“It really is her.”
Yin Chen glanced over too. “The Omega filming the advertisement with her is pretty famous. He starred in a romance movie where an Omega pretended to be an Alpha, and he exploded in popularity nationwide over the summer.”
Song Zang tilted his head. “How do you know that? You’ve actually been secretly paying attention to other Omegas behind my back. Heartless bastard.”
“I’m keeping an eye on your career competition.” Yin Chen’s expression did not change. “The fans he attracts are the same audience as yours.”
Noah was a dark-skinned Omega with delicate, refined features and adorable little dimples at the corners of his mouth. He was beautiful and sweet.
But when he disguised himself as an Alpha in the movie, his entire presence changed abruptly, as though a cold, proud, untamed soul had taken up residence inside his body. He became imposing and impossibly handsome.
He rode an illegally modified two-wheeled aircraft, racing at breakneck speed across the sky, then leaned down with an electromagnetic charged gun and opened fire to save the person he loved…
That thrilling, fast-paced film clip happened to be looping on a floating public screen purchased by Noah’s fans, mixed together with clips of Noah’s kissing scenes and marking scenes, rotating every five minutes.
The sheer pheromonal charisma in every movement, the explosiveness of his acting, and his flawless beauty allowed this eighteen-year-old rising actor to capture the hearts of countless young Omegas in one stroke.
“Yin Chen, he deserves to be more popular than me.”
Song Zang seriously watched several clips and found himself impressed by the professional ability of the Empire’s young actors.
“I only hyped my identity because I wanted to use the opportunity to find more players. Now that I’ve found Lin Wen Jing, I’ll pull her into the group first.”
“Mm. Her mental state was wrong before. Be careful. I’ve seen several players who were widowed in the game. They all went pretty crazy.” Yin Chen frowned slightly as he warned him.
Song Zang kept the warning in mind and immediately tried inviting her to the group, but even after tagging Lin Wen Jing privately several times, she never replied.
Maybe she was asleep, or perhaps a packed schedule had tied her up… Song Zang could not spare much attention for reconnecting with an old acquaintance right now. There was still a hard battle ahead that needed preparation.
Far from the bustling city center stood the enormous legion base, designed in an especially cold and austere style.
Rows of hard-edged silver-gray buildings stretched neatly into the distance. The nearly invisible high-altitude barrier network detected the approaching Blazing Sun by radar and immediately switched into intelligent unlocking mode.
Cruise-guidance lights activated at once, forming rings of cold light across the broad landing platform.
The Blazing Sun officially touched down without the slightest tremor, smooth as silk.
Song Zang did not even feel the contact with the ground before Yin Chen had already placed the suitcases by the cabin door.
“All personnel, disembark immediately and return to formation. Second squad, escort the Omegas to the medical team for handover. Keep your mouths shut. No interviews.”
Yin Chen activated the shipwide broadcast system and issued his orders.
He was in charge now, because Catherine had already slipped away. The instant the ship landed, she quietly escaped through the rear hatch without anyone noticing.
Her assignment was heavier. She needed to safeguard the highly dangerous frozen insect eggs and several imprisoned moles, rush straight to the military headquarters building, and report everything that had happened to the Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Military.
There were simply too many moles, and Catherine had begun to suspect the internal ecology of the military itself.
Many of the brothers and sisters who had once fought beside her might already have betrayed their original convictions and been infiltrated beyond recognition, regardless of rank.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Military was the only person Catherine truly dared trust, someone she was willing to entrust with her life and secrets regardless of the cost.
An SSS-rank Alpha officially recognized by the Rose Empire as the strongest person still alive.
She had fought in countless brutal wars against the insectoids and had never once been defeated. Her military achievements could supposedly circle Zone A if stacked end to end.
Her political position was equally undisguised. She stood only for the people and for fairness. She had publicly voted in support of establishing an Interstellar Federal Republic, supported abolishing every blatant aristocratic privilege, and opposed a social system that ranked people by mental-power level.
Yet what frustrated the Commander-in-Chief herself was that the very reason she could openly declare her opposition to the Imperial system without fearing consequences was that she was privileged to begin with.
She had been born into an immensely powerful noble family in Zone A. Her parents held extraordinary status among the upper classes, she had received the finest education and living conditions from childhood, and her mental-power rank crushed nearly everyone else in the world.
Nobody could punish her. Nobody could silence her.
She had entered the battlefield at twenty and bled and sweated for the Empire ever since. To this day, she remained the ultimate idol of every Alpha who joined the military.
Even the Eldest Princess had been deliberately named in tribute to the Commander-in-Chief. The fact had sparked plenty of public discussion, and many people suspected that the emperor had secretly loved her, perhaps even once carrying on a… forbidden clandestine affair with the Commander-in-Chief.
The Eldest Princess’s full name was Fiona Rose.
The Commander-in-Chief, meanwhile, was the one and only Fiona de Cavendish.
She was not only Catherine’s idol, but also the combat mentor who had led Catherine onto the path of military service. By now, the Commander-in-Chief was the only person left whom Catherine could trust.
Catherine sent the captured moles into a special prison, then reinforced the containment around the frozen insect eggs layer after layer and personally carried them into Fiona’s office.
“Stop. Stay away from that!”
Fiona was widely experienced and recognized at a glance that the organisms inside the freezer container were extraordinarily dangerous. Her expression changed slightly as she immediately wrapped the entire container in mental power.
“Percy, what forbidden place did you wander into this time?”
“Teacher, I didn’t. I really didn’t this time. Look at the autopsy report first. These eggs very likely came from Zone A. If an infectious outbreak starts, we’re finished.”
Catherine explained what had happened aboard the ship, then said seriously, “The Eldest Princess is reaching deeper and deeper into everything. Even if she’s fighting for power, she shouldn’t be going this far. What’s she so desperate about? Please talk to His Majesty. This can’t continue. She’s threatening the safety of every Imperial citizen.”
Fiona remained silent for a long while before speaking in a low voice. “His Majesty is dying. His mental condition is no longer suitable for making any decisions, and he shouldn’t even appear in public.”
“W-what?!”
“He came to see me secretly last night with no pants on and knelt on the floor begging me to save his life.” Fiona’s brows drew together, her tone growing heavier. “I had a complete examination performed on him. His brain is severely diseased, his lungs contain large areas of fluid accumulation and bizarre cavities. Logically, he should have died long ago…”
Yet for some reason, current medical equipment could not determine what kind of energy was keeping the elderly emperor alive. His body was like a torn sack somehow running at high speed, completely unreasonable.
Fiona lowered her eyes. “At first I suspected the insectoids, but the death of one senile old useless man wouldn’t shake the foundation of the Empire.
“Even if they intended to assassinate people in high positions, they should have used this method on me first. So I suspect His Majesty’s condition is more likely the result of losing an internal power struggle. Catherine, what happened to you makes that possibility even stronger.”
To dare use such insane, bizarre worms merely for a position in the line of succession… Fiona genuinely could not understand it.
Struggles over inheritance had been countless throughout Rose Empire history, but even the losers rarely died especially miserable deaths.
They could still enjoy extraordinarily luxurious aristocratic lives, and some even had the right to form their own military forces in special regions of Zone B, establish independent power bases under the protection of the federal government, and continue participating in politics.
The Eldest Princess’s behavior was so extreme that it made no sense at all. Her younger sister was a spoiled wastrel, her father was an old man on his last breath, and her younger brother had already died horribly… Why go this far?
Fiona sank into thought, countless ominous possibilities rising in her mind.
A more serious possibility was that inheriting the throne itself was only an initial reward. Once the Eldest Princess possessed the crown, perhaps she could use it to obtain greater benefits and reach whatever it was she truly desired.
The Rose Empire’s older and darker history, humanity’s past wandering through the universe, the secrets behind human brain development and the evolution of mental power… after sitting at the top for so many years, Fiona had naturally heard fragments of all of it.
But she genuinely had no interest. Her goal in life was simply to kill insectoids, because insectoids really did eat people.
Until all the insectoids were dead, humanity exploiting, oppressing, and fighting among itself was meaningless and pointless.
That brutally simple idea had allowed Fiona to preserve the same pure conviction for decades. She devoted herself entirely to the battlefield and humanity’s interests, carefully doing what needed to be done and never recklessly prying into those… dark places that were difficult to escape once entered.
But now, even she could no longer choose to stay outside the situation.
A madman who drilled a hole through the bottom of a ship because he was thirsty could indirectly kill every passenger aboard for the sake of one absurd private desire.
Fiona began making plans, starting with weakening the protective systems around the Eldest Princess. Royal security had always been exceptionally strict, and combined with those bizarre worms and secret experiments, charging in alone would be the most foolish possible choice.
Ideally, they could establish a charge of collusion with the enemy and then legitimately mobilize a fleet to surround her and crush her by overwhelming force…
Catherine slapped her thigh. “The Second Princess is still alive, and she’s actually pretty decent. Why don’t we just rope her in and assassinate the Eldest Princess together? If it’s inconvenient for you to appear personally, I’ll kill her!”
Fiona: …
＊
The Omegas rescued back to Zone A had already left the ship safely aboard a small passenger craft sent by the hospital, only to be surrounded by military-authorized media.
The children wore thin full-face masks and awkwardly hid behind the soldiers’ broad backs without saying a word, not daring to answer the reporters’ questions carelessly.
Meanwhile, aboard the temporarily overlooked Blazing Sun… Song Zang and Yin Chen still had not disembarked.
After confirming that everyone else had completely cleared the ship, Song Zang closed his eyes, steadied his mind, and released his bizarre pheromones with all his strength and no restraint whatsoever.
The scent of rotting roses suddenly surged outward like a rising tide, rapidly flooding every corner of the spacecraft.
Sure enough, there were so many indescribable stragglers still hiding aboard.
The bizarre, sticky, plump little worms rushed out from hidden holes all across the enormous ship, their slick, wet fuzz leaving one glistening trail after another across the walls and ceilings.
Just hearing the wet writhing sounds as they moved and the “breathing” gasps from their fish-gill heads opening and closing sent a chill through Song Zang, along with an appetite he could barely suppress.
Smooth texture, soft and cool, with a warm center that burst with juice when bitten… So delicious. Absolutely wonderful.
Song Zang forced himself to leave three worms alive and handed them over for Yin Chen to deal with.
Yin Chen did not even touch them. He simply stored them inside his system space from a distance.
The sight made Song Zang uneasy.
“Can your storage slots really hold living things freely now? Nothing’s going to happen again?”
After all, at the beginning of Happiness Community, Yin Chen had been terrifyingly irritable after losing fragments of his memory.
The awful attitude straight to Song Zang’s face, the death threats, deliberately possessing a mutilated corpse just to scare him… every bit of it remained vivid in Song Zang’s memory, and thinking back on it still made him a little angry.
Big bastard. He had made Song Zang lose his temper too and point at Yin Chen while saying nasty things. Song Zang could swear to heaven that he had never been like that before.
The shy, polite, obedient Song Zang of the past was gone forever!
More importantly, he absolutely did not want Yin Chen to suffer any injury that could have been avoided.
Yin Chen calmly nodded, his gaze faintly unreadable as his lips curved. “I’m getting stronger too. I won’t repeat the same mistake twice.”
“I don’t believe you unless you kiss me.” Growing even more uneasy, Song Zang threw himself into Yin Chen’s arms and forced him to hold him tightly.
The request was somewhat ill-timed, but Yin Chen readily wrapped his arms around him.
By habit, Yin Chen raised a hand and pressed it against Song Zang’s soft hair, letting the strands slide through his fingers as he rubbed comfortably for a few moments. Then his movements suddenly stopped.
“…Wait. Song Zang, your neck is really hot.”
“Hm?”
“Are you about to enter your susceptible period? No wonder you’ve suddenly gotten clingy.” Yin Chen looked thoughtful and immediately split his attention to search educational material about Alpha susceptible periods.
Song Zang’s eyes reddened. “I don’t know. I’m an orphan with no common sense. Nobody ever taught me. You’re not going to dislike me now, are you?”
He did not want to become unreasonable for no reason either, but he… could not control it.
Yin Chen froze slightly, narrowed his eyes, and read the information again. After a short silence, he carefully said in a low voice, “I don’t dislike you. I want you. Without you, I’d go insane. I want to marry you immediately.”
So sweet. He loved it. Song Zang pressed a hand to his heart, dizzy with happiness, and felt every negative emotion that had been making him restless moments ago vanish in an instant.
Song Zang immediately pulled himself together, took Yin Chen’s hand, and drew a deep breath. The damp flush around his eyes disappeared without a trace.
He needed to face the cameras in the best possible condition.
The spacecraft doors slowly opened again, and the thunder of approaching footsteps filled the area.
Media reporters officially approved by the Empire flooded in almost at once, cameras and microphones aimed toward the ship’s exit as simultaneous livestreams began across multiple platforms.
Two high-definition lighting cameras hovered low in the air, capturing Song Zang’s face directly along with the sight of his fingers intertwined with Yin Chen’s.
Since they could not interview Commander Percy or the victims of the illegal clubs, they shifted their focus to Song Zang instead. He was every bit as newsworthy.
His romance with the First Legion commander was even more worth digging into.
What the reporters had not anticipated was the heavy residue of pheromones still lingering inside the ship.
The bizarre stench of rotting vegetation swept out abruptly and overwhelmingly, drifting on the breeze in fine threads.
Song Zang watched several reporters’ brows draw tight instantly, their expressions turning as ugly as if they had swallowed flies.
Forget conducting a coherent interview. They did not even dare open their mouths, as though they might roll their eyes back and faint in the next second.
By a remarkable coincidence, the high-definition cameras were equipped with extremely sensitive scent-collection sensors that could faithfully transmit the smell of Song Zang’s pheromones to StarNet during the livestream.
All viewers had to do was tap the olfactory widget and they could smell someone else’s scent from home.
The lively stream of comments fell silent for one abrupt second, then erupted explosively.
【No wonder the gene-bank AI got it wrong. Holy shit, does pheromone scent like this really count as a disability…? I can’t. I seriously can’t.】
【People still pick partners by smell alone these days? Hey, perfectly healthy person upstairs, learn to use your eyes before judging someone.】
【He’s sooooo pretty! I love Alphas prettier than me. He totally looks like the sweet, delicate little pitiful type. I’m in!】
【Give it up, all of you. He’s gay. No wonder he smells that bad.】
【The Commander seriously loves him. He already publicly booked a marriage registration for today on StarNet. Go look. Show’s over, everyone disperse…】
【What do you mean gay? Are Beta couples being erased again? More than sixty percent of annual registered marriages in the Empire are Beta-Beta. We’re the actual mainstream!】
【We Betas never fight anyone, work hard, earn money, and live ordinary lives, but every time Alpha-Omega people start drama, we get dragged out and smeared too… I’m sick of it. Yes, we’re homosexual. You lunatics are the ones ruled by animal instinct. You’re beast-sexual!】
【Excellent roasting upstairs. Liked.】
【Aww, the useless Betas are mad~ Big useless people making more little useless people and saving up social-health-insurance money for my children. So touching~ The Empire’s future tax revenue depends on you, hehe. Useless.】
As expected, the topic somehow veered into something completely unrelated again and triggered another round of arguments.
Song Zang unexpectedly gained plenty of support from Betas, who said he had been oppressed by official institutions yet remained strong and brave enough to live as himself… and somehow, he went viral again among an entirely different audience.
Of course, plenty of people also found the situation absurd and thought Yin Chen had simply lost his mind.
Under conventional social expectations, an Alpha officer with mental power as strong as Yin Chen’s was supposed to pair with a highly compatible Omega.
Otherwise, going too long without emotional or physical soothing could make him unstable on the battlefield and interfere with the larger situation.
Two Alphas becoming partners was supposedly equivalent to smashing two powder kegs together, dangerous to their household and society and potentially harmful to the future of the Imperial military.
After all, every military enthusiast knew that Yin Chen was the soul of the First Legion and an idol to plenty of warship fanatics.
In addition to arranging daily training, Yin Chen was responsible for overall strategic deployment and practical combat planning. On the most dangerous vacuum battlefields, he had to improvise in real time, extend his mental power across the entire field, and control fleet formations and attack patterns… when the fighting became intense, even Catherine had to follow his commands.
He was important.
Precisely because he was so important, people believed his partner could not simply be chosen casually. Only someone capable of bringing Yin Chen’s abilities to their maximum potential could count as a truly qualified spouse.
At least, that was what many StarNet spectators privately thought.
The extremists were even more absurd. Arguing furiously online was one thing, but hotheaded Alphas who could not tolerate their “idol being defiled” piloted drones carrying timed explosives to surround the First Legion’s military base and stage violent protests.
Some threatened to execute Song Zang by firing squad, demanded a strict investigation into whether he might be colluding with the enemy, or simply spread rumors that Song Zang was actually a male insectoid disguised as a super spy.
In a certain sense, those people had actually guessed part of the truth.
Of course, the protest drones were instantly destroyed by the anti-missile system. Their signals were traced back to the Alphas’ home addresses, and AI police went straight to their doors to arrest them.
None of that chaotic trouble touched Song Zang in the slightest.
By then, Song Zang had already finished handling the reporters’ questions and left only the personal follow-camera from his social-media account running to record what happened next.
Holding Yin Chen’s hand and dressed in his most formal military uniform, he completed their marriage registration on camera.
The entire process was livestreamed. The authorities verified and stamped the registration, the information was uploaded into the StarNet database, and their personal records immediately became formally linked.
Property sharing, housing sharing, subsidy sharing. Nearly every interest and benefit they possessed became tightly bound together. In the truest sense, they were now inseparable.
Couples with sufficiently high pheromone compatibility already had extremely low divorce rates, because their need for each other surpassed simple “love.” But one person’s pheromones could actually achieve high compatibility with many others. A genuine one-hundred-percent match was rare.
To ensure that Omegas who had undergone lifelong marking would not later be cruelly abandoned by their Alphas, the Imperial government had painstakingly built an extensive web of legal and policy protections around them.
Song Zang was now benefiting from those marriage laws too, becoming a newly rising member of Zone A’s elite.
He was ridiculously rich!
The salary the Eldest Princess paid Yin Chen was almost impossible to express in numbers. With that money, Yin Chen could practically buy… the lives of everyone on an entire garbage planet. Yes, everyone, from government officials to undocumented civilians.
“Baby, even if you really took money to do bad things, I wouldn’t blame you.” Song Zang gazed at him with deep affection.
It was simply too much money. Even in video games, Song Zang had never seen that much virtual currency.
He covered Yin Chen’s asset total from the camera, so the livestream audience could see only an absurdly long string of digits that looked as though someone had rolled their face across a keyboard.
At that moment, the livestream audience reached a new peak.
Not only that, Yin Chen had booked an even more attention-grabbing appointment.
Song Zang was going to undergo a second mental-power assessment at the Empire’s most authoritative official verification institution.
After all, Song Zang had destroyed the testing equipment during his first attempt and still had not received a precise rank. Thanks to AI Little Star’s aggressive promotion and hype, netizens throughout the Empire had heard about the bizarre incident.
They flooded the screen with comments full of anticipation, packed so densely together that they seemed even more impatient than Song Zang himself.
Song Zang had a fairly good idea of his own mental-power level.
In pure attack power, he was probably stronger than Yin Chen, but his ability was nowhere near as useful as Yin Chen’s mental-power field and had absolutely no crowd-control capability. Its only advantage was that he could solo-kill anyone with one-hundred-percent penetrating damage, easily.
Since signs of his susceptible period had begun appearing, his mental sea had grown fuller and more restless too. He happened to desperately need one chance to let loose completely.
Under a researcher’s guidance, Song Zang stepped inside a fully sealed transparent spherical apparatus.
At the center of the sphere sat an ordinary-looking milky-white flowerpot containing a thorn-covered red rose. Its petals were full, its leaves deep green, and it was very beautiful.
“Please concentrate. Focus all of your power on the center of the flower and attack it. There is no need to hold back.”
“What an amazing testing device…”
“Of course. This is our Testing Center’s exclusive patented technology.”
Song Zang closed his eyes and followed the researcher’s directions, focusing his awareness inside his mental sea and driving it with everything he had.
He was worried about blowing apart the researcher’s pretty rose, but the flower’s endurance turned out to be several times stronger than he had imagined.
Layer upon layer of cushioning air walls converged from every side of the sphere, perfectly resisting Song Zang’s attack aimed directly at the flower’s center. The blood-red petals merely trembled. Then Song Zang heard a loud, celebratory notification tone.
【Congratulations, Mr. Song. Your mental-power rank is: SSS! You have surpassed 99.99% of the Empire’s population!】
Before Song Zang could react, the sphere’s door opened immediately.
The researcher who had previously been polite and composed suddenly rushed into the sphere and stroked the rose petals through his gloves with obvious distress, his gaze intoxicated and unfocused.
His condition was strange, almost as though the rose had sucked away his soul, yet the words coming from his mouth remained perfectly clear. “Mr. Song, your mental-power rank cannot be measured precisely because it has exceeded every known historical limit.
“This mutated form of mental power is simply too powerful. To prevent further property damage, the Testing Center will prohibit you from undergoing any further verification attempts. Equipment maintenance costs are extremely high. We ask for your understanding.”
Song Zang feigned delight and answered, while his thoughtful gaze drifted toward the livestream comments.
Obviously, Song Zang was not the only person who thought the researcher’s behavior was extremely strange, almost as though his body had been divided into two separate parts.
Just as Song Zang was seriously considering whether he should knock the man unconscious and take him away for study, a gentle young man’s voice suddenly came from Yin Chen’s carry-on suitcase. “Excuse me, could I try too?”
Song Zang’s heart jumped. With quick reflexes, he immediately shut off the livestream.
Even the researcher, still entranced by the rose, stared blankly in shock and almost began to suspect Yin Chen of illegally imprisoning someone.
Then the head belonging to Prince Arthur unzipped the suitcase with its own mouth and walked out.
That’s right. He really had walked out all by himself.