When Su Duan's consciousness naturally returned, he found that he was already back in his and Vigter's bedroom.

The small wounds deliberately left on his body had been treated, and he felt very clean and refreshed. Above his head was the high ceiling, and he was covered with a soft quilt, the edges of which were always tightly pulled up to his chin. It was quiet by his ears, with only the faint sound of another person's breathing.

The system quietly reported to him, "Host, no other incidents occurred."

Su Duan softly said "good", feeling much more at ease, then turned his head slightly and looked in the direction of the breathing sound.

The black-haired youth was curled up beside him, but unlike before, he was not tightly holding Su Duan's waist with his arms and burying his head in Su Duan's chest to sleep. Instead, he was about a fist's distance away from Su Duan, only lightly touching the back of Su Duan's hand with his own.

It was as if he really wanted to get close, but was also very cautiously guarding against something.

Vigter's reaction today was somewhat sluggish for some reason. Usually, when Su Duan woke up and opened his eyes every morning, the youth hugging him would also open his eyes along with him. But today, it was not until Su Duan turned his head and his gaze fell on Vigter's curled eyelashes that Vigter suddenly opened his icy blue eyes.

His pupils contracted for a moment, and the adult Luota rolled up from the bed and knelt beside it, just staring at him blankly, with some nervous and complex emotions flowing in his icy blue eyes, and a hint of retreat in his eyes.

He didn't even dare to touch him... even the hand that was originally touching him was hastily withdrawn.

Seeing Vigter so frightened like a startled bird, Su Duan's heart inexplicably tightened. He sat up from the bed, propping himself up with his arms, and reached out to the black-haired youth beside him, gently placing his palm on the other's soft cheek.

Vigter stiffened for a moment when his face was touched, but he didn't dodge. Instead, he tentatively rubbed his cheek against Su Duan's palm.

As if he was in a hurry to confirm something.

"Good Viji..." Su Duan curved the corners of his eyes, his clear black eyes focused on the youth who had buried his face in his palm, and said softly in the tone he used to coax the cub, "Come here... can I hold you?"

The black-haired youth stopped rubbing his cheek in Su Duan's palm, looked up at him for a few seconds, and then suddenly pounced on him eagerly.

He straddled Su Duan with his legs apart, his muscular arms tightly wrapped around Su Duan's waist, and his head skillfully buried in Su Duan's chest and began to rub against it.

...As if he was the one who had been wronged.

Su Duan stroked the fluffy black head in his arms, his fingertips inserted into Vigter's hair, slowly massaging him.

With this hug, Su Duan found that the other's body seemed to have grown a bit taller, and the strength of his arms around him and the width between his shoulders... had all changed slightly.

Although these changes were not obvious, for Su Duan, who had a human-shaped Luota hanging on his body all year round, it was still very easy to tell.

He had grown a little bigger again.

"I'm sorry..." A muffled voice came from his arms, with a hint of self-blame and hoarseness, saying very softly, "I hurt you again..."

He had wanted to protect his little prey, but before his prey could be targeted by other members of his race, he had already done something to hurt him first.

Su Duan hugged his head a little tighter and comforted him, "Our Viji is very powerful. If it weren't for Viji shielding me, I would have been hit by the bookshelf."

"But I was the one who knocked over the bookshelf..." An even smaller voice came from his arms.

"..." Su Duan had to admit that what he said was true and could not be refuted.

So after a few seconds of pause, he decisively skipped over this topic. "Did you forget? I actively pressed your head down and let you drink. Don't blame yourself, be good."

"I couldn't control myself." The youth in his arms stubbornly insisted on his own theory. "It's my fault..."

Su Duan felt that they had to have a talk about this issue. He could understand Viji's reluctance to drink his blood. If their roles were reversed, he wouldn't want his own health to be maintained by his lover's blood either.

But correspondingly, he also didn't want to see Viji die from the disease.

The pills from the mall could only temporarily suppress the disease after it broke out. To completely cure it, his blood was still needed.

They had already gone through the past two years like this, and there was no reason to give up here.

After drinking so much of his blood yesterday, Viji's healing value had risen to 65, with only 35 points of healing value left, which was not a distant matter.

So Su Duan dug the other's head out of his arms, cupped the other's face and brought it close to his own until their noses touched before stopping. "Listen to me, Viji, you're sick—"

"I know, Mr. Aiberta talked to me about it yesterday... It's an incurable genetic disease, right?" Vigter interrupted him and said urgently, "Incurable, otherwise the clan wouldn't have become like this."

Due to the large-scale outbreak of the disease, countless cubs died before reaching adulthood, and adult Luotas were also affected, and this impact continued to spread downward for several generations, resulting in a sharp reduction in the lifespan of adults and a significant delay in the hatching time of cubs.

The cubs hatched in the royal family today were all born from eggs after that genetic disease, and before they could be born, their parents had already left too early due to the impact of the disease.

Aiberta was the only adult Luota left without any health problems. His actual age was not as young as he appeared, and he was now over two hundred years old and had been on the throne for nearly two hundred years.

...If no new, healthy Luota cubs could grow up before he was forced to abdicate, the royal family would have to be renewed.

But fortunately, the genetic disease that broke out without any warning also left just as quietly. The cubs that have been hatched in recent years are all healthy.

As long as there are healthy cubs, the Luota race will sooner or later be able to flourish again.

But the prerequisite is - health.

Even though they have been severely affected by this genetic disease, the Luotas have not yet found an effective treatment for their sick compatriots.

In fact, His Majesty the Emperor seemed quite puzzled by the fact that he was able to regain his sanity after the onset of the disease, and immediately arranged for a doctor to give him a full physical examination.

"Your condition is already improving, otherwise how could it have been suppressed during the onset? You also know there's no such precedent." Su Duan helplessly pinched the soft cheeks in his hands and said, "My blood does have a therapeutic effect, you can actually feel it, right?"

The adult Luota whose cheeks were pinched out of shape pursed his lips, his facial expression tightly stretched, and fell into silence for a moment.

He had just come of age and had no experience in lying, so he was easily exposed.

"It will be fine... very soon."

"You said you would protect me." Su Duan got even closer, to the point where their breaths intertwined, "Isn't it supposed to be for life..."

The rest of the words were lost between their lips and teeth, gradually becoming blurred.

This was the first kiss between the two since Vigter came of age - a proper one, the previous one where he was kissed silly in order to deliver medicine didn't count.

The little prey who was actively kissed was so frightened that his eyes widened, the black pupils in his icy blue beast eyes narrowing into a thin beam. Vigter's entire body stiffened in place.

But after all, he was a natural predator, so after the initial stiffness, he quickly found a way to dominate the other.

......

After barely appeasing the big cub at home who had fallen into a state of self-blame, Su Duan cautiously asked the big cub about the consequences of him stacking building blocks with bookshelves in the family head's study.

"Mr. Aiberta punished me to organize all the messed up books..." Vigter dejectedly rested his chin on his shoulder.

Of course, before being punished to organize the books, he was also picked up by the scruff of his neck in his original form by the older member of the same race and taken for a lap around the palace while being surrounded and watched by those ugly dumplings chirping and chattering, an experience that Vigter was unwilling to recall...

Thinking of the books scattered on the ground, perhaps hundreds of thousands of them, the words "I'll help you" got stuck in Su Duan's throat for a moment, and then he silently swallowed them back.

...This punishment was really too terrible.

It couldn't be that Vigter would really have to organize hundreds of thousands of books by himself, right? How long would that take?

Moreover, organizing books was not as simple as picking them up and putting them back. There were very strict requirements for categories and order.

Su Duan instinctively felt that His Majesty the Emperor was just trying to scare Vigter. After he had the system calculate that even at the fastest speed, not even one-tenth could be organized before Vigter started school, he felt more confident.

It must be a scare tactic.

So he blinked and promised with ease, "Don't worry, I'll help you."

The adult Luota, who was unaware of Su Duan's previous hesitation, rubbed his shoulder, and a soft emotion spread in his heart, feeling that his whole person was about to become soft and mushy.

Sure enough, on the third day of organizing the books, His Majesty the Emperor arranged for a dedicated team to take over the task, with over a hundred people, their faces full of professionalism.

Su Duan and Vigter, who were originally buried in piles of books, were summoned again to the Emperor's afternoon tea time.

His Majesty the Emperor unwaveringly had afternoon tea every day and was very fond of inviting various people to talk during tea time.

Because he was originally concealing something, and because the other party had wrecked an entire study, Su Duan obediently held his small cup, his gaze focused on the steaming tea water in the cup, with a slight guilty conscience.

When facing His Majesty, Vigter for some reason also had an unusual listlessness, contrary to his usual behavior of declaring his possessiveness of Su Duan with his eyes and actions in front of others, and instead quietly sat beside him, also focusing on drinking his tea.

The two of them were like two beaten quails, sitting in a row together.

His Majesty the Emperor calmly drank a whole cup of tea before speaking to the black-haired member of the same race in a low voice, "I never thought that in this era, I would still see a sick member of our race... If we count from the time of birth, you should be even older than me, Vigter."

Vigter seemed to not have expected the other party to start with such a gentle remark, and stared blankly at those deep emerald green eyes that revealed no true emotions.

The Emperor with elegant light golden short hair continued, "Although it's been a long time, I still have to say to you - welcome home, and I'm sorry for losing you back then."

At that time, the race was too chaotic, and new cubs were dying every day. Losing an egg, which would have caused a great sensation in normal times, no longer stirred up any ripples. Except for his parents, probably no one could spare the energy to search.

Being alone in the eggshell for three hundred years must have been a very lonely time.

"..." Vigter was completely stunned for a moment before stammering in response, "It's... it's okay..."

After Vigter averted his gaze in confusion, His Majesty the Emperor naturally turned his eyes to the black-haired boy beside him, whom he had originally thought was a human, and continued, "Of course, what I expected even less was to see a... living Planter."

Su Duan's hands holding the small cup tightened slightly.

His Majesty the Emperor put his empty cup on the exquisite little table and leaned forward slightly, saying in a low voice, "And the results of the blood test done on Vigter before showed that your blood has a clear suppressive effect on the genetic disease in his body... That's why he was able to grow to adulthood smoothly, right?"

Three hundred years ago, when the genetic disease broke out among the Luota race, all the cubs died without exception before reaching adulthood. So when he saw that Vigter had already reached adulthood, he didn't think in that direction at all. It was only when this adult cub fell ill and destroyed his entire study that he realized that there seemed to be something wrong with his background.

An egg that was lost three hundred years ago, after an unimaginably cold and desolate time, struggled out of its shell, still carrying the genetic disease that had been extinct for more than a hundred years.

To be able to survive until now... it was probably all thanks to that Planter giving him blood. This explained very well the severe anemia on Vigter's body when they first met.

Although the black-haired member of the same race concealed the Planter's scent very well when they first met, that day Su Duan's blood stained his clothes and desk. When he discovered something was wrong and went to the study, Vigter didn't have time to clean it up at all. That scent that could so obviously arouse appetite, if he still couldn't sense that something was wrong, he would really be a fool.

Su Duan held the cup, lowered his eyes and softly murmured a sound of agreement, uneasily pursing the corners of his lips.

A trace of complexity flashed through the deep green eyes of His Majesty the Emperor.

When the genetic disease that plagued an entire race broke out among the Luota tribe, the Planters had already been extinct for some time due to being unsuitable for the environment, so they never had the chance to discover that the blood of this race also had the effect of curing genetic diseases.

Fate had played a huge joke on them.

If only the Planters had not gone extinct at that time—

...Forget it, it's all in the past now, and there's no point in hypothesizing about these things.

"Don't be nervous, I believe you have already discussed countermeasures, right?"

Su Duan nodded silently again, but he was so nervous that he still didn't know how to explain for a moment, slowly organizing his words in his heart.

Without waiting for Su Duan to finish organizing his words, His Majesty the Emperor spoke again in a gentle tone: "...When you are ready, tell me slowly. Let's stop here for today. Finish this cup of tea and go back to rest first. You must be tired after tidying up the study for three days."

After the two finished their afternoon tea and left hand in hand, His Majesty the Emperor slowly brewed himself a cup of fragrant afternoon tea. As he brought it to his mouth, he suddenly seemed to think of something interesting and laughed softly.

The last sick Luota in this world.

—And his only medicine.

Two existences equally forgotten by time.

What a coincidence.