Free Web NovelInside the military academy on the capital planet.
Xi Heyan had just finished a class when his light-brain received a message from an unfamiliar sender.
It was an advertisement.
【Grand Opening of the Adventure World Theme Park — You’re Invited.】
Below the ad was a cartoon rabbit’s smiling face.
Very cute.
Xi Heyan closed the ad with an expressionless face.
When Zhuo Haoyu invited him to the training room for a mech match, Xi Heyan simply shook his head and refused.
“I’m not going. I have something to do this afternoon.”
Zhuo Haoyu did not think much of it. He assumed Xi Heyan was off to work another one of his “jobs.”
He was already used to it. Every time school went on break, Xi Heyan always seemed to be the busiest one of all, although Zhuo Haoyu still had no idea where exactly he was working.
And as soon as Xi Heyan left the school, he changed clothes, and even his face and biometric data changed with them.
At least on the surface, the face he wore now was utterly ordinary, the kind that would disappear in a crowd and never be found again.
Wearing that plain, forgettable face, Xi Heyan once again entered the underground black market.
Someone was already waiting for him in a private room inside the bar.
It was a person wearing a rabbit mask.
The moment the person saw Xi Heyan come in, a disguised electronic voice spoke up at once. “I brought what you wanted.”
Xi Heyan walked over. The other person tapped the light-brain and played a piece of footage that looked as though it had been secretly recorded.
The scene in the video appeared to be inside a laboratory. The people caught on camera were all wrapped from head to toe in protective suits.
They pulled the experimental subject for this round out of a cage.
It was a small stray beast.
Because it had been locked in a cage for so long, it seemed especially violent.
One of the people in protective gear took a syringe out of a cryo case and injected it into the stray beast.
Very quickly, the beast let out a scream of pain.
Its body looked as though it were undergoing a second mutation. Bones all over its body crackled and snapped, and it began swelling up as though it had been pumped full of air.
In just ten minutes, the stray beast had completely changed.
Its body had grown three to four times larger than before. The muscles in its limbs had clearly become far stronger, its fangs protruded more prominently, and its claws were even sharper than before.
If the earlier stray beast had not been enough to make Xi Heyan especially wary, then after the injection, the beast had become tall and powerfully built. When it opened its huge blood-slick mouth full of fangs and fixed the camera with those scarlet, clouded eyes, revealing a greedy expression, it gave off an overwhelming sense of pressure even through the screen.
And after the transformation was complete, the very first thing it did was bare its fangs and lunge at a nearby researcher.
In the next second, the collar around its neck flashed. A current shot through it, and the stray beast immediately let out a howl.
The video ended on that frame.
After watching the footage, Xi Heyan’s face revealed nothing.
The person in the rabbit mask said unhurriedly, “You asked us to investigate Polaris. This video was shot by one of our people after they managed to slip inside.”
“To be honest, it took quite a bit of work on our end to get this footage. Under Kegso, Polaris was sealed up like an iron drum. If that old bastard hadn’t died, and if his apprentice weren’t busy angling for position and formal control right now, it wouldn’t have been nearly this easy for us to plant someone inside.”
The rabbit mask paused there, then looked sidelong at the silent Xi Heyan and narrowed his eyes in a probing way. “Given our relationship, even at a friendship price, this job’s fee should still be at least this much.”
The rabbit mask raised a hand and named an outrageously high number.
Xi Heyan looked at it once, then said evenly, “I’ll transfer it to your account later.”
At that, the rabbit mask’s eyes turned smiling at once. For people in this line of work, there was nothing they liked more than clients who paid cleanly and generously.
“Since this one’s expensive, I’ll throw in one extra piece of information.” The rabbit mask grinned.
“Their project involving stray beasts started back when Kegso was still alive. We still haven’t found out exactly how long it’s been going on, but one thing’s certain—they must have some kind of secret experimental base behind the scenes.”
Hearing that, Xi Heyan still showed no sign of surprise.
“How about one more deal?” frёeωebɳovel.com
...
The beasts’ roars were getting closer and closer, and those jaws full of fangs were opening toward him.
Wen Yuzhi no longer had time to dodge.
He watched calmly as the stray beasts lunged at him from left and right.
The instant they were about to bite into him, crystal-clear butterflies fluttered toward them.
They shattered like gemstones.
Jagged shards of crystal pierced through the stray beasts’ bodies in an instant.
A furious howl rang out, scarlet eyes bulging further outward, making them look even more hideous.
Wen Yuzhi’s face grew paler and paler.
The healing he had done earlier had already consumed too much of his mental power, and materializing those butterflies had nearly drained the last of it.
The overuse of his mental sea made his head throb with pain.
Chong Fengxue arrived at that exact moment.
The instant she saw what was happening, she threw a dagger toward Wen Yuzhi, then leapt up and hooked one arm around the head of one of the stray beasts.
...
The entire sequence of movements flowed almost seamlessly.
Relying on pure strength, Chong Fengxue snapped the beast’s cervical spine with her bare hands.
And after catching the dagger, Wen Yuzhi reacted fast as well.
He grabbed the fur at the front of the stray beast’s neck and drove the dagger forward straight into its throat.
To make sure it was truly dead, Wen Yuzhi stabbed it three times.
Warm blood sprayed out. Some of it splattered onto the young boy’s silver-white hair, and some onto his hands.
Wen Yuzhi seemed completely unaware of it.
He drove in the final stab, and only after confirming that the stray beast was dead through and through did he pull the dagger back out.
The stray beast that had just been baring its claws and fangs crashed to the ground. Its bulging eyes remained open, as though they still held a deep unwillingness.
Perhaps in its eyes, someone as slim and soft-skinned as Wen Yuzhi should never have been able to resist them at all.
He should have ended up like the other humans—his throat torn open in terror, forced to watch himself get eaten bit by bit.
And yet Wen Yuzhi had not fallen into the fate they imagined. Instead, it was they who had been dealt with one after another.
In the end, five stray beasts—five corpses—lay neatly lined up on the ground.
When Chong Fengxue turned back after killing her beast, Wen Yuzhi was still holding the dagger she had given him.
The silver-haired boy stood there with his head lowered, snow settling on his shoulders, the ends of his hair and both his hands stained with blood.
Standing before the massive corpse of the stray beast, his indifferent expression made him look exactly like an angel in a painting grieving for the world.
The image hit hard enough that Chong Fengxue froze.
But she recovered quickly. She jumped down from the beast, crossed the distance in two or three steps, and stopped in front of Wen Yuzhi.
“Are you okay?”
Wen Yuzhi shook his head and handed the dagger back to her.
Chong Fengxue did not take it. “Keep it. I’ve got plenty more where that came from. You’ve already used up all the bullets in the gun, so keep this dagger for self-defense for now.”
As she spoke, Chong Fengxue looked at the corpses on the ground.
“You’re really impressive.”
For someone who had barely ever fought stray beasts before to survive being surrounded by five of them and even kill them—Wen Yuzhi’s performance really did shock Chong Fengxue.
After all, both she and Chong Fengshuang had always assumed he was just a little young master raised in a greenhouse.
Neither of them had expected him to strike so decisively once he had a dagger in hand.
Wen Yuzhi had not expected it either.
In that moment, his mind had gone completely blank, and everything in front of him had seemed to slow down. He saw the stray beast lunge at him, and his body had instinctively raised the dagger.
By the time he came back to himself, the beast in front of him was already dead.
And his heartbeat had quickened, his blood heating up.
Killing a stray beast with his own hands did not make Wen Yuzhi feel afraid.
Instead, it made him feel exhilarated.
If there had been a mirror in front of him at that moment, Wen Yuzhi would have seen that the instant he raised the dagger and drove it through the stray beast, his pupils had tightened, and even his calm, indifferent expression had become exactly like Mansendis’s.
He looked like a miniature Mansendis—calm and composed in the face of danger.
Only after he came out of that state did the dull, densely packed pain in his head make Wen Yuzhi frown.
But compared to that discomfort, there was something even more important weighing on his mind.
“These stray beasts are a little strange...”
He told Chong Fengxue about how the beasts had been hiding in the corner, lying in wait.
After hearing him out, Chong Fengxue’s expression immediately darkened.
She said to Wen Yuzhi, “Usually when stray beasts come harass the base, there are only a few dozen at most. The hunting party can handle that without any problem. But today, I don’t know what happened. There are far more of them than ever before.”
From a few dozen to thousands upon thousands, the pressure on the hunting party was obvious.
Uncle Chong and the others were practically using their lives to hold back the beasts, but there were simply too many of them.
And because it was dark, by the time they discovered that stray beasts had gotten inside the fortress, it was already too late to stop them.
Uncle Chong chose to stay on /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ the front line and keep the beast pack pinned there, while Chong Fengxue hurried back with several others.
When they got back, they happened to find the stray beasts that had broken in attacking the wounded, and Chong Fengxue killed those beasts on the spot.
Then, from the wounded, Chong Fengxue learned that Wen Yuzhi was still over here.
Afraid something might happen to the little young master, she came to check on him.
She had not expected there to be more that had slipped through the net on Wen Yuzhi’s side.
And these few stray beasts were obviously different from the others. They even knew how to keep lying in wait in the dark.
If Wen Yuzhi had not discovered them in time, there was no telling how much more damage they would have caused inside the fortress.
At that thought, Chong Fengxue took a deep breath and said sincerely, “Thank you for helping us this time. You didn’t just save so many wounded people—you killed these stray beasts too.”
Wen Yuzhi’s expression remained calm. “You took me in, so helping you is only right. Besides, we already agreed before. I’d treat your wounded, and you’d take me to the place where the escape pod crashed.”
Chong Fengxue, however, did not simply accept that explanation as though it were only natural. freewebnoveℓ.com
In her eyes, Wen Yuzhi truly had saved many of them. Things had been so dangerous tonight that if Wen Yuzhi had not been here, then with the base’s backward medical conditions, even those who hadn’t died directly in the mouths of the stray beasts would still have died from their injuries afterward.
Wen Yuzhi’s help had preserved their lives.
Chong Fengxue had a hard, cold personality, but she remembered kindness.
Even if Wen Yuzhi did not care about it, she silently etched what he had done into her heart.
...
Elsewhere, a dense fleet of warships departed the Ninth Star Sector.
The species in the nearby sectors were all trembling from the Saint Clan’s sudden movement on such a massive scale.
They had no idea who the Saint Clan was preparing to go to war with, or which unlucky fool had managed to provoke those lunatics again for no reason.
The last time the Saint Clan had mobilized a fleet on this scale, it had been against the human empire.
And the time before that, they had attacked the Padar people.
In the former, the human empire’s defense system had been torn open with ease by the Saint Clan’s warships. The imperial military had lost face so badly that the human emperor had reportedly fainted from rage.
In the latter, the Padar people had directly lost their capital, Kanirila. Even now, the surviving Padar people turned pale at the mere mention of the Saint Clan, each one curled up and hiding, with none of the arrogance they once had.
With those two living examples right in front of them, the moment they saw the Saint Clan fleet mobilize again, the species near the Ninth Star Sector all became fearful.
And sometimes, the more afraid you are, the more likely the worst is to come.
When the Saint Clan warships descended overhead, those species all thought they were finished.
Looking at the dense mass of warships above them, the gap in strength was so enormous that they knew perfectly well there was no chance they could win if they fought.
So after their upper ranks discussed it, they simply decided they might as well surrender on the spot.
At worst they would become prisoners of war, and being prisoners was still better than losing their lives.
And yet, to their surprise, the Saint Clan did not occupy their homes.
These Saint Clan soldiers seemed to be searching for something. Every time they arrived somewhere, they carried out a sweeping search of the area.
If they found nothing, they immediately returned to their warships and headed for the next destination.
This behavior left the invaded races baffled.
What was this supposed to mean?
They came... and then left? They were not invading after all?
Quite a few races were left with the same confusion. After the Saint Clan fleet left the Ninth Star Sector, it split into dozens of smaller groups. Each group had over a hundred warships, and they descended over different planets.
Every selected planet experienced the same thing—an invasion without occupation. The Saint Clan soldiers rushed down, searched the planet, then hurried away again.
The local inhabitants were left behind reeling, going from despair to the sudden shock of surviving by sheer luck, as if a gift had fallen from the sky.
They did not understand it, but for those races, as long as the Saint Clan left, that was enough.
No one knew what the Saint Clan was doing.
Only the Saint Clan themselves knew.
They were searching for their missing little highness.
Three days had already passed since the little highness went missing, and under Mansendis’s orders, every active Saint Clan warship had been sent out to search.
They started from the regions around the Ninth Star Sector, not overlooking even the tiniest planet along the way.
The Saint Clan had practically turned the surrounding sectors upside down in a sweeping search.
And as more and more time passed, with one empty report after another, the atmosphere aboard the Thanatos became increasingly oppressive.
Mansendis stood inside the command room, watching the track of the warships across the route map. From beginning to end, his face remained expressionless.
Mond came in and saw the way Mansendis looked. Without making a sound, he stood behind the silver-haired sovereign and did not interrupt him.
Instead, it was Mansendis who noticed Mond and spoke first.
“Any news?”
Mond opened his mouth, just about to say no, when Alvin hurried in with a tense expression.
“Squad Fifteen has reported in. They’ve found a suspicious warship!”
