The Black Pollution Sphere

Luo Ruzhuo said, "Please release your Mental Entity."

A flash of white light filled Luo Ruzhuo's purification room, and the largest Mental Entity it had seen so far appeared.

The golden lion had thick limbs, a dense mane, and amber slit pupils like its sentinel's. It stared straight at Luo Ruzhuo as though she were delicious prey.

Chiya was restrained at the other end of the sofa. Although he didn't know what the guide was going to do, he remembered to warn her, "Miss Luo, please be careful and try not to touch it directly."

His Mental Entity was good-tempered, but it was still a ferocious beast at heart. Every guide who had purified him before had stayed at a safe distance and used tools to make mental contact.

He meant well, but Luo Ruzhuo walked straight over as though she hadn't heard him. Chiya's heart leaped into his throat. He desperately restrained his Mental Entity's movements in his mental domain, trying to keep it from rushing forward and frightening the guide.

But the moment Luo Ruzhuo came close and he caught that sweet scent, Chiya lost control after all-

The lion's lazily drooping tail snapped straight, and its mane bristled. A low growl caught in its throat before it could emerge, and it charged forward a few steps on its massive paws. Before Luo Ruzhuo could do anything to fight back, it stopped.

It neither pounced nor roared. It carefully edged up to Luo Ruzhuo's feet and licked the back of her hand with its rough tongue. Then its enormous body flopped onto its side with a thud, exposing its soft belly. It let out the loudest feline purr possible, as though thunder had rumbled outside again.

Luo Ruzhuo: ...

Chiya shut his eyes in embarrassment. His face turned bright red in an instant, and his ears were so red they looked ready to bleed.

The Siamese cat had the biggest reaction of all. It meowed its complaints at the lion sprawled across most of the floor. Fortunately, it was small enough to lie down anywhere, so it flopped down again, rolling around Luo Ruzhuo's feet and acting cute. It was far more ingratiating than the lion.

The lion wanted to roll around too, but the room was too small. One roll and it would run out of space. It could only gaze at Luo Ruzhuo with its big, round golden eyes, trying to look cute and win the guide's favor.

Luo Ruzhuo vaguely remembered that the felines in her previous life had been aloof.

But they were Mental Entities, so it was normal for their personalities to change in interstellar society... right?

Luo Ruzhuo had gotten her fill of fluff just now, and her heart was as hard as iron. Ignoring both animals on the floor, she put on a businesslike air and laid her hand on the lion's forehead-

The next moment, the lion on the floor gradually turned transparent, then vanished.

It was like passing through a thin, transparent film. With a pop, Luo Ruzhuo felt only the slightest resistance before entering the S-rank sentinel's mental domain.

The natural scenery here was the same as in the mental domains of every sentinel except Luo Xi.

A vast grassland stretched beyond the horizon, with a few trees and shrubs scattered across it.

Back in familiar territory, the lion rolled happily on the ground and roared twice, as though inviting Luo Ruzhuo to play.

Luo Ruzhuo had no time to pet the big cat yet. She had serious business to attend to.

But there was blue sky and white clouds overhead, and vast grassland in every direction. As far as Luo Ruzhuo could see with the naked eye, there was no pollution resembling black mist.

She noticed, however, that the area visible to her naked eye was not the full extent of this S-rank sentinel's mental domain.

Luo Ruzhuo closed her eyes, and her body became a wisp of wind over the grassland. She rose higher and higher, moving farther and farther from the ground beneath her until the grassland became a map she could take in with her naked eye. At the edge of the map, she caught sight of the familiar black mist.

Finally, I found it. This is what I came for.

Luo Ruzhuo opened her eyes, and her mental power swiftly condensed into a cage. It swept in from every direction, completely surrounding a small portion of the dense mist, then gradually compressed. The circle of mental power grew smaller and smaller... until it became a spherical object.

With a wave of her hand, a black sphere appeared in Luo Ruzhuo's palm.

Had a third person been there, they would have noticed that the sphere seemed to be tightly enclosed by something invisible, unable to escape. No one would have guessed that something so well-behaved was actually pollution.

Having obtained what she wanted, Luo Ruzhuo left the mental domain in satisfaction.

When she opened her eyes, she met Chiya's astonished gaze.

His expression was complicated-disbelief, confusion, delight... It was as complicated as a pie chart. Luo Ruzhuo couldn't be bothered with any of it. She waved a hand, and a memory alteration that treated everyone equally reduced the sentinel's tangled thoughts to nothing.

Whatever complicated sentinel-guide system there was, it could say goodbye to her psychic power.

Luo Ruzhuo picked up the Siamese cat from the floor and repeated her trick, entering Luo Xi's mental domain.

Remembering how the pollution had attacked the Siamese cat before, Luo Ruzhuo frowned. She didn't release the mental power barrier binding the pollution in the little sphere. Instead, she set up another barrier between the training room and the corner where the pollution spawned.

The new barrier separated the kitten from the training room, and Luo Ruzhuo tossed the little pollution sphere inside. After coming out, she used the device to check Luo Xi's pollution level again-40%. Good, now there was no need to hide it.

Since she was already checking, Luo Ruzhuo also tested the unconscious Chiya. His pollution level had dropped from 89% to 80%.

Oh? Luo Ruzhuo raised an eyebrow. Had 9% of an S-rank sentinel's pollution level transformed into 40% upon entering a B-rank sentinel's mental domain?

The difference between sentinel ranks in this world seemed much greater than she had imagined.

What Luo Ruzhuo didn't know was that, by Sentinel Academy's entrance test standards, Luo Xi's Mental Entity had actually only been C-rank. It had reached its current B-rank after he joined the Desert Team, as the Siamese cat grew through repeated confrontations with pollution.

That was also why his Mental Entity was the part of his mental domain most severely eroded by pollution.

This was the price of raising a Mental Entity's rank through later effort.

Luo Ruzhuo only learned these things a long time afterward.

For now, Luo Ruzhuo had resolved the immediate problem, but the two sentinels lying on the sofa left her at a loss.

When exactly would they wake up? She couldn't let them delay her lunch at the cafeteria-

After seeing the Desert Team members out, Luo Ruzhuo turned and left without hesitation, despite the lingering, reluctant gazes of several sentinels. Her steps grew quicker, and her figure receded farther and farther from view.

Everyone watched the guide drift away like the wind, then turned their attention to the two sentinels who had come out.

The other members of the Desert Team were all curious about what the captain and Luo Xi had experienced inside-especially the only two sentinels on the team who had yet to interact with Luo Ruzhuo:

Shuangya, whose Mental Entity was a snow leopard, and Changgeng, whose Mental Entity was a tiger.

First, the two of them had witnessed their teammate Heisha get possessed, transforming from an ice-cold cool guy into a gentle cool guy.

Then they had seen Luo Xi, who had previously avoided Luo Ruzhuo at all costs, turn into a cat so eager to curry favor that he practically wanted to glue his eyes to her.

Finally, they had watched their captain see the test report after coming out and remain silent and distracted ever since, as though his soul had flown away with the guide.

Shuangya and Changgeng: ...

Curious. They were so curious!

Never mind whether curiosity would kill the cat—what did a cat have to do with them, a snow leopard and a tiger?

"Did she purify both of you?"

"Didn't they say Luo Xi's pollution level was too high to be purified?"

"Captain, what did you do after you went in?"

Chiya and Luo Xi: ...

Great. They couldn't answer those questions either.

One had been dazed after his purification and then anesthetized. The other only remembered the guide touching his Mental Entity, after which his mental barrier had been like air, letting the guide enter and leave as though it weren't there. The entire process hadn't even taken five minutes—and then he had fallen unconscious too.

What could they possibly say?

If he hadn't seen the actual numbers in the pollution level column of the test report, Chiya would have thought it had all been a dream too.

Stranger still, they knew Luo Ruzhuo had a secret—or rather, they had a vague feeling that Luo Ruzhuo had done something to them that she didn't want anyone else to notice.

Yet neither Chiya nor Luo Xi could feel any ill will toward Luo Ruzhuo at all.

Perhaps, just as they had said Heisha was possessed at the start, they had been possessed too.

And willingly at that.