Song Zang quickly skimmed Imperial law again to make sure he had not misunderstood anything.
The position of sergeant major was specifically responsible for tactical advising and logistical duties throughout the Empire’s various military forces.
Low-ranking sergeant majors had virtually no authority inside a corps, but once the rank reached A-10, they stood even higher than generals.
The Empire’s Chief Sergeant Major even possessed a large private office in the capital’s Zone A intelligence hub, with exceptional access to information and enormous authority, capable of controlling the orders and strategic deployments transmitted by the commander-in-chief.
And Yin Chen was A-9. Despite his young age, he had already climbed almost to the very peak of power and had the authority to influence the operational direction of major Imperial corps.
A lieutenant colonel of Hall’s middling rank could act stern and impressive around ordinary soldiers, but when he encountered a senior sergeant major who supposedly “sat behind a desk,” he still had to lower his head first and greet him politely.
No matter how Song Zang looked at it, Yin Chen should not have appeared in the remote, backward Imperial Zone C. The Empire was currently at peace, and all three major corps were undergoing routine rest and secret training. There was no need for him to appear on a battlefield.
If so, the role assigned to Yin Chen should logically have remained in the luxurious comfort of Zone A, living in privilege, drinking a cup of outrageously expensive fragrant tea, attending matchmaking events with noble Omegas, and preparing and planning for his future promotion path…
Yet Yin Chen had appeared on a mining planet, living alongside the stationed garrison, only a twenty-minute “drive” from the barren garbage planet with its severe air pollution.
There had to be some unspeakable secret behind this as well.
Song Zang was intensely curious, but he did not approach Yin Chen on his own. Instead, he deliberately showed a pale, frightened expression, took several weak-kneed steps backward, and fell onto the ground as though the pressure of a high-ranking Alpha had made it impossible for him to breathe.
Yin Chen’s expression did not change. He lazily glanced at Lieutenant Colonel Hall, looking rather impatient.
The dignified middle-aged man’s facial muscles immediately tightened, as though Yin Chen’s gaze had made him nervous at once, though he could not reveal the slightest hint of it outwardly. Yin Chen wore no rank insignia on his uniform. Perhaps he was concealing his senior position within the battalion.
Lieutenant Colonel Hall pondered briefly, coughed, and spoke in a fairly friendly tone. “Mr. Song, were you the one who discovered the petroleum?”
“Y-yes… I found it. Inside my house,” Song Zang answered softly with his head lowered, stammering.
He could feel the two squads of Alpha soldiers casting faintly contemptuous looks at him, as though they could not believe such a frail, timid Alpha existed in the world. He was practically disgracing the entire sex.
Lieutenant Colonel Hall’s expression was the most normal of all. His face remained stern, serious but upright. He had no opinion of Song Zang and only wanted to determine the exact size and depth of the oil field as quickly as possible so extraction procedures could begin.
The lieutenant colonel removed his sable-lined cloak and ordered two soldiers to enter the house first and check for possible danger or ambushes.
“Reporting, Lieutenant Colonel. No danger, but… it smells terrible. Air quality is poor. Requesting sanitation treatment.”
“No need. It’s just the slums. A few quiet months and you’ve already become pampered? How bad could it possibly smell?”
Lieutenant Colonel Hall scolded them with a stern face, then strode into the crude sheet-metal house and nearly fled right back out.
But after boasting like that, he had no face to turn around and leave. He could only pinch his nose and silently grit his teeth through it.
Song Zang, who had watched the entire sequence, struggled desperately not to laugh. He had not expected his stinky pheromones to create such comedic results.
Because Lieutenant Colonel Hall’s emotional shift was so intense, a few strands of his pheromones leaked almost imperceptibly. Song Zang secretly sniffed. They smelled like apples. Kind of cute.
Apples… Although they grew on deciduous trees, biologically they still belonged to the Rosaceae family. Apparently the range of pheromones in this world was far more varied than he had imagined, encompassing the scents of countless plants in the rose family.
“What are you laughing at?”
Yin Chen suddenly spoke, his sinister tone unusually chilling.
Song Zang startled and only then realized that at some point, Yin Chen had silently come to stand right beside him.
Not only that, Yin Chen stood extremely close. One arm unobtrusively hooked around Song Zang’s waist, his palm leisurely settling there and rubbing again and again.
Scalding body heat forced its way through the thin fabric and seeped into Song Zang’s snow-soaked, icy back, sending up a tingling current of warmth.
So warm. So comfortable.
“I-I wasn’t laughing at anything.” Song Zang’s voice was soft. Outwardly he looked nervous and frightened, but he secretly shifted his feet and leaned his weight against Yin Chen’s strong, solid arm, turning his head to sniff the back of his neck.
Yin Chen’s control over his mental power seemed extremely precise. Not even the faintest trace of pheromone scent escaped.
Seeing Song Zang furtively tilt up his face, Yin Chen finally relaxed a little in resignation and deliberately released the tiniest trace of fragrance to satisfy his curiosity.
A luxurious but understated old-rose scent, rich without becoming cloying, with exactly the right vintage velvet quality. Song Zang’s brows relaxed. He genuinely wanted to bite Yin Chen on the spot. Of course, no matter what Yin Chen smelled like, Song Zang would like it especially much.
Seeing that everyone’s attention was focused inside the sheet-metal house, Song Zang lowered his voice. “What flower is that? It smells really familiar.”
Yin Chen himself was not especially satisfied. “Crimson Glory. Too fragrant. I don’t like it.”
The moment he said it, Song Zang understood. Crimson Glory, also known as Zhumo Shuanghui, was a double-petaled hybrid tea rose. Its parentage included the wine-famous Clos Vougeot rose and the Louis XIV rose, a symbol of nobility and authority. It was a rose with quite a distinguished history.
When Crimson Glory first bloomed, its color was a passionate bright red. As time passed, the edges of the petals gradually darkened, bleeding into a uniquely ink-black hue. When made into dried flowers, that darkness became even richer, giving the petals an especially captivating appearance.
Song Zang had once wanted to plant some beautiful flowers and greenery at Helin Estate and had even researched quite a bit for it. In the end, he had not continued. He chose ordinary, fresh green plants instead.
That place was the home of his good friends. Chi Yan’s home. It was not a home belonging to Song Zang alone.
The overwhelming forces that had hunted him everywhere were weaker than he had imagined. The conspiracy came from terrifying beings beyond the world rather than grudges and schemes created by people, and that actually made Song Zang breathe a tremendous sigh of relief.
He wanted to buy a house of his own. Detached, far away from crowds, so that if someone hunted him down and he fought lunatics there, innocent people would not be caught in the aftermath. Only then, when he carefully decorated territory that truly belonged to him, could he finally live freely and enjoy himself without restraint.
For now, though, he first had to uncover the truth behind every mystery before he earned the right to fully enjoy life.
Lieutenant Colonel Hall’s footsteps sounded more hurried than when they first met. He had personally conducted a rigorous geological survey and confirmed that petroleum truly lay deep underground, then fled that room filled with rotten stench as fast as he could.
Yin Chen showed no intention of indulging the lieutenant colonel simply because Hall outwardly held a higher position. He spoke blandly. “Lieutenant Colonel Hall, what are the results? Is this oil field suitable for large-scale extraction?”
“Very suitable. The reserves are abundant. It’s just very deep, which is why scans never detected it before. I’ll have Jia Xian negotiate with the Energy Administration right now. We need to buy up the surrounding land as soon as possible.” Lieutenant Colonel Hall explained rapidly, then swept his gaze over Song Zang and paused. “However, Mr. Song, I have several questions. I hope you can answer truthfully.”
“All right, L-Lieutenant Colonel.” Song Zang immediately straightened a little, lowered his eyes, and continued stammering.
“The deep hole inside your house was created by a single strike of mental power. The marks are extremely obvious, fresh, and rough. But as far as I understand, Mr. Song, your mental power is only D-rank, and your pheromones…”
At this point, Lieutenant Colonel Hall paused. His stunned gaze swept over Yin Chen’s hand resting behind Song Zang’s waist.
The First Corps’ famously ascetic strategic sergeant major was actually interested in a suspicious disabled Alpha in that way?
No wonder Yin Chen had never shown interest in beautiful Omegas and had even voluntarily canceled his eligibility for official matching. So this man was a same-sex-loving, stink-fetish pervert…
Hall rapidly weighed priorities in his mind. When he turned back to “interrogate” Song Zang, his tone abruptly became gentle and courteous. “Mr. Song, could you explain the circumstances leading up to this?”
“I’d never used mental power before. Today I suddenly wanted to try,” Song Zang said quietly, his eyes showing a trace of pitiful helplessness. “But I had no experience. I tried hard to concentrate, made a mistake… and drained my entire mental sea at once. I only managed to punch through this one little hole. I’m sorry.
“Lieutenant Colonel, did I do something wrong?”
Listen to that. This little Alpha really was delicate, even better at pretending to be weak than an Omega.
Lieutenant Colonel Hall secretly complained to himself, but at the same time, shock surged through his heart like a storm.
If the deep hole inside the sheet-metal house had truly been made by Song Zang… then the intelligent StarNet detection system might genuinely have made an error.
Not just anyone could possess such terrifying explosive mental energy. Even the strongest A-rank soldiers under Hall’s command could barely hope to match it. And even though Song Zang’s mental sea was in an extremely depleted state, he showed no sign whatsoever of mental-power instability. He remained perfectly rational, able to speak calmly like an ordinary person.
Defying heaven. Absolutely defying heaven.
Song Zang was not disabled at all. The strange-smelling pheromones inside his gland did not represent “zero sexual attraction,” severe disability, or innate inferiority either.
That odor, which ordinary people could barely tolerate, was highly likely to be an exceedingly rare mutated variety of exotic rose fragrance. In short, a mutation.
This seemingly slender, fragile Alpha might have undergone an 【atavistic overexpression】 mutation in the womb, transforming into a monstrously incomprehensible top-tier genius!
The only drawback was that a genius’s genes were too precious and unusual. Reproduction was naturally more difficult for them because it was extremely hard to find… a perfect partner whose pheromones were compatible enough.
Only another monster could be attracted to a monster like Song Zang.
Lieutenant Colonel Hall was no longer young. Although his mental-power aptitude was ordinary, his family had some noble background, and he himself was discreet and upright. That was why he had been assigned to guard an important mining operation, hoping to produce results, build merit, and climb several ranks.
He truly counted as a well-informed Alpha. During his student days he had loved the humanities and social sciences and had also studied ancient history in depth.
Hall had always been highly interested in the pheromone-tracing project currently being conducted by the Imperial Research Institute. His family possessed connections capable of reaching various secrets, so he knew quite a lot about it.
He stared fixedly at Song Zang, barely able to contain his excitement.
If he had truly discovered an Imperial “discard” who was actually a genius Alpha on a garbage planet, and if he successfully handled this matter, the commendations and merit he could receive would be even more valuable than a successful mining operation!
Of course, before any of that, he still had to ask Yin Chen’s opinion.
Yin Chen was the true commander behind the mining project, an enormously important figure specially dispatched from Imperial Zone A to supervise it. If Hall angered this ancestor, perhaps nobody would make it out of the mine alive.
Noticing Lieutenant Colonel Hall’s cautious yet unmistakably excited gaze, Yin Chen seemed to understand something as well.
He removed his hand from Song Zang’s waist, turned, and stepped into the cramped sheet-metal house. He checked every piece of furniture and every arrangement, including the bottomless hole.
No suspicious surveillance equipment. Nowhere to hide anything. No pheromone contaminants and no mental-power jammers.
Living in a crude place like this, even bathing or using a toilet required traveling a kilometer to the communal public bathhouse. Many less fastidious lower-class residents might simply relieve themselves directly in the thick snow…
Yin Chen left the cabin. His gaze fell on Song Zang’s damp black hair, then shifted to the Alpha’s thin clothing soaked through with snow. His eyes abruptly turned cold.
Without a second thought, he arranged everything. “I’m taking you to bathe now. Then we return to the mining planet and perform a complete mental-sea examination.”
Lieutenant Colonel Hall secretly sighed in relief and ordered several accompanying soldiers, “You stay behind. From this moment on, seal off the residential district. Nobody may pass through casually. Tell Land Administration and the Energy Bureau to get their asses over here for secondary confirmation. If there’s no problem, start the procedures.”
“Yes, Lieutenant Colonel!”
Song Zang still wanted to eavesdrop on their extraction process, but Yin Chen swiftly grabbed his arm and hauled him onto the shuttle. The movement could only be called rough, yet the expressionless, cold soldiers were already accustomed to it and showed no reaction.
Even if they did have emotional fluctuations, they were all being spent gossiping about Yin Chen’s strange “sexual orientation.”
A perfectly excellent Alpha would attract gossip even if he married an ordinary Beta.
After all, only an AO pairing with extremely high pheromone compatibility had the greatest chance of producing superior Alpha or Omega descendants… while falling in love with a Beta merely polluted the gene pool further and wasted reproductive resources.
Unfortunately, after long historical change, the Rose Empire had long since become a nation ruled by law. Human rights mattered more and more, and nobody could forcibly interfere in another person’s choice of partner.
Because the birth rate of high-quality Alphas and Omegas was simply too low, proposals for 【mandatory pheromone matching and marriage】 were actually introduced every year.
But every time news about such legislation appeared, ordinary citizens had not even formed strong opinions before young nobles and wealthy second-generation heirs erupted in fierce opposition.
Only people with money and power, living comfortably, had the luxury of pursuing true love and the ability to value it.
From the public perspective, Yin Chen probably belonged to exactly that type of person who “did not understand ordinary suffering.”
And at this very moment, the most important matter in this severe clean freak’s mind was getting Song Zang bathed as quickly as possible.
By hand.
Yin Chen had a private residence aboard every Zone C military shuttle.
His office area resembled a luxury suite and included a panoramic bathroom. The specialized smart transparent glass was actually connected to StarNet, allowing occupants to watch 4D films while bathing or, during shuttle flight, activate full panoramic observation mode and admire the vast, ever-changing beauty of deep space.
It had to be said, they really knew how to enjoy themselves.
The bathtub had already filled automatically with hot water. Every corner of the room carried the faint, reserved fragrance of old roses. Song Zang’s arrival drew out a barely perceptible sense of pressure and rejection from the space.
Perhaps this was the instinct of powerful organisms. Alphas were born intensely territorial and always left traces of pheromone scent throughout their domains without noticing, intimidating any member of the same sex who intruded.
But for some reason, Song Zang, surrounded by that pressure… felt rather sweet inside. The air was full of a fragrance that made him comfortable. His entire body relaxed, and a faint blush rose over his pale cheeks. The longer he smelled it, the hungrier he became.
He really wanted to eat rose pastries.
This body, burdened by poverty, was indeed malnourished. His mouth had lived blandly, and his sex life had been even blander.
A young Alpha who had never met even one “opposite sex” partner in his life naturally had a body that was inexperienced, soft, and tender.
Lukewarm bathwater filled with bubbles rose bit by bit over his shoulders. After soaking for long enough, all his skin became faintly pink with untouched youth.
Only a hopelessly unromantic person like Yin Chen would focus completely on bathing Song Zang. He washed him with extraordinary seriousness, practically wanting to strip off a layer of flesh with his bare hands.
Scalding fingertips moved over every part of Song Zang’s body. Thin calluses earned through war pressed against the back of his neck, producing a strange sensation both rough and ambiguous.
Yin Chen turned him over and washed him repeatedly several times. Song Zang’s limbs went limp, and he lazily refused to move at all.
Wiping away the water, drying him with warm air, changing him into soft pajamas… Yin Chen handled everything himself.
The shuttle’s climate control was warm enough to be luxurious. Song Zang became so comfortable that he nearly fell asleep, only for two lemon gummies to be pushed into his mouth.
They were not especially soft and had a slightly chewy texture, but their fragrance shot cleanly through his nose.
Sitting against the headboard, Song Zang slowly chewed and tasted a low dose of caffeine as well as an unfamiliar herbal fragrance, perhaps an alien plant unique to the Empire.
Yin Chen pulled a chair over and sat beside the bed, idly playing with Song Zang’s fingers. His posture, however, was straight and proper, like an incorruptibly righteous man.
His uniform shirt, which he had not changed yet, had been dampened by the bathroom water and clung tightly to his upper body, outlining firm, distinct muscle.
Half wet and half dry, deliberately concealing what it revealed, mixed with the scent of milky body wash and the ever-present rose fragrance, the atmosphere gradually became suggestive.
Yin Chen himself seemed completely unaware. He looked down at Song Zang with an examining gaze. “You smell like blood. Where did it come from?”
“A player. He bullied me and tried to kill me. I didn’t have any choice,” Song Zang explained aggrievedly. The thin blanket accidentally slid from his body, revealing his casually bent beautiful legs, a dazzling stretch of white.
“Oh, and he called me a man-seducer too. He was especially vicious.” Song Zang’s eyes reddened slightly as he continued.
“You are seducing me.” Yin Chen calmly stated the truth, pulled Song Zang’s wrist up with slightly more force, and leaned close to smell it. “Much better now.”
Warm breath brushed his wrist, tickling. Song Zang curled his fingers nervously as though carefully testing him. “Baby, you really don’t mind the rotten stink on me?”
Yin Chen paused. Confusion spilled into his phoenix eyes, as if he did not understand what Song Zang meant. “There’s no stink.”
“Impossible. There really is. I nearly knocked myself unconscious with it earlier!”
“Then smell yourself again.” Yin Chen raised a brow.
Song Zang fell silent for a moment and tentatively touched the back of his neck.
…It really was gone.
Not only had the rotten smell vanished, but every special scent indicating his Alpha identity had vanished with it. His gland was still there, yet all that remained was the clean, fresh fragrance of body wash.
Song Zang was bewildered. “How could this happen? My pheromones are rotten roses. It’s recorded in my personal file.”
“I don’t know.” Yin Chen smiled faintly, his tone suggestive. “Maybe because I’m here, you don’t need pheromones to seduce anyone else. Seducing me is enough.”
“That makes so much sense.” Song Zang’s ears reddened. Taking advantage of the moment, he tugged Yin Chen closer and said softly, “Then touch my leg. Hurry. I want to seduce you.”
Yin Chen obediently put a hand on him and squeezed once, though his movements remained restrained. “We reach the mining planet in five minutes. We can do more tonight.”
“Yay! There’s one more thing. Officer, I want to make a real-name report. There are small-scale space-pirate operations near the garbage planet, and they may be planning something major.” Song Zang pinched his fingers. “The player who bullied me was one of their minor leaders. Officer, can you give me his ship to play with?”
Yin Chen opened StarNet and carefully recorded the pirate-den coordinates Song Zang provided, while looking somewhat confused. “I have ships too. You can play with any of them. Why do you want his modified junk?”
Song Zang answered righteously, “All your ships are registered, networked, legal transportation. The moment you fly them anywhere, everyone knows you’re a respectable person. But I really want to be a robber.”
Yin Chen: …
“Song Zang, you’re acting a little strange today.”
Song Zang became even more righteous. “If you turned into a sterile disabled Alpha and nearly knocked yourself unconscious with your own pheromones, you’d become even more deranged than me.”
“You want to take revenge on society?”
“A little.”
“Fine. I’ll play along. But before that, your mental-power rank needs to be evaluated again.”
“Hm?”
Yin Chen glanced at the private message window floating before him and fell into thought. “Lieutenant Colonel Hall says you might be a… super-genius buried by an AI detection error.”
＊
The brief journey through space ended, and the shuttle arrived on the mining planet.
Winter snowfall was heavy and warmth was necessary. Song Zang did not remove his thin pajamas and instead layered several thick garments over them.
A fluffy ivory sweater, Yin Chen’s uniform jacket, and a light coffee-colored scarf.
Song Zang followed behind Yin Chen. Before disembarking, he took the opportunity to admire the facilities inside the spacious shuttle.
Very cool. Extremely beautiful.
This military shuttle was actually not especially large. It counted only as small equipment mass-produced by the Rose Empire.
Yet it could house thirty people comfortably and carried sufficient energy reserves to support two long-distance journeys across planetary systems. It resembled a refined cruise ship adapted for space. The scarf Song Zang wore had been purchased from the shuttle’s self-service shop.
Yin Chen paid. Five hundred and thirty star coins for one scarf.
A single scarf could consume more than a month of Song Zang’s disability allowance, and that was before factoring in the military’s special tax exemptions… Poor people could barely survive if they stayed on garbage planets, but if they lived on major worlds, they probably genuinely could not afford to live.
Lieutenant Colonel Hall moved quickly. The reporting reward and property-sale funds had already reached Song Zang’s savings account. Altogether they totaled more than forty thousand star coins, just enough to buy him one ticket out.
But only just enough.
Yin Chen brought him into the heavily guarded military camp and headed directly toward the logistics medical division.
The old-rose scent lingering on Yin Chen’s coat surrounded Song Zang. It was Yin Chen’s way of declaring ownership. Nearby soldiers hardly dared approach and treated him as a beautiful Beta favored by a superior officer.
The examination center carried the familiar cold smell of disinfectant.
Standing before a cylindrical testing machine, Song Zang followed the doctor’s instructions and gathered his mental sea again, using all his strength to attack the blinking red point at the machine’s center without holding back.
Bang!
The testing device exploded, and alarms immediately began blaring.
The hole punched through the building was nearly imperceptible. Outside the medical division, however, two soldiers who had been chatting were inexplicably struck in the calves by an invisible force, blood pouring out.
“Eh?”
Song Zang looked completely innocent.
What was going on? It seemed he really was a genius.