Zhao Chen's heart leaped.
His face went stiff for several breaths.
His look was very tangled.
Now excited, now guilty, now unbelieving, now lost, now afraid.
He rose and paced back and forth where he stood.
Tao Beibei, giving out work some way off, cast him a puzzled look.
She had never seen her commander carry himself like this.
"You need not worry. I have already made arrangements here. I am about to make for the Rakshasa-Hades-class Interstellar Dreadnought, and I will stay at Big Sister Charlotte's side. And I have already ordered the Rakshasa-Hades-class Interstellar Dreadnought withdrawn from the front-line order of battle, and assigned some interstellar warships to guard its safety."
Lilith saw through what was in Zhao Chen's heart just now.
Charlotte giving birth, Zhao Chen was naturally excited and happy.
As for his guilt, it was because his wife was giving birth and he could not be at her side.
Lilith looked tenderly at this man before her, so wholly unlike an Emperor of an empire.
But in her heart this man's place kept rising higher and higher.
A man like this, thrown into turmoil because his woman was giving birth.
Was that not a kind of love, shown plainly?
"I…" Zhao Chen hesitated a moment and opened his mouth to say something.
"I know what you're thinking. I think Big Sister Charlotte would never agree. More than her side, the great decisive battle at the Hive Nests needs you! Remember, that was where she had always wanted to go. Only at your repeated insistence did she choose to hold the rear. If you gave up commanding the great decisive battle at the Hive Nests now and went back to her side, she would surely not be happy the moment she opened her eyes. Neither of us is some little wife; we know very well what matters more right now!" Lilith said gravely.
Zhao Chen clenched his fists.
"This is a video Big Sister Charlotte left with me. She told me to play it for you when it was needed." As she spoke, Lilith played a short video clip.
Its lead was none other than Charlotte.
From her rounded belly, it could be seen that this video must have been made two or three months before.
"Hi. If Lilith is playing this video, I must be having the baby right now! Zhao Chen!"
The Charlotte in the video called Zhao Chen by his name just then.
In these past few years that had been very rare.
More than once, in private, Zhao Chen had told Charlotte and Lilith there was no need to call him Your Majesty or the like; they were husband and wife, and they could just call him by his name, or Old Zhao, or some such.
But every time, Lilith and Charlotte let it go in one ear and out the other.
They could never remember it.
Who would have thought that now she would call him Zhao Chen outright?
"I'm warning you! I'm only having a baby; it's no big deal. If you dare drop what you're doing while I'm having the baby — say, some battle you're commanding — and run back to see me, I won't be happy at all! I, Charlotte, am of the White Tiger clan, Grand Marshal of the Owl Dragon legions. Not one of those sniveling little girls. I don't need pointless things like that. Remember! You are the Emperor of the Owl Dragon Interstellar Empire; you should be where you ought to be! Ever since you took that seat, there are a lot of choices that aren't yours to make anymore!"
As Charlotte said those last words, the eyes she turned toward this end of the video were very tender.
Zhao Chen looked at Charlotte, frozen in the video frame.
He took a deep breath.
He looked to Lilith. "Take good care of Charlotte and the children."
Lilith nodded.
"Tell Charlotte our two children's names. The boy is Zhao Hu, and the girl is Zhao Baier," Zhao Chen said with a smile.
"Mm. I'll tell Big Sister Charlotte." Lilith nodded hard.
Zhao Chen was just about to end the call.
Lilith spoke suddenly: "Actually… there's a piece of good news I meant to tell you once all this was over. But… I can't hold it in."
Zhao Chen looked in surprise at Lilith, whose cheeks had flushed a little.
Lilith bit her lip lightly, then said softly, "You're going to have another son."
With that, before Zhao Chen could speak.
Lilith cut the call.
Lilith was expecting too!
Zhao Chen's eyes went wide.
To tell the truth, it was only to be expected.
Ever since Charlotte had come to carry Zhao Chen's child, Lilith had all but had Zhao Chen to herself.
Whenever the two met in the flesh, Lilith would have with Zhao Chen a battle to rival the parting of heaven and earth.
Only, perhaps because of her succubus constitution, her fertility was very low.
So there had never been any result.
Lilith had privately worried about it for a long time.
Afraid she could never bear a child of her own and Zhao Chen's.
Now at last it had borne fruit.
Zhao Chen looked in excitement to the Panther-Girl beside him. "I'm having another child! I'm having another child!"
Just then Tao Beibei came over.
Zhao Chen went straight up, swept Tao Beibei into his arms, and spun round and round on the spot.
His face was all delighted smiles.
When Zhao Chen set Tao Beibei down on the floor, she saw only stars before her eyes; His Majesty had spun so fast it was like riding a roller coaster.
It took some doing.
But at last Zhao Chen's excitement settled.
Now he looked at that last Hive Nest across the way, his eyes shining with excitement and joy.
As though he could already see that, once this Hive Nest was destroyed, a happy life lay ahead.
His whole family then, and lovely little children.
At the very thought, the corners of Zhao Chen's mouth kept turning up despite himself.
"Reporting." Chu Xuan's video image popped up on the command channel.
"What is it?" Zhao Chen looked to Chu Xuan.
Chu Xuan said gravely, "Your Majesty, from three minutes ago, all the hive-race combat units within this Hive Nest have stopped appearing, and are no longer attacking. It's… it's as if they've given up defending altogether!"
On hearing this, Zhao Chen was at once on the alert.
He did not believe for a moment that these Order hive-race would meekly surrender.
Where something is out of the ordinary, there is always a devil behind it!
They were surely up to some mischief.
"Be careful. Use our detection equipment and scan the inside of the Hive Nest," Zhao Chen said.
Chu Xuan shook her head. "We've scanned it already. The Order hive-race all seem to be in a kind of hibernation. The one thing out of the ordinary is that the tentacles of those tree-shaped hive-race units are all joined to one another, and joined to the hive-race combat units as well. And they run all the way down to the core deep inside the Hive Nest. But it's too deep; our radar and scanning equipment can't make out anything unusual."
Zhao Chen frowned and said, "So they've given up resisting? Since we can't find anything from outside, send in our unmanned robots and interstellar drones, deep into this Hive Nest, and see what they're up to!"
"Yes!"
Chu Xuan carried out Zhao Chen's order at once, loosing great numbers of unmanned robots and interstellar drones into the Hive Nest before them.
Because those hive-race combat units all seemed to be hibernating, the unmanned robots and interstellar drones met no obstruction of any kind!