Yin Chen split open Fiona’s gland with one slash.
In the next instant, two completely different yet equally rich rose fragrances burst into the air and tangled together.
Catherine’s mucus-soaked body rolled out with it. Her wet blond hair clung tightly to the sides of her pale face, and her lips had turned a sickly bluish purple from suffocation.
There was a gruesome open wound at the gland on the back of her neck. The cartilage’s unusual structure was fully exposed, with pale bone faintly visible deeper inside. The blood that had once flowed there had long since dried, leaving broad dark-red stains across the collar of her gray-blue military uniform.
The wound had not healed. Although she was barely clinging to life, her pheromones were still being forced to pour out continuously.
Her upper body was covered in countless small wounds, especially her gun hand, which was almost entirely coated in mottled clots of blood. Faint remnants of an Alpha’s formidable mental power still lingered around it.
It seemed this had been Catherine’s way of protecting herself. At the moment of her final defeat, she had reacted extremely quickly, brutally driving her mental sea to staunch the bleeding throughout her body, only to lose consciousness soon afterward.
Yin Chen stared at her for a few moments, then tossed the glass sphere onto Catherine and said, “Give her CPR.”
Little Star AI: ???
“Don’t pretend. You can discharge electricity and protect your owner.” Yin Chen threatened it expressionlessly. “Defibrillate her. If her heart doesn’t start beating again, I’ll eat every male insectoid.”
Catherine was not a bad person. She belonged on a blazing battlefield filled with roaring artillery, under the boundless expanse of the universe. She should not have ended up in such a wretched state, corroded and entangled by a monster.
Yin Chen stopped paying attention to how miserable she looked. He leisurely stepped forward and used the tip of his blade to pry apart Fiona’s glandular cartilage.
The regenerative mucus was so potent that the princess’s gland had become grotesquely enlarged and overgrown as well. Most of the cartilage was completely useless. The tequila fragrance still gathered at the very core, faint and thin, made to seem on the verge of death by the vigorously growing flesh around it, like a dwindling life about to go out.
Captain Percy’s pheromones were stronger than hers. Even unconscious, the lush, intoxicating rose fragrance of General Jacqueminot easily crushed the presence radiating from the princess.
To an Omega, pheromones represented a person’s underlying traits. They were also the clearest expression of an Alpha’s hormones and sexual appeal.
If outsiders saw Captain Percy like this, the number of marriage proposals appearing in her inbox every day might increase tenfold overnight.
Princess Fiona, on the other hand… looked even less capable of reproduction than a disabled Alpha. That faint rose scent was strange. It did not smell like it belonged to a proud imperial princess at all.
Remembering the tiny, almost imperceptible flower seed inside his own gland, Yin Chen had long harbored suspicions about the structure of Fiona’s gland.
She had chosen to conduct implanted gland-replacement experiments and spent enormous sums recruiting “artificial geniuses” like Yin Chen for long-term observation. That made her goal quite clear: she wanted to use the same implantation method to treat herself.
Yin Chen could not understand what correcting defective genes had to do with gland-replacement surgery, but he did not stop. He slowed down and carefully dismantled the gland bit by bit, peeling away each layer like an onion to inspect what lay beneath.
He saw spreading cancer cells, hollow inner walls that had been corroded, regenerated, then corroded again, and…
A tiny yellowing sprout.
It was buried beneath layer after layer of rotten flesh and ball-shaped tumors. Its leaves sagged crookedly, and it was only about the size of an ant. Wet regenerative mucus wrapped around it, but that did nothing. It remained wilted and nearly dead.
Plants needed sunlight. This one had none.
Too much fertilizer and water could also create a severe imbalance, easily rotting the roots, stems, and leaves and destroying the entire ecosystem.
Intrigued, Yin Chen kept digging deeper with the tip of his knife. Gradually, the stench of putrefaction spread naturally through the air. It carried a faint sense of familiarity, but lacked the trait Yin Chen actually liked.
It was not Song Zang’s pheromones. The difference was fundamental, so he did not like it.
Its roots were embedded in the gland and connected to a nearly shattered cervical spine. Countless holes had been punched through the vertebrae by roaming flesh worms. Once-healthy nerves and marrow had been sucked away and destroyed, leaving yellowed, emaciated roots that had overgrown unnaturally and twisted together with the brainstem until they were impossible to separate.
The brain had stolen every genuinely useful nutrient. All the leftover waste it could not use had accumulated around the roots and could not disperse, where the sprout slowly absorbed it, stubbornly and grotesquely maintaining a firefly-faint spark of life.
Roots this waterlogged and nearly rotten naturally could not smell healthy. They were constantly spreading pathogens and hallucinogenic neurotoxins, all of them dangerous enough to damage the human body.
Once, they had been suppressed inside Fiona’s body and poisoned only her. Now nothing restrained them, and they were doing everything possible to penetrate Yin Chen’s mental sea and make his cognition distorted and his thoughts muddled as well.
Yin Chen understood what his task was now. He also understood why Fiona had shown him no hostility and had even opened a path on her own, allowing him to reach the truth without obstruction.
He had to nurse this tottering, dying sprout back to health and make the tequila rose bloom safely and successfully.
That was not going to be simple. Its condition was different from the wild rose, and an unexpected complication had arisen. After Catherine was swallowed and wrapped inside it, a small portion of her pure rose pheromones had already fused with the rose roots. Perhaps some unknown change was quietly taking place, making the physiology extremely complicated.
Even more troublesome, Yin Chen was not very good at saving people, much less flowers. All of his specialized medical knowledge had actually been learned this year… for Song Zang.
He had even specifically added Chang Mei Jiang as a friend and spent several months learning surgical techniques and special precautions from her.
Of course, Song Zang did not need to know that.
Yin Chen thought for a moment, opened StarNet, and found Princess Fiona’s chat window in his contacts.
Simple and brutal methods were often the most effective.
[Yin Chen: What do I need to do?]
[Rose: Feed me. Feed me. Feed me.]
[Yin Chen: Be specific. Feed you what?]
[Rose: Perfect, complicated flower seeds with powerful vitality. I want flower seeds!!! Flower seeds! Flower seeds! Hahahaha, I’m so itchy, it hurts so much, how dare you treat me like this? Watch your attitude! You’re only A-9. Do you think you’re that witch Cavendish? You’re my creation. Offer everything you have to me!]
[Yin Chen: Psycho.]
…
Meanwhile, Song Zang wandered slowly along the edge of the cliff carrying a portable oxygen tank.
For the moment, he could not find a way out.
The insectoids’ architectural philosophy was extremely bizarre. The ceiling and floor were both made from thickened, reinforced special materials, with tens of thousands of electrical wires crisscrossing inside them, yet everything looked gray and lifeless. The ceiling’s raised dome felt oppressive, while the lighting consisted only of the simplest energy-saving spotlights, leaving the place dim and gloomy. Visually, it was not even as pleasant as the spherical AI inside the reassembly pod.
Maybe insectoid eyesight was superior to human eyesight, allowing them to see every detail clearly without lighting the entire room.
And yet this was obviously a major experimental facility, but it looked almost exactly like the sheet-metal container he had lived in on Zone C. There was not even a ventilation system. It was so stuffy and humid that even female insectoids would probably start feeling short of breath if they stayed here too long.
Judging by all the free services H+ AI had eagerly tried to offer, this company clearly had not spared a single thought for its employees’ mental health.
There were, however, hidden cameras operating around the clock. They were set to dynamic tracking mode and silently followed Song Zang’s every step.
“Anyone there? No, wait… any insectoids there?” Song Zang simply stopped, looked innocently at a camera, tilted his head, and said, “Open a door for me.”
He was speaking the Federation language, which he had only just learned in an emergency crash course. His precise official accent made him sound more like an insectoid from the Federation capital than the female-insectoid infiltrators they had encountered on the little mining planet.
The camera’s dim red light abruptly began flashing. Less than five minutes later, cold light flooded the silent reassembly pod, and four female-insectoid soldiers were teleported in at once.
They were tall and powerfully built, nearly too large to maneuver inside the pod. Their bulging pecs almost strained through their thin military uniforms, and all four wore the same cold, sharp expression.
Handsome.
Too bad every one of them was an enemy.
The female insectoids knew there was something dangerous below the cliff. With practiced coordination, they rigidly controlled where they looked and never once glanced downward.
Sure enough, the grotesque thing that could make humans rot and go mad worked on insectoids too.
Song Zang blinked. Misty tears instantly gathered in his red eyes as he deliberately complained in an angry voice, “You’re so slow. Why did you only get here now?”
“I’m sorry, honored male-insectoid sir. I am Major General Kyle of the X12 Sector Fleet. It is a pleasure to meet you.” The leading female insectoid bowed. His humble attitude clashed bizarrely with his powerful, muscular body. “Our investigation indicates that your mimetic-network connection may be malfunctioning, temporarily preventing contact with the Federation Security System. This delayed our rescue response. Generous compensation will…”
“So this is my fault now? Hm?” Song Zang folded his arms, cut him off, and raised a spoiled, dissatisfied brow.
Song Zang was very experienced at playing a giant baby who had been pampered rotten by society.
As soon as he finished speaking, he saw Major General Kyle’s lips flatten and a flash of impatience pass through his gray-black eyes.
It was only a trace, but it was still impatience.
Apparently, the Insectoid Federation’s indulgence and worship of male insectoids was not completely brainless. At the very least, powerful people trapped inside the rules probably still had thoughts of their own.
Kyle’s posture did not change, and his attitude remained humble. “No. Of course this has nothing to do with you. You are an innocent victim.
“This is a serious safety failure on H+’s part. Before the powered teleportation device officially enters the market, the system should never approve a teleportation request from any male insectoid, much less allow you to appear inside an experimental restricted zone. A detailed incident report will be sent later…”
“Restricted zone?” Song Zang interrupted him again and sneered imperiously. “Did this so-called restricted zone also cause my brain-computer system to malfunction? I don’t want some incident report. I want these idiots to get what they deserve. Every insectoid responsible should be thrown into Blackwater Prison and properly tortured!”
Blackwater Prison was something the players had learned about in advance while gathering information on insectoid society. The insectoids had many forms of punishment, all brutal and vicious, and they were used only on powerful female insectoids.
The so-called blackwater was a corrosive but nonlethal liquid commonly used to torture prisoners through water punishment.
The prolonged darkness and water torture were already cruel enough, but for criminals, life after the sentence was even more despairing.
The beautiful enamel coating on a female insectoid’s bone wings would be stripped away by the blackwater, their hair would fall out, their skin would become rough and mottled, and they might spend years shedding skin and flesh until they became hideous, useless rejects despised by every male insectoid.
Female insectoids were different from humans. Once they had experienced sex, they could never return to the state they had been in before marriage. The mental-power soothing they required could only be obtained from male insectoids.
If they could not get it, the consequences of a mental-power rampage on the battlefield could be extremely severe.
“Understood. H+ Biotechnology and the troops stationed in X12 will bear full responsibility for this incident. Your demands will be satisfied.”
Major General Kyle was remarkably good at enduring things. The moment he heard the words Blackwater Prison, a faint chill and guardedness crystallized in his gray eyes, but his tone remained just as humble as before.
He lowered his head to hide the expression in his eyes. Every word sounded as though he were thinking only of Song Zang’s safety, yet he deliberately used technical phrases that a “male insectoid wouldn’t understand.” “Sir, the restricted zone is extremely dangerous. Mimetic-network signals are frequently attacked and disrupted by experimental subjects here and are highly unstable.”
“To prevent accidents, the experiments in this area have already been suspended, and H+ Security has sealed the site. There is no normal entrance or exit, so we’ll need to use special methods to break our way out. Sir, please accept our escort and evacuate immediately.”
He was talking, but not telling the whole truth. Song Zang, meanwhile, was secretly looking at his system screen.
[Yin Chen: Go with them. Find the H+ biological laboratory and steal every Alpha and Omega gland you can. Keep a few good ones for yourself to eat. Give me the rest.]
[Song Zang: You’re really this comfortable letting me leave alone? You don’t love me anymore.]
[Yin Chen: I’ll keep following you the whole time.]
[Song Zang: You really don’t love me anymore… I’m crying myself to death.]
So pitiful. No one wanted him.
Standing on the cliff, he could not even see Yin Chen’s shadow.
Life was lonely as snow, and there was nowhere to speak of such sorrow.
“What kind of dump doesn’t even have a door? It’s ugly as hell.” Song Zang was in a foul mood, and that made his performance as a clueless male insectoid even more convincing. “Fine. Hurry up and get me out.”
“Of course. Please wait a moment… forgive the offense.”
Kyle stepped back as he spoke, allowing another handsome female insectoid to approach.
“Hello. I’m Louis. Please forgive me.” The female insectoid pressed his lips together and gently hooked an arm around Song Zang’s waist. His hand quietly clenched into a fist, so only the firm length of his forearm touched Song Zang, avoiding even the slightest impropriety.
For some reason, Song Zang was confused for only a moment before he somehow understood the difference between the two of them.
Kyle was already married. He had a male lord, and their relationship was probably fairly good.
This younger one, however, was a virgin. In his twenties and clearly never once touched by a male insectoid, he became so flustered under Song Zang’s impatient, beautiful red-eyed scrutiny that the tips of his ears flushed red.
He did not look like someone with one of those twisted, extreme personalities. More like some rookie his superior had deliberately pushed forward as a match… If he had never done anything bad to humans, well, maybe Song Zang could spare him.
Song Zang clicked his tongue softly and let Louis escort him toward one side of the cliff while secretly sending Yin Chen harassing messages.
[Song Zang: Your baby is about to catch a female insectoid’s eye. I’m being abducted by force. He’s taking advantage of me.]
[Yin Chen: photo of the sprout.jpg]
[Yin Chen: Fiona says she only needs to eat rose glands. The exact location is the third basement level of the H+ laboratory building. We’ll meet there.]
[Song Zang: Say it. You can’t live without me. You miss me so much you’re dying, and when we meet later you have to kiss me to death.]
[Yin Chen: I can’t live without you. I miss you so much I’m dying. When we meet later, I have to kiss you to death. Baby.]
Much better.
Satisfied, Song Zang closed the screen.
In the next instant, a muffled, oppressive explosion sounded beside him. The lights under the dome flickered, and the ground shook violently.
Major General Kyle was firing at the wall.
The weapon in his hands had an unfamiliar shape. It was a handheld beta-type death-ray cannon, a special particle-beam weapon capable of destroying and melting internal organs the instant it struck a human body, breaking down the atomic structure of any obstacle and releasing enormous amounts of lethal heat.
It was a patented insectoid technology. The Empire’s laser cannons were imitations. They were powerful, but lacked this overwhelming atomic-destruction effect.
The towering wall in front of them, which had looked virtually indestructible, shattered in an instant.
Louis stood firmly in place and simply lifted Song Zang with one arm as easily as if he were picking up a little white rabbit. His powerful legs rooted him to the ground, and he angled his body slightly to shield Song Zang from all the flying dust.
“Report. Target wall destroyed. We are about to exit the restricted zone. No visible risks.” Kyle suddenly spoke. “X12 requests further instructions.”
He paused after speaking, his expression solemn. “Received!”
No one knew what the insectoid on the other end said. Kyle’s expression became complicated, and he gave the order to withdraw.
Louis rushed out immediately. Outside beneath the gray sky, the temperature dropped by ten degrees all at once, carrying a thread of cold through the air.
He glanced at the atmospheric oxygen level, then hurriedly slapped the oxygen mask back over Song Zang’s face. He was anxious and used a little too much force.
If Song Zang’s actual body had not belonged to a sturdy Alpha, that one slap could have flattened the bridge of his nose.
…No wonder he was already in his twenties and still could not find a partner.
Still being carried, Song Zang was taken quickly outward through an obviously abandoned internal vehicle passage until they reached a wide landing pad.
A spherical aircraft descended onto the designated area in utter silence and darkness, ghostlike.
Kyle stepped forward and stood before the aircraft for identity verification.
The instant verification succeeded, the aircraft activated. The spherical shell suddenly blazed with light, illuminating intricate, eerie black-and-gold patterns.
Just looking at the colors… they were strikingly similar to Song Zang’s insect markings.
The more Song Zang looked, the more he suspected that the spherical design was actually imitating a male insectoid’s egg. Even H+’s spherical AI computer might be another imitation.
Their reproductive anxiety was severe, even more exaggerated than humanity’s.
He marveled inwardly but did not stop talking. Pulling up his oxygen mask, he frowned and complained, “How dare you treat me so roughly? It hurts. Look, even my face is red.”
Louis’s face turned deathly pale. “I’m sorry. Please don’t report this to the security system. I’ll compensate you. I’ll give you all my money…”
“No need. I don’t care about it.”
Song Zang raised his chin and gave him two contemptuous looks before strolling toward the luxurious cabin reserved for him.
The room was decorated in cloud-and-candy colors. Every piece of furniture had padded corners, and even the walls felt as soft as marshmallows.
This so-called male-insectoid suite looked more like a child’s bedroom. What kind of bizarre lives did male insectoids live in such a harsh society?
Song Zang did not know whether to laugh or cry. Claiming he wanted privacy and declining to pursue Louis’s offense, he shut and locked the door behind him.
He flopped comfortably onto the bed and resumed harassing Yin Chen.
Catherine’s heartbeat had returned, so she would not die, but a small amount of glandular tissue was clearly missing. She had suffered severe blood loss and oxygen deprivation and remained unconscious because her injuries were too serious. For now, there was no way to learn what bizarre ordeal she had gone through.
Princess Fiona possessed some instinct for self-preservation and could use her brain’s neural network to communicate with Yin Chen, but her mental state was extremely unstable. After only a few sentences, she would start babbling incoherently, making useful information difficult to identify.
For now, all they knew was what Princess Fiona had indicated: to save the dying sprout, it needed nourishment from different glandular flower seeds, as well as a certain amount of fresh blood.
Of course, Yin Chen had promised nothing. He did not trust the princess and was instead trying to find a way to transplant the plant.
Song Zang suspected insectoid blood would be more useful.
Otherwise, the wild rose would not have ignored Yin Chen and latched onto him first.
Apparently, he should draw a few more jars of insectoid blood later and keep them in reserve.
As for now… Song Zang looked out the porthole at scenery as dim as the garbage planets of Zone C and silently pulled the curtain shut.
He wrapped himself in the blanket and decided to lie flat and enjoy a brief journey that was comfortable, if lonely.
Five minutes passed. Song Zang still had not fallen asleep.
That was because Major General Kyle was upstairs cursing Louis at the top of his lungs, and Song Zang could hear every word perfectly.
“You fucking idiot. You offered to compensate him in full over something that small? Even if the security system made the ruling, you didn’t cause any actual harm to the male insectoid. At most you’d owe a few tens of thousands. Who the hell throws money at someone like that?
“What if you meet some heartless bastard who promises he’ll marry you, scams you out of everything you own, then turns around and walks away? What the hell are you supposed to do after that?”
Song Zang’s mouth twitched.
He realized that Major General Kyle had been putting on a cutesy voice in front of him too. Now that he was out of the male insectoid’s sight, this tall, imposing military officer’s voice instantly dropped into a deep, rough register with a streetwise edge.
Louis obediently endured the scolding for a while before muttering, “He’s nice. He didn’t do that. He didn’t want my money. He’s different from the others…”
“He wasn’t interested in you. Stop dreaming. Did you see that sir’s eye color? A male from the Stuart family, even an illegitimate one, is several times more noble than we are.” Kyle fell silent for a moment, then sighed. “You might be willing to become a female consort, but he wouldn’t want you anyway. There’s nothing to be done… I’ll ask my male lord to help with the situation at your home. That’s that.”
“Major General, I can’t keep dragging you into this. It’s too dangerous, and it’ll affect both you and your male lord. My female father was greedy and got set up by the rebels himself. I shouldn’t be dragging you into it in the first place.” Louis’s voice was low, full of helplessness and shame.
Set up by the rebels? Come to think of it, the insectoid side had been stuck in a fractured civil war for many years without any result.
But if a Federation female insectoid was discovered to have ties to the rebels, the consequences would inevitably be disastrous.
So Kyle had deliberately pushed Louis forward to make intimate contact with a “male insectoid,” hoping to help his subordinate latch onto a powerful patron and avoid being implicated by his father’s trouble… Sure enough, no matter how humble a female insectoid acted, none of them could be entirely selfless. They were not idiots.
And the Stuart family sounded like a force no one wanted to provoke. Those red eyes that had inexplicably appeared after Song Zang’s bloodline awakened were probably inherited from the male-insectoid side.
The more Song Zang listened, the more awake he became. He simply threw off the blanket, got out of bed, took a bottle of orange drink from the little refrigerator, and continued eavesdropping while he drank.
Major General Kyle punched Louis, and he did not hold back.
“Your female father saved my life. There’s no way he colluded with the rebels! Louis, you idiot, you actually believed that? Back then my entire team was wiped out. He fought through severe injuries, killed every rebel reinforcement, and protected the secrets of K02 Space Station. That’s why he never walked again!” Kyle roared, nearly losing control of the pressure released by his mental power.
“His legs were ruined for me, for the future of the Federation. Anyone who says he colluded with the rebels is the real traitor!”
A unique and ferocious mental power spread through the aircraft, carrying enormous pressure. It even seeped through the thick partition walls like one cold gleaming needle after another mixed into the air. A single careless deep breath could leave delicate throat and airway tissue bleeding and riddled with wounds.
Compared with an Alpha’s control-oriented force field, the structure of this mental power really was more similar to Song Zang’s. Sharp and direct, carrying blatant offensive force and killing power.
After taking the punch and the lecture, Louis stopped bringing it up and only asked quietly, “Then how do we report today’s incident?”
“Let those lunatics at H+ clean up their own mess. We’re here to rescue insectoids.”
Lunatics?
Song Zang reopened the curtain and looked down from the high altitude.
The aircraft was about to reach the H+ pharmaceutical building.
Far away, towering ring-shaped structures overlapped one another. The clouds hung low, and cool daylight fell across the glass, veiling it in a hazy shadow.
Song Zang blinked. He could not shake the feeling that something was moving inside that haze.
It looked like green leaves unfurling, dense and complicated branches crossing in every direction, taking root in the cracks of the concrete and winding around layer after layer. They clung to bulletproof tempered-glass windows, leaves trembling and flower buds drooping, blocking out every trace of light from outside.
But before he could look more closely, the dark-blue system screen suddenly popped into view and interrupted his use of the ability.
【Clear Requirement: Do You Know How to Raise Flowers? (2/3)】
Song Zang’s eyes widened.
He had not even arrived yet. Who had completed the task?