Chapter 416: Chapter 370: In Passive Heat

"Time’s up."

Alex glanced at his wrist and turned to Gu Ning.

The exam was scheduled for exactly one hour, and he wouldn’t give Gu Ning a single second more or less.

Gu Ning finished just as time was called. She put down her pen, sat up ramrod straight, and waited nervously for Alex to grade her test.

Alex walked over, picked up her test paper, and scanned it carefully.

"How was it?"

Gu Ning looked up at him and asked, a little nervously.

"Not bad," Alex said. "Sixty percent correct."

Gu Ning breathed a sigh of relief. ’So I passed.’

"You guessed on fifteen percent of the questions, didn’t you?" Alex looked up from the test paper at her.

"...I guessed, but I got them right."

"And if I’m not mistaken, you pieced together the answers to several questions from other parts of the test."

In that respect, she was a bit like Lanuo used to be.

When Lanuo took tests, he would rack his brains to fill the entire paper just to get a good score, regardless of whether he knew the answers.

In his own words, guessing correctly was a skill in itself.

This wasn’t a good study habit. If you don’t know something, you don’t know it. A test isn’t about the score; it’s about assessing how much a person has learned.

Gu Ning gave a dry laugh.

For a little human raised on standardized testing, guessing questions and finding answers within the test itself were basic tactics for many exams.

"You don’t have to write down answers you don’t know," Alex said. "I just want to know your current level in the universal language so I can adjust my teaching method. I don’t care about your score."

Gu Ning held out her hand to him. "Alright, give it here. I’ll redo it."

Alex took the test paper and tapped it lightly on her palm. He then sat down beside her, put an arm around her, and began going over the questions with her as he corrected it.

Gu Ning summoned all her focus to listen, but...

Alex hadn’t given her translation earpiece back yet, so she was struggling to understand.

"Alex."

After he had gone over two questions, Gu Ning held out her hand, palm open in front of him. "I need... my translation earpiece."

Alex tilted his head, his gaze shifting from the test paper to her face.

His breath hitched almost imperceptibly before slowing. "You need to try and move away from the translation earpiece. Don’t rely on it constantly. The system’s translations are inaccurate."

Gu Ning propped her chin on her hand and had just started to sigh when she heard the familiar, mechanical voice of the translator coming from Alex’s hand.

Alex took off his own terminal, placed it by Gu Ning’s hand, and projected the translation interface onto the desktop. "Only click translate when you don’t understand."

After speaking, he tapped the interface, and the terminal translated his words.

Gu Ning said, "Let’s use my terminal. It’s connected to the earpiece."

Alex said, "I need to listen too."

While Gu Ning was taking the test, he had stood by the window for nearly an hour, working to connect the strange translation system from her terminal to his own.

He wanted to hear for himself how this translator usually interpreted the language for her, teaching her such a warped version of the universal language.

"I need to understand your language to teach you better," Alex said in a soft voice, his eyes lowered to Gu Ning.

In all this time, Ningning had never spoken to him in her own language.

There were many different clans over at Sky Watch Point, with a wide variety of languages. Even before Sky Watch Point and the Beast Alliance lost contact, communication was often a barrier.

In the past, the Beast Alliance’s universal language wasn’t the primary means of communication at Sky Watch Point. It was only common within the major zones of the Beast Alliance; Sky Watch Point, the Sea Area, and some isolated Beast Clan tribes within the Alliance did not speak it.

Gu Ning had also consistently shown a reluctance to reveal her own language. She always tried her best to communicate with them in her clumsy universal language, and when she really couldn’t say something, she would use the terminal to translate and then write it down for them to see.

They had found her in Zone 19, and they all knew that for her to have appeared there, she must have gone through something terrible. It was an unspoken agreement among them to never bring up related topics in front of her or ask too many questions, lest they dredge up bad memories and cause her pain.

"Okay."

Gu Ning accepted Alex’s teaching method. Only using the translation when she didn’t understand would indeed greatly reduce her dependence on it.

She had a good language-learning environment, and with systematic, standardized teaching, learning a new language wouldn’t be difficult.

Their gazes returned to the test paper.

One learned earnestly, and the other taught earnestly.

One was determined to achieve her goal, genuinely wanting to master the language, and with Alex’s intimidating presence, she didn’t dare to slack off in the slightest.

The other was forcing himself to keep his attention fixed on teaching, determined not to show the slightest hint of anything being wrong in front of the little female, lest he distract her.

Alex’s tone was gentle and patient, his teaching methodical and progressive. Gu Ning had no idea how much he was suffering and holding back inside.

For the past few days, Alex’s mind hadn’t had a single moment of relaxation.

Although he had not yet actually mated with Gu Ning, they had already shared the most intimate contact short of it.

Ever since then, he had been in a state of passive estrus, relying on Inhibitors to suppress it.

He had originally thought that if he just spent some time apart from Ningning and avoided too much contact, it would get better. He never expected that her scent these past two days would be even richer and more fragrant than during her bleeding period.

He had transferred all the staff on this floor. Aside from a few doctors, he didn’t even schedule soldiers for guard duty, leaving only himself, Barto, and Philinos to stand watch.

He also had Lanuo prepare a more effective deodorizer to spray throughout the entire corridor and had people mark scents around the hospital to finally suppress Ningning’s smell.

An estrus scent this strong, if left untreated, could probably be smelled from several kilometers away.

That night, Ningning had been with Barto, and her scent hadn’t been concealed much. Even after undergoing a second metamorphosis and gaining a human form, the fox didn’t have the ability to mask her scent.

Alex lowered his gaze, staring intently at Gu Ning, who was hunched over, correcting her test paper.

The little female’s long, soft hair was down, but two braids on either side of her ears made her look neat and kept it out of her way.

He took a light sniff and caught the scent of a fox in her hair.

Barto had braided it for her.

Alex’s gaze fell on the little female’s small, delicate ears.

Under the room’s light, her ears seemed to glow with a faint, lustrous sheen.

Alex’s Adam’s apple bobbed. His breathing slowed a little more, and the fingers resting on her waist began to rub gently.

"All done." Under Alex’s guidance, Gu Ning finished correcting the last wrong answer and gave a big stretch.

She felt she had learned a great deal from just two or three hours of tutoring.

Having learned something, the frustration that had been building up over the past two days from Barto’s teaching completely vanished.

"Alex, should we..." Gu Ning started to ask if he wanted to continue, but when she turned her head, she saw the alpha wolf staring at her, lost in thought.

Gu Ning’s outstretched hands froze in mid-air for a moment before she slowly lowered them. "Alex?"

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