Poisoned Wine

After losing four partners, S-rank Guide Yan Shuyu turns down hundreds of pairing applications, only to be forcibly partnered with a scoundrel.

Yan Shuyu: "What makes you qualified to fight alongside me?"

Tang Wu: "S-rank, top of the exams, young, strong, and healthy, handsome, long-legged, and smart. As for my stats in that department..."

Yan Shuyu (rubbing his forehead): "That's enough!"

Yan Shuyu: "I don't want to team up with you."

Tang Wu: "But I want to!"

*

But his application to cancel the forced pairing is rejected. Furious and resentful, Yan Shuyu has no choice but to accept reality. Then the story goes completely off the rails

Why is this wolf glued to his side every single day?

Yan Shuyu (at the end of his rope): "Are you a damn dog?! You and your spirit animal, get away from me!"

Tang Wu points at the gyrfalcon perched on his shoulder, looking aggrieved. "But partner, your spirit animal doesn't seem to agree."

"You seem... a little all talk."

*

Years later, Tang Wu thinks back to the afternoon he first met Yan Shuyu.

"I was curious about his past, his secrets, and why so many people were willing to go through fire and water for him, even give their lives. But when I finally saw the gray eyes hidden in the shadows, I could think of only one thing, "

"I think I'm about to follow the same path they did."

1. An aloof, stubborn bottom with a gyrfalcon spirit animal × an overwhelmingly powerful, cunning, devoted-dog top with a North American gray wolf spirit animal.

2. The basic setting draws on the 'Sentinel and Guide' entry in Baidu Baike. Any original additions are explained in the novel.

3. All city names are fictional. Any resemblance is purely coincidental.

Content warnings:

1. There is a female-female secondary couple.

2. The bottom has a bit of a harem-protagonist aura. Read with caution if that bothers you.

Tang Wu (pronounced Wu)

★Coming soon: "The Shut-In Assassin Gets Stalked After Retirement." I'll start it after finishing this novel.

Bai Xing is a graduating student and shut-in who goes back and forth between two places every day. He's a nobody on the fringes of Alpha Kete, with no friends or family, and no one cares whether he lives or dies.

His grades are average, life is difficult, and he gives off a constant air of dullness and decay.

The only thing he has going for him is a somewhat pretty face.

Then one day, he realizes he's being followed.

Only one person in the world knows he used to be an assassin.

Theme: Humans and nature living together in harmony