Even After Scheming So Much, He Still Had to Marry...

He still wasn't used to walking on two legs.

But the feeling of having his feet on solid ground was truly wonderful!

After returning to his own territory, he had nothing better to do, so he kept practicing walking while thinking up countermeasures. By nightfall, he could already control his legs proficiently. He stood perfectly straight, and though he walked at a sluggish pace, there was a unique rhythm to it that made him quite pleasing to watch.

At least, that was how it looked to the servants who were used to the eldest young master's bizarre posture.

Jing Yi slowly and gracefully made his way to the dining room and sat in his seat.

The Jing Family was a large family.

Jing Bo placed great importance on the authority of the family head, so every evening, he required everyone to gather for a meal. This included the Jing Family's second son, Jing Sa, who was in university; the third son, Jing Cong, who was in middle school; and the youngest daughter, Jing Lan, who had just turned twelve and was spoiled beyond measure. Jing Sa and Jing Lan had both been born to the current Madam Jing, while Jing Cong was nominally adopted. In reality, he was the product of Jing Bo's affair. It was said that the woman who bore him had once been a low-ranking government clerk. After earning the merit of bearing a son, she used Jing Bo as a stepping stone to transfer to Xylophone Star's tax department, where she had a bright future ahead of her. From then on, she never looked at Jing Cong again.

As for Jing Yi himself, although his mother had been Jing Bo's first wife, her presence in this household had been pitifully faint. Everyone, including Jing Yi's grandmother, treated the former mistress of the house as taboo. In any case, considering that Jing Yi and Jing Sa were less than a week apart in age, either Jing Bo was a scumbag who cheated while his wife was pregnant, or Jing Yi had been born prematurely, his mother had met with an accident right after giving birth to him, and Jing Bo had swiftly found his second spring. Jing Yi leaned more toward the former.

He just didn't know whether the woman who had given birth to him was still alive.

The Jing Family had a rule that no one was to speak while eating or talk while sleeping.

So after arriving, Jing Yi couldn't immediately stir up trouble. He could only fill his stomach first.

The food on the table was truly... hard to describe.

The staple food was something with a tough texture, somewhat like Earth's military compressed biscuits. There were several dishes: meatballs, meat stew, fish balls, fish stew, two plates of green vegetables, and one small plate of roasted meat that looked the best. It smelled quite good, but the meat was dense and had to be chewed for a long time before it could be swallowed.

Jing Yi ate as though he would rather be dead.

Actually, it wasn't that the culinary development of this world was truly so terrible—or rather, that wasn't entirely the case.

To explain that, one had to mention the current food composition of this world.

The Mi Star people's population had exploded. Aside from the Mother Planet, the eight habitable planets had rather average living conditions, and their terraforming would take a long time. Thus, food supplies still depended largely on the Mother Planet. But the Mother Planet only had so much land, and to feed an ever-growing population, agricultural technology naturally had to be developed vigorously. It was like Earth in the past, where genetically modified technology and all sorts of miscellaneous techniques and drugs were widely used. No one cared whether the things grown would harm the human body. Quantity mattered more than quality; everything was for humanity's survival!

Over time, with genetic technology, drugs, and all kinds of radiation, the nutritional value of crops and livestock steadily declined, while harmful substances steadily increased. This had long been an open secret, but for cheaper and more abundant food, everyone had to continue drinking poison to quench their thirst. Having something to eat was better than having nothing. They couldn't just wait to starve to death, could they?

To make matters worse, as the Mi Star people ventured farther into the sea of stars, they invented more genetic drugs for humans themselves. Combined with certain mutations, the innate constitutions of Mi Star people now varied enormously from individual to individual. They ranged from F to S. The weakest were probably comparable to Earth's shut-ins, about Zero Point five geese, while the strongest could be exposed to space for as long as half an hour without dying. It truly embodied the saying that people were born unequal.

Foods with low nutritional content and high levels of harmful substances posed no problem for people with F- or E-grade constitutions. Their absorption abilities were poor, so the impact would not be great. But for those with high-grade constitutions, it was like an Earthling eating a pound of grass. It might create a sense of fullness, but the nutrition would not keep up! If an Earthling could eat more than ten pounds of grass in one meal, perhaps the nutrition would be enough, but who had a stomach that big? It was the same for Mi Star people. They had no way to obtain sufficient nutrition from ordinary food anymore. It was simply tragic.

Where there was a problem, there had to be a solution. Either they cultivated or searched for food varieties with greater nutritional value, or... they compressed low-nutrition food.

So this meal that Jing Yi found so disgusting was actually an aristocratic luxury! Ordinary people with low-grade constitutions could eat junk food to their hearts' content. Those with high-grade constitutions had no choice but to drink thick, tasteless concentrated nutrient fluid. How could they be as extravagant as the Jing Family? These were genuine delicacies!

After finally finishing the meal and setting down his chopsticks, Jing Lan curled her lips and congratulated Jing Yi. "I heard you're going to marry Major Qin? How unpredictable life is. Those people who mocked you for never being able to win Major Qin, even if you died trying, must have had their faces slapped swollen by now, hahaha!!"

Even After Scheming So Much, He Still Had to Marry...

Wasn't it a resounding slap in the face? They had said that even if he died, he would never win Major Qin. Now that Major Qin had really died, hadn't that crazy, lovesick stalker still managed to get him?