Yin Chen did not tell Commander Percy what had happened to him.
He stayed in the freezer room for a moment, confirmed that Prince Arthur was the only corpse that had “returned from the dead,” and only then chose to break through the door by brute force.
Wrapped in a biting chill, Yin Chen carried his snow-white blade and followed the route left behind by the soldier who had dragged Song Zang away, rapidly tracking him toward the upper decks.
Unfortunately, it happened to be mealtime. Soldiers on rotating duty were changing shifts one after another, eager to get back and eat, and crowds flowed through the ship in every direction.
“Commander, s-sir, what happened to you?”
“Nothing.”
“Bro, are you okay? Don’t tell me you secretly went swimming in the Death Ice Lake behind our backs?!”
“No.”
“Sir, what are you holding… Is there an intruder?”
“Nothing.”
Yin Chen barely stopped for even a second, but the blond human head dangling from his hand was simply too eye-catching. Subordinates kept stopping him to ask questions. Yin Chen tried to keep every answer as brief as possible, but his progress was still slowed.
By the time he reached the quarantine area, Song Zang had already successfully downloaded every piece of data from the computers, including top-secret virus lists, rare lethal diseases unique to different regions, and surveillance footage containing discussions about 【orders from the Eldest Princess】.
He had even made three careful backups.
Song Zang deliberately stamped two copies with the Inspection Division’s official watermark. If he ever needed to submit them to technical authorities in Zone A to verify the authenticity of the data, they would serve as ironclad evidence.
No matter how the authorities investigated, the Inspection Division would never be able to wash away the suspicion or the evidence of its crimes.
Satisfied, Song Zang erased traces of his intrusion, deleted the surveillance recording of himself entering the Inspection Division, wiped away his fingerprints, lifted the little dachshund’s paw and waved it, then shut down the computers with a gesture.
Only after confirming that he had left behind no obvious clue pointing directly to himself did Song Zang stretch lazily and turn toward Yin Chen, who had silently been standing guard for him.
At the sight of him, Song Zang froze for a long moment, hardly believing his eyes.
“…Baby, you look terrible.” He could not help laughing aloud.
Yin Chen’s hair looked as though it had been kissed by lightning. Every strand was frozen separately, the shorter pieces clumped together and exposing his entire handsome face.
He was still very handsome, but he really did look spectacularly disheveled.
His coat hung stiffly from his body like an enormous dull slab of gray-blue ice.
The knee-high military boots made from specially treated cowhide had been devastated by the extreme cold, covered everywhere in cracking and splitting. Even most of the soles, which had been fastened on with metal rivets, had somehow fallen away.
Yin Chen wore only a thin base-layer shirt underneath. The gilded thorns on the left side of his chest still gleamed brilliantly, but the rest of the fabric… looked like an impossibly thin, brittle potato chip that would shatter into pieces at the slightest touch.
“You’re not doing much better.” Yin Chen did not care about his own appearance at all. His gaze swept over Song Zang’s wet, furry lounge pants, and he gave a faint smile. “Song Zang, you’re wearing a colorful torn sack.”
Blood and flecks of brain matter had congealed into the fluff. After soaking for so long, the entire pair of pants had absorbed human fluids until they looked swollen and heavy.
Song Zang cared just as little about his own appearance. He shook the weighty trouser legs and smiled even more deeply. “Looks like we’re going to have to shower several more times today.”
“Don’t rush. There are professional instruments in the laboratory. We may as well test what this head is actually made of.”
As Yin Chen spoke, he lifted Prince Arthur’s vividly alive head so Song Zang could inspect it up close as well.
The handsome eighteen-year-old prince raised his eyelids. Thick golden lashes trembled wetly, while his magnificent double pupils showed a trace of bewildered, helpless amusement.
“So pretty!” Song Zang blurted out.
If you ignored the dense sprouts of flesh growing from the severed neck, it really was a beautiful head, almost like a work of art.
Although his facial skin had been torn by “stray dogs” and his gland brutally destroyed almost like a castration, none of it had diminished the unique air surrounding Prince Arthur.
Yin Chen seemed to read Song Zang’s thoughts and raised an eyebrow. “He isn’t Arthur. He’s Arthur’s reanimated brain.”
Song Zang nodded. “Mm… a proliferating mass of flesh caused by genetic mutation, right? I remember you described it that way.”
Prince Arthur, deprived of his vocal cords, could not answer.
He gave Song Zang a friendly smile. The rotten skin of his face pulled stiffly enough to expose the pale gums beneath. Song Zang’s brow twitched, and as though compelled by something, he looked a little deeper.
Such fresh, rosy, healthy gums, almost like those of a living person with excellent blood circulation.
But the prince was dead. Not only dead, but reduced to a single head.
“I don’t know what’s going on either.” Yin Chen glanced at Song Zang and answered before he could ask.
Next came the examination.
He set the head on a sterile operating table, put on gloves, drilled a small hole into the side of the skull that would not endanger its life, extracted a tiny amount of brain tissue, and packaged it together with samples taken from the heart before sending everything into the testing equipment.
His technique was extremely practiced, with no unnecessary movement, neat and decisive. It seemed Yin Chen really had successfully stolen skills from Chang Mei Jiang, and had learned remarkably well.
While the samples were being analyzed, Yin Chen placed the head with its small drilled opening and the still self-pumping heart inside a large scanner for comprehensive imaging from every angle.
For some reason, the two of them lingered in an Inspection Division littered with corpses, using the equipment however they pleased, yet nobody came to trouble them.
Catherine Percy never appeared from beginning to end, and the technical personnel responsible for manual surveillance were equally silent, never taking the initiative to contact Yin Chen and ask what was happening.
While Yin Chen was busy operating the precision equipment, Song Zang did not remain idle either. He sat at the entrance to the quarantine room, alert for enemies who might appear at any moment, while cleaning Hot Dog’s wounds and changing its dressings. Compared with the obvious improvement it gained from drinking insectoid blood, ordinary Alpha blood did not seem particularly useful to it.
The bullet holes in its backside were still pitifully leaking tissue fluid, and two patches of its brownish-yellow fur had been burned completely bald. Song Zang held one hind paw to inspect it and found arc-shaped abrasions on the paw pad characteristic of electromagnetic discharge patterns.
Fortunately, the moles in the Inspection Division had little real combat experience and had not hit the dog’s paws. Otherwise, it really might have ended up a little cripple.
Song Zang rubbed its head in distress. The little dog nuzzled coquettishly in his arms and panted with its mouth open, only to reveal a dense mouthful of rose seeds embedded in its gums and palate. Beneath its tongue were even more seeds wrapped in mucous membrane, nurturing countless new lives.
“Hot Dog, you’re going to trigger my trypophobia. Next time you open your mouth, don’t do it so close to me.” Song Zang narrowed his eyes and offered the advice in a gloomy but gentle tone.
Hot Dog was far smarter than he had expected. Its soft little head tilted to one side as though seriously considering the problem.
After a while, the little dog went “Blech” and spat rose seeds all over the floor. They instantly took root in the grooves of the flooring and cracks in the walls, frantically absorbing the dried blood left everywhere.
Song Zang had no time to stop it. In less than five minutes, the entire quarantine room of the Inspection Division had transformed into a dim green sea of shrubs. A fresh scent spread through the air as the plants consumed every nutritious drop of blood, leaving the filthy floor looking clean again.
Cleaning and air purification at the same time. Song Zang had to admit, somewhat bizarrely, that he was tempted.
The newborn roses lazily and naturally stretched themselves out. Their roots hid beneath the floor while branches clung to the ship, growing vigorously, sprouting fresh shoots and tender buds without needing any sunlight at all.
They were intelligent too. None approached Yin Chen, almost as though a genetically ingrained fear made the roses instinctively avoid that dangerous existence.
Song Zang stared until his eyes dazzled, then turned toward the smug-looking little dog. “Can these buds bloom?”
“Woof…”
Hot Dog shook its head, and the rose branches hanging beside Song Zang actually shook along with it.
Song Zang’s pupils trembled. He tried, “Hot Dog, shake hands with me.”
A branch with the fewest thorns slowly stretched over, wrapped around Song Zang’s right hand, and rubbed against it ingratiatingly.
So that was how it worked. In principle, these plants still belonged to Hot Dog as extensions of itself.
Song Zang grew even more curious. After a long, difficult exchange in which neither side was quite speaking the other’s language, he barely managed to understand the principle.
All newly grown roses could form buds, but none could bloom.
Because Hot Dog was a single dog. The seeds it spread were not truly complete flower seeds and could not be counted as independent life-forms.
No matter how frantically the branches absorbed nutrients or how vast a forest they became, those buds still could not nurture genuine new life.
The flower bud was the true starting point of new life. The rose branches were only tools that assisted in gestation.
If Song Zang found Hot Dog a suitable “other half” and artificially fertilized the opened buds, there would be a chance of producing several similar plant-dogs, though the probability of fetal deformity or death during development was extremely high.
After all, the plant-dog itself was an exceptionally unstable new form of life.
Before artificial fertilization, every low shrub rooted and growing here was still, in fact, part of Hot Dog itself.
Hot Dog could control them with ease and transfer excess nutrients from its body into them, so this entire room of green plants could probably be considered the dog’s auxiliary organs. Even if every branch were cut down or burned away, however, Hot Dog’s own life would not be endangered.
After studying it for a long time, Song Zang concluded that this was basically a self-produced, self-used “exoskeleton.” It was way more badass than anything humans had, and extremely useful!
Excited, he lifted the little dog and scratched its belly. “Hot Dog, be good. Don’t spit out seeds whenever you feel like it. Your little flowers can’t be wasted in places like this. When we get home, you can plant them when I tell you to. You have to protect the seeds you still have left, understood?”
“Woof woof!”
Hot Dog went limp with pleasure under the scratching, lying bonelessly in Song Zang’s arms and letting him fuss over it however he pleased.
Striking while the iron was hot, Song Zang continued coaxing in an artificially sweet voice. “Good dog. Help me secretly check whether there’s anything strange inside the exhaust ducts.”
“Woof?”
Hot Dog blinked in confusion, then put on a grave little expression and split its attention to control the newborn branches. They pried open the ceiling above them, loosened the screws fastening the radiant-iron wall panels, and extended into the crisscrossing ductwork.
Its expression grew more and more serious, as though it had encountered something it could not understand.
Seeing such a humanlike expression on the face of a miniature dog was unbearably cute… Song Zang smiled, his heart itching with the urge to scoop it up and rub it all over.
A moment later, Hot Dog let out a confused little whine, tucked its tail, shuddered, and hurriedly pulled back every branch it had sent out.
They were wet and sticky but completely undamaged. Their leaves were a deep glossy green, and if anything they looked plumper and more vigorous than before.
Song Zang pinched one branch and inspected it repeatedly. He found nothing obviously wrong, except that his hand became coated in quite a lot of sticky transparent liquid.
No way?
Compelled by some inexplicable impulse, Song Zang licked it. A system notification instantly confirmed his guess.
The strange slippery scraping and writhing sounds in the exhaust ducts earlier had all come from the worms and their regenerative mucus.
But Hot Dog had brought back only the mucus, with no trace of the worms themselves… so where had those worms gone?
Could they already have been attracted by Song Zang’s pheromones and rushed into the iron pot to become food?
Actually… that was entirely possible.
Song Zang narrowed his eyes, looked at the corpses lying on the floor, then at the bewildered Hot Dog.
Apart from the torn carotid arteries at the sides of their necks, the rest of the corpses were largely intact, with only a few marks left from fighting the dog.
“Hot Dog, did you eat those disgusting worms?”
“Whine?”
The little dachshund pawed at Song Zang’s clothes, trying to settle into a more comfortable position in his arms, then tilted its head.
It had never seen them and could not understand what Song Zang meant by worms at all. Good. If the dog had been affected by the worms too, things would have become much more troublesome.
Song Zang sighed in relief, stared at Hot Dog for a moment, then abruptly grabbed a huge bundle of branches and tore off the slick leaves.
Half of the leaves went straight into his own mouth. The other half… he rolled into a ball and stuffed into Yin Chen’s mouth.
“Whine?!”
Hot Dog looked horrified, pitiful and helpless in Song Zang’s arms, utterly unable to comprehend its owner’s deranged behavior.
Yin Chen accepted the leafy offering with speechless resignation, then casually hooked an arm around Song Zang’s shoulder and pulled him closer.
Song Zang was not very willing to press against him and quietly edged away. Yin Chen still had not removed his coat, and touching him felt like leaning against a massive block of ice.
“Don’t move. The test results are out.” Yin Chen squeezed his cheek hard and spoke darkly.
“That fast?” Song Zang stopped.
Although Prince Arthur had died, his medical records had not been destroyed. After comparing them with the historical data and DNA test results, Yin Chen became even more certain that his theory was correct.
The head and heart that had revived on their own shared only seventy percent genetic similarity with the real Prince Arthur, suggesting siblings or close relatives.
But this truly was not Prince Arthur.
To be cautious, Yin Chen also compared the DNA samples from the head and the heart with one another. Scientifically speaking… these two organs shared only ninety percent similarity and did not belong to the same person either.
In other words, the prince’s corpse that had been frozen aboard the Blazing Sun for years had somehow split itself into two brothers.
“The worms’ regenerative mucus you mentioned is the key to its revival.” Yin Chen studied the wet membrane coating the surface of the heart thoughtfully. “The worms move slowly at low temperatures, but they can still survive. They probably crawled into the morgue unnoticed and accidentally brought Arthur back to life.”
This was not Princess Fiona’s doing.
The Eldest Princess would have wanted Arthur’s remains destroyed beyond recognition a hundred times over. She probably never imagined something this bizarre could happen.
Song Zang frowned. “Wait, then the other corpses won’t start reanimating too, right?”
“No. I checked. Prince Arthur’s freezer compartment had been opened many times. Every other unit was perfectly sealed. Only his wasn’t closed properly. I suspect it was Commander Percy’s oversight.”
As he spoke, Yin Chen directly video-called Catherine.
She hesitated for a full half minute before finally accepting.
“What, afraid I’ll somehow kill you remotely?” Yin Chen raised an eyebrow and went straight for the heart of the matter.
“No. It’s my problem. I’m useless.”
Catherine sighed as she spoke and shifted the camera farther away, revealing the scene behind her.
She was deep in the lowest part of the ship, inside a cold gray special prison for war criminals.
One of her long, powerful legs was planted hard on the body of an Alpha mole.
Song Zang focused on the body and realized the man looked familiar. After the explosion, he had visited Yin Chen’s office too, with a round, friendly face, arguing fiercely with his colleagues about the master-control AI.
His colleagues were lined up neatly beside him. Catherine had beaten their faces swollen, and electronic restraints bound them tightly. Under the unrestrained pressure of a high-ranking Alpha, they trembled, pale-lipped and utterly unwilling to resist.
Yin Chen said expressionlessly, “You don’t look useless to me.”
“You know what I mean, Commander.” Catherine took no pride in her physical strength. Her expression was helpless. “There are things I don’t want to hide from you, but I don’t dare say them myself. If I say them, you might die. I might die too.”
“Hiding Prince Arthur’s corpse isn’t enough to trigger a fatal curse.” Yin Chen looked at her, his voice cooling slightly. “I’m your only deputy. You should understand that our relationship affects the bigger picture. From now on, I want us to be more honest with each other.”
“Mm. I know.”
Yin Chen continued, “Princess Fiona planted spies inside classified military departments and is conducting illegal human and animal experiments. Song Zang and I already have partial evidence of both. I’ll send you copies. But the corpse you stole is coming with me for examination. Don’t fight me for it.”
Catherine softly thanked him. After a moment’s silence, she knocked the prisoners on the floor unconscious one after another.
Once she was sure they had all passed out, Catherine continued, “I really did steal Prince Arthur’s corpse. Nobody helped me. I broke into the forensic morgue on my own and took him. Arthur and I… had history. If I hadn’t taken the body, there would never have been any chance to overturn what happened to him. If you have a way to investigate this, take the corpse.
“The Eldest Princess has probably suspected me for a long time. She placed you beside me not only because you’re capable of leading the First Legion, but also to monitor me. That’s why at the beginning I wanted to shoot you myself, so don’t talk to me about trust! But later I realized you’re actually a good person.”
“Good that you know. Send me whatever dirt you have on the Eldest Princess.” Yin Chen was completely unconcerned. “I’ll kill Fiona myself. You don’t get to fight me for that.”
Catherine’s eyes lit up. “Really? Hearing that puts my mind at ease. I was terrified you’d been seduced by that woman too and willingly become her attack dog… Plenty of Alphas these days love bad women!”
“My marriage partner is standing right here. Don’t talk nonsense.” Yin Chen frowned abruptly and pulled Song Zang in front of the camera.
Song Zang looked completely baffled, staring at Commander Percy through the screen.
He had barely paid attention to Yin Chen’s conversation with her. He was concentrating on eating leaves and teasing the ravenous Hot Dog at his feet.
The tender rose leaves, coated in wet mucus, had been experimentally cooked by Song Zang in several batches into crisp scallion-oil crackers and greasy meat patties wrapped in leaves. One bite at a time, they were delicious.
Song Zang was enjoying himself so much he had become a little reluctant to share with Yin Chen.
Catherine caught on immediately. She broke into a bright smile and wished the two of them a lifetime of happiness in bed.
Song Zang smilingly accepted the blessing, cheerfully said goodbye, and ended the call.
“She’s actually pretty nice.”
“A hopeless romantic. She’s putting her entire career on the fire just to clear Prince Arthur’s name.”
Yin Chen evaluated her calmly.
“Then if I died under suspicious circumstances…”
“I’m a hopeless romantic too. Problem?” Yin Chen snatched the cracker from Song Zang’s hand with a faint smile.
Satisfied, Song Zang curved his lips and hugged him sweetly. “No problem. Baby, everything you say is right.”
Yin Chen took a step back and washed and disinfected his hands. “Don’t get too close. Have your dog retract those branches. I’m going to examine the heart now.”
“Okay.”
Prince Arthur’s head was temporarily placed on the sterile table. Watching its own “brother” being cut open and examined by Yin Chen, it pressed its pale lips together and looked thoughtful, frightened, yet oddly admiring.
Yin Chen handled the unusually robust chambers of the heart and said thoughtfully, “The regenerative mucus is extremely effective. After the heart grew for a second time, some of its functions actually improved. If this heart were transplanted into an adult man, his cardiac function would surpass that of a top athlete.
“Look. There are traces where worms crawled through the myocardium. Even with these channels still present, the muscle tissue remains extremely strong and healthy, more resilient than the parts that never came into contact with mucus.”
“You’re right. Could the Eldest Princess be using the worms for modification experiments?”
Song Zang tilted his head and glanced over as he spoke.
His penetrating vision seemed to be getting stronger. He no longer even needed Yin Chen to keep cutting. He could see every detail inside the heart directly.
Prince Arthur’s cerebral cortex was the same way. Song Zang could see all of it clearly, with layer upon layer of dense grooves and folds and rapid blood circulation. It looked almost Einstein-like, obviously the brain of an intelligent person.
Unfortunately, the toe-like proliferating growths beneath the head were disgusting enough to greatly weaken Prince Arthur’s visual appeal.
“The princess can’t control them. Just like Commander Percy, she probably knows these corpses have problems, which is why she doesn’t dare come down here and inspect them herself. Humans in this world aren’t that powerful.”
That made sense, Song Zang thought. But what use was there in Princess Fiona placing worms she herself could not control inside the bodies of moles?
To affect their minds, make them easier to sway, persuade, and control.
Reasonable. What the princess wanted to control was never the worms themselves, but the humans being eroded by them.
“Yin Chen, isn’t she afraid of backlash against herself? Officially her mental power is only A-rank. She’s definitely nowhere near Commander Percy.”
Yin Chen’s gaze fell on Hot Dog. The trembling little dachshund immediately perked up and wagged its tail ingratiatingly.
He removed his gloves and rubbed the dog’s head with a faint smile. “This is a hybrid mutant made from plant and animal tissue. Only the princess could create something like it in the entire Empire. I think… she doesn’t care about the possibility of backlash. Either she was born a lunatic with no bottom line, or contamination drove her insane a long time ago.”
“Mm. Her mental state is definitely unstable, because mine is unstable too.” Song Zang muttered guiltily under his breath.
In such a short span of time, he had personally watched huge numbers of bizarre worms pour from a soldier’s facial openings, even tearing at the tissues around his eyes… After witnessing the entire process at close range, Song Zang thought it was actually fairly reasonable that the shock had scrambled his mind for several minutes.
Yin Chen, however, had a different opinion.
He said he needed to closely observe the entire process of Song Zang’s “fusion evolution,” and immediately dragged Song Zang away for another full-body examination.
They still could not find any trace of AI Little Star, but Song Zang’s malnutrition had improved, his muscle mass had increased significantly, and he was extremely healthy.
The examination center, hastily repaired after the earlier explosion, was packed with people. Commander Percy had ordered every member of the Blazing Sun to complete one imaging scan before beginning their next shift.
Anyone with shadows in their lungs was kept off duty in quarantine for secondary testing. The quarantine room overflowing with greenery found another use.
The moles who had died earlier in the Inspection Division, meanwhile, were taken away by military doctors for secret autopsies.
When their tracheae and lungs were opened, every body contained dense clusters of slick eggs that had not yet hatched, an unnerving sight.
These were not insectoid eggs. The insectoids were not that powerful. Otherwise, humans would long ago have become livestock raised as food.
Unfortunately, one military doctor fainted on the spot, foaming at the mouth and unable to breathe independently, and had to be rushed away by a medical robot for emergency intubation.
In the end, Catherine personally stepped in. Wearing isolation gear and a face shield, she sealed every egg extracted from the bodies inside the highest-grade isolated cold-storage unit, guarded jointly by security robots and soldiers from Catherine’s own duty detail.
Song Zang even took advantage of the chaos to secretly scoop out several spoonfuls, sandwiching them into bread and eating them like caviar.
“…Song Zang, isn’t your obsession with Life points getting a little excessive?”
For once, even Yin Chen found Song Zang’s deranged behavior difficult to stomach.
Song Zang narrowed his eyes. “Heartless bastard, haven’t you thought about it? What are you going to do if I die of old age?”