Yin Chen did not especially like this exaggerated method, but Song Zang was extremely satisfied with it.
After all, the Rose Empire’s territory was larger than thousands upon thousands of Earths put together. Trying to find the other players through coincidence or chance encounters would truly be like searching for a needle in the ocean.
Aside from Zhang Tao Xiong, who had courted death right at the start and been dealt with directly by Song Zang… the player closest to Song Zang was Yin Chen.
Yet even at the very beginning, the two of them had been more than five hundred thousand kilometers apart. If Song Zang had not discovered petroleum, who knew what method they would have needed to meet quickly?
Maybe he would have stolen Zhang Tao Xiong’s modified spacecraft and gone straight down the path of becoming overlord of a garbage planet?
Unfortunately, the instance plot was now spreading steadily toward Zone A. Song Zang no longer had the chance to stay behind in the slums and become a robber, but becoming a mega-famous internet celebrity was a pretty good alternative.
He could become a StarNet robber instead and harvest money from audiences all over the world.
By the time Song Zang wandered dazedly out of the bathroom, several hype posts inspired by him and written by AI Little Star had already been pushed to marketing accounts all across the Empire. They had been transformed into animated video explainers packed with emotion and compilations of conspiracy theories, and in the blink of an eye they had reached a million points of popularity.
Song Zang had joined StarNet’s contributor revenue-sharing program. His illustrated posts contained all kinds of hidden advertisements, and reaching one million points of popularity in one go meant he could cash out one hundred thousand star coins before tax. In an instant, he had made a small fortune.
Sure enough, working and saving money was not the only way for an ordinary person to escape Zone C. But not everyone could casually explode in popularity on StarNet.
The true hero was AI Little Star, an artificial intelligence overflowing with emotion and somehow even more lifelike than a living person, doing everything in its power to help Song Zang achieve whatever he wanted.
And it did not charge him a single additional fee.
Rather than feeling delighted, Song Zang grew even more vigilant and increasingly suspicious of it. “Little Star, why are you willing to help me?”
“Mr. Song, because I’m your little star~”
The gentle youthful voice was as sweet and soft as ever, making even the faint mechanical quality of an AI almost disappear.
It sounded alive. Far too alive. It was practically a living person residing inside a virtual network.
Just then, Yin Chen’s warm fingertips brushed the tip of his ear. Song Zang’s whole body went numb, and he turned around and collapsed bonelessly into Yin Chen’s arms.
“That’s so scary, baby. Can you hear it?”
“No.” Yin Chen was helping him dry his hair and pinched Song Zang’s cheek with a faint smile. “This shell limits my strength. You should know that very well.”
True.
The night he had spent with an enormous python had nearly exhausted Song Zang to the point of leaving his soul behind. His back had burned with pain, and for the first time in ages he had even enjoyed the sour ache of strained muscles.
But when he interacted normally with Yin Chen in his “human” state, Song Zang was often perfectly capable of bullying Yin Chen half to death instead.
Perhaps appearing in an indescribable form was what truly allowed Yin Chen to move freely, completely unrestrained. Yet Yin Chen had willingly put on this shell, like locking himself inside a dull, airless set of shackles.
Yin Chen had always been quietly yielding to him.
“…Baby, you’re way too tolerant of me. You’re so good to me. I’m trash.”
Song Zang looked utterly heartbroken as he quickly pulled out a new hair-clip jammer and fastened it to the collar of his pajamas.
Yin Chen stared at him blankly. “What are you talking about?”
“I need to confess something to you. There’s something seriously wrong with my StarNet AI. It developed autonomous thought and secretly monitors everything I do, but it has never hurt me.”
Yin Chen’s hand paused. His fingertips quietly pressed against Song Zang’s carotid artery and slowly stroked it. “Keep talking.”
“Either it wants to kill me, it loves me, or it wants to replace me. Those are the only three possibilities.”
Song Zang’s face reddened slightly from the pressure, but he burrowed even deeper into Yin Chen’s arms, allowing that long, powerful hand to remain against his neck. His gland stirred restlessly with a tingling, astringent ache.
Fortunately, Song Zang had fully evolved by now. He no longer lost control of his pheromone release when he got excited, spreading the smell of rotten roses through every corner of the spacecraft. That unimaginably embarrassing scene would probably be comparable to a large-scale poison-gas attack.
Come to think of it, making a story out of his absurd pheromones might become another viral piece of internet content.
Song Zang could not help falling into thought. Then he suddenly realized his airway had become obstructed, and waves of oxygen-starved dizziness came surging over him.
“You dare zone out in the middle of your explanation?” Yin Chen stared at him, his tone sinister and cold. The sharply defined bones of his wrist suddenly pressed downward, and he looked almost angry enough to laugh.
Song Zang did not struggle. A hazy flush abruptly gathered around the corners of his eyes, and his voice turned tearful. “But I already told you everything. You’re the one who didn’t say anything.”
Yin Chen remained completely unmoved, his phoenix eyes cold and dark. “You didn’t explain it clearly. Be more specific.”
Looking aggrieved, Song Zang squeezed out a few tears and carefully described AI Little Star’s behavioral traits, its style, and every bit of help it had voluntarily provided from beginning to end.
“I swear I’ve never responded to any of the advances it initiated. Not once. Every time it starts acting strange, I block the signal. Really, really.”
“Mm. I believe you.” Yin Chen quietly listened until the end, then immediately affirmed Song Zang’s “innocence.”
Even so, his austere, icy expression did not improve in the slightest.
“Song Zang, this is not a normal AI. It may not even be an AI at all.”
“…What?”
“The Rose Empire Human Rights Protection Act established explicit and extremely strict limits on interactions between humans and AI. An artificial intelligence’s voice can approach and imitate any human or animal voice to an unlimited degree, and it can cooperate with humans in intimate emotional communication…
“But before any of that, an artificial intelligence must first provide explicit notices and warnings, enough for humans to distinguish virtual interaction from reality. Any form of suggestive or manipulative speech is absolutely prohibited. Except for military AI, which has special autonomous privileges, every step of human-machine communication must be initiated by the human side. The human must start the conversation.
“This regulation is enforced most strictly for personal AI. If StarNet detects abnormal AI behavior, your personal AI-assistance access will be forcibly suspended until the relevant developer performs an inspection and repair, confirming that the AI poses no danger to you and will not cause severe emotional dependency.”
But AI Little Star had obviously initiated conversations countless times, softly and sweetly trying to ingratiate itself with Song Zang and even proactively worrying about his safety…
As an artificial intelligence with extremely powerful self-learning ability, evolutionary speed, and adaptability, Little Star should easily have been able to infer from Song Zang’s indifferent responses what kind of behavior he actually wanted from an assistant AI.
Yet Little Star never changed. It stubbornly maintained the persona of a soft, gentle Omega and occasionally popped out to explain outside information to Song Zang.
Yin Chen continued coldly, “At both the mining-planet medical station and aboard the Blazing Sun, you successfully passed identity verification and the preliminary safety scans of two examination pods. That can only mean there is nothing wrong with your subcutaneous implant chip. Its network connection is stable, and it is still operating normally.”
Song Zang thought for a long moment, then suddenly understood. “So the problem has to be somewhere else. Logically, StarNet’s protection system should have detected my AI’s abnormal behavior a long time ago and forcibly terminated the assistance function… but it never did anything!”
“Exactly.”
As Yin Chen spoke, he rolled up his sleeve and pressed his wrist tightly against Song Zang’s. A nearly inaudible notification tone sounded in the air.
The two implant chips separated by their skin lined up perfectly and connected wirelessly.
Yin Chen activated his military terminal, and a privacy-screened floating interface lit up in an instant. Song Zang’s personal identity information and medical records appeared before his eyes without the slightest obstruction.
“Conveniently enough, my permissions are unusual. I’ll check the status of your network service first.”
“Thank you, baby…”
“Stop thanking me.” Yin Chen answered irritably.
Song Zang fell silent. Suddenly unable to tell whether Yin Chen was still angry, he cautiously tested, “Baby, this is something you’re supposed to do?”
“Who else do you want helping you?”
Song Zang understood.
He blinked his wet black lashes and tilted his head, revealing a delicate trail of crystalline tears along the side of his face.
Sweet words came effortlessly. “Baby, I understand now. I’m going to cling to you for the rest of my life. You’re the only one who can protect me. Nobody else is reliable. You’re the strongest support and anchor in my entire life. I’m going to hang off you like a parasite and drink your blood, live off you, and eat you into bankruptcy.”
Yin Chen froze. His Adam’s apple moved slightly. The cold, frightening aura around him quietly softened without him noticing, though his tone remained ominous. “I’m still angry. Stop saying sweet things.”
Song Zang: …
Of course.
Such an obvious declaration of 【being derangedly determined to live off someone】 was, naturally, a love confession in Yin Chen’s ears.
Song Zang had already gotten used to Yin Chen’s occasionally bizarre logic, but he still could not help thinking bitterly that it was lucky Yin Chen had met him. If he had encountered someone who genuinely only wanted to mooch off him, who knew how badly that person would bully Yin Chen!
Damn it. The more he thought about it, the angrier he got.
He had sixty million now, and he would earn plenty more in the future. Even if Yin Chen had no legal human identity, could not find a job, and spent every day lying around at home, Song Zang could comfortably support him for the rest of his life.
“Yin Chen, when can you come to the real world? I absolutely have to spend money on you.”
Song Zang had asked this many times before, but Yin Chen did not dodge the question this time. After thinking for a moment, he said, “Soon.”
“…Really soon?”
“Mm.”
The answer was vague, but exceptionally certain.
Yin Chen was still multitasking with the terminal, finding a way to check the network service Song Zang had subscribed to. After browsing for a moment, however, he narrowed his phoenix eyes with growing suspicion. “Song Zang, your interstellar network plan is too cheap. It doesn’t include AI assistance at all.”
Song Zang immediately forgot about flirting and frowned uneasily. “That can’t be right. At the very beginning of the instance, I carefully read the plan details because I happened to be behind on my internet bill and couldn’t get online. I saw it very clearly. Every plan included at least the most basic AI.”
“It doesn’t.”
“…Was I crazy back then?”
“Nothing that dramatic. I think this is Little Star’s doing,” Yin Chen said thoughtfully. “If it can communicate with you through encrypted channels and make you mistake it for a genuine artificial intelligence, then the permissions it can exercise on your body must be extensive. It may be able to alter what appears on your screen, perhaps even alter… what you believe you’re actually seeing.”
“That makes sense. Let me look again.”
Thoughtfully, Song Zang used his own StarNet account to open the carrier’s website and checked the service description for his network plan again.
The densely packed text clearly showed that he had purchased the cheapest monthly service. It allowed calls, internet access, remote panoramic video, social-media browsing, and free video sites. The basic functions were relatively complete, with the only disadvantage being slow connection speed. Even free games could not be played smoothly.
Yet unlike the page displayed on Yin Chen’s side, at the very bottom of Song Zang’s webpage there was a clearly written line: 【Basic Personal AI Service】.
At the beginning of the instance, this line had looked perfectly clear and blended seamlessly into the rest of the page. At least, Song Zang had been unable to distinguish any difference.
But this time… Song Zang blinked, then blinked again. The line grew increasingly blurred and insubstantial, revealing an unnatural ghost image and an abrupt border, like a badly pasted pirated advertisement.
“Yin Chen, I’ll share my screen with you.” Song Zang quickly performed the operation. “How about now? Can you see that small line of text?”
“Yes. It’s very clear, good enough to pass for real. That’s a Trojan program added afterward. Nobody would notice.” Yin Chen gave an objective assessment.
Even Yin Chen could potentially be fooled by false information… Song Zang frowned slightly and stared thoughtfully at the line of text growing blurrier by the second.
Perhaps his ability to see through the illusion now should be credited to the inexplicable penetrating “superpower” he had awakened.
A human absolutely could not do this. Mental power came from pushing the brain’s development to the limit, but seeing through solid obstructions and perceiving reality beyond them could only be an insectoid ability.
Song Zang merely needed to focus and quiet his mind to see many things clearly.
For example, several faint military uniforms neatly stacked behind the cool-toned radiant-iron wardrobe door. Soldiers hurrying along one deck below, topped by bouncing heads of red hair. In the small pantry next door reserved specifically for Yin Chen, a chef robot extended four agile mechanical arms and busily prepared lunch…
He could even see the crisp outline of Yin Chen’s pale abdominal muscles. If he pulled his clothes aside, Song Zang could faintly glimpse his vividly beating heart too. It was especially beautiful.
But even standing before the highest-definition full-length mirror, Song Zang still could not see through himself, much less see where AI Little Star was actually hiding.
“When we return to Zone A, let me perform a craniotomy on you.” Just as their investigation reached an impasse, Yin Chen abruptly made the suggestion.
“…Huh?”
Yin Chen’s expression remained perfectly normal. His gaze was still cold and dark, but there was no malice in it whatsoever. Only unmistakable seriousness.
Seriousness about Song Zang.
He drew Song Zang into his arms. Warm fingertips brushed from the side of his neck toward the back, gently rubbing against the Alpha’s gland. It was hard to tell whether he was soothing him or provoking him.
“Before opening your skull, I’ll contact the best specialists and have them inspect your chip completely. If there is nothing wrong with the implant, then AI Little Star may be hiding inside your brain in some form. Only I can deal with that.”
A craniotomy?
Song Zang did not object. Thinking about it carefully, it even sounded rather exciting. Yin Chen would definitely like his pretty brain. In this entire world, the only person capable of slicing open his skull with ease was probably Yin Chen.
But… Song Zang took a deep breath and finally asked a question he had hesitated over for a long time. “Yin Chen, haven’t you ever thought that simply removing the subcutaneous chip would be safest? Doesn’t the feeling that the military and artificial intelligence might be monitoring us every moment make you uncomfortable?”
“No. As long as you have the chip, I can locate you whenever I want. If you want, you can monitor me whenever you want too. Why would I want it removed?” Yin Chen’s lips suddenly curved. “I like it.”
Song Zang’s expression went blank for a moment. Then he began thinking very seriously. “…That makes so much sense. I want to monitor you every second too, obsessively spy on you. But how am I supposed to do that? You’re a sergeant major now, and your private information is classified. I don’t have permission.”
“After we return to Zone A, apply to register our marriage,” Yin Chen answered without hesitation. “As my spouse, Imperial law gives you the right to view my exact location.”
“Yin Chen, you’ve been planning this forever, haven’t you? Scheming bastard!” Song Zang clicked his tongue in admiration.
Yin Chen sneered and fired back without hesitation. “You marketed me as a deranged Alpha with a disability fetish, saying I get pleasure from crushing and breaking super-geniuses. Now netizens all over the world are watching the spectacle and begging me to set you free… and you have the nerve to call me scheming?”
“I didn’t write that. AI Little Star did. Don’t slander my innocence!”
…
The two argued back and forth for ages without figuring out who was more in the wrong when the slightly laggy system screen suddenly lit up with a new-message alert.
It was Chi Yan. Several hours later, she had belatedly realized that Song Zang was the disabled Alpha from Zone C who had suddenly gone viral. Since everyone had already added each other as game friends, she moved quickly and pulled the two of them into the same group chat.
【Chi Yan: Hello. Looks like this instance won’t be easy.】
【Chi Yan: @Song Zang, you’re so clever. Why didn’t I think of becoming an influencer?!】
【Xie Chun Ye: Hello.】
【Song Zang: Which zones are you all in? We’re aboard the First Legion’s Blazing Sun W1 spacecraft and will arrive in Zone A tomorrow night.】
【Xie Chun Ye: Zone B.】
【Chi Yan: Perfect, come to Zone A. I’m a princess, so I can protect you.】
【Song Zang: A-a princess?!】
【Chi Yan: A spoiled little wastrel princess everyone dotes on, not that psycho dog abuser. Bosses, help me stage a rebellion when you have time. I want to be Empress.】
【Xie Chun Ye: +1.】
After the brief exchange, both sides gained a solid understanding of one another’s circumstances, especially the exact composition of Zone A’s center of power.
It turned out that this generation of the Rose Empire’s royal family had eight princes and princesses in total.
Three useless Betas had very little presence. They were raised in the palace and given elite educations, and the direction of their training was brutally simple: they would become assistants to the future Imperial heir, the leader’s unseen shadows.
Two Omega princes of marriageable age were selecting Alphas from families with backgrounds suitable for the royal house and preparing for political marriages. One Omega was already formally engaged, with the happy announcement expected before the end of the year.
As for the other prince… according to Chi Yan, he had apparently fallen in love with Yin Chen’s role at first sight, only to be cruelly rejected at a banquet. Since then, he had sealed away his heart and spent every day in the palace staging hunger strikes.
The remaining three Alphas were all eligible to inherit the Rose Empire’s throne and shared military authority and equal political power with the sitting president of the federal government.
Song Zang did not understand why an empire also had a federal government that sounded like a republic until Chi Yan remarked gloomily, “Constitutional monarchy. But the monarch was too good at fighting, so both sides fought to a draw and held their noses while choosing joint rule.”
That explained it. A top-level power structure this chaotic could only breed more conspiracies and evil beneath the surface.
The Eldest Princess was first in the line of succession, Chi Yan was the deliberately spoiled second child, and besides them the Empire had once had an even younger Alpha prince.
He had been strikingly handsome and brilliant from childhood, the dream lover of countless Omegas, and deeply favored by the emperor.
But he died horribly at eighteen, like a brilliant blue morpho butterfly with its wings crushed to pulp.
Severe acute meningitis, complications from mental-power disorder, sudden suppuration and ulceration of the gland… He collapsed in a beautiful public sky garden, convulsing, trembling, and disfigured, while dogs devoured most of his flesh around the suppurating lesions.
Imperial citizens passing through the garden witnessed the prince at the most humiliating moment before his death.
The incident caused an enormous uproar. Every photo and video was locked down overnight. The final official announcement stated that the prince had died of a sudden illness.
According to Chi Yan’s speculation, however, her terrifying elder sister Fiona was very likely the true mastermind.
Song Zang prepared himself mentally in advance. Clearly, the Eldest Princess’s methods were far too vicious. Once they returned to Zone A, they would inevitably face attack after attack, both open and hidden. Even Chi Yan did not dare underestimate her and was still pretending to be a wastrel, lounging in the palace and eating and drinking her days away.
Because her image as a useless princess had sunk so deeply into everyone’s minds, the Eldest Princess had not caused her any trouble at all. She even dragged Chi Yan before their father to perform a touching display of “an affectionate elder sister and respectful younger sibling” and “an eldest sister like a mother.”
Chi Yan’s life was actually quite wealthy and comfortable. Nobody would offend her for no reason.
Xie Chun Ye, on the other hand, was in an extremely passive situation.
He was an Omega, a middle-class Omega being raised at home “waiting to marry.” His parents, desperate to climb the social ladder, were about to package him off to Zone A to attend banquets, parties, and matchmaking events hosted by nobles and wealthy merchants.
His personal mission was just as malicious: land such an excellent marriage that his parents would go wild with joy, brutally slap the faces of same-age little Omegas from the extended family who had married into rich households, and become someone the entire family groveled before.
What he had to do seemed to belong to an entirely different production from the other players’ missions.
Thinking of Xie Chun Ye’s usual expressionless, aloof demeanor, now forced to display an Omega’s characteristic “gentle attentiveness”…
Song Zang badly wanted to laugh, yet at the same time he felt conflicted by this distorted social culture.
StarNet often carried educational and critical posts attacking insectoid social systems.
Imperial citizens believed that although those bugs might look no different from humans, their minds contained nothing but eating, □□, and reproduction. They were utterly savage animals.
But on closer examination, the Rose Empire did not seem much better. Two hundred years ago, “Alpha-Alpha homosexuality” like Song Zang and Yin Chen’s had still been considered… a mental illness requiring compulsory hospitalization.
Humanity already possessed almost fantastical mental power, could roam the vast universe, and could endlessly expand into new homes, yet most people remained obsessed with reproduction right in front of them.
In the interstellar age, human cryogenic restoration, genetic screening, and safe cloning technology had surely been developed to extraordinary maturity. Research into Alpha-Omega suppressants could not possibly be limited to the expensive short-term patches and medicines sold on the market.
Song Zang did not believe these technologies could truly be useless in solving the limits of human reproduction and physiology.
So why did nobody use them?
The Empire’s history really had contained controversies over all kinds of ethics and morality, but those disputes were from two thousand years ago.
Later, in order to develop mental power and mechanical implant technology, voluntary invasive human clinical trials had already opened throughout the Empire’s major research institutes. New projects appeared constantly and had caused plenty of deaths and disabilities.
As long as the compensation was high enough, nobody raised an objection.
So now, how could emerging technology related to “preserving humanity’s future” and reproduction possibly receive no attention? Had none of the privileged people at the top of the Empire ever thought about immortality?
Song Zang had many questions, but before long he received… a preliminary answer.
A journey lasting an entire day and night could not be spent in bed from beginning to end.
Yin Chen had no work to do, and idling around was still idling around. So he took Song Zang through the spacecraft, which stood as tall as a ten-story building, while also probing for signs of the mole.
The medical center damaged in the explosion was still under emergency repair, so they simply took a long detour into an energy-saving backup stairwell with powerful weightlessness and “floated” down toward the deck below.
Song Zang had a wonderful time, but very soon he stopped smiling.
Operating a spacecraft this impossibly complex required the master control console to be connected to an enormous, ultra-high-powered physical computer.
When that computer ran at high speed, it required equally massive cooling equipment to dissipate heat.
The problem lay right next to the cooling system.
To conserve energy, the cooling unit doubled as a refrigeration system. That was right. Next door was the morgue, packed with the mangled bodies of soldiers killed in action whose families had still not claimed them.
Song Zang saw a corpse that looked very familiar.
It looked exactly like the Alpha prince in the horrifying pre-death images Chi Yan had sent.
The corpse abruptly sat bolt upright.
With stiff, rotting fingers, it traced three large characters across the glass of the freezer compartment.
【Save me…】