[The system can confirm that the Commander is still alive.]
[When you first arrived in this world… although its life aura was extremely faint, there was indeed still a possibility of awakening it.]
A0’s words made Qi Heng raise an eyebrow.
[The ability known as Second Rebirth causes the Commander to regress toward infancy over a period of five thousand years. Once it returns to the form of a juvenile egg, it will hatch once more and begin growing again…]
“I know that.”
[Under ordinary circumstances, that is indeed what should have happened.]
A0’s tone shifted.
[However, you did not return as promised. Moreover, you disappeared without a trace shortly after the Commander began its Second Rebirth.]
[An order mobilizing the entire civilization for war required the joint authorization of the Tianjia Civilization’s Imperial Chief Consul and Grand Marshal. Therefore, after learning that you had disappeared, the Commander forcibly awakened from its rebirth and joined the Chief Consul in signing the order for war.]
Without the military power of the Primordial Zerg, the Tianjia Civilization’s strength had been greatly diminished.
As the war continued to deteriorate, Tianjia ultimately lost the conflict in which it had wagered the survival of its entire civilization.
A0 was describing events that had occurred inside the game after Qi Heng left.
He had known none of it.
[The Tianjia Civilization was destroyed twelve thousand years ago. Seven thousand years ago, on the day the Commander completed its Second Rebirth and was reborn, you did not appear…]
[It has been waiting for you ever since.]
Qi Heng fell silent.
When he had still been the Overlord of the Tianjia Zerg, he had indeed made a promise to the Commander.
On the day of its rebirth, he would personally come to receive it.
But at the time, Qi Heng had believed it was merely part of the game’s storyline.
How could he have imagined that…
The Commander had truly waited for him for such an impossibly long time.
The system had no reason to deceive him. In that case, the Commander had to still be alive.
That could at least be considered good news.
Qi Heng briefly recalled the Commander’s storyline from the game.
The place where it had ultimately chosen to undergo its Second Rebirth was Tianyun Star, directly beneath his feet.
Was that a coincidence, or had the system deliberately brought him here?
In a flash, Qi Heng remembered the exact place on Tianyun Star where the Commander had begun its Second Rebirth.
A possibility arose in his mind.
“That egg pit… Was it once Tianyun Star’s Hatchery?”
Even if the system had detected that the Commander was still alive at the moment they landed, it could not possibly have sensed it from an enormous distance.
Furthermore, the egg pit’s position and shape closely resembled the lower half of a building preserved in Qi Heng’s memories.
[Your deduction is correct, Overlord.]
A0 confirmed his suspicion.
Tianyun Star had once possessed a Hatchery containing Zerg eggs sent from planets throughout the civilization because they were unusually difficult to hatch.
Qi Heng had always paid close attention to the civilization’s population growth.
After discovering that the Commander’s aura could promote the hatching of those eggs, he had ordered them gathered together.
Later, the Commander chose to undergo its Second Rebirth directly beneath the Hatchery.
The Commander’s aura could assist the eggs in hatching.
In return, the life aura carried by the eggs could nourish the Commander, greatly increasing the probability that it would awaken after completing its Second Rebirth.
For a time, Qi Heng said nothing.
A mixture of guilt and unease rose within him.
Now that the Commander’s loyalty and almost faithlike devotion toward the Overlord had become real, Qi Heng seemed like an enormous, capital-letter example of a faithless bastard who had betrayed the trust of someone who had drawn close to him.
When he first ordered the Commander to undergo its Second Rebirth, he had partly been considering future plans to conquer and colonize even broader galaxies after the civilization advanced again.
When he learned that the Commander was attached to the Overlord and unwilling to leave for five thousand years, Qi Heng had made a promise with it.
Five thousand years later, he would personally come to receive it.
Because of that promise, the Commander obeyed the Overlord’s order despite its profound reluctance.
Qi Heng simply had not expected his own interests to change so quickly afterward.
The Overlord…
Qi Heng smiled bitterly to himself.
Looked at that way, the Commander was far from the only one to whom the Overlord had broken a promise.
There were many things he had agreed to do with the game’s “story characters” but never completed.
“How do I awaken the Commander?”
Whether considered rationally or emotionally, awakening it had become imperative.
He had broken his promise for long enough.
It was time to fulfill it.
Besides, Qi Heng genuinely needed the Commander now.
[First, Overlord, your first-stage fusion must reach fifty percent. Then you must travel to the Commander’s location and use your mental power to establish frequency resonance.]
[Only after sensing your presence will the juvenile egg containing the Commander have a chance of awakening from its excessively prolonged dormancy.]
Fifty percent fusion was not particularly high.
By cultivating stellar power and mental power simultaneously, Qi Heng should be able to reach it before long.
After considering the matter briefly, he made his decision.
“A1 never mentioned any of this, and the information isn’t in the database.”
“How do you know it?”
[As one of the system’s hidden programs, some of the information I possess is not recorded within the system database. It originates from scenes I personally observed.]
A0 calmly offered its explanation.
Its internal programming differed somewhat from A1’s, though the two were generally interconnected.
Whenever Qi Heng asked a question, A0 would speak everything it knew and hold nothing back.
“Even after I reach fifty percent fusion, there’s no guarantee I’ll awaken the Commander, is there?”
[Correct. However, the probability of success is seventy percent.]
For the system, seventy percent was already an extremely high probability.
After all, it exceeded half.
Qi Heng understood that perfectly well.
A seventy-percent chance was enough.
Success would naturally be welcome.
If it failed, there would be little point regretting it.
That night.
On the wasteland.
Qi Heng circulated stellar power to maintain his body temperature as he lay flat beside a weathered building.
A layer of camouflage fashioned from branches and leaves covered his body.
He held his breath and reduced his life activity to the lowest possible level.
This was the wilderness outside District 49.
Few Zerg could be seen here even during the day, much less at night.
Qi Heng had come to hunt.
One week earlier, after absorbing energy for the second time inside Mine No. 1, he had produced a third batch of one hundred and fifty mining workers.
Earlier that day, he had returned and absorbed the dozens of metric tons of Obsidian Crystal they had excavated.
After deducting daily operating expenses, the system’s stored energy had reached six thousand points.
The mine had also begun producing approximately six metric tons of Obsidian Crystal each day, providing a stable daily income of six hundred energy points.
After careful consideration, Qi Heng spent three hundred energy points to activate [Subsystem Scan], a branch of the system’s basic scanning function.
With the functions layered together, its scanning range increased from three meters to one kilometer, while consuming a fixed one energy point per minute.
The completed [Scan] function could record everything occurring within one kilometer, down to the smallest detail.
Combined with [Subsystem Analysis], which had cost five hundred energy points to activate, all collected information could be organized into documents and stored within the system.
At Qi Heng’s instruction, it could also analyze many details that might otherwise be overlooked.
After his energy reserves exceeded five thousand points, Qi Heng had attempted to repair the system.
A0 refused.
It explained that the system’s first repair would require at least ten thousand energy points.
It also recommended that once Qi Heng accumulated that amount, he should first repair part of the system’s built-in folded space.
In the game, these had been the inventory slots and storage warehouse.
After thinking it over, Qi Heng found A0’s suggestion very useful.
With a portable folded space, he could store excavated ore inside it as an emergency supply of reserve energy.
If a crisis arose, he would not be left entirely passive.
At that moment, a red thermal image appeared on the system interface scanning the one-kilometer diameter around him.
It had emerged from a burrow Qi Heng previously marked.
Judging by the traces, it was probably a burrowing animal measuring between forty and fifty centimeters in length.
There was an eighty or ninety percent chance that it was one of the rabbits living on the wasteland.
The rabbit hole lay less than one hundred meters from Qi Heng’s current position.
Narrowing his eyes, he saw a gray head emerge from the burrow.
It possessed moderately long, drooping ears, a plump and meaty body, powerful hind legs, and atrophied forelimbs that could nevertheless dig with astonishing speed.
A thin, narrow, and exceptionally sharp knife appeared in Qi Heng’s hand.
It had been made from Obsidian Crystal.
The extremely hard Obsidian Crystal blade was much sharper than one made from bone or stone.
Anything produced by the system was guaranteed to be top quality.
The knife could also be infused with stellar power when attacking.
One knife cost ten energy points.
Other than being expensive, it had no flaws.
And its price was not the system’s problem.
It was Qi Heng’s problem.
The slender blade resembled a surgical scalpel.
Qi Heng held it between two fingers, flicked his wrist, and sent the black blade flying.
After throwing the first knife, he quickly launched a second and then a third.
The blades, each coated in a layer of stellar power, flew at tremendous speed.
They pierced the large gray rabbit’s carotid artery as easily as a knife sliding through tofu.
A short distance away, the rabbit collapsed heavily to the ground.
Qi Heng stood and shook the shrubbery camouflage from his body before walking toward it.
The wasteland was not safe at night.
None of the animals capable of surviving there were easy prey.
Had meat not been so outrageously expensive in the slums, making it wasteful to continually exchange Starstones for it, Qi Heng would not have rushed out to hunt the moment he activated the scanning function.
He had even learned the knife-throwing technique by “hugging Buddha’s feet at the last minute.”
Fortunately, every aspect of his current body was exceptional.
Even something he had only learned at the last moment was enough to kill a large gray rabbit near the bottom of the wasteland’s food chain.
Until the system’s scanning function was deactivated, it would continue monitoring the surrounding area.
If any danger or unexpected change occurred, it would immediately issue a warning.
That was the source of Qi Heng’s confidence in wandering the wasteland after nightfall.
He reached the large gray rabbit and pulled the knife from its carotid artery.
The next instant, blood sprayed outward with a wet spurt.
Fortunately, Qi Heng had prepared himself and avoided being splattered.
He bent down and wiped the blood from the black blade with the rabbit’s fur.
Then he wrapped it in a strip of cloth and placed it in his pocket with the other knives.
Finally, he seized the rabbit by its long ears and carried the creature, which weighed several dozen jin, back toward the district.
One rabbit was enough.
Given Tianyun Star’s climate, any meat they failed to eat within a short period would begin to stink and rot.
Furthermore, the scent of blood left behind by the dead rabbit would attract other predators.
Qi Heng possessed no real combat experience.
If he encountered jackals, wolves, tigers, leopards, or anything similar, it would undoubtedly become a difficult battle.
There was no reason for him to take that risk.
District 49 was extremely quiet at night.
Even female Zerg found the low nighttime temperatures cold, so once darkness fell, none of them remained outside.
Except, of course, for the occasional female Zerg who, like Qi Heng, braved the cold to hunt in the wilderness.
Notes:
- 临时抱佛脚, literally “hugging Buddha’s feet at the last minute,” means hurriedly preparing or learning something only when it becomes urgently necessary.
- One Chinese jin is approximately 500 grams or 1.1 pounds, so “several dozen jin” indicates a very large rabbit weighing at least several tens of pounds.
- Qi Heng’s original human sex is male. The Zerg body he is merging with is male Zerg. Because the fusion is incomplete, the present-day Zerg around him have mistakenly identified him as a female Zerg, which allows him to enter the mines and move among them.
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