Yin Chen did not hesitate. He fired a shot straight through the soldier’s skull.
The wounded soldier, blood pouring from his mouth, trembled as he fell backward, but Yin Chen still did not stop. He abruptly seized the bulging artery in the soldier’s neck and tore his head off alive.
Because it was not only that tongue, now like a puddle of pus, that was undergoing violent mutation. The soldier’s head was changing too.
The intact head rolled to the ground and rapidly became scorching hot at a speed impossible for humans to comprehend. It boiled and melted beneath the moonlight until, in the blink of an eye, it fused with the soil and no longer retained any recognizable shape.
Song Zang went deathly pale and shrank behind Yin Chen, carefully clutching the corner of his clothes without daring to let go. The other Beta soldier, lucky enough to have survived, had also been frightened senseless.
Unable to believe what he was seeing, he muttered uncontrollably in a hoarse voice, “How is this possible? It wasn’t like this before. This can’t be happening…”
Yin Chen looked thoughtful. The laser sight settled on the soldier’s face again.
“The danger inside the mine is a secret that can’t be told to outsiders?”
Meeting Yin Chen’s calm, frost-cold gaze, the soldier’s desperate instinct for survival forced him to grit his teeth and remain composed. He shook his head. “Reporting, Sir. There are some secrets every brother in the unit knows. Lieutenant Colonel Hall gave strict orders that they must never be disclosed to anyone outside the battalion… But, Sir, you’re also part of our mining camp…”
“No, I’m not.”
Yin Chen understood.
His military registration actually belonged to Zone A’s First Legion, and his official position was Staff Sergeant Major of the First Legion. Although he had come to the mining planet under the Eldest Princess’s orders to carry out a secret mission, Yin Chen had no fundamental connection to the military camp stationed in Zone C.
So the secrets known to everyone in the mining battalion were, by rights, things he should never have known even the slightest detail about.
Lieutenant Colonel Hall, who had revealed only a few details, had been directly muted.
The soldier who revealed much more had suffered a horrific punishment and backlash.
Then could he and Song Zang also become endlessly entangled in 【Backlash】?
Rather than avoid danger, it was better to cut danger to death.
Yin Chen stopped pressuring the trembling survivor.
He lowered the muzzle, sweeping the laser sight across the headless corpse on the ground, and said calmly, “This was my problem. You can report it to Lieutenant Colonel Hall. You don’t need to get involved in any of this again.
“Send me his household registration, address, and information on his family members. I’ll personally give his family compensation.”
“Yes, Sir!”
The soldier hugged his gun and ran without hesitation, sprinting toward the lights at the center of the military camp and desperately seeking the shelter of somewhere safe.
But the incomprehensible slaughter did not seem to be over. The two watched helplessly as he stumbled to the ground. A dark-green bird with three legs and two heads plunged from above, its claws flashing coldly as it tore through the camp’s high-altitude force-field barrier with overwhelming ease.
The great bird folded its wings and glided swiftly, treating the fallen soldier like plump prey. In midair, both of its terrifying, razor-sharp beaks opened wide.
Song Zang raised his modified gun, heavy as an iron weight, aimed at the flying creature, and fired several shots without hesitation.
The bird’s heads drooped weakly. Green feathers sprayed through blood, its claws spasmed reflexively under the heavy damage, and dazzling electromagnetic arcs shone against the moonlight.
But the starving exotic beast, desperate to fill its stomach, would rather give up any chance of saving its life than abandon one final sumptuous feast.
With the half of a sharp beak it had left, it picked up the soldier’s grotesquely liquefying corpse little by little, tilted its heads back, and poured the flesh deep into its throat.
Again and again, mouthful after mouthful. Song Zang put away his gun with a pale face and clung tightly to Yin Chen’s arm.
There was no need for him to intervene.
The beautiful dark-green exotic beast scalded itself to death while eating.
The flesh of its abdomen split open along the centerline from the heat. The fine, soft down on its belly mixed with the wet blood gushing out, twisting into clumps of ugly, knotted scars.
“Yin Chen, I’m scared…” Song Zang’s voice carried a sob. “Will we be the next ones to die?”
“There’s something wrong with the moonlight. Let’s go.”
Yin Chen tightened his grip on Song Zang’s hand, strode into the waiting mine elevator, and pressed the button for the deepest level.
Bang!
Boom!
The elevator did not run smoothly as usual. The moment it started, it shook violently with a shrill metallic roar and plunged downward at high speed.
The overwhelming sensation of weightlessness struck Song Zang’s heart like the beat of a drum.
Yin Chen immediately scooped him up around the waist. His strong arm hooked beneath Song Zang’s knees and pulled him tightly against his chest, shielding him completely.
In an instant, the helpless tremor brought on by the mad descent vanished entirely.
“Still scared?”
Song Zang heard Yin Chen ask in a low voice.
He curled obediently in Yin Chen’s arms, rested his head against his shoulder, and answered softly, “Not anymore. How long until the elevator reaches the bottom?”
“About five minutes.”
After speaking, Yin Chen lowered his eyes and gave Song Zang a meaningful once-over, a trace of intrigued curiosity passing through his phoenix eyes.
“Song Zang, your eyes are beautiful.”
“Mm?” Song Zang froze. “We’re about to fall to our deaths. This doesn’t seem like a very appropriate time to flirt, does it?”
Yin Chen acted as though he had not heard the question. His gaze remained fixed on Song Zang’s face, and he patiently described what he saw in a gentle voice. “They’re red. Like rubies, like red roses. A very elegant vintage red. You’d look especially beautiful when you cry, like a moving pearlescent filter. Really beautiful.”
Honestly, never in his life had Song Zang expected someone with Yin Chen’s foul-mouthed personality… to look at his pretty face and produce such a detailed compliment.
He stared blankly for a long moment, his cheeks instantly flushing, then secretly reached out to touch Yin Chen’s abs. “Keep talking and I’ll get embarrassed, you devil.”
Yin Chen’s body tensed for an instant, then gradually relaxed again, allowing Song Zang to rub him however he liked.
“I’m stating a fact. Your eyes are red right now, like a succubus trying to seduce me.” As though counterattacking, he pinched the fragile gland at the back of Song Zang’s neck. “Song Zang, your assigned identity really isn’t ordinary.”
“Oh? I already guessed.”
Song Zang was not stupid. Ever since Yin Chen had inexplicably dug out his own gland and inexplicably stuffed it into Song Zang’s mouth, Song Zang had been carefully observing every clue and detail that might serve as a 【reason】.
Perhaps Yin Chen really had only wanted to spice up their love life. Perhaps Yin Chen really had simply suffered an explosion of insanity and insisted on doing something deranged and perverse.
But based on all their past experience together, Song Zang knew very well that Yin Chen was always far more capable than he imagined.
Yin Chen had exactly this ability. He could remain perfectly calm while acting insane, using the situation to accomplish whatever goal he wanted. He could do things that looked completely deranged on the surface while actually benefiting Song Zang.
Then there were those insectoid bone wings. When Song Zang personally tore them free, they had suddenly given him that subtle, teasing sensation and a vivid vitality no outsider could possibly detect…
Combining all the clues, Song Zang quickly deduced the most likely truth.
He was not a pure Alpha human, nor was he merely an unfortunate genius misdiagnosed by artificial intelligence.
He was very likely a hybrid.
That would explain why Song Zang’s birthplace was unknown and why there was no information at all about his biological parents. From his earliest memories, he had grown up alone on a garbage planet, surviving with great difficulty into adulthood by collecting scrap metal, scavenging trash, and relying on government disability subsidies.
That would explain why his pheromone scent was so strange, impossible to classify as any specific plant in the rose family, and why the AI had even judged him to possess 【no sexual appeal】.
That would explain why… despite being a disabled Alpha with feeble mental power and a weak body, he had somehow continued surviving in the filthy air of a garbage planet, remaining unharmed while surrounded by space pirates and criminal gangs like a pack of wolves.
That would explain why, even when malnourished and with his mental sea nearly dried up enough to kill him, he simply refused to die.
In the vast universe known to the Rose Empire, there was only one kind of human-mimicking intelligent life-form with vitality that tenacious.
His body very likely contained insectoid blood!
“Smart.” Yin Chen curved his lips. “I’m only suspicious too. I haven’t completely confirmed it.”
In theory, simply eating an insectoid bone wing should have no effect on a human, much like eating fried silkworm pupae. It was essentially just consuming an extremely high-quality protein source.
Of course, Song Zang’s hunger for those bone wings was still extraordinarily unusual. According to Yin Chen’s theory, it might also be a kind of “madness” caused by long-term malnutrition.
After all, Song Zang’s body was not only deficient in the various vitamins humans required, it was also severely lacking the nutrients insectoids needed… and those nutrients were extremely difficult to obtain in human territory, especially in impoverished Zone C.
“Then why didn’t you tell me directly?” Song Zang sounded aggrieved. “You scared me so badly I wanted to cry.”
“My fault.” Yin Chen apologized without hesitation.
“Explain yourself!”
The elevator was still falling and had yet to reach the deepest part of the mine. Yin Chen glanced at the electronic floor display, now showing chaotic readings, and frowned slightly without drawing attention to it.
Since they still had some time, he patiently explained, “My idea hasn’t been conclusively proven yet. If I told you, I could mislead your own detailed judgment of your condition.
“But I can’t take you to Zone A for genetic testing. The advanced examination equipment and genetic tests in formal hospitals automatically upload their reports to the StarNet cloud. Nobody has the authority to interfere, which would expose your identity instantly and bring a great deal of trouble.
“So I could only test things first. If the test revealed a problem, that would mean my line of thought was correct. But Song Zang, you understand your body better than I do. Only when you can confidently determine that you’re a hybrid can I truly be certain.”
Song Zang understood Yin Chen’s caution.
But he did not want Yin Chen to remain this cautious when dealing with him personally, even if it was for his own good.
So he started being unreasonable. “I’m not afraid of you misleading me. If you have an idea, we’re supposed to explore it together. Yin Chen, do you look down on me? Tell me the truth!”
His unreasonable tantrum really did force Yin Chen’s honest answer out of him.
“Fine. There’s another reason.” Yin Chen fell silent for a moment before admitting darkly, “I just wanted to bully you and scare you on purpose. You look very cute when you’re unsettled and secretly assuming the worst of me.”
Song Zang: ?
Song Zang looked even more aggrieved, his tone mournful. “Don’t use syrupy love talk to excuse yourself. I understand. I understand everything. You despise me because I’m some little mixed-blood bastard. I’m not worthy of you. I’m so pitiful…”
Yin Chen looked faintly amused. “Song Zang, you don’t exactly hold back when you talk badly about me behind my back. How many times have you called me a perverted lunatic?”
“How do you know?” Song Zang choked for a second. He did not deny it, and his gaze quietly wandered away.
“One look at your eyes and I know whether you’re secretly insulting me. Song Zang, I understand you better than you think.” Yin Chen maliciously pinched the back of his neck again and seized the opportunity to threaten him in a dark voice. “You can insult me. You’re not allowed to suspect that I have ulterior motives toward you again.”
A strange swollen ache instantly spread from the gland that outsiders should never touch. Song Zang was tightly enclosed in Yin Chen’s arms, and after breathing in that tempting rose fragrance for so long, he was already restless. Now his cheeks turned even redder.
At this rate, Song Zang was genuinely afraid he would lose control of his instincts, rip open Yin Chen’s clothes, and start elevator play right there… The surveillance camera only made it more exciting.
To prevent certain deranged events from occurring, Song Zang hurriedly collected himself and softly surrendered.
“Okay, baby. You’re a pervert who’s especially good to me.”
“Good that you know.” Yin Chen curved his lips, apparently quite satisfied with Song Zang’s evaluation, then abruptly changed the subject. “All right. Hold on tight.”
Song Zang froze, then immediately wrapped his arms around Yin Chen’s neck without asking questions.
The spacious mine elevator was constructed primarily from the Rose Empire’s radiant iron, an aerospace material with exceptional shock resistance, hardness, toughness, and near-perfect ductility. In theory, even with the elevator plunging at high speed, it should never have produced such violent vibration and grinding noises.
But now it was no different from an ordinary sheet-metal box, smashing around during its descent, constantly on the verge of collapse while trapping Song Zang and Yin Chen firmly inside the car, as though determined to drag them cruelly toward an inevitable death.
The elevator struck bottom and shattered apart.
The terrifying impact threw up waves of dust and powdered debris. Flying shards of metal embedded themselves deep in the mine walls, carving out dense clusters of horrifying holes.
They should have been smashed bloody and broken, yet Yin Chen remained motionless, focusing as he attempted… a buffering technique he was not particularly skilled with.
An Alpha’s unique mental-power field burst outward and formed a powerful spherical barrier, enclosing Yin Chen and Song Zang at its center and allowing them to land completely unharmed.
In theory, mental power was invisible and colorless, yet Song Zang could see strands of blood-red light within the curved, flowing air. It carried the decadent shade of overripe roses ground into pulp, outlining the veins of lush, dripping petals.
“So pretty…”
Song Zang stared without blinking, even able to see his own reflection inside it, along with his eerily reddened eyes. Hardly able to believe it, he softened his breathing and murmured, “Yin Chen, why does your mental power have a color? We’re not about to become some Mary Sue couple, are we?”
“I don’t know either.” Yin Chen curved his lips. “But it matches your eyes. That’s enough.”
“Then what’s going on with my eyes?”
“My guess is that it has something to do with your bloodline, the moonlight, and the mine’s secret. If we keep going deeper, we’ll eventually uncover some truth.”
After being tormented by Song Zang for half the day, Yin Chen had learned his lesson. Even guesses he could not yet confirm, he now told Song Zang in exhaustive detail.
Satisfied, Song Zang kissed him. “Good. Wait a moment.”
Before formally beginning their exploration of the mine, Song Zang still wanted to identify the exact cause of the elevator failure.
Besides whatever “supernatural nonsense” might exist here, there could be other unknown factors. Before tonight, countless cheap laborers had gone down into the mine and died in all kinds of bizarre ways, yet nobody had ever died because a mine elevator lost control and crashed.
Radiant iron represented safety and reliability. The elevator had run for years without a single failure.
Song Zang removed an inconspicuous miniature button and disengaged the signal jammer.
Little Star immediately popped out with great enthusiasm, transforming into a virtual cloud colored like the universe and bouncing around Song Zang.
“Mr. Song~”
Song Zang gave a light cough, his manner stiff. “Little Star, check what’s wrong with the elevator for me.”
“Yes, Sir~”
The young man’s soft, clear voice echoed through the depths of the mine, sending out wave after wave of heart-softening ripples.
Yin Chen’s eyes immediately darkened. He narrowed his cold phoenix eyes and looked at Song Zang with a faint smile.
Song Zang hurried to prove his innocence. “Baby, this is my StarNet AI’s default setting. I don’t know how it turned into this either. It really has nothing to do with me. I only like your type!”
“My type… What type am I?”
“A peerless, world-class perverted demon.” Song Zang answered immediately without even thinking.
Yin Chen raised an eyebrow. The cold aura around him vanished in an instant, and he nodded with considerable confidence. “That’s more like it.”
Half a minute later, Little Star spoke again, this time with almost human worry and concern.
“Reporting to Mr. Song: the contamination index of the mine elevator you were riding is at an unknown level and cannot be estimated. It far exceeds Imperial safety standards. Please move away from the accident site immediately to avoid irreversible physical and psychological harm.”
Song Zang froze, then quickly grabbed Yin Chen’s wrist and retreated several steps.
“Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Song~”
Little Star’s voice softened slightly as it continued, “Based on analysis of the crash, the cause of this accident was the elevator’s built-in self-destruct program. It was remotely activated from the master control console, which issued the self-destruct command.”
“The master control console?” Song Zang was inwardly surprised.
“Yes, Mr. Song. Little Star does not have permission to access master-control information. The master control console has a powerful defense system. If an outside program attempts to intrude, it will immediately detonate the mine regardless of the consequences. So please don’t continue deeper into the mine, all right? Little Star is worried about your future safety. Little Star hopes you can be happy.”
What an incredibly humanlike artificial intelligence.
Listening to that sincere, gentle young man’s voice only made Song Zang more wary. He gave a vague response, then reactivated the signal jammer without hesitation.
He rubbed the button at his cuff and looked at Yin Chen. “What do you think about the master control console?”
Yin Chen’s gaze fell on the shattered egg-shaped camera, obvious coldness seeping from his expression. “The Eldest Princess wants to kill me. She must have discovered that half my gland is missing, but she can’t openly punish me for my ‘crime.’ Better to make me die here and pass it off as an accident.”
“That’s awful!”
“It’s reasonable for her to want me dead. But you’re innocent, and she casually decided to kill you along with me.” Yin Chen curved his lips, killing intent chilling the air. “Don’t worry. She’ll become a criminal of the Empire.”
He collected the few surviving core components from the elevator wreckage to use as evidence against the Eldest Princess later. Once a self-destruct program had been activated, the traces it left behind could not be erased.
The Zone C mining planet held essential mineral resources used to construct spacecraft and warships. It looked neglected, but in reality it was a key region under constant military guard.
Space pirates roaming the outskirts might steal guns, artillery, beautiful people, and food, but they did not dare casually touch a single piece of radiant iron.
Interfering with resources tied to the Rose Empire’s future development required an investigation even if the person responsible was a princess.
As long as the Eldest Princess had not yet ascended the throne and still had political rivals powerful enough to compete with her, she could not control everything. Zone A would certainly be able to determine whose subordinates had accessed the master control console connected to the mine elevator at such an unusual hour in the middle of the night.
Then, once the evidence of “attempted murder of an Imperial genius Alpha” was added piece by piece, the princess’s position would finally begin to shake.
The two walked leisurely through the tunnel while Yin Chen patiently broke down his reasoning and explained it to Song Zang in detail.
“Baby, I thought you’d only want to cut her down with one slash.” Song Zang blinked.
“Ruining her reputation, letting the world know what happened to you, and then cutting her down with one slash amounts to about the same thing. This way is more useful for our mission.”
Yin Chen’s voice was calm, but he was obviously in a terrible mood. If some monster or evil thing suddenly appeared in front of them, Yin Chen would probably deliberately hack it several extra times before letting it die.
Song Zang, on the other hand, found the whole thing rather sweet. Smiling, he hooked his fingers around Yin Chen’s hand and swung it lightly. Yin Chen was in such a bad mood precisely because the Eldest Princess had dragged Song Zang into her bullying too.
He really wanted to kiss him to death. Too bad the time and place were both wrong.
The tunnel excavated by mechanical arms stretched beyond the limits of sight. Energy-saving guide lamps lined both walls one after another, providing illumination for the workers.
Scarlet light spread quietly through the narrow, deathly silent passage, making everything look especially eerie and ominous.
Song Zang genuinely could not imagine how much malice the designer of these underground energy-saving lamps must have harbored toward cheap mine workers to choose this color.
From a psychological perspective, prolonged exposure to red light would gradually intensify the workers’ tension and anxiety, creating an unavoidable sense of oppression. Even the most ordinary modern home design rarely chose red as its dominant color.
Combined with the mine tunnels’ near-total isolation from the outside world, their endless length, narrowness, and confinement… over time, this might even produce pathological psychological problems, especially mass hysteria and stress disorders.
The Imperial inspectors could not possibly have failed to notice the drawbacks of red lighting, yet this inhumane design had still been approved. Had it truly been deliberate?
As Song Zang thought, he could occasionally smell the odor of old human remains. Some were buried deep underground, some trapped in layers of sand and soil, and others hidden inside chambers sealed by collapse accidents. The miners who died here would never have another chance to see daylight.
There should not be ghosts in this world, but there were powers far more terrifying than ghosts. The mine was like a gigantic mass grave, continuously generating a gloomy, uncanny atmosphere of negativity… If nothing strange happened in a place like this, Song Zang would actually have found that more surprising.
Yin Chen was clearly curious about the same thing. He held Song Zang’s hand with one hand and summoned the silver long blade with the 【Hardness】 attribute in the other.
“Remember? You used this to cut me open. Twice.” His voice lowered, carrying a meaningful, seductive coaxing note.
Song Zang could not help blushing. “Baby, this isn’t the time to flirt… I’m a good person. I absolutely won’t do that kind of thing with you in a pile of corpses.”
“You hesitated.”
“No!” Song Zang gritted his teeth.
Yin Chen curved his lips in delight and pinched Song Zang’s warm earlobe. He did not press the matter. With a lift of his hand, blade-light flashed, and he stabbed directly through what looked like a perfectly ordinary section of tunnel wall to their front-left, opening a huge hole. It was simple and brutal, yet did not disturb the stability of the surrounding mine in the slightest.
When the dust settled, what appeared before them… was a chain of hollow chambers buried by the passage of years.
There were portable folding chairs crushed flat, ordinary cold-weather jackets, lunchboxes and thermos cups shattered into pieces, several fragmented safety helmets, and many safety ropes and tools used by miners.
It seemed that many years ago, workers had deliberately excavated this place and used it as temporary “sleeping quarters,” though for some unknown reason it had later been sealed again.
The two stepped inside quietly and soon discovered several miners’ remains, most of them largely intact.
Because the air was dry and there was no bacterial moisture, the buried bodies had nearly become mummies. In the bottomless underground chamber, they remained forever frozen in grotesquely twisted death poses.
They had been murdered. As they fled in panic, laser-charged guns had pierced their hearts one after another.
The corpse with the least ugly death sat against the chamber wall. Even its clothes remained neat and tidy. Only its neck was broken, leaving its head drooping at an impossible angle and making the sight even more horrifying.
Song Zang carefully approached and raised a hand to touch the corpse’s shattered, broken neck.
The muscle fibers at the back of its neck had completely dried and weathered away, crumbling like loose sand at the slightest touch. Before Song Zang even applied force, the head fell off by itself and rolled for a long while with a hollow rumble-rumble before stopping.
A section of stark-white spine jutted abruptly from the severed neck.
Yin Chen picked up the head, examined the other half of the broken neck, then shook his head at Song Zang.
This corpse had no gland.