In this world, humanity had a natural enemy.
The insectoids. A powerful species possessing high intelligence and extremely advanced technological weaponry, occupying an overlord position across the vast universe.
If the insectoids were not currently suffering internal conflict and split into two hostile political systems… then the Rose Empire might still be unable to stand against them on equal footing.
Insectoids reproduced through eggs, but their physiological structure was remarkably similar to humans. The only major differences were far stronger muscular development and razor-sharp bone wings growing from their backs.
Female insectoids were the strongest. They could remain airborne for long periods, survive extreme environments through their formidable natural bodies, and perfectly mimic human appearance, walking upright and speaking human languages.
On poorly managed Imperial border planets, an insectoid could easily imitate an undocumented resident or human space pirate and quietly slip through security.
Their society was extraordinarily cold and harsh. At home, they reproduced madly. On the battlefield, they fought madly. Every struggle placed collective interests and male-insectoid interests above all else. They were loyal, fearless of death, and brutally extreme in their methods.
Compared with AO humans’ sensitive glands and pheromone disorders that could be provoked at any moment… female insectoids held far more advantages in war.
Female insectoids were born warriors. They experienced neither susceptibility periods nor heats. A single infusion of mental power from their male master could sustain years of campaigning and allow them to die heroically for the collective.
Even if mental-power instability truly occurred, a female insectoid would merely attack the entire world indiscriminately, actually becoming even more dangerous in combat. Once paired, they were extremely difficult for anything other than their male master to seduce and would not rapidly sink into “emotional” lust.
With all these physiological disadvantages compared side by side, even though the conflict was fundamentally just a war between humans and aliens over territory and power, the Rose Empire had in fact remained at a disadvantage for years. Aside from various cutting-edge warships developed with enormous determination, humanity’s only overwhelmingly dominant offensive force relied entirely on top-tier Alphas using terrifying mental power to conduct wide-area suppression across the vast universe.
But in truth, the conflict between the two species was far more brutal than a simple war over authority and territory.
To insectoids, humans were food. Humans occupied a premium place in the insectoid diet.
Equivalent to a tender, luxurious feast… Human flesh could be torn open and eaten raw on the spot, or prepared carefully over low heat and cooked through countless methods.
Female insectoids preferred raw human flesh, while male insectoids preferred delicately prepared dishes.
Even merely to please their male masters, female insectoid soldiers would hunt humans relentlessly by any means necessary. That included the mimicry, covert infiltration, scheming, and intrigue these battle fanatics most disliked. They had become increasingly skilled at those things.
Yin Chen rapidly researched insectoid culture on StarNet while using his privileges to access classified enemy intelligence inside the military. He understood perfectly well that from a realistic perspective, the insectoids ultimately held the higher chance of victory.
Of course, both factions had weaknesses. Humans of the Rose Empire were constantly driven by physiological desire, while many female insectoids… appeared cold and ruthless but actually possessed emotions purer and more single-minded than humans.
In short, terminal love-brain syndrome.
If one wanted to destroy this iron-blooded military force from within, a honey trap would actually be the most effective tactic.
The insectoids excelled at mimicking humans. Human technology was equally advanced. Why had they never tried imitating male insectoids and turning the strategy back against them?
Every beautiful Beta without active glands or pheromones could use suitable cosmetic procedures to imitate the refined appearance of a male insectoid.
Song Zang’s pheromones were strange. In fact, he was probably the most suitable person to impersonate a male insectoid… Who knew how many females he could trick into emptying their fortunes and going insane for him.
At the thought, the coldness in Yin Chen’s eyes deepened.
After all, Song Zang possessed a special “heartthrob system,” and unless something unexpected happened, the mid-stage boss of this instance would definitely come from the insectoid side. Inevitably, it would become deeply attracted to Song Zang.
Yin Chen temporarily could not stop Song Zang’s little plans, but he could kill more insects to make himself feel better.
Although the hunters entrenched inside the military camp did not appear to be actual insectoids. They were merely exhibiting the violent instincts of humanity’s “natural enemy” while suffering mental-power instability. This was an extremely unusual new symptom and perhaps far more complicated than it looked.
Kill half. Keep half alive. Send them back to Zone A for careful study. Perfect.
Lieutenant Colonel Hall only panicked for a moment before immediately becoming serious and professional. “Sir, I’ve completely sealed the camp. High-altitude interception is active, and the magnetic cannons are charging. How should we proceed?”
“Hide yourselves. Don’t let them find you. I’ll kill them.”
“…What?” Lieutenant Colonel Hall panicked again.
There were nearly ten Alpha officers suffering mental-power eruptions today, which was no small number, and every one of them currently possessed combat ability at an unreasonable peak. Could Yin Chen truly defeat ten people alone?
Hall was full of worry. He feared this mysterious superior would recklessly charge into battle and end up without even an intact corpse. If that happened, the people demoted, investigated, or even dragged before a military tribunal would not be limited to Hall himself. Every soldier serving the country in this camp could suffer with him.
Yin Chen looked at Hall blandly. He did not take a charged firearm, only lifted a snow-white long blade and turned away. Before Lieutenant Colonel Hall could stop him, Yin Chen’s figure flashed and disappeared abruptly into the shadows between buildings like a ghost.
Even all-angle surveillance footage could not locate him.
W-what terrifying speed was that?
So this was the strength of a top-tier genius: unreasonable beyond comprehension. An ordinary person like Hall could spend his entire life without imagining their world.
Hall sighed, then his expression sharpened. “Jia Xian, take five people around the rear hill. Seal both side armories and stay alert. And Philip, you son of a bitch, stop pretending. Put on combat gear. Even if you die, you guard the laboratory!”
“Yes, Lieutenant Colonel!”
Philip, the restrained and scholarly-looking Beta military doctor, removed his loose white coat and leisurely rubbed the dry skin at the back of his neck.
A cold, damp woody fragrance exploded violently through the air.
＊
At the same time, Song Zang quietly cracked the iris verification and slipped into the military camp’s large confiscated-weapons depot.
The Rose Empire possessed even more advanced technology than he had imagined. Behind the seemingly ordinary reinforced-steel door, there were no space-pirate spoils at all. The room was completely empty.
Yet the administrator-only restroom in one corner was actually an extremely well-hidden short-range spatial teleportation device.
Song Zang became somewhat excited and pressed the teleport control without hesitation. Green light flickered. When he opened his eyes again, he had been transferred directly to a military camp on another small mining planet.
Calling it short-distance teleportation was not entirely accurate.
The two mining planets were more than five hundred thousand kilometers apart.
Inside the teleportation space, a pleasant high-end perfume fragrance lingered. It contained a trace of simulated Omega softness and sweetness mixed with a refreshing herbal note that cleared the mind.
It resembled an exquisite elevator inside a luxury shopping mall.
Song Zang rubbed his slightly dizzy head and did not linger to admire anything. He turned and walked directly toward the real confiscated-weapons warehouse.
The variety of seized goods was enormous. There were not only modified weapons and ships, high-end exoskeletal equipment, but also many extremely interesting little objects.
Slices of insectoid bone wings, fossil specimens from unknown organisms, several lumps of frozen soft tissue sealed behind thick glass, aggressively invasive disaster plants, potted giant carnivorous flowers blackened with purple-red color… Song Zang was dazzled by the selection.
He saw large quantities of illegal pelts stripped and tanned from exotic beasts. Many were thick like bear or fox fur and looked soft and comfortable, but touching them revealed individually distinct poisonous spines hidden throughout the hair.
According to the electronic catalog, those spines were horrifyingly potent. An ordinary person who touched them would immediately go insane, their gland becoming permanently disordered and disabled, turning them into a “disabled” lower-class citizen similar to Song Zang. They were suspected to be biological mutant weapons created by the insectoids, though there was still no evidence.
Beyond the poisonous pelts, Song Zang also saw the hybrid corpse of a plant and a canine, apparently brought into storage the previous week. Extremely rare and novel.
The inexperienced warehouse administrator had failed to realize that the plant was still alive and preserved the grotesque “corpse” in formalin.
Before long, the plant portion’s roots began yellowing and withering, releasing waves of unpleasant death and decay so intense that they even penetrated the glass container and corroded every biological specimen nearby.
Song Zang took a deep breath. It was not especially foul. At least it did not smell as bad as his pheromones.
He felt slightly reassured and carefully examined this exceptionally strange glass jar.
“Grotesque” was the only word for it.
Yellowed roots were covered in dense, tiny spikes, resembling the stems of climbing shrubs from the genus Rosa. They wound deep through the canine’s torn-open body, like a parasite and also like a symbiote.
The enormous heart, drained pale of color, was deeply cut by broad razor-edged leaves growing from the branches, which had embedded themselves into the heart muscle.
Translucent leaf veins gradually fused with the animal’s blood vessels, merging completely deep inside the heart to form a perfect and unbelievable internal-external circulatory system.
The organs and intestines followed the same principle. Tender new shoots even grew from the surface of the liver, while the stomach sac nurtured a crimson rosebud on the verge of blooming.
If this bizarre beast had not died during military extermination, perhaps one day that rose would have broken through the center of its chest and bloomed magnificently.
Song Zang was shaken. He carefully checked the catalog entry, only to discover a blank page with no detailed information or researcher annotations.
It was not that there had never been records. Someone had deliberately erased every record afterward.
Data recovery was not particularly difficult, but Song Zang intended to test AI Little Star along the way and deliberately summoned it.
“Mr. Song, restoring historical data will increase your future mortality rate to fifty percent… Eh?
“Sorry, Mr. Song. Little Star is being silly and seems to have calculated incorrectly. Beginning recalculation…”
“Don’t recalculate. Just help me.” Song Zang’s lips twitched as he hurriedly interrupted.
Although Little Star’s artificial sweetness was becoming more exaggerated, its functions remained powerful. It was sufficient to assist Song Zang in forcing access to deleted historical versions.
The researcher had indeed left only a few short annotations. Brief as they were, they contained an enormous amount of information.
【Plant Type: Suspected hybrid of multiple rose varieties. Coloration resembles Crimson Glory. Further confirmation required.】
【Canine Breed: 100% purebred royal-exclusive dachshund.】
Yin Chen’s pheromones were Crimson Glory.
According to Imperial law, royal-exclusive dachshunds could never leave Zone A and were forbidden from crossbreeding.
At present, only the two Alpha princesses and the Empress raised them in the Rose Empire, with more than thirty animals in total.
According to StarNet gossip, the royal family loved dogs intensely. The two princesses had even personally funded construction of a spacious dog park in the capital specifically for these short-legged creatures to play and run around freely.
The pampered lives of royal dogs were more comfortable than those of most humans.
Yet for some unknown reason, a tiny young dog raised with every luxury and absolutely incapable of leaving the palace on its own had somehow appeared in Zone C. Its palm-sized body floated stiffly inside a glass jar, grotesquely fused with a climbing plant.
Song Zang became even more interested. He tapped the jar with one finger. The corpse suspended in formalin twitched briefly. Seemingly by accident, it drifted away from the spot he had tapped and “casually” hid at the bottom of the jar.
The yellowed, degraded branches clearly had not died completely. They could even make furtive evasive movements.
Combined with the dachshund’s round little body, it looked especially cute.
Song Zang’s lips curved. His voice was gentle. “Good boy, can you understand human language? If you can, move your front legs. Three times. Then I’ll take you with me and give you something tasty.”
Splash, splash, splash!
The little dog thrashed violently in the formalin. Its short front legs bent and performed a stiff, clumsy dog-paddling motion.
Exactly three times.
Keeping his promise, Song Zang immediately removed the jar’s sealed lid, grabbed the dachshund by the loose skin of its neck, and lifted it out.
“Yip, yip…”
The little dog hung helplessly in the air, frightened and unwilling to struggle, trembling as it made several weak sounds of submission. The side of its body where chest and abdomen had been split completely open was exposed before Song Zang.
The dog was not what trembled. The plant branches piercing through its body were. The whimpering did not come from the dog either, but from branches rooted into the vocal cords.
Wilted branches wrapped around the organs, still dripping with liquid. The instant they touched open air, they abruptly tightened, their surfaces rapidly flushing with living green.
Song Zang examined it carefully and could confirm the dog itself was dead. Only the plant remained alive.
As long as even the faintest possibility of survival remained, it would exhaust every effort to root itself deeply and draw nutrients from corpse flesh. Even if every branch were cut away and the plant withered yellow, new shoots could still revive from the roots. Plants had always possessed astonishing tenacity.
The vitality and “self-awareness” of an alien plant were naturally even harder to judge by ordinary logic.
Song Zang held it in his arms and rubbed the cold, wet little dog head. Whenever his fingers “accidentally” brushed the branches, he clearly sensed a faint suction attempting to secretly drain his vitality.
Unfortunately for it, a handful of rose branches parasitizing a dachshund might possess an eerie, ingenious structure and strong contaminating properties… but those tiny thorns could not even pierce Song Zang’s skin.
Song Zang tilted his head. “Good boy. You’re pretty smart, so I won’t kill you. Stay with me and play the role of a dog properly.”
“Yip?”
Human and dog stared at each other in silence. After a moment, the entrenched branches were the first to compromise.
The suction vanished and the target changed. Every glass jar on the display shelves suffered equally, fine cracks spreading uniformly over their surfaces.
All exotic-beast corpse specimens that had not yet been turned over for processing had their remaining traces of flesh nutrients sucked away and became visibly more withered.
The branches improved before Song Zang’s eyes, becoming supple and alive. Yellow, rotten leaves dropped away one after another, while newly sprouted dark-green leaves grew wildly, wrapping completely around the pale dead heart.
Even the wilted, dripping little dog began to look more energetic. A dim spark of innocence appeared in its round black eyes, and its brush-like tail quietly wagged.
The only organic animal in the room left completely unharmed was Song Zang himself.
Song Zang curved his lips and continued rubbing the little dog’s head wildly. AI Little Star quickly searched out the small mining planet’s battalion mission records for him to inspect.
“Good boy, what do you like eating? Let me see…”
Song Zang read from the floating screen sentence by sentence, his tone somewhat meaningful. “When the patrol surrounded you, you were attacking… hm, the refrigerated fresh-storage section of a compressed-meat factory? Before that, local residents reported that you secretly drank blood and milk from several nursing ewes. Two old cattle were sucked dry into jerky too.
“That’s so bad. How could you bully the little lambs’ mothers?”
The dachshund guiltily turned its head away and refused to keep meeting Song Zang’s eyes.
This alien plant was genuinely impressive. It could imitate a little dog perfectly.
Song Zang smiled more deeply. “So you don’t like meat. You prefer drinking blood? Just as perverted as my baby.”
“Woof!”
Good. Full of energy.
Song Zang tucked the obedient little dog under his arm and turned toward the illegally modified weapons section.
Zhang Tao Xiong’s spacecraft really was interesting.
With the master-control key, it could be operated and summoned remotely or flown automatically by an AI navigator.
The exterior used high-quality stealth coating, enough to evade the vast majority of high-definition cameras and radar detection. The outer hull had been completely rebuilt, its underside forcibly packed full with at least fifty retractable high-powered electromagnetic charging cannons.
Not only that, at maximum power the ship’s top speed reached more than three times the legal Imperial speed limit. It was an unbelievable top-tier configuration.
In other words, if the ship were suddenly attacked by the military and the pirates wanted to flee… escaping would actually be extremely easy. Nobody would expect impoverished robbers operating in remote Zone C to possess such advanced shipboard weaponry.
The military shuttle that had landed on the garbage planet, for example, could burn through every drop of fuel it carried and still never catch this modified ship.
Song Zang could tell that every modification blueprint aboard the ship had been designed by an amateur rather than Imperial government researchers.
Everywhere he looked, wild creativity ignored all rules. Parts had been stripped from one place and scavenged from another, assembled with no obvious structure whatsoever. Yet once fitted together, they transformed junk into something miraculous.
Zhang Tao Xiong really had hidden things from him. The true secret of this role was that he was actually a scientific genius fallen into the wilderness.
If that player had possessed a calmer temperament and simply held his nose and refrained from provoking Song Zang, even if the two remained cold toward one another, they might have become extremely efficient partners for clearing the instance.
But once a person gained too much fame, fame exceeding the limits of their actual strength would eventually drag them down.
Every advantage that should have belonged to Zhang Tao Xiong had fallen into Song Zang’s hands.
He searched through the warehouse and indeed found a section dedicated to StarNet signal jammers in all kinds of shapes. Lipstick, handbags, wigs, shoe inserts… all portable designs meant for concealment.
Song Zang selected the most inconspicuous one, a button, and fastened it to his trousers.
In winter, an outer coat covered it completely. Nobody could see anything.
Song Zang pinched his wrist and attempted to summon artificial-intelligence services. Nobody responded. The sweet-voiced AI Little Star had indeed temporarily disappeared.
Without the constant sense of being monitored, Song Zang moved even faster.
He stuffed several instant-trigger grenades into his coat pockets and stole two conveniently sized modified electromagnetic guns.
The privately made firearms looked ugly and crude, like two enormous chunks of scrap metal welded into scale weights.
But when fired, they required no preliminary charging and doubled electromagnetic destructive power, capable of punching several large holes straight through the high-altitude lockdown barrier technology the Empire was most proud of.
There was a risk of explosion and accidental discharge, but to Song Zang that was hardly worth mentioning.
Song Zang set the ship’s master controls to recognize both himself and Yin Chen. Once he had the equipment he wanted, he stopped “shopping.” Holding the little dog, he quickly left the seized-goods warehouse and immediately sent his coordinates to Yin Chen.
【Yin Chen: ?】
【Song Zang: Darling, can we raise one ugly little dog? Only for this instance ovo】
【Yin Chen: .】
Hmph. So cold. Apparently he was unhappy, but had pinched his nose and agreed.
Yin Chen was actually quite easy to talk to, especially after an intimate night together. As long as the request did not cross a genuine boundary, he would agree to almost anything. Including wearing fluffy cat ears and a pretty chest harness.
Remembering old events at the café, Song Zang’s lips curved and his mood became even better. He carried the quietly trembling dachshund deeper into the military camp.
Compared with the chaos on the large mining planet, the backup small mining planet was exceptionally peaceful.
Mineral output here was lower and there was little profit to steal. Space pirates could not even be bothered to raid it, so the atmosphere inside the camp was much calmer.
Lieutenant Colonel Hall was not present. The sentries lazily yawned, and few people guarded the mine. Most soldiers were crowded into the simulated-mecha training hall, watching battles, joking, and having a lively time.
Song Zang therefore slipped smoothly into the medical station, planning to steal some needles, thread, and supplements to sew the little dog’s ruined body back together.
Because the planet had been peaceful for years and hosted no research operations, the small mining planet’s medical station was extremely basic. Automated examination, injections, and IV equipment were complete, but staffing was minimal. There was not even a military doctor assigned on duty.
A Beta nurse lay fast asleep on the office sofa.
He was a heavily muscled, rough-built man wearing dark-blue work clothes, sleeping in a wildly sprawled position.
Song Zang found it amusing and was about to quietly pass through the office when his final step paused. He turned back and looked at the man several more times.
Something was wrong. There was a scent on this Beta.
The smell of insects!
Song Zang immediately stuffed the little dog into his coat pocket, raised the gun in one smooth motion, and fired through the glass without hesitation.
Bang!
The electromagnetic beam traced a terrifying arc through the air and pierced the Beta directly between the brows in the blink of an eye. Blood sprayed and fragments of skull scattered across the floor.
But that was not enough.
Insects possessed extraordinarily tenacious vitality. Even after their heads were torn away, their bodies could survive briefly.
That characteristic applied not only to tiny forest insects, but also to upright, human-mimicking insectoids.
The muscular nurse abruptly sprang upright, clearly still unaware that his identity had already been exposed. Wearing an expression of righteous fury, he slammed the emergency call button beside the desk and shouted harshly, “All units, enemy attack!”
Without thinking twice, Song Zang fired four more shots, penetrating all four limbs and completely eliminating the body’s ability to struggle.
It had to be said that the shooting training at Helin Estate had genuinely helped. Even holding two heavy chunks of modified firearms, Song Zang’s aim remained precise. He needed no adjustment period.
The nurse collapsed on the floor, his whole body convulsing. He showed no fear whatsoever and continued desperately attempting to control Song Zang through a mental-power field.
An indescribably terrifying pressure erupted abruptly, carrying a cold, murderous force as it aggressively surrounded Song Zang and specifically slammed against his gland.
This was insectoid mental power.
Song Zang raised a brow. He had no intention of fighting mental power with mental power. He kicked the door open and entered directly, intending to crush this oversized insect to death with his own hands.
But before he could, the dachshund suddenly jumped from his coat pocket and sprinted forward on short legs. Organs still wet with formalin dragged beneath its belly, smearing slick moisture across the floor.
Song Zang stopped with interest and watched as the little dog bit down on the nurse’s throat. Its teeth sank viciously deep as it excitedly and frantically drank his blood.
Not only blood, but also the moisture and nutrients stored throughout muscle and fat.
The nurse struggled violently. His thick, powerful arms seized the wound in the little dog’s abdomen and pulled hard.
That should have been an efficient and precise fatal counterattack, yet the little dog never loosened its bite.
In less than ten seconds, the formidable insectoid gradually lost strength. Blood drained from its limbs, leaving them a bleak purple-blue.
The dachshund, once ragged and miserable, instead became sleek and glossy.
Song Zang did not need to stitch or bandage it at all. Tender branches growing at insane speed threaded one by one through the abdominal cavity, densely sewing torn flesh closed.
“Good boy, you’re so low-maintenance.”
A faint smile appeared on Song Zang’s lips. He tore away the female insectoid’s clothes and rolled the body over.
The pair of cold bone wings folded against the spine and shoulder blades were brutally torn free by Song Zang’s bare hands.
But the next instant, Song Zang’s breathing suddenly grew heavier.
His movements stopped being rough. He gently stroked the blood-drenched contours of the wings. For some unknown reason, strange heat surged through his heart.
It felt as though the wings were still alive, obediently curling in his hands and breathing humbly beneath his touch.
They could be implanted back into flesh at any moment and come alive again.
Implanted… into his spine.