Lu Yuan tensed instinctively the instant his throat was clamped.
He knew all too well that Shen Nian never held back when she went at someone. Last semester during the physical fitness test, she had slapped his shoulder hard enough to leave a red handprint that hurt for three days.
But this time -
It didn't hurt.
It really didn't hurt.
Shen Nian tightened her arm around his neck. She was squeezing pretty hard; if it had been before, he would already have been coughing. Now there was pressure on his throat, but it was still completely within his tolerance. In fact, it was almost... neither here nor there.
His body had gotten stronger.
That thought had barely surfaced before another sensation drowned it out.
Shen Nian hunched forward, trying to drag him down, hanging off his back with her chest pressed against him.
With the way she was arching and grinding, the two soft mounds on her chest kept rubbing and pressing against his back, full of springy elasticity, and the feel of her nipples brushing his skin was unmistakably clear.
Lu Yuan's breathing quickened.
The thing between his legs shamefully got hard again.
Shen Nian arched twice and still couldn't take him down. She lowered her head, trying to hook his legs out from under him, and her eyes flicked downward.
She saw it.
Rigid and jutting up, brazen in angle, bouncing slightly as it stood there.
"Fuck!" Shen Nian froze, the words forced out through clenched teeth. "You're actually enjoying this, you bastard??"
Lu Yuan opened his mouth, but before he could say anything -
"Enough."
Zhou Wei's voice came from inside the carriage, not loud, but steady.
"Stop messing around."
Shen Nian loosened her arm.
She jumped down from Lu Yuan's back and stepped away, crossing her arms over her chest, her face practically spelling out that she was not done with him, but she really didn't strike again.
Lu Yuan rubbed his neck and turned around.
Zhou Wei was standing by the carriage door, one hand resting on the handrail. When her gaze fell on him, it first swept across his face, then slid down a little before she could stop herself.
It landed on the thing that was still standing hard.
She paused for a fraction of a second.
A faint flush rose in her face. She coughed once and dragged her eyes back up, and when she spoke again, her tone had already reverted to the class adviser mode.
"The system just announced that the two of you triggered the breeding protocol and that your first union increased your attributes."
She paused.
"How much did you two gain?"
Lu Yuan blinked.
Right.
There had seemed to be a prompt just now when he came, but at the time the tenfold wave had felt so good he hadn't had the presence of mind to care about anything else.
"How do I check?" he asked.
"Try thinking about opening the panel," Meng Wanqing's voice came from inside the carriage.
Lu Yuan silently said it in his mind.
A translucent panel popped up out of nowhere, hovering before his eyes.
[Lu Yuan - System Panel]
Level: LV1
Talent: Absolute Critical Hit (SSS)
Strength: 23 (8+15)
Agility: 24 (9+15)
Physique: 22 (7+15)
Spirit: 26 (11+15)
Defense: 44 (physique x2) Mana: 78 (spirit x3)
Skill Bar: Empty
Equipment Bar: Empty
Backpack: Empty
Survival Coins: 0
Merit Points: 0
Every attribute line had a green plus sign after it. Lu Yuan tapped the one behind Strength.
A line of small text popped up.
[Breeding Protocol (First Time) Triggered - All Attributes +5]
[Talent "Absolute Critical Hit" Triggered - Critical Multiplier x3]
[Actual Gain: All Attributes +15]
Lu Yuan stared at the panel for two seconds.
All attributes plus fifteen.
So that was where the surge in strength from just now had come from.
"How much?" Zhou Wei asked.
Lu Yuan looked up. "The base bonus from the breeding protocol is five points to all attributes."
The carriage went quiet for a moment.
"My talent triggered a triple crit."
He paused.
"Actual bonus, fifteen points to all attributes."
The carriage exploded.
"Fifteen points??"
"All attributes?? Every single one gets fifteen??"
"I only had eight points of Strength total!!"
"My Agility was only six! He gets fifteen from one time??"
The girls' voices tangled into a mess, some shocked, some shouting, some sucking in sharp breaths.
Meng Wanqing stood in the middle of the carriage and pushed her glasses up. Her voice wasn't loud, but it was very clear. "A normal person's starting attributes max out at ten in a single stat, with an average of five to eight. Fifteen points to all attributes means that each of his stats is now two to three times a normal person's starting value."
That sentence made the carriage go quiet again.
Then it blew up even harder.
"Two to three times?? Just once and he gets two to three times??"
"Then what if you do it twice?"
"Shut up, you!"
Zhou Wei's brow twitched, but she didn't respond to any of that. Instead, she turned to Shen Nian.
"Shen Nian, yours?"
Shen Nian was standing outside the carriage door, arms still folded over her chest, the flush on her face showing no sign of fading.
When she heard Zhou Wei call her name, she froze for a moment, then closed her eyes and silently said it in her mind.
The panel popped up.
She looked down at it, her pupils widening slightly.
"Same," she said, her voice a little tight. "Fifteen to all attributes. I got the crit bonus too."
The carriage couldn't stay quiet anymore.
"She got it too??"
"The crit bonus applies to both of them?"
"Then doesn't that mean whenever Lu Yuan does it once, both of them get fifteen points?"
"Holy shit..."
Zhou Wei drew in a deep breath.
Her mind was racing.
The base bonus of the breeding protocol was five points to all attributes. Lu Yuan's talent had crit it up to fifteen. And both of them received the fifteen.
And this was only the first time.
The system had said the rewards for first pregnancy and first union were the highest, with diminishing returns afterward.
If the first time was five points, then even if it dropped by half after that, it would still be attribute points across the board.
And then there was the randomness of the crit...
Her gaze drifted unconsciously to Lu Yuan, from his face downward, then lower again.
Then she yanked it back.
"Ahem." She cleared her throat, keeping her voice steady. "Put that aside for now. Right now..."
"Teacher, we can't put it aside."
Lin Shiyu's voice came out from the carriage. Her round face no longer wore a smile; it was serious now.
"This isn't a matter of whether we can put it aside. We have no gear at all right now, not even clothes. What happens if we run into monsters later?"
"The average of all our attributes combined probably isn't even eight points. Lu Yuan's already in the twenties. And this protocol boosts both sides, so Shen Nian's in the twenties too."
She paused, looked around at the girls in the carriage, then finally returned her gaze to Zhou Wei.
"This is our capital for staying alive, teacher."
The carriage went quiet.
More than thirty girls looked at one another. No one spoke, but their eyes were moving.
Quite a few of them looked over at Lu Yuan, then at the still-not-fully-softened thing between his legs, and then quickly looked away.
Some blushed, some dropped their heads, but none of them refuted Lin Shiyu's words.
Su Yao sat in the corner of the carriage, her long hair hanging down to cover half her face. She still hadn't said a word.
But her fingers tightened unconsciously on her knee.
Gu Siyu stood in the middle with her arms folded, her expression calm, but the color at her ears betrayed her.
Zhou Wei was silent for several seconds.
"Lin Shiyu is right."
Her voice was steady, though she knew her own heartbeat was at least twice as fast as before.
"This protocol really is the most direct way to get stronger right now. But..."
She emphasized the word "but."
"The system said it has to be completely voluntary. If either side resists, it won't work. So this can't be rushed, and it can't be forced."
She swept her gaze around the carriage.
"What matters most right now is getting off the train to search for supplies. Clothes, food, weapons - whatever we can find. The station stop is seven hours. We've already used nearly one."
"Everyone off the train. Split into groups. Gu Siyu, you handle the grouping."
"Okay," Gu Siyu answered, and started assigning people.
Lu Yuan stood by the carriage door, the panel still floating in front of him.
He reached out and closed it, then looked up at the girls in the carriage.
More than thirty pairs of eyes were glancing his way on and off. Some were direct, some furtive, some pretended to be looking elsewhere while their eyes kept circling back to him.
Those looks were different from before.
Before, they had been embarrassment, shame, and don't-look-at-me.
Now there was something else layered on top.
He couldn't quite name it, but Lu Yuan could feel it.
His gaze swept over Su Yao. Su Yao happened to be looking at him too. Their eyes met for less than a second before Su Yao looked away first, lowering her lashes.
He looked over at Shen Nian next. Shen Nian glared at him from the side, the corners of her mouth turned down, the blush on her face still not completely gone.
"Everyone get off," Zhou Wei said, slapping the handrail once.
The girls rose one after another, barefoot on the carriage floor, and headed for the door.
As they passed Lu Yuan, some brushed by with their shoulders turned sideways, some kept their heads down and didn't look at him, and some glanced at the thing between his legs on the way past, then hurried on with red faces.
When Lin Shiyu passed by, she stopped for a moment and looked up at him, a meaningful smile on her round face.
"Lu Yuan."
"Yeah?"
"Do your best."