Free Web NovelThis terrifying interstellar storm covered an enormous range, sweeping through several star sectors.
Within the First Star Sector, on Blackrock Star, which lay under the human empire—
Black rock lay exposed across the surface. Shattered ash drifted through the air. The place looked as though it had been split into two worlds, one side filled with blowing yellow sand, the other with endless snowfields.
At a glance, the sense of desolation and loneliness came at you head-on.
There were no towering buildings here, no bustling cities either. On the black earth stood only a few long-abandoned forts and some ruined walls and broken eaves.
On the stone pillars eroded by wind and sand, traces remained that showed this had once been the site of civilization. Through those surviving outlines, one could faintly glimpse its former prosperity and splendor.
Once upon a time, Blackrock Star, positioned at the farthest edge, had been the strongest iron wall along the empire’s frontier.
From its most barren soil, it had raised the fiercest soldiers.
The moment those black banners rose, those iron guards—blades in hand, fearless even in the face of death—left the terror of death hanging over their enemies at all times.
But all of that had come to an end twenty years ago.
Now, Blackrock Star was the poorest wasteland in the entire empire, so poor that not even the least picky star pirates would bother stopping by.
Everyone knew that aside from rock, there was nothing here but more rock.
With weather this brutally harsh, forget anything valuable—ordinary people could barely survive here at all.
This place had long since become a cursed land abandoned by the gods.
The moment the interstellar storm swept across it, the hunting party out searching for food seemed to sense danger closing in.
The old man at the head of the group abruptly opened his eyes and looked up at the sky.
The black sky hung over them so heavily it looked like the end of the world.
He made his judgment at once and shouted in a hoarse, aged voice, “Take cover!”
Hearing the old man’s shout, the people around him, mounted on wolves, pulled out horn-like objects resembling rhinoceros horns and blew them. The ancient, desolate call of the horns echoed over the black earth, carrying far into the distance.
The people hunting outside heard it too.
—It was the signal telling them to hide immediately.
The hunters obeyed without hesitation, abandoning the prey they had almost caught and finding cover nearby.
The very next instant after they had hidden themselves, a violent, overwhelming force descended onto Blackrock Star.
Along with a deafening explosion, those people felt the ground shake violently beneath them.
Only after quite a while did the horn sound again.
The hunters sheltering behind cover finally emerged one after another.
There, not far from them, a huge impact crater had appeared in the black ground.
None of them moved rashly. Instead, they all returned to the old man’s side.
“Uncle Chong, this is...?”
Standing on the cliff, they stared curiously at the crater below.
From their angle, all they could make out was a pile of scattered metal fragments lying at the center of the crater.
But the old man they called Uncle Chong recognized at a glance that those metal fragments were from a starship or warship.
They did not belong to Blackrock Star.
Probably some unlucky bastard had crashed onto their world again.
Uncle Chong narrowed his eyes. After a moment of thought, he said, “Send a few people down to take a look.”
Two men and two women quickly stepped out from the group.
Mounted on the wolves beneath them, they cautiously approached the crater.
As they drew near the pile of metal wreckage, the wolves suddenly let out sharp warning cries.
“Uncle, there’s someone here!”
In the next instant, they shouted again.
“It’s... it’s a kid!”
The moment they heard it was a child, the hunters all exchanged looks.
They drove their wolves toward the crater. Of the first few to go down, one of the women reached out first and lifted a person from the pile of twisted metal.
It was a child who looked only around ten years old.
And what shocked the hunting party was that this child had satin-smooth silver hair, skin as pale as snow, and a loose white robe that looked almost like sleepwear. With his eyes shut tight, he looked like a sleeping angel.
The child was far too beautiful.
So beautiful that one look was enough to tell he did not belong to their barren, backward Blackrock Star. He was the kind who should have lived in a delicate, comfortable greenhouse, some pampered little heir raised in luxury from childhood.
The woman holding him looked a little at a loss.
She had never held such a soft child before.
He was simply too delicate and precious, forcing even a woman who had once killed a fire lizard with her bare hands to rein in her strength.
She was afraid that with the slightest carelessness, she might shatter this beautiful child.
By the time Uncle Chong came over, a crowd had already gathered nearby.
Some looked at the child with curiosity, others with astonishment.
After all, outsiders rarely appeared on Blackrock Star, much less children.
“Uncle Chong.”
Seeing him approach, the woman quickly said, “He was lying right in the middle of all that wreckage.”
Uncle Chong first looked at the place she indicated. It was the very center of the crater. The collision had clearly been severe. Metal was scattered all over the ground, with almost no intact pieces to be found.
And even so...
The explosion they had heard just now had likely been enormous.
Yet for some reason, despite an impact violent enough to shatter even metal that could withstand the pressure of space, this child had somehow survived.
At that thought, Uncle Chong turned his gaze toward the young boy in the woman’s arms.
Like the members of the hunting party, his first reaction was that this child did not belong on Blackrock Star.
Had he drifted here by accident?
Or was it...
Uncle Chong looked at that head of silver hair and fell silent for a moment before saying in his hoarse voice, “Bring him back. Let Ashuang and Ashuang take care of him.”
If they left him here, the child would never survive the night. Better to bring him back first. No matter what his identity was, once he woke up, they would know.
The moment Uncle Chong made that decision, the sky gradually darkened as well. The sun was sinking fast, and night would fall very soon.
After dark, Blackrock Star became extremely dangerous. Even the hunting party did not dare linger outside.
The horn sounded.
With the prey they had caught, the hunting party prepared to return. The woman hoisted the boy in one arm, grabbed the iron chain with the other, and swung herself up onto the back of the red wolf she had tamed in one clean motion.
Under Uncle Chong’s lead, the wolf pack turned back.
They made it to the fort before nightfall.
It was a fort built half aboveground and half underground.
Tall walls surrounded it on all sides, and watchtowers had been built at each corner. The structures aboveground served as defensive positions against enemies, while the lower levels were where they actually lived.
Blackrock Star’s environment was so harsh that forts like this had been created in order to survive it.
Once the heavy gates shut, the place became a fortress as solid as iron.
Countless footsteps, low voices, the clatter of utensils—every last one of them came into Wen Yuzhi’s ears with perfect clarity.
He frowned slightly, only feeling that his room was somehow especially noisy today.
“Mond... tell everyone to keep it down...”
Still half asleep, Wen Yuzhi mumbled the complaint on instinct.
Then he slowly opened his eyes, only to find that what came into view was not his room at all, but a completely unfamiliar place.
His mind snapped awake in an instant.
All his memories came rushing back at once.
Being taken onto a strange warship... the imprisoned Saint Clan... him and the Saint Clan called No. 1 fleeing in panic... and then finally boarding the escape pod...
One memory after another surfaced in his mind, until they stopped at the moment when the escape pod had run into the interstellar storm and No. 1 had lunged toward him.
So... they had survived?
Wen Yuzhi had just started to sit up when a hand pressed him back down. fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
“Don’t move. Take it slow first. You just woke up—you can’t sit up that fast, or you’ll feel awful.”
An unfamiliar voice sounded above his head.
A moment later, a clean-featured young man appeared in front of him.
Just as Wen Yuzhi was about to speak, another face—identical to the first—appeared beside him.
The two faces, perfectly identical in both features and outline, looked as though one had been copied and pasted beside the other.
Even Wen Yuzhi could not help freezing for a second.
But the one who had spoken first seemed long since used to the way everyone reacted with surprise the first time they saw them.
He smiled and explained, “My name is Chong Fengshuang, and this is my older sister, Chong Fengxue. We’re twins, so we look exactly alike, don’t we?”
Wen Yuzhi nodded.
At least on appearance alone, they really did look exactly the same. But if you looked closely, there were still subtle differences.
The older sister wore her hair cut short and neat, and there was a sharp forcefulness in her eyes, while the younger brother seemed more fond of smiling and looked gentler.
Only...
Wen Yuzhi glanced around at the surroundings. This was obviously another unfamiliar place.
“May I ask where this is?”
Chong Fengshuang raised a brow. “You don’t know? This is Blackrock Star.”
And where was Blackrock Star supposed to be?
Wen Yuzhi said nothing, but the confusion in his eyes was plain enough.
Chong Fengshuang: “...”
Well, it was normal enough for some rich family’s pampered little heir not to recognize a poor backwater place like theirs.
“This is the outermost planet of the empire. If your escape pod had crashed even a little farther off, you would’ve ended up in the uninhabited zone.”
...The escape pod crashed?
Wen Yuzhi pressed his lips together. The moment the control console had failed, he had blacked out. He had no memory at all of anything that came after that.
“Could you please tell me what happened?”
He asked Chong Fengshuang in a small voice.
Wen Yuzhi had already been good-looking to begin with, and now, lying on the bed with his face slightly pale, he gave off a delicate, fragile sort of beauty.
And when he lifted his eyes and softly made a request like that, the light, gentle tone seemed to stab straight into Chong Fengshuang’s heart.
He had never seen a child this beautiful on Blackrock Star before, nor had he ever heard a voice this soft.
Under Wen Yuzhi’s gaze, Chong Fengshuang hurriedly lowered his head.
His ears were a little red.
Seeing her brother act so pathetically, Chong Fengxue took over and answered for him. “We heard an explosion. The hunting party found you nearby.”
“According to them, the escape pod you were in had already crashed, and it smashed a huge crater into the ground. They found you in a pile of metal wreckage. When they saw you were still alive, they brought you back.”
Wen Yuzhi immediately asked, “Did you happen to see anyone else with me?”
Chong Fengxue shook her head. “The hunting party only brought back you.”
Then she looked at Wen Yuzhi and said in her cold, hard tone, “If you had a companion, I suggest you prepare yourself now.”
“Because there’s a very high chance he was turned to ash in the explosion. And even if he somehow survived, alone out in the wild, there’s no way he could possibly stay alive.”
Chong Fengxue said it without the slightest softness.
Chong Fengshuang hurried to smooth things over. “Sis, he just woke up. Don’t hit him with that right now.”
But Chong Fengxue only kept her face stern and said coldly, “It doesn’t matter whether he hears it now or later. He’ll have to know eventually. This isn’t some greenhouse. If you want to survive on Blackrock Star, then you need to understand how cruel this place is.”
After tossing out that line, Chong Fengxue seemed to lose interest in Wen Yuzhi altogether. She went over to the side and picked up a dagger, starting to wipe it down.
Chong Fengshuang, on the other hand, apologized to Wen Yuzhi on his sister’s behalf.
“Sorry about that. My sister’s personality is kind of blunt. She’s not trying to target you or anything. It’s just that things are a little special here. I’ll ask around about your companion for you.”
Wen Yuzhi was not angry.
Even if what Chong Fengxue said was not pleasant to hear, she was obviously someone who lived here and understood this place far better than he did.
She had not said it to scare him. Just as she claimed, she wanted him to prepare himself for what this place was like as early as possible.
If No. 1 had been an ordinary person, Wen Yuzhi would naturally have been worried sick. But Wen Yuzhi knew No. 1 was Saint Clan. Since he himself had survived, the other party had to have survived too.
“I want to go see where the escape pod crashed.”
Wen Yuzhi knew his request might be putting them in a difficult position, but he had nothing on him he could use as payment.
After thinking it over, he said, “I can heal external injuries for you in return.”
The ability to heal external wounds was certainly valuable in the interstellar world, but it was by no means so rare as to be unheard of. In Mu Luo’s Hil people, for example, there had been clan members who awakened similar gifts.
What truly made Wen Yuzhi’s natural ability precious was that he could not only heal external wounds, but also treat violent disruption in the mental sea.
In the whole interstellar world, there was only him.
And offering to heal external injuries as payment was the result Wen Yuzhi had arrived at after careful thought.
The people ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ here were not like those researchers on the warship. Those researchers had captured him because they were acting on orders from above.
There was no room to negotiate with them.
But the people here were natives of this planet. They had no interests tied to him. That meant they were people he could communicate with, people he could make a deal with.
Only, he had no light-brain on him now, no money or valuables of any kind. If he wanted these people to help him, then he had to show that he had value.
And his greatest value was his natural ability.
But the ability to treat the mental sea absolutely could not be exposed. That left only wound healing.
Wen Yuzhi believed they would be tempted.
And sure enough, the moment they heard that he could heal injuries, Chong Fengshuang’s eyes lit up at once, and his expression grew visibly excited.
“You can heal wounds? You’re telling the truth?!”
Chong Fengxue was even more direct.
She took her dagger and cut a line across her own arm.
Then she held her arm out in front of Wen Yuzhi.
Clearly, she wanted to personally verify whether what Wen Yuzhi said was true.
Wen Yuzhi released his mental power.
A soft sensation brushed lightly across the wound, and in the blink of an eye, the cut on Chong Fengxue’s arm had already healed.
The rapidly mended wound was the best proof possible.
The delight on Chong Fengshuang’s face deepened at once.
But Chong Fengxue only looked at Wen Yuzhi and asked, “You’re just exposing your own ability like this? Aren’t you afraid we’re bad people who’ll lock you up and use you?”
This cold-faced girl still did not speak in a very pleasant way.
Wen Yuzhi still only smiled, unconcerned. His brows curved slightly, and with the loose white robe draped over him and those delicate features of his, the boy of barely ten looked especially fragile and harmless.
Yet for some reason, the instant Chong Fengxue’s eyes met Wen Yuzhi’s, an indescribable chill suddenly rose in her heart.
That instinct for danger had saved her more than once before.
And yet just as her expression was about to sharpen with alertness, Wen Yuzhi moved his gaze away first.
“If you were bad people, I’d still have a way to escape.”
He blinked and tilted his head as he said it.
Wen Yuzhi sounded very relaxed, but neither of the two people in the room took his words seriously.
After all...
He looked exactly like a pampered little heir raised in luxury, with not the slightest sign of training on him. It seemed like if he went outside, a gust of wind could blow him away.
When he said he could escape, it sounded more like he was just trying to save face in front of them.
The suspicion in Chong Fengxue’s heart vanished in that instant too.
That feeling just now... had probably been her imagination.
With his head lowered, silver-white hair spilling down, Wen Yuzhi looked like a delicate porcelain doll.
How could a frail little heir like that possibly make her feel danger?
Chong Fengxue could not help inwardly sighing at her own overthinking.
As for Chong Fengshuang, from the very start, he had never found Wen Yuzhi the least bit dangerous.
On the contrary, seeing him reveal his ability so easily, Chong Fengshuang had already tagged him in his mind as naive and easy to coax.
He was even secretly glad that Wen Yuzhi had happened to run into them.
If someone else had picked him up instead, with a personality as simple as this little heir’s, he probably would have been eaten alive.
Little did he know that the little heir he thought naive and easy to coax had already quietly released two butterflies.
At that moment, the two butterflies were resting silently against the ceiling.
The instant Chong Fengxue or Chong Fengshuang revealed even the slightest malice, those two butterflies would destroy their mental seas in a heartbeat.
