Song Zang panicked.
The explosion definitely could not kill him, but… all his clothes had been burned away.
And right beside the blast zone was a group of frightened, delicate little “opposite-sex” children who might see him completely naked at any moment.
Fortunately, Yin Chen reacted quickly. Facing the spreading shock wave head-on, he strode forward with an icy expression, tore apart the remaining pieces of bulletproof glass with his bare hands, and firmly seized Song Zang’s exposed wrist.
At the same time, his blood-red mental-power field surged across the room at once.
To prevent trouble, Yin Chen did not even look back. Using mental power, he pushed all the fragile Omegas farther away, separating them from the blast wave in the simplest, roughest way possible.
A piercing fire alarm rang through the corridor. Two squads of fully armed soldiers rushed over with guns, only to run straight into the line of Omegas Yin Chen had pushed out through the door.
“What happened? The examination pod exploded? Hey, kids, don’t cry, don’t cry. Come over here with me.”
“Master control says there’s a vulnerability in the medical system. An unknown program just broke in.”
“Then why haven’t you notified the legion commander yet?”
“The legion commander is almost here!”
The soldiers busied themselves protecting the Omegas. When they looked up and saw the magnificent blood-streaked mental-power field suspended in midair, they suddenly seemed to calm down.
They all appeared to recognize Yin Chen’s unusual mental power. The taut, solemn atmosphere abruptly loosened, and not a trace of panic remained.
The self-destruct program came quickly and disappeared even faster.
After a brief two seconds, Yin Chen brought the roaring flames under control and extinguished them. The once-advanced examination pod had completely become a pile of scrap metal, with occasional crackling bursts from sparks scraping against debris in the corners.
Only Song Zang was still buried underneath.
Yin Chen’s brows drew tightly together. He wanted to pull Song Zang out immediately, but after tugging for quite a while, he managed to expose only a head.
Song Zang was deliberately hiding his body deep in the wreckage. Since he refused to move, even Yin Chen could not do anything about him.
“Are you planning to hibernate in there?” Yin Chen was so exasperated he nearly laughed. “Get out. Breathing too much dust is bad for your lungs.”
Song Zang still did not move.
He squeezed his eyes shut. His thick lashes, covered in tiny fragments of metal, trembled rapidly as he spoke weakly and pitifully. “Baby, I don’t have any clothes…”
That made perfect sense.
Yin Chen fell silent for a moment, then turned and called out to one of the soldiers. “E12, bring me my coat.”
“Got it, bro!”
The soldier answered with unusual familiarity and hurried toward the examination room next door.
Song Zang still had not opened his eyes, but he reached back and grabbed Yin Chen’s wrist instead, quietly tightening his grip as he demanded resentfully, “Yin Chen, someone just called you bro. Who is he? How dare he? I haven’t even called you bro.”
“My fault. Blame me.” The pitch of Yin Chen’s reply rose almost imperceptibly.
He seemed to enjoy being questioned by Song Zang. Even with Song Zang buried beneath scorching-hot scrap metal… it could not affect the sudden improvement in his mood.
The soldier codenamed E12 was both clever and enthusiastic. He returned not only with Yin Chen’s coat, but also two bath towels and an entire unopened set of training clothes.
The so-called training uniform was really just the casual clothing soldiers wore every day. It was a simple gray crew-neck basic made from soft, close-fitting fabric, comfortable enough to sleep in. Every detail, including height and waist measurements, matched the sizes in Song Zang’s personal file exactly.
And just like that, the major embarrassment of having all his clothes burned away was successfully resolved.
Song Zang knew very well that every kindness and special privilege he was receiving came entirely from Yin Chen’s influence.
Otherwise, there was no way he would currently be qualified to lie comfortably in Yin Chen’s bed, drink warm blood-replenishing medicinal soup, and receive a mental-state evaluation from a medical robot.
The bedroom door was slightly ajar, and Song Zang could hear scraps of conversation rising and falling outside.
Several technicians had gathered around the desk and were heatedly analyzing, right in front of Yin Chen, the true cause behind the examination pod’s unexplained explosion.
“It doesn’t make sense. Before the self-destruct program activates, the core master-control system requires an iris scan and secondary confirmation. I was sitting in the cockpit at the time and never saw any prompt.”
“Of course you didn’t. Round-trip energy is limited, so while we’re docked the master-control system automatically switches to semi-sleep mode and is managed by the Blazing Sun AI. I think artificial intelligence is about to revolt, ignore human decision-making authority, and approve explosive self-destruction all by itself.”
“Don’t be alarmist. I’m tracing the algorithm-edit records right now. Someone definitely tampered with them. What’s the AI done wrong? The real problem is the bastard using it to commit crimes.”
“Fine, fine. Other than the few of us, who else even has permission to modify the master-control AI algorithm? If you think the explosion was caused by a person, then there has to be a mole inside our legion. The Blazing Sun departs in twenty minutes, which means that mole will be returning with us!
“Stop worrying about proving the AI innocent. Is that really the fucking point? I propose we disable autopilot immediately, switch to two-person manual shifts, and have people supervise each other. At least then we won’t all get blown up together by the mole!”
Silence. A full half minute of silence.
“…Bro, what do you think?”
Yin Chen’s indifferent voice followed. “Disabling the AI is safer. My opinion doesn’t decide it. Let the legion commander choose. Where did she go?”
“How does your opinion not count? The commander will support you too! John, stop dragging your feet. Shut down the AI now. Until we identify the mole, we have to stay absolutely cautious.”
Song Zang listened with great interest.
He realized Yin Chen was extremely popular. The soldiers of the First Legion were not as cold as the mining-planet battalion either; they felt much more human. They habitually called Yin Chen “Commander,” while the ones who knew him better simply called him bro.
Their trust in him was practically overflowing from their eyes.
Before long, the legion commander they had been talking about finally arrived as well. Before she even appeared, a voice bursting with energy rang down the corridor.
“Hey, Little Rose!”
Song Zang narrowed his eyes and tilted his head, watching the movement beyond the crack in the door.
A tall female Alpha stood there, idly hefting an electromagnetic charged gun while radiating an icy, impossible-to-ignore sense of power.
She wore a black military coat, her long legs lazily braced against the doorway. The insignia on both shoulders was especially striking.
It was a lush, heavy classic double rose: General Jacqueminot.
The intricate blood-red petals layered densely over one another, blooming fiercely among thorny branches. They were outlined and enclosed by the same special gilded thread, reflecting a captivating brilliance beneath the lights.
She was strong. Extremely strong.
At that moment, Song Zang understood deeply that mental-power rank was by no means the only standard for judging an Alpha’s strength.
Even through a cabin door, the dense scent of blood and gunpowder around her was intensely strong, like lingering ghosts wrapped around her soul.
This bright, cheerful-looking young woman had unquestionably been tempered by countless battles and brushes with death.
Song Zang’s button-shaped signal jammer had been completely burned out in the explosion, allowing AI Little Star to become active again. Lowering its voice, it quietly told Song Zang that this was Catherine Percy, commander of the Rose Empire’s First Legion and commander of the Blazing Sun and Bright Moon fleets.
Yin Chen glanced toward the bedroom and said calmly, “Commander, stop calling me that.”
Catherine shrugged, turned around, sat on the sofa, and crossed her legs. “All right, Commander Who’s Been Absent for Half a Year. What are we talking about?”
A technician immediately answered, “Reporting, Commander. We discovered that the master-control AI made a decision error and independently approved both confirmations required by the self-destruct system. This accidental explosion may have been planned by a mole, and the suspect has to be among the few of us. We need to delay departure and conduct a security investigation.”
“Mm… then investigate. Once you find them, I’ll shoot them. But departure time cannot change. Getting the victims to Zone A for treatment as quickly as possible is the priority.”
At that, Catherine’s expression suddenly chilled. She curved her lips into a cold smile. “Why are you still standing here? Investigate! And tell those idiots running wild on the garbage planet to get their asses back here. If anyone delays the voyage and causes the Campbell family’s development funding to arrive late, I’ll personally skin them and sell the hide on the black market to recover a few hundred star coins.”
“Yes, Commander!”
“Mission guaranteed, Commander!”
The technicians went slightly pale and hurried away as fast as possible. In front of Catherine, they were nervous as quail, with none of their earlier casual ease.
Song Zang looked at Catherine’s murderous expression, then at Yin Chen sitting calmly nearby with a faint trace of approval in his eyes, and suddenly understood.
No wonder the soldiers were closer to Yin Chen. It turned out Commander Percy was even more vicious than Yin Chen in everyday life…
Both of them were terrifying people who wanted to kill someone the moment they disagreed. They were birds of a feather. Being appointed first and second in command of the First Legion meant their strategic thinking naturally aligned almost perfectly, leaving only the poor soldiers beneath them trembling in fear.
Once everyone had fled, the office became quiet again. Catherine yawned and discussed a few serious matters with Yin Chen, every word of which Song Zang overheard.
The First Legion had gone to considerable trouble this time, deploying the core vessel of the Blazing Sun fleet and crossing star systems all the way to distant, barren Zone C. They were not here merely to collect the confined underage Omegas.
The Empire’s borders happened to be peaceful, while new legion recruits needed real combat experience, so headquarters had assigned them many additional missions.
These included lightning raids to clear out space-pirate settlements in Zone C, recovering the bodies of rampaging Alphas, confiscating illegally modified weapons and spacecraft above the danger threshold, and killing the chief presiding officer of the Zone C Federal Government.
Beyond that, the First Legion also had to assist the battalion stationed at the mine by traveling to the garbage-planet oil field to collect geological samples and perform inspections.
Once those missions were complete, they would naturally sign a mutually beneficial resource-cooperation agreement, secure five hundred tons of refined radiant iron in advance at a relatively low market price, and take five hundred different types of Zone C soil samples back to Zone A for in-depth analysis…
There were simply too many formal appearances and miscellaneous tasks to handle. Catherine, who only enjoyed fighting, became more irritable the longer she talked. Even beneath her thick, dignified military coat, killing intent seemed to pour relentlessly from between her bones.
Given the First Legion’s efficiency, one morning should actually have been more than enough to complete all those assignments without difficulty. Everything had gone smoothly, with no unexpected incidents.
…Until the self-service examination pod aboard the Blazing Sun inexplicably activated its self-destruct program.
A military examination pod had a service life of forty-five years. Yet only three years ago, the logistics department had carried out a systematic replacement of the fleet’s medical equipment, and every facility aboard was the newest model on the market.
By a rough estimate, the explosion had destroyed medical investments worth several million star coins. If they counted the nanotech repair instruments and expensive limb-regeneration ointments burned to ash inside the cabinets as well… those were Imperial subsidies issued according to military headcount and could not simply be replaced with money. The total loss was nearly impossible to calculate.
Catherine was furious enough to ascend to heaven. She had not been that angry at first, but after calculating the losses with Yin Chen, she only grew angrier the more she thought about it. “We have to find whoever is behind this. Investigate thoroughly. Make them pay us back before they die.
“And your little boyfriend. What exactly is he? A normal person could lie inside an examination pod holding a grenade and still not be identified as a hostile target. Yin Chen, you understand how suspicious that is, right? If you hadn’t brought him aboard, I would’ve shot him already.”
Yin Chen lifted his eyes and answered calmly, “We went to the bottom of the mine last night and destroyed more than a thousand insectoid eggs in one go. There are still eggshells and embryonic tissue fluid on the soles of my boots. You can take them to the lab for testing. If the AI classified Song Zang as an insectoid intrusion, that’s reasonable too.”
He had not lied. Every sentence was true. But when the pieces of truth he chose to reveal were placed together, they happened to conceal the deeper truth perfectly.
Sure enough, Catherine stopped pressing about Song Zang. Her expression abruptly changed instead, becoming serious. “Anything involving the mine can’t be discussed outside. I don’t want to know, and I can’t know.
“If you find anything unusual, you can bypass my authority without restriction and communicate directly with Lieutenant Colonel Hall. If you need armed support, have Hall submit the request himself, and you approve it.”
Yin Chen looked at her thoughtfully. “Percy, there are signs of insectoid reproduction inside the mine. You’re not interested? Usually bugs are your favorite thing to kill.”
“It’s not that I’m not interested. I don’t dare! Don’t tell me you don’t know.” Catherine paused and took a deep breath. “The moon in Zone C kills indiscriminately.”
Yin Chen raised an eyebrow. “I know. I saw it myself last night, but I don’t understand how it works.”
“You say that like I understand it!”
Catherine helplessly pressed a hand to her forehead.
Then she began telling Yin Chen about an old incident he did not know.
The indescribable danger inside the Zone C mine had long been an open secret among the Empire’s upper levels.
But for the overwhelming majority of people, including royalty and nobility, their understanding of the mine stopped at the concept of 【it is dangerous】. They could not go any further.
Because knowing too much really did kill you.
People who knew the truth and casually revealed too many secrets would unexpectedly die without warning. Some deaths appeared to be suicides, others accidents, and all were extraordinarily gruesome.
Those who received the secrets could not escape death either, even if they kept their mouths shut. Some even descended into endless madness and hysteria, causing unimaginable disasters before dying even more horribly.
The military camp stationed on the mining planet was the only group of “survivors” permitted to discuss the mine freely.
Decades ago, according to Catherine, Zone A’s upper leadership had already conducted various tests and experiments. They selected several murderers guilty of extremely serious crimes from the mining planet’s prison, then randomly selected ordinary soldiers from the stationed battalion who had entered the mine and ordered each soldier to tell a prisoner everything they had seen underground in exhaustive detail.
Each prisoner and soldier communicated one-on-one through a single isolated channel.
Because everyone possessed different levels of knowledge about the mine’s secrets, their eventual outcomes differed as well.
One soldier’s heart stopped on the spot. Several others left the prison safely, only to begin falling ill, suffering injuries, and encountering every imaginable kind of misfortune over the next six months before dying one after another. In the end, even the one who lasted longest did not live past thirty.
The murderers all survived safely for more than ten hours. Then, during outdoor exercise that evening, they collectively melted beneath the faint outline of a pale crescent moon.
Yes, melted. Flesh and bone alike turned into rotten, viscous liquid. Even their orange prison uniforms were corroded with them, leaving nothing that could be picked up by hand.
After eliminating every variable and repeating the comparison multiple times, the researchers reached a conclusion: moonlight was killing them.
Even if the soldiers who disclosed the secret escaped Zone C, as long as they had once been exposed to Zone C’s moonlight, their vitality would still be taken away little by little.
Because the scenes were so horrifying and brutal, the matter was forcibly sealed by a Zone A research center, and no one was allowed to spread the experimental findings.
Catherine Percy might have been straightforward, disliked political maneuvering, and hated maintaining false relationships, but standing so high within the Empire’s power structure meant she had no choice but to know these dark pieces of history.
“The people who reveal the secret die slowly, while the people who hear it are guaranteed to die. This erasure rule is too strange. If that’s the case, then if I wanted revenge on society, couldn’t I just spread the mine’s secrets everywhere and kill people indiscriminately?” Yin Chen did not understand and raised an eyebrow as he questioned her.
Catherine answered without mercy. “Stop dreaming. You’d rot all over and die miserably halfway through spreading it, suffering so badly you’d regret ever trying. The Zone C mine isn’t the only dangerous place. More innocent people have died in Zone A. I’ve personally witnessed countless tragedies.”
“Really? I don’t believe you.” Yin Chen took a sip of cold tea.
“…Yin, don’t make me fight you. You’ve only been gone half a year. Where did you learn to be this irritating?!”
Yin Chen did not answer. Instead, he pressed harder with a cold, uncompromising attitude. “Where else have dangerous phenomena appeared? Give me the approximate locations. I’ll investigate them myself.
“Percy, there are no absolute secrets in the age of intelligent information. You understand that better than I do. Otherwise, insectoid eggs would never have appeared at the bottom of the mine. If we can’t eliminate these hidden dangers, the insectoids will discover how they work even faster and use their dangerous properties to push humanity toward extinction.”
Catherine fell silent for a moment. “You’re right. I’m afraid of dying without even knowing why. Have your little boyfriend close the door. This is military business. He can’t sit in.”
Bang!
The reinforced, pressure-sealed double-layer soundproof door slammed shut.
After last night’s emergency practice, Yin Chen had become increasingly skilled at using mental power. For small everyday tasks like this, he no longer even needed to move his hands.
Unfortunately, Commander Percy had underestimated Song Zang’s hearing.
Song Zang remained weakly sprawled on the bed, imitating Yin Chen by trying to manipulate nearby objects with mental power.
While concentrating completely on eavesdropping, he accidentally punched two holes straight through Yin Chen’s wardrobe.
…Forget it. Song Zang rolled over speechlessly.
He genuinely could not manage this kind of delicate work.
According to Catherine, dangerous restricted zones existed almost everywhere throughout the Rose Empire.
Their sources differed, but every mid- or low-tier planet with an underdeveloped economy and sparse population had at least one unknown hidden danger.
There were legendary parallel-space rifts that could swallow people whole, a ten-thousand-meter waterfall that no one who entered ever escaped from, a remote garbage planet whose southern hemisphere had no radio signal whatsoever, and a nascent black hole hidden inside the Empire’s largest fossil museum that expanded by one centimeter every year…
The universe was simply too vast. Even the Rose Empire, which seemed like a colossal existence from the players’ perspective, was only a young novice traveler.
Unfamiliar and terrifying entities, incomprehensible facts, bizarre and uncanny geography: as humanity continued to develop, such things would only appear more and more frequently.
Quickly identifying which restricted zones were connected to the main storyline would absolutely not be easy.
After Catherine finished sharing the secrets she knew, she still worked hard to suppress herself, refusing to reveal even the slightest curiosity that might get her killed.
She stood, brushed the hem of her coat, and fixed Yin Chen with a steady look beneath thick golden brows. Perhaps afraid he would interrupt, Catherine suddenly spoke very quickly and seriously. “Yin Chen, I know the Eldest Princess has shown you enormous favor, but she’s morally corrupt. She’s a terrible person. Do you understand? I don’t like speaking badly about others, but I’ve seen many things with my own eyes.
“Yes, the Eldest Princess is an extremely capable leader, and she truly hasn’t openly committed anything illegal, but she isn’t a good person! She secretly abuses dogs, and she toys with every Omega who falls in love with her, then throws them to her drinking buddies for their amusement like garbage she no longer needs.
“She’s accepted sincere affection from countless people and never returned that sincerity in equal measure. Someone like that will squeeze every last bit of usefulness out of you and then discard you without mercy. She sent you to guard the mine because she absolutely wanted to use the opportunity to get you killed. If she lets you keep growing stronger, she won’t be able to control you anymore.
“I’d die for the soldiers under my command. She, on the other hand, would calmly let every member of the First Legion die in front of her first. Bro, think about it carefully. Isn’t it very possible that all these unexpected crises we’ve experienced were her doing? That’s all I’m saying. If you don’t believe me, pretend I never said any of it.”
The instant she finished, Catherine turned and left, slamming Yin Chen’s door hard enough to shake the room.
She was not leaving because she was angry. The ship would depart for the return journey in two minutes, and the legion commander had to be seated in the main control room to issue the flight order personally…
To avoid being late, Catherine sprinted at full speed, her footsteps thundering down the corridor.
Yin Chen sat silently at the desk for a moment, lowering his eyes as he replayed her heartfelt words. After some thought, he summoned a small transport robot.
He had the AI assist in generating a detailed report summarizing and documenting the previous night’s mine-elevator self-destruct incident, then sent it to the First Legion’s professional technical staff.
Next, Yin Chen searched through his system space and poured out the broken elevator’s core components and chips. He packed all of them into the robot’s storage compartment and sent them down to the technical department on the lower deck.
Leaving the investigation into last night’s remote manipulation of the master control console to reliable professionals was the most convenient option. It would also help the commander test whether the mole could resist making another move.
The Empire’s First Legion was naturally more trustworthy than the Eldest Princess. At the very least, its soldiers had vivid personalities, one after another, and even their commander was not the cold-blooded stereotype he might have expected.
Just like Lieutenant Colonel Hall’s trusted soldiers, who dared jump onto the round table and fight each other during a serious meeting… There was something uniquely human about the atmosphere inside the military.
Once the transport robot disappeared at the end of the corridor, Yin Chen poured a cup of hot ginger tea and carried it into the bedroom.
He pushed the door shut behind him, then abruptly stopped and narrowed his eyes. “Song Zang, what did you do to my wardrobe?”
“Bro, think about it carefully~” Song Zang raised his eyes and gave him a darkly sarcastic look.
At that moment, Song Zang sat cross-legged on the bed, wrapped in a thick blanket as soft as clouds, bundled into one enormous lump that left Yin Chen with no obvious place to grab him. Every time Yin Chen stepped closer, Song Zang immediately wriggled backward, refusing physical affection.
“My fault.”
“Dear bro, how could you possibly be wrong~ You’re everyone’s bro. What am I supposed to be~?” Song Zang continued in the same eerie, sarcastic tone.
Yin Chen stood beside the bed and fell into helpless silence. For the first time, he finally experienced what Song Zang usually felt when he was “suspected” and had no way to explain himself.
“Stop bullying me.” After they remained deadlocked for a while, Yin Chen came up with what he thought was a brilliant peace offering. “Next time I’ll get a tongue stud and let you try it.”
Song Zang’s pupils shook violently. “No! Who taught you something that bad? You’re not allowed to hurt your tongue!”
Yin Chen pressed his lips together slightly and lowered his phoenix eyes toward Song Zang. His voice sounded steady and calm, but his body quietly tensed. “I mean in my giant-snake form. I’ll hold your whole body in my mouth.”
Song Zang’s pupils shook again. “…Baby, I accept.”
＊
The young couple reconciled instantly and went hand in hand to the better-equipped transparent panoramic bathroom.
Watching the scenery outside the spacecraft alternate between vast, brilliant nebulae and endless, lightless darkness… they spent an enjoyable two hours there.
Of course, they also handled serious business.
The side mission’s completion rate kept changing, which meant there were still separated players stranded elsewhere who needed to identify one another.
So Song Zang used AI Little Star to package and promote himself aggressively across StarNet.
“SSS-Rank Super Genius Cruelly Suppressed by Zone C Authorities”
“Stunning 3S Alpha Youth About to Arrive in Zone A”
“Commander Percy Furious, Mysterious Commander Hides a Beauty Away: Click to Read the Rose Legion’s Secret Romance”
Three minutes later, Song Zang was famous across the entire network.