Defeating Magic Chapter 36: Soak in a Hot Spring Together

Chapter 36: Soak in a Hot Spring Together

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: Mimosa

The condition of the accommodation in the mine was particularly poor, as no one in management would choose to live here, Li Qing didn’t even live here so there was no need to send anyone to keep an eye on the place as it was originally used simply to dig ore, and there was nothing to steal.

However, Zhou Yan’s goal was to build a usable mecha as soon as possible, so he wanted the processes, including forging and smelting, to be completed under his own supervision. So he lived and ate with the workers at the mine during this time, and the project did advance significantly.

The one thing that surprised Zhou Yan was Luo Futu, who had been expected to shortly move back to the inn because of his discomfort with the life here. He had never thought that he would persist until now. In fact, the taste was not that bad.

“Is your piece good?” Zhou Yan couldn’t help but ask a question. Luo Futu looked very fragrant and elegant when he ate something, so that he couldn’t help but have doubts whether this pot of dry cakes could still be flavorful? He now regretted that he didn’t drink the pot of chicken soup he made for Luo Futu. It was too wasteful.

Luo Futu hooked the corner of his lips, broke off a piece from his own dry food, and handed it over. “Taste it?”

He still had the black veil over his eyes, but he could accurately tell where he was. With the exception of his eyes being covered up, his other features were more pronounced, such as his pointed and curved lips as well as his high nose bridge. Zhou Yan could not resist sweeping his lips as he took the piece of dry food into his mouth before he spat it out on the ground without chewing twice.

Luo Futu had a piece of dry food that had not even been baked but he assumed that he had eaten worse. He then handed over the piece in his hand.

“You do not need to stay here with me, go back to the hotel and stay there.”

Luo Futu did not rush to answer, and took the piece of roasted dry food off the iron bar. “I think it is necessary.”

Zhou Yan was always so strong, and always forgot that he was essentially an omega. Of the hundreds of laborers in the mine, although most of them were beta, there may be one or two alphas. How could he leave him alone in such a place and feel comfortable? The mine had been recruiting people for some time, and since they had started making mecha, they had recruited more people and had not carefully accounted for the gender they were recruiting.

Luo Futu broke off a small piece of the roasted dry food and shoved it into Zhou Yan’s mouth, who subconsciously opened his mouth and bit into it. The coarse texture was not as hard to swallow as it was when it was roasted over the fire. He subconsciously glanced to the side. The others were like them, gathered around the fire to roast dry food that they ate with relish without showing any discomfort.

Not only was the food here bad, the sleeping environment was even worse. Several people would sleep in a large bunk, and in the room, the smell of different pheromones mixed together in a vomit-inducing manner. Gabriel was not bad to Zhou Yan. As a collaborator, Li Qing gave Zhou Yan and Luo Futu a separate room.

Even though it was a separate room, the accommodation was not as good as it could have been. There was no real door between the single room they lived in and the room where the workers lived. There was only a curtain which made it barely a “single room”. Perhaps because Zhou Yan’s body did not emit the smell of pheromones, people here subconsciously treated him as a beta. A beta and an alpha in the same room was still very in line with the rules.

It didn’t matter how bad the living environment was, what Zhou Yan found most unbearable was that the personal safety of the workers here was actually difficult to guarantee. Mining in the mine was high-risk and intensive labor; they sometimes needed to climb to high places with a rope around their waist being the only protection. After the first batch of alloy was refined, Zhou Yan did not let them rush to make mecha, but instead produced a batch of safety helmets and safety shoes for them, so that every day, at least he would not be as scared watching the workers go in and out of the mine.

He had been in a highly civilized society for a long time, which made him uncomfortable, and Zhou Yan always felt very vain—if the current labor conditions in the iron ore plant were put on Dense Cloud Planet, it would be exposed in a hurry and labeled as a “sweatshop”.

Zhou Yan sighed, “Look, if our society was productive enough, the working conditions of these people wouldn’t be so bad.”

Luo Futu’s eyes were blindfolded, so the word “look” seemed a bit strange for him at this point. When he was blindfolded, Zhou Yan couldn’t see his thoughts, so he subconsciously felt a little pity for him.

A thought suddenly popped into his head: It is so easy to make Luo Futu look miserable, as long as he shut up. 

He suddenly felt compassion, so he didn’t continue, and instead broke open the baked dry food that he ate with hot water. After these few days together, Zhou Yan found that he actually had some misunderstanding about Luo Futu. He was not a person who could not endure suffering, and in any case, he never complained during these days. Sometimes when it was too tiring to keep an eye on the craftsmen making parts, Luo Futu would arrange things for him.

In the past few days, Luo Futu had become very proficient in the process of making mecha.

However, it could also be because he wanted to master this powerful mechanical weapon sooner. At that time, even if he left himself as a collaborator, Luo Futu could continue to do his own thing.

“You are very tired today, rest early after you finish eating.” 

Hearing Luo Futu admonish him, Zhou Yan glanced at him with a softened expression. At that moment, an old worker in charge of making iron came over and yelled to Zhou Yan, “Little Zhou, let’s take a bath together after eating.”

Zhou Yan glanced in his direction and gave a slightly stiff smile.

This little change was something Zhou Yan didn’t expect. After staying here for a few days, he gradually made a few friends, and they also gradually considered him as one of their own. Sometimes they would call him to join them when they wanted to take a bath. The only recreational activity for the workers here was bathing. There was a big hot spring behind the mine, which was built in the open air and enclosed into many pools both large and small that everyone liked to go to after work. Since no one took too much notice about hygiene before, the environment around the hot spring was very worrying, and Zhou Yan almost passed out the first time he went.

This was too unfriendly for a person with a cleanliness problem.

Zhou Yan then arranged for some people to clean the hot spring, not allowing them to spit and throw garbage around the hot spring. He also had them put some screens to cut off the line of sight, so that it was no longer a group of people soaking together with no privacy.

Of course, the most important issue was hygiene. Since it was winter now, it was fine, but in summer, if the environment was still this dirty and poorly maintained, it was likely to cause a large-scale plague which would create a loss for the mine.

Zhou Yan told Gabriel what he thought, and the latter was not interested in managing the matter, so he simply let Zhou Yan do it, and Zhou Yan really put his hands on it.

Anyway, after nearly a week of hard work, the public spa was finally able to be used. Zhou Yan actually did not think he would make friends. His personality was not suitable for making friends, but the few workers he spent the most time with were quite nice to him.

They were not as cautious towards him as they were in the beginning.

Luo Futu heard this and suddenly let out a laugh. “I will accompany him, you go by yourself.”

The old worker could feel Zhou Yan’s kindness, but also could feel that Luo Futu was not a good thing. Although the two of them stuck together all day, Luo Futu and Zhou Yan were two completely different extremes. The old worker left with the toiletries and muttered, “Why would such a nice person like Little Zhou be friends with you?”

Zhou Yan looked at Luo Futu expressionlessly. “You can’t talk properly.”

Luo Futu broke the dried food and stuffed it into his mouth. “I’ve already talked nicely, you want to see what I look like when I don’t talk nicely?”

“….” Sure enough, he was cuter when he kept his mouth shut. Zhou Yan didn’t want to nag Luo Futu anymore, so after eating quickly, he said, “I’m going to take a shower. Tomorrow morning at eight o’clock, the mecha’s exoskeleton material will be ready. I have to get up early to keep an eye on it.”

Luo Futu raised his eyebrows. “Do you want me to follow?”

Zhou Yan hesitated for a moment, and Luo Futu added, “Of course, if you are not afraid of encountering malicious alphas on the way and delaying the progress of tomorrow’s work, I won’t follow.”

“….” Zhou Yan thought carefully for half a day, but finally compromised. “Come with me.”

This was not the time for bravado, he knew his gender disadvantage; the people here were so tough, and his bravado was not good enough to withstand the environment. Zhou Yan used to hate those omegas who used powerful inhibitors that would allow them to pose as betas to get into school when he was in military school.

Luo Futu heard this, and immediately smiled before he stood up. “Don’t worry, I’m here. I will absolutely not let any alpha near you even half a step.”

Zhou Yan did believe Luo Futu since he acted like he cared about him. But in his opinion, he just cared about a collaborator who was of great use to him. It was a tacit agreement that needed no deliberate emphasis; just as Zhou Yan would protect Luo Futu unconditionally, he would also try to protect his own personal safety.

On the way to the bathroom, there was a small incident. The mine did have people who liked Zhou Yan, but there were some people who had a lot of problems with Zhou Yan, because he made some “safety regulations”, “hot spring use regulations”, and so on. These people had been saying behind their backs that Zhou Yan was as pretentious as an omega who had never seen the world.

So on the way to the hot spring, Zhou Yan accidentally met up with some people who had such thoughts. The leader of the group was Sun Tian, who had an explicit fight with Zhou Yan a few days ago, so it was a bit of a headache for Zhou Yan to see them. Today, these people saw Zhou Yan and did not take the initiative to say anything. Zhou Yan was also happy that they did not find trouble and just pretended not to see him.

The moment they walked forward, passing Zhou Yan and Luo Futu, Zhou Yan suddenly smelled a pungent smell of smoke, and he couldn’t help but sneeze. Zhou Yan subconsciously looked back, but the men had already gone far away.

Luo Futu looked at him keenly. “What’s the problem?”

Zhou Yan shook his head. “Nothing, I might have caught a cold.”

Luo Futu was not a good-natured person, and if he let them both meet, there would inevitably be another conflict. Thus, Zhou Yan hurriedly pulled Luo Futu into a screened compartment, so that he could not have any conflict with others.

“You’re really unlike an omega sometimes. You have no sense of precaution at all.”

Zhou Yan took off his bathrobe and sat in the hot spring pool, staring at Luo Futu with a crooked head. “Because I don’t mind you taking a bath with me?”

Luo Futu didn’t say anything, but it was obvious that this was what he was talking about.

“It’s nothing, I’ve seen you naked anyway. We’re so familiar, why be pretentious?”

Luo Futu raised his eyebrows slightly, took off his robe, and then slowly walked into the warm water. Zhou Yan looked at him expressionlessly, staring at Luo Futu’s broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, big pec body. He felt very envious. He hadn’t even trained to this extent on Dense Cloud Planet! …. Alas, he could not be angry about it.

“Ah….” 

Luo Futu suddenly splashed a handful of water at Zhou Yan and laughed. “Don’t look again, or I’ll be unkind to you.”

Zhou Yan wiped a handful of water droplets on his face and looked away. He didn’t want to see it!

Zhou Yan sat down deep into the hot spring water. The hot water with the smell of sulfur diffused over his shoulders, making him very comfortable. Zhou Yan then closed his eyes and leaned back on the edge of the pool to close his eyes to rest. In a short while, Luo Futu slid silently like a snake to Zhou Yan’s side and looked at him sideways. “I’ll be closer to you for close protection.”

“….” It’s not like a strange alpha would suddenly appear in the hot spring. Zhou Yan glanced at him, the tip of his nose suddenly sensed a faint scent. It was impossible to say whether it was Luo Futu’s pheromone smell, or another smell.

It seemed to be the smell of smoke….

Zhou Yan’s mind was suddenly a little dizzy, and the scene in front of him became blurred. He couldn’t use his strength and hurriedly grabbed the edge of the hot spring pool as he muttered, “I’m dizzy….”

Luo Futu was concentrating on his bath when a head suddenly fell onto his shoulder.

…. What’s going on? He was confused when Zhou Yan suddenly leaned on his shoulder and slowly slid into the water. Luo Futu subconsciously wrapped his arms around his waist and scooped Zhou Yan into his arms.

Zhou Yan’s body was soft. He was hugged and did not react, just lying on his body without moving.

“Zhou Yan, what’s wrong with you?” This was very wrong. Luo Futu gently patted Zhou Yan’s face, but saw that his face was flushed, as if he was drunk. But he hadn’t been drinking….

“I….” Luo Futu subconsciously leaned over and heard him say: “I’m hungry for meat.”

“….”

Before Luo Futu had time to react, Zhou Yan, who was lying in his arms, suddenly came over and opened his mouth before he bit down on Luo Futu’s Adam’s apple while mumbling, “Meat…”