Bai Liu replied calmly, “You saw wrong. I didn’t turn red. It’s the light reflecting.”

Spades said slowly, “?”

It looked quite red, though.

Red all the way from below his ear down to his collarbone...

He could not see any farther down. Perhaps it was not as red below that.

Noticing that Spades still wanted to lean closer and look farther down his body, Bai Liu decisively covered Spades’ eyes and scolded him in a cold, slightly breathless voice, “Stop looking at me. Pay attention to the plot.”

Pay attention to the plot?

The plot right now...

After realizing that Spades had actually started listening intently to the sounds those two people were making, Bai Liu felt that he had given the wrong suggestion.

The local customs of “bed exercises” differed from place to place. This Guy and Alex were probably from a more sexually open region. Their style in bed was extremely uninhibited, and once they were in the heat of it, they would shout anything.

That included certain specialized bedroom vocabulary.

“Hold me hard.” Spades repeated the words one by one with great seriousness. Then he asked Bai Liu, “Is this related to the main plot? Do I need to hold you hard?”

Bai Liu: “...”

Bai Liu tried to remain calm. “No. It has nothing to do with you.”

“Oh.” Spades asked again, “Then why are they holding each other back and forth...”

Bai Liu spoke with lightning speed. “You don’t need to know why. This has nothing to do with you, me, the main mission, or these two NPCs.”

After saying that, Bai Liu calmly covered Spades’ ears and eyes.

However, Spades had already entered a strange investigative state. He felt that this matter must be related to the main plot, and he insisted on knowing why.

So Spades pulled down Bai Liu’s hands, which were covering his eyes and mouth. Just as he was about to continue his righteous questioning, he froze upon seeing Bai Liu’s appearance.

Spades was puzzled. “You’re even redder than before, Bai Liu.”

Bai Liu: “...”

Spades noticed that the look Bai Liu was giving him already carried a trace of murderous intent, and the gun in Bai Liu’s hand was restlessly aimed at Spades’ heart. Instinctively, Spades switched to a topic he felt was safer.

“What exactly are they doing?” Spades felt that he was discussing serious business, so his expression was very open and upright. He looked directly at Bai Liu without the slightest evasion. “What weapon did Alex use to poke Guy? A gun? Why didn’t Guy die?”

Bai Liu: “...”

In a certain sense, what Spades said was not wrong...

Bai Liu slowly let out a long breath. He realized that he would not be able to easily avoid this topic today.

This fellow Spades sometimes had a curiosity exactly like the young Xie Ta. Once he became stubborn about something, he absolutely had to know.

“Guy’s physiological structure allows him to be attacked without suffering serious injury.” Bai Liu steadily adopted an academic attitude and began to fool Spades. “Generally speaking, every male has it. It isn’t special.”

Spades’ tone was still confused. “Is that so? But I’ve studied human anatomy. Why didn’t I know males had something like that?”

Spades’ human anatomy class had been taught by The Judge. It had used middle and primary school health education textbooks. The core of the lessons was where the human body’s weaknesses were, so that one could launch surprise attacks and disable an opponent’s combat ability.

Although The Judge had briefly taught Spades a tiny amount of knowledge about sexual life in that class, it only covered heterosexuality—to the extent of “a man and a woman sleep in one bed for one night and then have a baby.” Everything else was beyond Spades’ syllabus.

Thus, Spades asked Bai Liu, “Do you have that physiological structure?”

Bai Liu subconsciously retorted without thinking, “I don’t.”

Spades’ tone carried reproach. “You just said every male has it.”

Before Bai Liu could answer, Spades looked at Bai Liu with sudden realization, as if he had made an inference.

“Are you female?”

“That’s not right...” Spades’ gaze moved down to Bai Liu’s chest, his tone serious. “I touched your body just now. You don’t have female secondary sex characteristics.”

Bai Liu: “...”

Bai Liu took a deep breath. “I don’t have them, but I am indeed male.”

Spades nodded, deducing as if he had understood everything. “I’ve learned about this situation in textbooks. When both male and female sex characteristics are not obvious, you are an intersex—”

Bai Liu could no longer endure it. “Shut up!”

Spades hesitantly looked behind Bai Liu. “Behind you...”

Bai Liu cut him off coldly. “There is nothing behind me. Shut up.”

“Heh.” Guy’s voice came from behind Bai Liu, still carrying a trace of softness and teasing. “Looks like we interrupted your discussion?”

Bai Liu remained still for about a minute before slowly turning his head.

Guy was kneeling on the floor with his clothes in disarray. He looked at Bai Liu beneath the bed with a smile in his eyes and reached out a hand.

“Have you two decided to come out now, or do you want to discuss it for a while longer?”

Bai Liu: “...”

Spades, behind him, explained innocently, “What I wanted to say was that there was someone behind you.”

Bai Liu slowly exhaled the breath trapped in his chest. He reached out and took Guy’s hand, then was pulled out from under the bed in one motion.

Beside them, Alex, who was cleaning up the corpse and the mess on the bed, gave the two of them an unfriendly look. His gaze swept over Bai Liu’s clothes for a moment, then he gave Guy a meaningful glance.

“Relax, Alex.” Guy was still smiling. He leaned lazily against the bedside. His collar remained open, and there was a soft, damp languor at the corners of his eyes and brows, making him look very approachable. “Although they aren’t wearing our side’s military uniforms, they shouldn’t be the enemy.”

Guy gave Bai Liu a teasing glance. “Otherwise, when you took off your pants and climbed onto me, they would have fired long ago instead of discussing our sex life under the bed.”

Bai Liu: “...”

Just how much of his and Spades’ conversation had these two heard...

Alex’s face instantly turned bright red. He interrupted loudly, “Guy—!!”

Guy found it amusing and raised both hands as if surrendering. “All right, I was wrong.”

Spades, who had crawled out from under the bed, stood obediently beside Bai Liu. Upon noticing Alex’s flushed face, he leaned down and said beside Bai Liu’s ear in a tone of mild novelty, “Bai Liu, this person turns red just like you.”

Bai Liu: “...”

Guy had spent several more years in the army than Alex. As an experienced veteran, he had his own judgment of the situation. So he looked at Bai Liu and Spades with a smile.

“Are you youngsters who snuck out from town to see what fighting a war is like?”

Dozens of kilometers from the border was a border town where the army’s main camp was stationed.

This border town was extremely remote and economically underdeveloped. The sudden arrival of the army brought a huge influx of people to this isolated town, driving up consumption in tobacco shops, taverns, and entertainment venues such as brothels and hotels.

For these soldiers, who lived precariously on the battlefield, the first thing they did after receiving their pay was spend it to bring themselves a little happiness.

Like Tom in the tent next door.

And to the original residents of this town, these soldiers—including some well-dressed officers—were like aristocrats. They came and went elegantly through the smoke of gunpowder, spent lavishly on top-tier tobacco and alcohol, and slept with the prettiest girls in town.

This was undoubtedly the best recruitment advertisement.

Quite a few young people in town began to yearn to enlist and started sneaking toward the front lines to scout out the situation.

Guy had encountered such youngsters more than once. He carried a kind of helpless fondness toward them. He looked at Bai Liu and Spades with that same gaze.

“So now that you know what war is like, do you still want to join?”

The moment Bai Liu opened his mouth, system panels appeared in front of both him and Spades.

[System Notification: Congratulations to player Bai Liu for triggering the main plot task — Help the NPC Alex win the war.]

[System Notification: Congratulations to player Spades for triggering the main plot task — Help the NPC Alex win the war.]

Bai Liu glanced at Spades, then smiled as he answered Guy. “Of course.”

Guy sighed helplessly. “I understand why you want to come, but you have better paths. You’re still so young. There’s no need to gamble.”

He looked up at Bai Liu sincerely, trying to persuade him. “The reason I joined the war is that I had no better way out. My parents and my clan couldn’t accept me.”

Guy smiled and pointed to himself. “Whether it was my orientation, my lack of ambition, or my poor studies. They are a very well-off upper-class family, while I live too freely, like someone from the lower classes. They weren’t even willing to give me the family surname and forced me to join the army to discipline myself.”

“They hoped the war would baptize me and turn me into a true noble man.”

Alex sat quietly beside Guy and took his hand. Guy squeezed back, the smile on his face still natural and unforced.

“But clearly, my definition of a man is different from theirs.”

He winked at Bai Liu. “They think a man shouldn’t have a [Redacted], but I think having one is a very comfortable thing.”

Bai Liu: “...”

Just how much did you hear!!

Alex lowered his head and hissed a quiet warning. “Guy!!”

“When the war is over, they’ll give me a large sum of money, and I’ll live very well.”

Guy turned to look at Alex. “This is my lover, Alex. He was originally a medical student who wanted to continue his studies, but for the past two years, the admission requirements for researchers at high-end universities have required high-level medical personnel—which means recommendation letters from the nobility.”

“Alex’s family are commoners, so he couldn’t obtain a noble recommendation letter. But he has a noble pursuit of medicine, so he joined the army.”

Guy turned back to Bai Liu. “Because after joining the army, as long as a soldier earns a certain amount of merit, the government rewards him with the opportunity to enter any high-end university for further study.”

“You see.” Guy looked at Bai Liu gently. “We both know why we’re standing on the battlefield. We aren’t here for the war itself, nor for those flashy recruitment advertisements. What about you?”

Bai Liu looked evenly into Guy’s eyes. “We know as well. We are here for the end of the war.”

“If the war doesn’t end, it will soon push back into the town behind us.”

Bai Liu followed Guy’s fantasy about them, as well as Guy’s attitude toward the war, and fabricated a persona that would earn this NPC’s favorability—a small-town youth who loved peace, loved his hometown, and possessed a high ideological awareness.

As expected, Guy had no resistance to this persona. His gaze froze, and a layer of mist rose in his eyes as he looked at Bai Liu and whispered, “...What you said is very right. You are a good lad.”

Alex remained wary of Bai Liu and Spades.

Sitting beside Guy, he kept his gun in hand with an unfriendly attitude. But he respected Guy’s way of doing things, so while Guy spoke to persuade them, Alex waited quietly without saying a word.

However, when Guy said to Bai Liu, “You are a good lad,” Alex, who had stayed silent until now, swept a sharp gaze toward Bai Liu.

Back then, not long after Guy had said that to him, the two of them had developed into lovers.

This sentence instantly doubled Alex’s alertness toward Bai Liu. He raised his gun and said, “Guy thinks you’re harmless, but I don’t.”

Guy pressed Alex’s gun down. “Hey, he’s a good lad. Maybe we can be a little friendlier.”

Alex was truly angered by Guy’s attempt to stop him. He directly chambered a round, stared straight at Bai Liu, and said in a low voice, “A good lad? There can only be one good lad in this tent.”

[System Notification: The main plot NPC Alex is having a jealous reaction toward player Bai Liu. Favorability is dropping rapidly! Once it falls below the red line, player Bai Liu will automatically be removed from this NPC’s related main plot task!]

Bai Liu: “...”

He had been careless.

He had overdone the persona.

Alex aimed his gun directly at the center of Bai Liu’s forehead. “You’d better confess honestly. What were you discussing under the bed?”

Bai Liu had already sensed Alex’s intense hostility toward him. At this point, anything he said would be wrong and would cause favorability to drop, so Bai Liu gave Spades a look, signaling for him to take over the conversation.

Spades answered Alex with an upright expression. “We were discussing the issue of the [Redacted].”

“Bai Liu said he didn’t have a [Redacted], but I thought he should have one. I was imitating your process to find Bai Liu’s [Redacted], but he wouldn’t tell me where it was. Before we came out from under the bed, I still hadn’t found his [Redacted].”

Bai Liu: “...”

Alex: “...”

Guy: “...”

Alex’s face turned completely red as he lowered his gun. He scratched his head, and his eyes shone faintly as he looked at Bai Liu and Spades standing close together. It was as if he had discovered people of his own kind, and he said incredulously, “...My God, you two are actually a pair too?!”

“Are you also like us, coming to this little tent to—” Guy trailed off suggestively, making a gesture with two fingers, “—have an affair? You two are certainly bold!”

“It seems we were the ones who disturbed you. You must have arrived before us.”

Guy gave Bai Liu’s waist a meaningful glance. “But it looks like you haven’t gotten to the main point yet?”

[System Notification: Alex’s favorability is rising rapidly. Player Bai Liu has been included in the main plot task again.]

[System Notification: Guy’s favorability is rising rapidly.]

Bai Liu, who had been about to defend himself, shut his mouth. He could not help fiddling with the gun in his hand, casting Spades a light glance with a smile as bright as the spring breeze.

“Yes, that’s right. He and I are a pair.”

Spades, who felt dense murderous intent coming from Bai Liu, was bewildered.

“?”

Had he answered incorrectly again?