Pure

* Apocalypse + getting back together after a breakup + sentinels and guides

* My take on sentinels and guides. The genre belongs to the world; the messy stuff is all me.

* A guide who seems warm but is cold inside, and turns straight men gay on his own initiative, as the gong x a pure-hearted King Sentinel as the shou

*

In the seventh year after breaking up with Lu Yan, Lin Shu's life had gradually settled down, including his being single for seven years straight.

Then one day, his peace was mercilessly shattered.

A dismembered homeless man's corpse inexplicably appeared in front of the upscale French restaurant Lin Shu ran, and squads of officers descended from the sky.

As Lin Shu crouched in the kitchen, beside the corpse, heartbrokenly wondering whether his six-figure baking machine could still be used, he looked up and found his ex-boyfriend of seven years standing there with an expressionless face.

They hadn't seen each other in seven years. He was taller now, looming over Lin Shu like a nightmare come true.

With his arms folded, the biceps beneath his broad shoulders bulged powerfully. The police chief's badge gleamed on his chest, and even his battered old combat boots, hugging his calves, gave off a sexy aura.

Lin Shu: "..."

Damn it.

*

The second time Lin Shu saw Lu Yan was after the apocalypse. Having officially switched careers from chef to the youngest squad leader in the Second White Tower, Lin Shu ran into Lu Yan on the street again. The same intersection was deserted now. Amid the ruins, the former police chief was no longer surrounded by his righteous army. He stood alone beside a heap of A-rank mutant remains.

Behind him hovered a formless spirit body like a ball of black mist. The man wore his usual smile, but his dark eyes were as still as a freezing pool.

For the first time since it was born, Lin Shu's spirit body, a saber-toothed tiger, bristled at the sight of an unknown species of spirit body, ready to fight.

And that formless spirit body, impossible to identify, seemed to turn and spot the saber-toothed tiger. In the very next moment, a tail-like appendage suddenly emerged from the black mist, and it excitedly slammed against the ground with a series of thuds.

Lin Shu: "?"

What kind of perverted spirit body is that?

...Just like its master.

*

Joint combat exercise across multiple battle zones at White Tower Headquarters.

Seeing the man sitting alone in the distance, drinking coffee, Lin Shu's teammate stopped him and whispered mysteriously, "Captain, don't go over there. That's Lu Yan, the famous guide from the Fifth White Tower."

Lin Shu froze. "Of course I won't go over... A guide? But I've seen him fight. Guides can fight?"

Teammate: "He can take on ten people."

Teammate: "A dark, unchaste guide."

Under normal circumstances, once a "sentinel" and a "guide" establish a mental link, they are bound together immediately: one and only, absolute, until death.

The [Unchaste Guide] is an exception.

The term "unchaste" refers to guides whose mental links are tangled every which way, who move among different wild sentinels, and who have no more restraint than a central air conditioner.

Even more likely to make sentinels steer clear than [Unchaste Guides] are [Dark Guides].

Dark Guides are mutant guides whose spirit bodies have turned into birds of prey, giving them individual combat abilities and even making them stronger than ordinary sentinels.

Most terrifying of all, they can forcibly invade a sentinel's mental landscape and destroy it unilaterally.

[Dark] + [Unchaste] = unheard of = an unbeatable combination.

Lin Shu thought, What a disaster. I wonder which poor bastard is going to become this heartless, promiscuous jerk's sentinel one day.

Theme: Rely on yourself, not heaven or earth