“All units on alert. Protect the male insectoid!”
In the blink of an eye, Song Zang was surrounded by towering, muscular men and shielded in the center as they tugged and dragged him backward.
He did not resist. Through the broad backs and chests of the female-insectoid soldiers, he stared fixedly at the rose blooming in the flames.
Blood-red rose petals swayed beautifully in the firelight.
It had never been pruned or constrained by a gardener. It bloomed wildly and freely, almost bursting through the skull, flaunting an unmistakable unruliness and feral vitality.
It was especially beautiful.
But… whose corpse was this?
Fresh white bone looked completely different from a specimen, and Song Zang could tell at a glance. He narrowed his dry eyes and could faintly see fresh, scalding red-and-yellow marrow slowly flowing within.
The female-insectoid soldiers were highly efficient. They did not even need protective suits. Silently grabbing fire extinguishers, they charged straight into the open flames and quickly put out the fire that had been spreading out of control.
A foul black fog, smoke mixed with toxic substances, lingered in midair like something that refused to die. Even the unknown vine branches hidden inside the wall conduits recoiled from the irritation.
Countless leaves severely infected with anthracnose had already burned away in the explosion. The fungal spores that had been floating and accumulating were roasted through, giving off an appetizing mutton-like aroma. None of that had anything to do with Song Zang.
Louis roughly fastened an oxygen mask over Song Zang’s face again and activated a suspended air-filtration barrier.
The pale-blue, crystal-clear barrier was shaped exactly like an oval insectoid egg. It enclosed Song Zang without a gap, and he could barely smell anything.
From the instant the accident erupted, everyone present had been extraordinarily quiet. There was no panic and not a single useless word. Their weapons were ready to fire. The H+ pharmaceutical supervisor was calm as well, reacting quickly enough to shut off the laboratory’s automatic sprinkler system so it would not destroy the evidence and clues at the explosion site.
After confirming Song Zang was in no immediate danger, two female-insectoid soldiers exchanged a look and split up, blocking every route into the laboratory. Their dull gray eyes sharpened in an instant, as though layered with the ghostly double image of a hawk’s pupils, scanning everywhere for enemies lying in ambush.
“Report. Three o’clock is secure.”
“Report. Nine o’clock is secure. No response on thermal imaging.”
“Call the Inspection Division over. You protect the male insectoid.”
Major General Kyle looked grave and vigilant. The moment the open flames were extinguished, he strode forward without caring about the scorching heat still lingering in the wreckage and personally rescued the unbroken insectoid eggs from the incubation chambers.
A robot could have done the same thing, but Kyle did not trust fragile insectoid eggs to steel hands.
Song Zang narrowed his eyes. Through the shells, he stared at the malformed hatchlings twitching and crying, curled up with their eyes rolling back, and blurted in disgust, “Has he lost his mind?”
“Sir, there are circumstances you may not know,” Louis answered quietly.
“Then tell me.” Song Zang shot him a look, pushed past the researcher blocking the way, gathered the woman’s shattered skeleton together, and lifted the skull to inspect it.
“Sir, that’s dangerous…”
Song Zang shook the fresh skull in his hand and scoffed. “It’s just a human skull. What’s dangerous about it?”
Louis did not dare stop him again. He quietly explained his earlier question. “Sir, the Major General is trying to protect the innocent residents of X12 Sector. If this batch of experimental insectoid eggs ultimately fails to produce any breakthrough results, half of H+’s employees will be shot dead, even if they personally did nothing wrong.”
“Did nothing wrong… Then where did the living samples in the laboratory come from? Who abused the animals and hatchlings? Don’t insult the word innocent. You’re all self-righteous lunatics.”
The laboratory supervisor was a female insectoid with a slightly irregular face, almost like a mantis. He hurriedly tried to clarify, “H+’s experimental regulations are extremely strict. We would never abuse an insectoid hatchling after it has taken form. You can rest assured about that.”
Song Zang’s voice was very soft, filled with undisguised mockery and making no effort to conceal his disgust. “You uncultured brutes care about nothing but profit. You don’t have a shred of empathy.
“Making fragile hatchlings live inside flower buds and cow uteruses with completely different structures is like forcing someone into shoes that do not fit, making them sleep on a bed covered in thorns, and giving them water steeped with shards of glass. They’re all suffering. I can see it. They’d be better off dying quickly like this.”
Major General Kyle’s movements paused almost imperceptibly. Holding several of the most intact soft-shelled eggs, he carefully placed them inside an incubator untouched by the explosion, then slowly shifted his dim eyes toward Song Zang with an unreadable expression.
“What are you looking at?” Song Zang glared back impatiently.
Part of that was acting, of course. But his mood really was not very good right now.
Kill enough people and you eventually become an expert in anatomy. Even without formal systematic study, you can develop your own unusually deep understanding of the human skeleton.
Song Zang could roughly feel out the specific details of this skeleton.
Female. Healthy. Early twenties.
Lin Wen Jing had only just turned twenty-one this year. She was about to graduate from university, and the trio in her dorm room had agreed to travel together and were preparing for the graduate-school entrance exams.
Now none of them were here anymore.
Xie Chun Ye was in mortal danger too.
It had not been long since the main mission notification appeared, yet the bones of her corpse had been stripped far too cleanly. Not even a trace of flesh or tissue remained, as if some cruel supernatural method had done it.
Had she really died for love?
Song Zang, at least, would never do that. As long as you were alive, there was still hope of changing the situation.
If you lost something precious but temporarily had no power to take it back… as long as even one glimmer of a future remained, Song Zang could keep going.
Pain was an emotion the brain could learn to live with. Once you became completely numb to it, things actually became easier. Unfortunately, many people could not hold out long enough to understand the stage where pain simply became something you coexisted with.
Song Zang reached into the empty nasal cavity of the skull and stroked the delicate, soft petals.
He knew this rose was special. Perhaps it had already been raised successfully. A strange blood-red light shimmered faintly across it, while tiny sharp thorns slowly crept and spread beneath his moving fingertip, tentatively piercing Song Zang’s skin.
In a hidden corner no one noticed, a drop of blood fell onto the dark-green branch and was silently absorbed.
H+ employees and female-insectoid soldiers investigated the cause of the explosion, checked for danger, and rapidly cleared the wreckage, yet could not find anything strange.
Major General Kyle activated the spherical computer on the table, pulled up the surveillance feed, and replayed what had just happened frame by frame.
Song Zang did not technically have permission to participate in the investigation, but he openly said he wanted to watch. Major General Kyle stayed silent, and the H+ supervisor had no solution, so he could only grit his teeth and enlarge the surveillance recording to maximum size for everyone to watch together.
The black hole had appeared too suddenly and too quickly, making the air temperature spike and producing countless tiny sparks. The culture substrate inside the glass chamber also contained flammable material, which was what caused the accidental explosion.
But the black hole did not suck away a single object. During the explosion, it abruptly expanded several times over, revealing an endless, uncanny darkness that seemed capable of pulling away everyone’s gaze and soul.
The moment the rose landed, it abruptly contracted again and vanished without a trace.
It was almost as though it had made a trip to insectoid territory solely to throw away this rose, desperate to spit it out as quickly as possible, leaving no cause or context anyone could understand.
Even this slowed-down footage was not safe. The expanding black hole nearly distorted the light on the suspended display. If anyone stared too intently, faint, rustling whispers seemed to creep into their ears, like a fleeting illusion almost completely buried beneath the surveillance static.
Song Zang cautiously shifted his gaze away so he would not be affected by something unknown and impossible to investigate.
He was cautious. One insectoid was even more cautious.
Major General Kyle’s gaze suddenly collided with his, then immediately moved away.
Song Zang had noticed long ago that compared with the other female insectoids, Major General Kyle paid him a little extra attention.
Kyle seemed very interested in Song Zang’s eyes. He was also subtly probing for information from Song Zang’s brain-computer system and constantly watching his microexpressions.
Wuwu, I’m being suspected. I’m all alone and helpless.
Fortunately, this problem was very easy to solve.
Because Yin Chen had arrived.
Although StarNet could not connect properly in insectoid territory, the modified ship’s illegal signal receiver remained absurdly powerful. Even across the border between two nations, it could secretly receive a summons and race over.
Yin Chen had somehow acquired a researcher’s white coat and wore a silver respirator that covered nearly his entire face. He reached the laboratory corridor without a sound and casually tossed over the little glass bead.
Song Zang caught it in one hand. Hearing that soft cutesy voice vibrating through bone conduction made the corner of his mouth twitch again.
Little Star AI still had not given up on trying to act cute for him.
Because no security alarm had sounded, the insectoids were not especially wary of Yin Chen’s arrival. They were merely irritated at being carelessly disturbed and concerned that the male insectoid might be startled by him.
The surveillance image shut off with a snap before Yin Chen could see even a single frame.
“What department are you from? Didn’t you see the notice that the entire building is sealed?” Major General Kyle raised his gun with a cold expression, as though one wrong answer would make him shoot Yin Chen dead on the spot.
Yin Chen’s cool gaze swept over lazily and paused on Louis’s face. Contempt from a superior vantage point flickered through his long phoenix eyes. “I’m his female spouse. Who are you?”
Louis froze. His face went pale as he took half a step backward, unconsciously lowering his head and hiding behind Song Zang, somehow looking like someone who had just been caught cheating.
Song Zang: …
“Don’t do things that make insectoids misunderstand.”
Song Zang clarified helplessly, then took several quick steps and threw himself into Yin Chen’s arms. At the same time, he passed over the rose saturated with blood, his voice even more affected than Little Star AI’s. “Baby, I’m scared~”
“It’s fine now. Xie Chun Ye is fine too. He only broke his legs.” Yin Chen held him and soothed him gently.
Major General Kyle did not lower his gun. His hawk-sharp gaze fixed on Song Zang. “Sir, who exactly are you?”
“I thought you’d already guessed.” Song Zang raised a brow. “I’m an illegitimate child of the Stuart family, a successful bloodline-awakening experiment, and the only… person who can solve your problem.”
All the insectoids went still. One researcher blurted out in shock, “Impossible. You’re not one of our products! Every experimental insectoid egg was injected with a special marking solution. A distinctive fluorescent code residue remains near the amygdala. The moment you enter any H+-owned building, you’d be scanned!”
Song Zang genuinely had not known that. He narrowed his eyes at Yin Chen, and Yin Chen looked back at him with a faintly amused expression.
Got it. Yin Chen ate the bit containing the fluorescent solution. No evidence left.
“Believe it or don’t.”
Song Zang arrogantly shut the matter down.
Major General Kyle remained respectful and lowered his eyes. “All political rights of the insectoid eggs and genetically modified experimental subjects cultivated by H+ are jointly controlled by shareholder insectoids and the Federation government. Sir, are you certain you wish to give up the privileges that belong to you?”
“I never said I was giving them up.”
The capital required for arrogance did not come only from having the stronger fist. It also came from an unshakable special identity.
Song Zang smiled as he spoke and leaned bonelessly against Yin Chen. “Baby, pinch my ear.”
Yin Chen lifted the cold respirator, lowered his head, and kissed him. He kissed upward from the side of Song Zang’s neck until his warm lips reached the cool tip of his ear, then bit it with just enough pressure to sting.
Ancient-looking black-and-gold insectoid markings abruptly surfaced before everyone’s eyes. The noble brand, swaying with a dark red glow, spread like sparks across Song Zang’s pale neck.
Major General Kyle’s expression shifted faintly. He tightened his grip around the gun while an almost invisible layer of cold sweat dampened his palm.
He was very glad he had never thought of offending Song Zang.
Even if Song Zang insisted on calling himself an experimental product, no insectoid would truly dare treat him like one.
Unlike humans, the soft, beautiful features of a delicate young man were the most typical sign of a pampered, high-ranking male insectoid. And such vivid, intense, beautiful insectoid markings indicated an ancient bloodline even more clearly. Song Zang could probably walk down the street announcing that he supported the rebels and still fail to find an insectoid willing to report him.
Even if someone really did report him, at most Song Zang would be made to attend a few ideological-education classes and placed in a comfortable, well-appointed confinement room with every entertainment facility provided. He could even bring a female insectoid inside to entertain himself.
Ultimately, it was because… the Federation truly had no newborn insectoid eggs anymore.
If no children could be born, species reproduction became the only thing that mattered. Everything else was a trivial detail.
Song Zang had not expected merely exposing his insectoid markings to work this well.
The H+ pharmaceutical supervisor, who had been stalling and cautiously probing him before, immediately led Song Zang toward a locked secret room.
The biological laboratory covered an enormous area. This explosion had only affected one incubation chamber. After they continued through a cleverly concealed hidden door, the view suddenly opened up.
Yin Chen followed behind Song Zang like a quiet shadow, casually holding the thorn-covered rose stem. He made no sound, yet his presence was overwhelming.
At the very least, Kyle did not dare lower his gun the entire way, while Louis wished he could stand eight hundred meters away from Song Zang. It was an instinctive animal response to terrifying danger, accompanied by pain like the mental sea itself was cracking apart.
For the sake of appearances, as female-insectoid soldiers, they absolutely would not show fear in front of a male insectoid. But they really were afraid.
Fear was an odor that could be smelled, and with it, an individual’s openings and weaknesses were exposed.
When they reached the freezing storage room, the bizarre grotesqueness confronting them became even more pronounced.
Human brains of different sizes filled the entire room. Some were pale slices soaking in formalin. Others were pink suspended specimens kept under artificial blood circulation. There were even old electrical-conduction test subjects with black-steel wires inserted beneath the cerebral cortex until they resembled thick steel-wool balls.
The insectoids did not seem to like cutting out the glandular cartilage directly. Instead, they preserved complete chunks of neck, like slabs of freshly cut goods at a butcher’s stall, the flesh flashing mixed colors beneath strange dark-green inspection lights.
The glands were sorted by different families and genera under the order Rosales and labeled clearly. There were fruit scents such as apple and papaya, and some even carried a special note marking them as “suited to male-insectoid tastes.”
Song Zang stood before the neck sections classified under roses, chose several strongly scented, ancient varieties, and openly packed them into his backpack.
He showed no particular emotion and tilted his head curiously. “Have all of you eaten human flesh?”
“Yes.” That was the H+ executives’ answer.
“Can’t afford it.” That was the female-insectoid soldiers’ unanimous response.
Kyle shook his head too, as if deliberately explaining. “Only male insectoids deserve the most tender and delicious food. We may have appetites too, but it doesn’t matter if we live a little rough.”
The instant he finished speaking, the executives’ bodies stiffened one after another. Their pale faces collapsed toward the floor, eyes rolling upward in spasms while their tongues twitched and they emitted hoarse, dull, foolish laughter.
The side mission’s progress advanced right on cue.
Yin Chen put away the syringe in his hand and watched their condition with interest, coldness sharp in his phoenix eyes. With the white coat and the faint curl at the corner of his lips, he looked even more like a deranged scientist, his entire aura absurdly well matched to this cold, grotesque laboratory full of human flesh.
“…What did you do?”
Kyle blinked his dry compound eyes, every muscle in his body tensing warily. He had not been able to see Yin Chen’s movements at all.
“Killed bugs.”
That was all Yin Chen said to him. Then he turned and explained to the curious Song Zang, “A mental-power toxin formulated by Philip, mixed with a pheromone-specific catalyst and Fiona’s cerebrospinal fluid. It works very well at destroying the mental sea.”
“Baby, you’re amazing~”
Song Zang understood at once, lunged over to kiss him, then casually reached into Yin Chen’s pocket and took several spare syringes.
The floor was covered in female insectoids whose mental seas had been forcibly destroyed. They were not dead, but they could hardly be called alive.
They could not control their limbs and had no ability to respond. Only their physiological functions continued working normally, like patients in a vegetative state who were completely unable to care for themselves. That made it extremely convenient for Song Zang to draw blood.
Song Zang did not hesitate. He rolled up his sleeves, dragged the female insectoids over, and started sticking them with needles. The thick syringes quickly filled with blood from different insectoids. Its color differed slightly from human blood, and even the insectoids’ own arterial and venous blood seemed different from one another.
Under strong light, the liquid inside every syringe showed faint traces of murky green matter, while the venous blood leaned more toward blue-violet. Visually, it was not horrifying at all. It was actually remarkably beautiful.
Song Zang capped the syringes and arranged them neatly inside his backpack. Then he smiled. “Major General Kyle, I’m going back to the restricted zone to help clean up your mess. Want to come with me?”
Kyle was silent for a moment. “As you wish.”
At this point, he no longer had any room to refuse. He could tell Song Zang’s attitude had gradually improved only because his “female spouse” had appeared and put him in a good mood, not because Song Zang had suddenly transformed into a kinder person.
The pharmaceutical building remained sealed in silence. The four female-insectoid soldiers were forced onto the modified ship and obediently entered a small prison whose bars were made of laser beams.
The few developed insectoid eggs Kyle had rescued were also tossed by Yin Chen into an incubator and raised carelessly, effectively becoming the “hostages” they had taken along.
Song Zang had not boarded yet. He pulled Yin Chen to stand downstairs, narrowed his eyes, and complained softly, “Can you see the fungal spores? They’re so scary. The longer I stay here, the more I feel itchy all over.”
“Just burn them all. Those rose egg-fruits are full of unformed insectoid embryos. They’re the same in nature as the wild-rose buds on the mining planet. If we burn them all to death, the side mission might be close to complete.”
Yin Chen patiently finished speaking, his words carrying an enigmatic undertone. A familiar cluster of eerie cold flame abruptly appeared in his pale palm.
Song Zang’s heart jumped. “You can use fire now! Isn’t this one of the forms of your true body?”
“I got stronger. A surprise for you.” Yin Chen’s eyes darkened, but the smile on his face remained gentle, creating an eerie sense of mismatch.
It was pretty frightening, which happened to be exactly enough to charm Song Zang senseless.
Cold bluish-white firelight swayed. Following Yin Chen’s will, the flames climbed upward and ignited the colorful roses covering the walls.
Tongues of fire tore into the dark-green vines, spreading wildly in every direction at terrifying speed. The egg-fruits heated by the high temperature rapidly changed color, juice streaming down like rain, instantly soaking the spores dispersed through the air and sending them clumping to the ground under gravity.
[High Temperature Warning! Superconducting-series equipment entering protective sleep mode! Locating heat source!]
[No target. Please try again.]
Just as before, no one could see the scorching, bone-eroding ghostly blue fire. Even the most advanced detection instruments were powerless against it.
Every precision device built around black steel entered sleep mode. But the parasitic roses tightly entangled throughout the building had nowhere to escape. Trembling, they were swallowed by the flames. The tempered glass melted under the heat and nearly fell from the upper floors together with the collapsing branches.
In the blink of an eye, H+ Biotechnology’s newly constructed pharmaceutical building had turned into a dangerously unstable ruin.
Song Zang felt much better. He took Yin Chen’s hand and returned to the ship, only to find the atmosphere inside even more oppressive.
Little Star AI secretly appeared and told Song Zang that everything that had just happened had actually been silently recorded by the female-insectoid soldiers and transmitted live through their brain-computer retinal ports to Major General Kyle’s superior.
If the superior did not speak, Kyle would not act rashly. He stood in front of all his subordinates and calmly answered the pair’s questions.
“You said H+’s employees are all lunatics. Why?” Song Zang sat cross-legged against the sofa, drinking the remaining half bottle of orange soda.
Kyle sat upright inside the prison, rigid and formal. “The Federation military does not support social experiments involving hybrid products. At the current stage, artificially synthesized insectoid eggs all possess genetic defects that cannot be ignored and require iterative improvement.
“Allowing new life born in laboratories to directly become Federation citizens and participate in reproduction is extremely imprudent. There is concrete evidence that combining defective genes may accelerate the extinction of the insectoid species.”
The consequences were that severe, yet the oldest batch of experimental subjects had already been sent into the Rose Empire, and the number of insectoid eggs in biological laboratories kept increasing. Seen that way, calling those researchers lunatics really was accurate.
Yin Chen looked thoughtful. “But the military isn’t strongly opposing it either, is it? Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
“All opponents are labeled rebel forces and shot dead on the spot.” Kyle lowered his eyes, his voice cold and stiff.
“Eh? Louis, is that why your female father got dragged into this too?” Song Zang suddenly thought of it and looked toward the quiet female insectoid in the corner.
“Yes, sir.”
Case solved. The ones who had truly descended into madness were the Federation’s decision-makers. Long years of reproductive anxiety had driven them to abandon all restraint.
“All right. Second question. Who knows there’s also an insectoid-egg incubation base underneath a mining planet in the Rose Empire?” Song Zang narrowed his eyes. “The eggs are only the size of grains of rice and parasitize rosebuds. The slightly larger embryos have no obvious defects. They’re extremely healthy.”
Major General Kyle went quiet for a while, apparently communicating with his superior. Soon he looked puzzled. “Sir, such an incubation base cannot exist.”
“What do you mean?”
“We extracted detailed information about the moonlight killings in Zone C from the Imperial Princess’s brain, and we lost several valuable technicians in the process.
“We planted spies to secretly monitor radiant-iron mining progress and prevent the birth of next-generation warships,” Kyle said gravely, stressing the point once again. “Even the maddest lunatic would never place precious insectoid eggs inside a mine and leave them to survive or die on their own, exposed to the risk of being dissolved by moonlight. Sir, insectoid eggs are the Federation’s future and hope!”
This time, Song Zang was the one who fell silent.
He had to admit Kyle’s explanation was extremely reasonable.
Even Song Zang, an “insectoid male” of unknown identity, was treated with extraordinary care, let alone a batch of pureblood insectoid eggs capable of competing with wild roses for energy.
The information gap was too large. Perhaps many of their original assumptions and guesses about the insectoids had been wrong from the beginning.
The rose egg-fruits entwined around the pharmaceutical building had also been quietly incubating insectoid eggs. Kyle and the others knew nothing about it, and H+ had no internal record whatsoever.
If no one had put them there, then why were so many insectoid eggs parasitizing plant branches, and in more than one location?
Song Zang’s pupils contracted as a terrifying possibility occurred to him.
Maybe the insectoids had never suffered a reproductive crisis at all. They simply did not know it.