The successful blooming of this Carola rose did represent substantive progress on the main mission, but it had nothing whatsoever to do with the story elements of the instance.
It had come solely from a player’s one-use special Sacrifice skill, trading a body of flesh and blood for progress on the main mission.
Because a player skill was fundamentally different from personally raising the flower, the vortex of power surrounding the rose looked visibly different as well.
At least, it was visible to Yin Chen’s naked eye.
“Fluorescent blue?”
Song Zang asked instinctively.
Yin Chen smiled meaningfully, something unreadable in his eyes. “Mm. So smart.”
That was weird.
Song Zang needed a moment before he understood what Yin Chen meant.
Even in the beta version of the game, he had never seen what the game system’s power looked like when made tangible.
Why had he instinctively assumed it was fluorescent blue, such an unusually niche shade of cyan light?
What exactly had he forgotten?
There hadn’t seemed to be anything that color inside the cracks of Happiness Community’s instance world either.
Song Zang silently worked backward through his memories while unobtrusively studying Yin Chen’s expression. “Then do I have a blessing too?”
“It drank your blood, so it will bless you.” Yin Chen pinched Song Zang’s already-healed finger and smoothly shifted the conversation to another important point. “Lin Wen Jing did us a huge favor. I know the truth about the blessings now.”
The first wild rose came from Zone C, the origin of humanity. It was so ancient that its age could scarcely be expressed in simple numbers, and the way it grew was equally mysterious. Yet it held no malice at all. It possessed the innocence of a child and a vast, loving maternal nature, while its relationship with the sun, moon, and land was one of cyclical mutual nourishment.
The blessing it gave Song Zang and Yin Chen was the most unusual of all: immunity to every malicious force capable of twisting the mind or distorting cognition.
It was equivalent to being constantly surrounded by a purification halo shimmering with holy light, giving their mental state, or rather their SAN value, a safety floor so they could never fall into irreversible extreme madness no matter what happened.
The second red rose came from Zone B, where humans had lived for a long time. Yin Chen had grabbed hold of the Infinite Game system’s special energy and directly searched the relevant information to see how this mission was supposed to be completed.
Xie Chun Ye and Lin Wen Jing were originally supposed to find a way to help that enormous devil giant clam, assisting it in controlling the continuously expanding black hole inside its body, soothing the torment and exhaustion it had suffered over countless years, and retrieving from the hole the rose seed that the clam could not nurture by itself.
Once the clam was happy, it would willingly contribute the energy it had accumulated over many years, allowing the rose to grow and bloom in an instant.
More importantly, that was not actually a black hole at all. It was a forming Schwarzschild wormhole that still possessed an 【event horizon】, a wormhole with a simple structure but very poor stability.
It could repeatedly close and reopen within a single instant, separating into independent black and white holes. Its tidal forces were also terrifying, and there was a chance they could crush any matter attempting to pass through it.
Xie Chun Ye and the others had been able to observe the existence of the black hole because the devil giant clam’s structural material was unusual. It could independently influence and control the state of the gravitational field and accretion disk, then use the closed surface inside its shell to reproduce matter that should have been captured by the black hole, creating an image visible to humans and pressing it close against the edge of the true black hole.
After all, black holes did not reflect light. No one should have been able to see one.
Clearly, the terrifying power contained in an ancient organism capable of housing the embryonic form of a black hole was beyond imagination.
If the players could somehow communicate with it and allow this potential wormhole to form smoothly, and if the Rose Empire’s specialists could devise a way to keep the wormhole stable over the long term…
Then the Empire’s future space-exploration and teleportation programs would instantly crush centuries of insectoid research.
Some of the information sounded extremely technical, but once broken down, it was actually quite simple.
A wormhole was a four-dimensional passage leading to another universe, a bridge through spacetime.
A black hole allowed entry but no exit. Any matter entering it would collide with its singularity of infinite density.
A white hole allowed exit but no entry. Matter could leave through its opening, but could never return to its point of origin.
Before a Schwarzschild wormhole fully formed, it could also be regarded as two independent black and white holes separated by a region of spacetime completely isolated from information and matter, while nevertheless moving continuously closer and combining with one another.
Once those two originally unconnected holes joined, they would form a wormhole passage spanning spatial dimensions, with even a chance of returning to the past.
Yes, the instance problem the players had to solve this time really did look rather complicated.
But the simplest solution was not difficult at all. The game system’s Points Shop had always sold complete tool kits for spacetime travel.
They only needed to ensure that, for one instant at a time, they were not torn apart by the tidal forces inside the wormhole. Then they could repeatedly search for rose branches or seeds and curry favor with that boundless ancient clam.
Because the devil giant clam was the real main force, the powerful existence truly taking on the suction of the opening for the whole world.
Even Yin Chen could not see through the dense material beneath its dark shell or understand the mechanism that kept it alive.
If he could not understand it, then so be it. Digging too deeply would only invite trouble.
It was older than the insectoids and humans combined, perhaps even older than the formation of Zone B’s Cat’s Eye star system. It had lived through countless extinctions and births of species, countless disappearances, aberrations, and evolutions of genes. It was an unimaginably ancient ancestor, almost like an immortal.
More frighteningly, it was still alive and extraordinarily powerful. It could even draw energy from the bridge through spacetime, nurture an exceptionally special rose, and grant a blessing to humans who met the conditions.
Just as the wild rose and the mining-planet system were inseparable and mutually intertwined, the Carola rose was also a child the devil giant clam both loved and hated.
Zone B’s Cat’s Eye star system looked enormous, but in truth it was merely the base supporting the clam and possessed nothing special in itself. As the black hole expanded year by year and the gravitational field grew ever stronger, even the Cat’s Eye at the center was nearing its limit, leaving the ecological order teetering on the brink of collapse.
The humans’ mental state was likewise on the brink of collapse, held in superficial balance by an invisible thread pulled taut. Xie Chun Ye’s family-drama ordeal alone made it obvious that beneath their polished appearances, the lunatics of Zone B were all barely forcing themselves to look human.
A very long time ago, Yin Chen would definitely have found a way to devour the clam’s true body and wrench knowledge from it, especially the energy and principles that allowed it to contain a massive black hole inside itself.
As part of the Collective, Yin Chen understood better than anyone just how unbelievable this was. The Collective could pass through wormholes, regenerate and reassemble itself, ignore tidal forces and collapsing space, and in extreme states even exceed the speed of light to escape the pull of a black hole’s accretion disk.
But putting a black hole inside its own stomach? Without the virtual model of a game instance, that would be nothing but fantasy and suicide.
Yin Chen calmly set aside his faint curiosity. His attention remained on Song Zang as he admired the beautiful lips that no longer turned pale so easily.
“If you had another physical examination now, you’d find that your body is in the best condition it’s been in for twenty years. Absolutely perfect.” Yin Chen curved his lips, growing more satisfied the longer he looked.
Song Zang had been listening with great interest. At that, he hurriedly checked his system data again. On his personal base-stat panel, the solid numbers had turned slightly translucent and every value had increased by fifty.
In other words, over the course of this instance, nearly every aspect of his body had received a temporary boost that would last only for this instance.
Song Zang’s original baseline values were simply so high that he had almost failed to notice.
“No wonder I feel so refreshed. How do I get the next blessing?”
“The system won’t tell me. I can only see mission data after a task has already been completed and settled.”
Still holding Song Zang’s hand, Yin Chen explained while casually raising an electromagnetically charged gun and spraying fire at the tumor-grown insectoid eggs hidden deep beneath the thick brain tissue.
His calm voice sounded amid the splatter of slick minced flesh. “But if the final flower is raised successfully, the player should have a chance of receiving a permanent blessing. Move quickly when the time comes. Don’t let Chi Yan snatch it first.”
It would actually be fine if Chi Yan got it. They were all on the same side. But Song Zang certainly did not dare casually give it away.
In Yin Chen’s eyes, every good thing ought to be dragged back into the nest he shared with Song Zang. All other intelligent lifeforms were untrustworthy.
Song Zang did not spoil his mood. Fine, he would grab a reward and make Yin Chen happy.
He returned his attention to the real issue and discussed it with Yin Chen. “I don’t think Fiona is the final flower. At most, she’s a deformed incubator for insectoid eggs.”
Exactly. Song Zang did not believe Fiona had what it took to become the final Boss. She was merely an unlucky genetic-disease patient who had made one wrong choice after another.
A truly terrifying enemy ought to be, at the very least, some special existence on the level of a false god.
After all, the previous two blooming roses had nothing to do with actual humans. Instead, their nutrients and root energy had been seized by insectoids and wandering beasts, leaving them inextricably entangled by kinship with ancient undersea creatures.
Yin Chen thought the same.
So, to completely rule out the Eldest Princess as a possibility, he did not even bother using the gland to probe what she was scheming. He lifted his long blade and cut apart all the major neural networks in the brain so she could not preserve her own consciousness.
Because the brain tissue covered such an enormous area, the trigger bombs they had previously found on the delivery drone finally came in handy too.
Yin Chen casually tossed the miniature bombs, turned, and scooped Song Zang up. “Catherine, run.”
“Eh? Okay!” Catherine reacted just as quickly, yanked off her blindfold, and bolted.
The mental-power fields of two top-tier Alphas appeared at the same instant, creating a special environment powerful enough to manipulate gravity.
After removing the gland, Yin Chen’s mental-power color finally returned to normal. Like Catherine’s, it was now completely clear and colorless, pressure rippling through it.
Song Zang felt like a tiny bundle being carried here and there by Yin Chen. In the blink of an eye, he was actually flying high into the air before landing steadily at the edge of the cliff again.
After a deafening boom, the vast canyon filled with an even stronger aroma of roasted brain. Tiny chunks of flesh, deepening from pink to red, flew everywhere like a lavish high-temperature rain of cherry blossoms.
Beneath the brain, there was nothing except mangled remnants of the skeleton and damaged electronic equipment.
The spherical AI nearby shrieked warnings. Catherine spat out a mouthful of blood, quietly put her blindfold back on, then pinched the implanted chip beneath the skin of her wrist and activated full-screen mute mode so she would not hear anything she was not supposed to.
The corner of Yin Chen’s mouth twitched. With Little Star AI’s help, he sent her a message.
【Yin Chen: Go back to the ship and rest. Pass along a message: the Federal President is actually a female insectoid, and the Eldest Princess is colluding with him. Have your teacher step in and deal with it.】
【Catherine: 1】
She could slack off now. The situation had gone far beyond her ability to handle and was absolutely not a responsibility she could shoulder, so she simply would not shoulder it.
Catherine sat in the ship’s medical room, forwarded Yin Chen’s message to the Commander-in-Chief, and comfortably lay back.
But Song Zang and the others still could not simply rest yet.
“What do we do now? Sister Chi went to save Brother Xie, and we can’t reach her either.” Song Zang blinked. “Should we go back to the Empire too?”
“Let’s have barbecue first. Your Heartthrob System will bring the key character to us.”
Yin Chen finished unhurriedly, then took an automatically inflating compressed camping set from the little backpack.
The people of the Empire might not be able to match the insectoids in cutting-edge technological research, but when it came to enjoying life, they had unquestionably reached the pinnacle.
In the blink of an eye, a “retro” fireproof barbecue grill, a self-igniting charcoal brazier, and three soft inflatable sofas appeared at the edge of the cliff amid a floor covered in brain matter, accompanied by background music of birdsong and flowers.
Yin Chen pulled Song Zang down beside him, shared the StarNet screen, and opened a panoramic 4D horror movie he had cached in advance.
The eerie opening theme began playing at once, with surround sound and perfectly smooth playback.
The butler robot built into the modified ship rolled over with a cart full of fresh meat. It doubled as both chef and barbecue-plating assistant with effortless competence.
The frozen glands taken from the backs of necks in the biological laboratory had their cartilage cut open. Tiny, nearly invisible flower seeds were picked out and used together with insectoid bone powder as seasoning.
They were all things Song Zang liked to eat, and they were good for him too.
The rich scent of barbecue gradually filled the area, mingling with the bloody smell of half-cooked brain tissue. It carried the subtly offensive atmosphere of eating hotpot in a morgue.
“Yin Chen, why exactly are you doing this?” Song Zang liked it very much, but he did not understand.
Yin Chen looked perfectly natural and answered as though it were obvious. “Showing off our love in front of the love rival who’s about to arrive.”
To make Julian Cooper understand that their tastes, hobbies, and rapport were things an outsider could never join in on.
Song Zang fell silent for a moment, then suddenly understood. “…Baby, you understand me so well. I think I love you to death.”
“Want some brain?”
“No. I’m a non-human-eater. Yin Chen, listen to me. Once we live together, you can eat anything you want, but you absolutely cannot eat people.”
“Fine. Then I won’t eat them either.”
【You consumed Flower Seed · Dusk. Resistance +10】
【You consumed Flower Seed · Sun Fairy. Resistance +10】
…
While enjoying the food, Song Zang held the glass bead, watched the movie, and had Little Star AI conduct a deep search into Julian’s background.
He was a natural-born sub-female insectoid and the first sub-female insectoid in the species to evolve successfully. Aside from his beautiful face, which strongly resembled a male insectoid’s, the rest of his physical characteristics were much closer to an Alpha’s.
No one knew why his genes had mutated, and no one had wanted to speak up for him.
To survive, he had voluntarily enlisted on the second day after reaching adulthood and entered the Federation military’s most dangerous special-warfare intelligence division. After countless rounds of strict training in acting and body control, he gradually became more and more human in appearance.
Back then, there was not yet much need to plant Alpha/Omega imitators. Julian had been assigned the identity of a civilian Beta from Zone B and tasked with investigating mysteries surrounding the origins of human culture.
But on the second day after he was sent to the Rose Empire…
Julian implanted an Alpha gland in himself at a black-market clinic, strangled every insectoid superior assigned to guide him through the mission, then found a way to sever his brain-computer connection midway through.
Song Zang had been able to remove the brain-computer system from his own body because he had Yin Chen, a flawless surgical genius and unlicensed doctor.
Julian had been different. At the time he had possessed neither power nor support and had only just arrived in a completely unfamiliar Empire. How had he managed to escape the mimetic network’s surveillance in such a short time?
Song Zang’s question was answered not long afterward.
Because Julian arrived far too quickly.
He actually walked out of the teleportation reassembly chamber behind the cliff.
The moment he received the Iceberg coordinates Chi Yan sent him, he had piloted a ship straight there.
After noticing traces of human passage, Julian had followed Song Zang’s trail without hesitation and activated the computer-driven device on Iceberg without the slightest concern for the potentially lethal risk.
Since he had long since shed his insectoid identity, Julian had no authorization to unlock the chamber door. He simply tore it open by brute force instead, his hands soaked in blood as the AI’s alarms grew increasingly shrill.
Ignoring the injury to his wrist bones, Julian approached the two of them with slightly unsteady steps and immediately blocked Song Zang’s best view of the movie.
“Hello, Song…” The injured silver-haired beauty lowered those slightly languid peach-blossom eyes. His voice was faintly hoarse and tired as he greeted Song Zang.
Song Zang frowned and deliberately cut him off in a cutesy voice. “Hubby, look at him~”
“Don’t block my baby’s movie.”
Yin Chen cooperatively wrapped an arm around Song Zang and pulled him closer, coldly ordering Julian to move aside as though an Alpha’s instinctive territoriality had been violated.
So Julian good-naturedly sat to one side, dismissed the busy butler robot, treated the wound on his wrist, and started grilling meat for the couple.
Song Zang froze for a moment, looking confused. “What exactly did you come here for?”
Who would eagerly cross billions of kilometers just to wait on a couple while they ate barbecue? This level of forbearance was practically insane.
“Song Zang, you want me to understand that I can’t have you. If that’s the case, then I can only give up. I hope you and he can be happy together.”
Julian gave Song Zang a gentle look, as though he could see through to Song Zang’s essence. Reluctance flickered in his clear eyes, while his dry yet gentle voice carried a thread of helpless sorrow.
Combined with his pale skin and milk-smooth silver hair, he made an extremely pleasing picture of an injured beauty.
Feeling the restraint around his shoulder tighten subtly, Song Zang seized the moment and tilted his head. “Then are you willing to do something for me?”
“Just tell me what you want. I returned to my homeland alone and abandoned everyone who needed me solely to make amends for the injustice you suffered. I’m willing to be used by you.”
Julian said this without the slightest guilt. After all, he had never felt much attachment to either humans or insectoids.
But it was impossible for a person to have no feelings at all. Before 【Mask】 forced Julian to fall in love with Song Zang, Julian must have had goals and emotional anchors of his own.
Song Zang could not be bothered circling around the point. Without even a warm-up, he asked directly, “The Eldest Princess’s condition worsened, she accidentally developed cancer during gene therapy, and then gradually lost her mind. Did that have something to do with you?”
“Yes. Thought induction is very simple.” Julian smiled gently, fitting perfectly with the suspenseful soundtrack behind him. “I approached her proactively under the guise of befriending the future Emperor in advance. That only made her less likely to suspect me.”
“Then why did she want to devour other people’s gland seeds? Is there some underlying logic behind that abnormal behavior?”
“There is. She thought she was the core of the ultimate plan, but… I was. She merely took my place as a scapegoat.”
“Project: Raising Roses?”
Julian paused, the curve of his lips rising higher. “You’re very clever, Song Zang. As expected of…”
“Enough pointless praise. Who came up with this plan, and what is its purpose?”
Song Zang’s aggressive questioning did not anger Julian. Instead, it struck precisely at the point that mattered, inexplicably exciting him. His voice, which had been gradually calming, began trembling again.
“God. God… the will of evolution, the ultimate sovereign of all highly intelligent life, the true God. Song Zang, you don’t understand. You cannot comprehend those wondrous dreams of high latitude, those unbelievable blessings and divine power. He loves every living creature, but He chose to set His gaze on me first and me alone.
Elio’s Notes: The source uses 高纬度 here, literally “high latitude.” In context it appears likely to be a typo for 高维度, “higher-dimensional,” but we’ve preserved the published wording rather than silently correcting it.
“Oh, it’s so blissful. I am the most unique, the strongest, and the most loyal apostle of the Sovereign. Song Zang, once I finish the sacred mission He gave me, you will be the next fortunate one chosen by God. I will recommend you to Him, because I truly love you.”
Julian’s voice was wet with tears. Soft light shimmered in his glacier-clear eyes, hazy with intoxication and overflowing with worship.
“Then if I tell you not to carry out the mission, will you agree?” Song Zang curved his lips, revealing sweet dimples as he spoke softly.
Julian’s “presidential speech” immediately jammed.
He pulled himself out of his intoxicated self-absorption and stared at Song Zang with slightly stiff eyes, falling into a long silence of confusion and incomprehension.
His attitude was sharply divided.
As though some invisible force had split his heart into two.
One half adored the perfect high-latitude Sovereign of evolutionary will, while the other adored… an experimental subject.
A top-tier Alpha jointly created by insectoids and humans, a perfect male insectoid.
Yet no matter what, Song Zang was still only an experimental subject.
What confused Julian even more was that Song Zang’s successful birth had in fact completely betrayed the will of natural evolution. He was an artificial creation, a child of conspiracy.
Even though the evolutionary will had never explicitly told him that unnaturally modified lifeforms had to be destroyed, as a devout believer in the evolutionary will, Julian should have understood the one, ultimate, correct… course of action.
He should have used Princess Fiona to kill Song Zang and his companions in the distant Federation, framed the insectoids for it, and made the flames of war between the two sides burn even fiercer.
Then, at the final battle, the victor would become king. Julian could achieve his own revenge while also showing the sacred will which side was truly worthy of continued evolution.
But Julian had inexplicably fallen in love with Song Zang. He was utterly obsessed, repeatedly watching recordings of Song Zang’s livestreams while his heart pounded wildly beyond control.
That love was tormenting him, steadily devouring his steadfast soul.
He clenched his teeth hard, snow-glacier eyes fixed beside Song Zang’s dimple, repeatedly shaking his head as he forced out the answer. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
He was in agony. In truth, he desperately did not want to agree.
His rational mind rejected everything, yet the heart beating for Song Zang controlled the opening and closing of his mouth. The struggle between those two wills gradually distorted even that beautiful face.
Only then did Yin Chen, who had been silent for a long time, finally speak. “This love is making you suffer? Then stop looking at Song Zang. Look at me.”
Julian had barely looked at Yin Chen even once. He had been deliberately diverting his attention because he was not a good person.
He was afraid the sparks of jealousy in his heart would swell into roaring flames, driving him to personally destroy Song Zang’s family in the cruelest and most extreme way and kill Song Zang’s lawful husband.
Julian had endured for a very long time. Hearing that casual “taunt” about the “primary husband” while his mind was still being torn in two finally shattered his restraint.
He slowly turned his head. His clear, moist eyes locked onto Yin Chen while his long fingers quietly pressed against the location of his implanted chip, poised to strike.
No one knew that the seemingly elegant and natural Federal President had not only forcibly implanted a Snow Mountain rose seed into the back of his neck and undergone surgery to remove his insectoid wings, but had also mechanically modified his body.
His identity was fake, his gland pheromones were fake, and even his eyes were fake. They could be charged in advance and fire an extremely lethal death-ray ion beam at close range.
But the instant their gazes collided, Julian’s expression abruptly changed in a bizarre way.
He had firmly decided to kill Yin Chen, yet in a daze he almost stopped breathing, suddenly seized by the terrified feeling of beholding a deity.
Reason screamed at him in fear to look away immediately, but his warped, abnormal emotions pulled him in deeper. One more look. Just one more. He seemed to glimpse the magnificent images that had so often flashed through his humid, distorted dreams.
His heart beat so violently that his chest began to ache. Julian’s eyes trembled as though he could see through Yin Chen’s flawless exterior and glimpse the sacred existence he loved and worshiped within.
It felt as if countless eyes were staring at him from above, stirring his brain matter and gnawing away at his sanity, plunging him once again into that damp dreamscape until he could not free himself. He longed to rot and dissolve completely, tears of happiness spilling from his eyes.
Of course, Yin Chen was deliberately allowing him to see this.
Song Zang noticed Julian’s abnormal reaction and turned suspiciously to stare at Yin Chen too.
A strange, vortex-like cold gleam flashed through Yin Chen’s dark phoenix eyes. It vanished so quickly that Song Zang nearly thought he had imagined it.
Song Zang said nothing, only staring unblinkingly at Yin Chen.
Yin Chen pinched his hand. His expression remained calm and cold as he issued Julian an order. “Tell me the details of your dreams.”
“…Yes? Mm, yes.” Julian’s speech had become slightly unclear. His pale lips trembled faintly and his eyes grew increasingly dazed.
He kept describing the world in his dreams. Whenever he reached overly detailed elements, he would sometimes unexpectedly seize up, briefly losing consciousness because his mind could no longer support him, only to force himself awake again with a blissful expression like a madman immersed in a deformed utopia.
Song Zang still did not speak, but the suspicion in his heart grew stronger and stronger.
Because Julian was not giving Song Zang any of his attention at all. Not even a tiny bit.
Even a false-god-level NPC could not resist the power of a system skill. So far, the only person capable of seeing through system skills was Yin Chen. And the only person who seemed capable of affecting them was Yin Chen too.
What was Yin Chen trying to do? Cheat?
Time was running out. Song Zang quickly opened the Points Shop and spent heavily on a bottle of special moisturizing eye drops.
After confirming that both eyes were comfortably hydrated and in optimal condition, Song Zang took a deep breath, immediately concentrated, and focused all his attention on Yin Chen.
His vision became saturated in deep red. Under the full enhancement of his atavistic bloodline, it turned sharper and stranger than ever.
Song Zang made no attempt to conceal his probing gaze. He forced his sight through the white coat, pierced the crisp winter military shirt beneath it, tore through beautiful, pale skin and flesh, and openly drove inch by inch into the skeleton.
He was curious what color Yin Chen’s bone marrow might be. Would it, like the tentacles that had invaded his mind, be moist, flawless, translucent, and crystal clear, tinged a beautiful pale pink by the circulation of blood…?
Several seconds later, Song Zang abruptly froze.
He discovered that Yin Chen had no bone marrow.
The energy and information moving beneath those stark-white bones formed a strange, multicolored substance. It was neither viscous enough nor fluid enough, and it could not really be called solid either.
Yet it spread throughout Yin Chen’s entire body, connecting the bones and blood of this perfect shell without the slightest gap, fixing the projected consciousness of another world inside it and entwining itself through dense neural networks like the finest puppeteer in existence.
His eyes grew drier and drier, the capillaries nearing collapse. He could barely hear Julian’s crazed, intoxicated voice anymore. Song Zang no longer cared at all about the NPC Yin Chen had driven mad. He kept forcing himself to look deeper, pushing through the restraints of time and space.
Yin Chen had not hidden any of this from him, which meant Yin Chen was willing to let him see it. Song Zang remembered clearly that in a strange black world, he had once torn off the skin of his own face with his own hands and wrapped it around similarly multicolored “marrow.”
This was a fragment of memory he had recovered in Happiness Community. Song Zang remembered how crazed he had been while mutilating himself. Why had he done that?
His burning insectoid markings felt as though they might cook his skin. Enduring the pain of flesh tearing open, Song Zang squeezed every last drop of eye medicine into his eyes.
He saw a wormhole forcibly wrenched open by an invisible force.
A white cocoon giving off a strange pull, completely lifeless.
A lock of fiery red hair whose owner he could not identify, yet which looked inexplicably familiar.
A wet, sticky ball of unknown light whose boundary between radiance and physical matter could not be divided by logic.
A huge sack of rose seeds coated in regenerative mucus, forever unable to take root in the ground.
Inside every seed was a silent world that had stopped running.
Song Zang had experienced some of them. Others were completely unfamiliar.
The dismembered beta-version players who had haunted his nightmares, lavish rewards dropped by beta-version Bosses, Flight DH444 from Tianhai City to Liuhe City, shattered Aberrant skins endlessly breaking apart and reassembling, God’s right hand holding calfskin parchment covered in the Devil’s Bible, handsome immortals skewered in rows like lamb kebabs…
Why were all these things inside the flower seeds, inside Yin Chen’s “body”?
“Song Zang, do you remember now?” Yin Chen’s tone was gentle and unhurried.
“Y-You… what did you do to him? Please let him go. Take only my life…” Julian’s panicked, tearful voice trembled like a mountain spring.
Halfway through “pleading” for Song Zang, Julian abruptly fell silent. Dense, strange noises drifted through the empty cliffside restricted zone, as though something were breaking through the soil.
Yin Chen did not acknowledge him at all.
Song Zang was very curious about what Julian was experiencing, but he suddenly realized… it was as though he had gone blind.
He could no longer see Yin Chen. His vision was fixed firmly on that strange space of dim and bright interwoven elements.
The sounds around him also became increasingly bizarre and difficult to distinguish: dull and crisp noises, slick and satisfyingly wet sounds, the rustle of fabric, Yin Chen’s breathing close beside him.
“Song Zang, do you remember now?”
Yin Chen’s kiss landed lightly against his cheek as he asked again in a gentle voice.
“Remember my ass!” Song Zang ground out through clenched teeth.
He had been a little panicked at first, but after sensing Yin Chen’s bizarrely gentle attitude, Song Zang suddenly stopped panicking.
He calmed down and thought back over Yin Chen’s suspicious behavior, both obvious and subtle. At last, several things clicked into place.
From the very beginning, Yin Chen had inexplicably dragged him into staying by the cliff, fed him “barbecued rose glands” to increase his Resistance by a huge amount, then leisurely sat on the sofa watching a movie and waiting for the prey to come to them, until finally the mid-stage Boss arrived on his own…
This entire chain of events had probably been within Yin Chen’s calculations.
This was a sealed insectoid-free restricted zone. No matter how much noise they made, no outsider would wander in. Catherine was asleep on the ship, and the enormous brain had been blown to pieces… No one would disturb them. It was extremely safe.
Especially convenient for the two of them to do whatever they wanted.
Song Zang could not see anything, but he understood Yin Chen’s thinking. He no longer needed to restrain his strength right now.
Groping forward, he seized Yin Chen’s collar. Using the image in his vision as a reference, he reached hard for those flower seeds, for those unfamiliar scenes that were sending violent pain through his brain nerves.
His slender wrist instantly pierced Yin Chen’s chest, brutally crushing the hot heart inside.
Yin Chen wrapped him tightly in return. Soon Song Zang heard him let out a low gasp threaded with strange pleasure.
His ear had been kissed red and damp, while a mint candy was pushed into his mouth. Song Zang’s breathing deepened as he realized that all his senses had been magnified without limit.
The worlds inside the flower seeds became tangible little by little, as though slowly eroding his brain. The smell of blood suddenly thickened around his nose, and the gland at the back of his neck burned frighteningly hot.
At some point, the rose seed stuck between his fingers had turned into warm, flowing, viscous minced flesh. Song Zang wanted to see what it was, but could not break free from Yin Chen’s arms.
“Song Zang, you did very well.”
Like punishment, and like a reward.
【You have received a free gift from BOSS · Unknown Error?: 《Unknown Error》. Use it now?】
【No.】
【Congratulations, Player. You have cleared the instance “Project: Raising Roses.” Calculating rewards…】
【Game Completion Rating: Unknown Error.】
【Main Mission Clear Reward: Unknown Error.】
【Side Mission Reward: Unknown Error.】