Qi Heng had not spoken loudly, but every Zerg possessed extremely sharp hearing.
As soon as the words left his mouth, the surrounding onlookers sucked in a collective breath. For a moment, every Zerg’s attention fell on the two of them.
The female Zerg stared blankly.
The male Zerg looked shocked.
A female Zerg had actually refused a male Zerg’s invitation!
It was simply inconceivable!
In front of Qi Heng, the smile on the face of the male Zerg calling himself Carlos stiffened.
Clearly, he had never expected to be rejected, much less rejected so mercilessly.
Qi Heng was growing impatient. He had no interest in standing there like a performing monkey for everyone to gawk at.
If this male Zerg refused to get out of his way, was Qi Heng somehow incapable of leaving on his own?
With that thought, Qi Heng frowned, stepped to the side, and prepared to walk away.
Carlos, who had been rejected for the first time in his life, remained frozen for several moments. His face alternated between pale and livid as humiliation turned to anger.
How dare this female Zerg reject him?
Not only had he rejected Carlos, but he had even told him to get lost. Now he was leaving without sparing Carlos another glance, as though Carlos were beneath his notice.
Anger surged through Carlos. Without thinking, he reached out and grabbed the black-haired female Zerg by the arm.
“Wait. Who gave you permission to leave?”
Qi Heng’s expression abruptly darkened.
He raised his arm and forcefully flung Carlos’s hand away.
Qi Heng disliked excessive physical contact with other people and always maintained a certain distance from everyone. Even Yan Ning, with whom he had a fairly good relationship, had never approached and touched him without permission like this.
This was unquestionably the ugliest expression Qi Heng had worn since arriving in this world.
Carlos had never imagined that a female Zerg would dare strike back at him.
Caught entirely unprepared, he felt an enormous force slam into him. His body staggered backward beyond his control, and when he could no longer maintain his balance, he fell heavily to the ground.
“Ah!”
Qi Heng looked down expressionlessly at Carlos, who had fallen in a miserable heap.
“Do it again, and I’ll break your hand.”
Carlos sat on the ground with his eyes wide open, unable to believe what he had just heard.
Under Qi Heng’s cold gaze, he instinctively swallowed.
Those eyes were terrifying, but somehow they made that face look even more attractive.
Ah, as expected of the female Zerg he had taken a liking to.
He truly was different.
Carlos felt as though the anger in his heart had been frozen solid by that one look.
Everything had happened so quickly that the surrounding Zerg were stunned by the turn of events.
A female Zerg had not only rejected a male Zerg’s sexual invitation, but had also knocked him to the ground. Had they not witnessed it themselves, no Zerg would ever have believed it.
And this female Zerg had even dared threaten a male Zerg.
After speaking, Qi Heng swept his gaze across the surrounding spectators, then stepped around Carlos and walked away.
He never wasted words.
Perhaps the other Zerg regarded his statement as a threat, but Qi Heng had merely been stating a fact.
He had always done what he said he would do.
After Qi Heng left, the other Zerg gradually dispersed once there was no longer any spectacle to watch.
Carlos remained seated on the ground for quite some time.
Another male Zerg walked up to him and nudged him with his foot, looking speechless at Carlos’s foolish expression.
“What are you still staring at? That female Zerg is already gone.”
“Are you planning to sit here forever?”
“Of course not.”
Carlos climbed to his feet and smiled at his friend.
“Xiao Wei, don’t you think he’s very special?”
“No.”
“That female Zerg attacked you just now. Weren’t you furious?” Carlos’s friend, Xiao Wei, looked him up and down several times, utterly bewildered. “I’ve known you for so long, and I never realized there was something wrong with your head.”
“There’s something wrong with your head,” Carlos retorted.
“That female Zerg rejected you and then shoved you to the ground.”
“If you think a female Zerg like that is special, what else could it be but something wrong with your head?”
As Xiao Wei spoke, dissatisfaction entered his voice.
“A disobedient female Zerg like that must be arrested by the patrol team and properly punished.”
“There’s no point trying to explain it to you,” Carlos said. “But you were right about one thing. We should go find the patrol team.”
“They can arrest him, but they aren’t allowed to hurt him.”
Xiao Wei stared at him.
“What do you mean?”
Carlos brushed the dust from his clothes.
“It took me so long to find a female Zerg who suits my tastes. I don’t want him dying too quickly.”
“Hurry up. I waited all this time for him to appear again. If he escapes, I’ll make you regret it.”
The patrol team maintained a station in the trading area, not far from where they stood.
Xiao Wei and Carlos headed toward it one after the other.
Elsewhere, Qi Heng’s expression had improved slightly after leaving, but his mood had not truly relaxed.
He began considering what had just happened.
There was nothing particularly important about Carlos mistaking him for a female Zerg.
What disgusted him was that, merely because Carlos believed he was a female Zerg, the male had approached him without the slightest shame or restraint and invited him to spend the night together.
Worst of all was the certainty in Carlos’s tone, as though Qi Heng’s agreement were inevitable.
The reactions of the surrounding Zerg were also highly suspicious.
Qi Heng realized that his behavior might have brought trouble upon him.
However, he did not regret it.
He had never truly been given a choice in that situation.
Should he have remained silent instead of telling Carlos to get lost? Or was he somehow supposed to accept the invitation?
Qi Heng had originally entered the central trading area to exchange Starstones for salt. He had never expected matters to develop this way.
The status of male Zerg in District 49 was clearly different from that of female Zerg. Since he had just offended a male Zerg, trouble would inevitably follow.
To prevent them from finding him, he should leave as quickly as possible.
Qi Heng changed direction and exited the trading area by another route.
Many female Zerg moved through the trading district, and some of them also had black hair. Qi Heng blended into the crowd and soon vanished without a trace.
By the time Carlos and Xiao Wei arrived with several female Zerg from the patrol team, it was already too late.
The black-haired female Zerg they were searching for had long since disappeared.
“This is all because you moved too slowly. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have escaped,” Carlos said with an ugly expression.
Xiao Wei scoffed.
“How can you blame me? This was clearly your own fault. If you hadn’t let him leave, would we be unable to find him now?”
“Why didn’t you hold on to him earlier?”
Male Zerg were inferior to female Zerg in nearly every physical respect. The difference in their constitutions existed from birth and only widened as they matured.
If a male Zerg ever came into conflict with a female Zerg, then for the sake of his own life, he should never attempt to confront the female Zerg head-on.
Every male Zerg knew that.
The corner of Carlos’s mouth twitched. He raised a foot and kicked at Xiao Wei.
“Are you trying to get me killed?”
That black-haired female Zerg looked dangerous enough. Carlos had merely grabbed his wrist, and the other Zerg had thrown him to the ground before warning that he would break his hand next time.
Had Carlos truly hugged him and refused to let go, he might already have been dead.
“At worst, he would have beaten you up. He wouldn’t dare kill you.”
“Female Zerg who try to resist us never meet a good end. They wouldn’t dare.”
As Xiao Wei spoke, he glanced at the female Zerg in the patrol uniform whom they had summoned.
“You can leave. There’s no need to continue searching. That female Zerg has probably already left the area.”
The female Zerg in the gray uniform silently departed, long accustomed to the arrogant, commanding tone of male Zerg.
“He escaped this time. Who knows whether I’ll get another chance?” Carlos said regretfully.
“Then wait until next time.”
Xiao Wei looked around the trading area, his expression meaningful.
“He can’t avoid coming here forever.”
…
Qi Heng did not know that he had been targeted.
He left by a different route.
However, given his personality, even if he had known, he would not have taken it seriously. The trading area was not somewhere he absolutely needed to visit.
Thus far, Qi Heng knew that male Zerg held a higher status than female Zerg and enjoyed a significantly better standard of living.
However, he did not yet understand precisely why.
He had assumed it was because male Zerg were so few in number.
Although he had some suspicions, he had no desire to verify them or investigate further.
Qi Heng had never cared about matters unrelated to him, provided they did not take the initiative to provoke him.
After leaving the boundaries of the trading area, he headed toward the outskirts of District 49.
At this hour, few Zerg could be seen in the wilderness beyond the district. As Qi Heng traveled deeper into the remote area, he gradually found himself completely alone.
When an enormous sunken pit appeared in his field of vision, he had reached his destination.
The dead-egg pit.
On the night Qi Heng transmigrated into this world, he had nowhere to go. In the end, he had sat beside this pit for the entire night.
Only after meeting Yan Ning at dawn had he finally found a place to stay.
He had not returned here since leaving that day.
Qi Heng opened the old blueprints for several special structures once built on Lan Continent of Tianyun Star.
A three-dimensional cutaway model of a peculiar building soon appeared on the system interface.
He reached out, rotated the structure, and compared it with the pit before him.
The pit’s original upper structure had once been a Hatchery.
In other words, the pit was all that remained of the Hatchery. This was also the place where the Commander had undergone Second Rebirth.
From Qi Heng’s perspective, only a few months had passed since he had ordered the Commander to begin Second Rebirth. After thinking for a while, he could still recall where he had arranged for the Commander to be placed.
However, if A0 had not activated the [Oath] Awakening Protocol and then expended energy to locate the nearest mental imprint, Qi Heng would have found it nearly impossible to associate this pit with the Hatchery where the Commander had undergone Second Rebirth.
A Hatchery originally built to improve the survival and hatching rate of Zerg eggs had now become the final resting place of dead eggs.
The building above had been completely destroyed, leaving only a deep crater behind. It was not difficult to imagine what had happened here during the war.
Had A0 not repeatedly guaranteed that the Commander’s aura still existed, Qi Heng would have found it extremely difficult to believe that, amid such devastation, the Commander could still be alive.
Qi Heng had only obtained this information from A0 that morning. This was the first opportunity he had found to investigate it carefully.
When the Hatchery was built, it had been excavated five hundred meters underground and divided into aboveground and subterranean sections.
The Commander was located at the very lowest level.
To awaken the Commander, Qi Heng’s mental power needed to make direct contact with the Commander’s body.
However, the disparity between his current self and the Overlord was too great.
At present, Qi Heng could barely project his mental power a hundred meters outward. If it needed to penetrate solid matter, that distance would be reduced by another two-thirds.
With mental power at this level, it was absolutely impossible to awaken the Commander while standing here.
He had to descend.
That was why Qi Heng had been studying the Hatchery’s construction blueprints.
The upper structure had been destroyed, and judging by the condition of the crater, few of the lower levels could have remained intact.
Nevertheless, the underground passages might not all have collapsed or become buried.
As long as he could find a single entrance, he could follow the routes marked on the blueprints into the subterranean complex.
Qi Heng looked at the crater’s steep slope.
He gathered stellar power beneath his feet and descended step by step. This method conserved more stellar power.
Before long, he approached the Zerg eggs abandoned along the edge of the pit.
Some were newly discarded, while others were old. Their colors revealed approximately how long they had lain there.
Qi Heng’s gaze swept across the eggs, and a faint discomfort stirred within him.
He could not help raising a hand to cover his chest.
The dreams had influenced him far more profoundly than he had realized.
The emotion rising within him was heartache.
He grieved for these dead eggs.
He grieved for each vivid life that had disappeared.
At the mere thought of how many Zerg eggs had been buried in this pit over the past ten thousand years, his brows drew together involuntarily.
Qi Heng took a deep breath, steadied his emotions, and suppressed them.
“A1, begin.”
【Yes, Overlord.】
【Terrain scan activated. Task successfully established: compare current terrain with the original structure and locate accessible passages.】
“Mm.”
Qi Heng did not head toward the center of the egg pit.
Instead, he followed the curved wall of the crater, taking the longest steps possible.
The system compared every area he passed with the passages shown on the blueprints and calculated the coordinates where an entrance might still exist.
Qi Heng could have searched personally, but there was no need.
The system could locate an entrance far more quickly.
This was precisely why he had accumulated system energy: to use it in situations like this.
As expected, fifteen minutes later, the system finished constructing a terrain map.
【Overlord, based on the calculations, the coordinates where passages may still exist are as follows…】
Qi Heng tested them one by one.
His luck was good. At only the second coordinate, he found an entrance buried beneath rubble.
This entrance was more than sixty meters below the rim of the crater.
At this depth, he could step on the dead Zerg eggs merely by lifting his foot.
“A1, perform a detailed scan of this entrance and calculate the energy required to clear the passage.”
【Calculation complete. One hundred energy points are required.】
When sufficient system energy was available, the system was practically omnipotent.
“Blast it open.”
【Please place your hand on the marked point.】
A red dot appeared within his field of vision.
Qi Heng extended a finger and touched the indicated location, somewhat curious about what would happen next.
The following second, accompanied by the system’s calm voice, the rocks before him silently shattered into pieces less than five centimeters across.
There was no violent explosion, only a faint tremor. Most of the rubble had been reduced to dust that drifted down around the entrance.
【Task completed.】
【Ninety energy points expended to clear the obstruction. Ten energy points expended to form a protective barrier. Total expenditure: one hundred energy points.】
Protected by the barrier, Qi Heng was completely isolated from the dust produced by the demolition.
The upgraded protective barrier was well worth its considerably higher price compared with the one he had previously used.
Not only did it prevent dirt and other contaminants from approaching him, it also maintained an oxygen cycle, making it ideally suited to what he was about to do.
Qi Heng waited until the dust had completely settled, narrowed his eyes, and looked inside.
Without much hesitation, he walked directly into the passage.
The depths were utterly dark.
Even with his excellent night vision, he could not see accurately in darkness this complete. Moreover, he encountered a new obstruction before he had traveled far.
The passage had not merely been buried at the entrance. Its interior had collapsed as well.
Qi Heng held a Starstone in one hand.
After activating the stellar power within it through a particular method, the Starstone became a source of light.
Its glow was not especially bright, but it was more than sufficient for Qi Heng.
“A1, expend energy to create one Devourer larva.”
With the protective barrier isolating him, he had no fear of being burned by the released stellar power.
【Creation complete. One thousand energy points expended.】
A plump white larva no larger than a fist appeared beside his feet.
Its appearance was nearly identical to that of a mining worker larva, but the energy required to create it differed by several thousandfold.
Qi Heng spread out his mental power and ordered the Devourer to clear any obstacles blocking the path ahead.
As its name suggested, the Devourer’s ability was to devour.
It could consume any mineral, plant, rock, soil, or other substance within its capacity. Even living creatures were included in its diet.
Everything it consumed would be converted into energy for growth.
Once a Devourer passed through its larval and growth stages and reached maturity, it retained only the energy necessary for basic survival.
Most of its remaining excess energy would then be condensed into a form of highly concentrated energy crystal.
Qi Heng had named this substance Sky Crystal.
A Sky Crystal was diamond-shaped and pure enough to be transparent. Only its uppermost tip carried a trace of pale blue, making it resemble the clear sky after rainfall.
One standard unit of Sky Crystal contained eighty percent more energy than an equal quantity of ordinary energy crystal.
The Devourer could therefore be considered one of the most useful Primordial Zerg.
Its sole disadvantage was that it needed to eat constantly in order to sustain its life processes.
If it could no longer obtain sufficient energy, it would enter dormancy.
Unless awakened, it would gradually exhaust even the small reserve of energy required to maintain life and eventually die in its sleep.
With the Devourer and the system assisting him, Qi Heng explored downward at remarkable speed.
The Devourer ate continuously as they traveled. By the time they had crossed the passage leading toward the lowest level, its body had grown several times larger.
Its color had also begun changing after consuming so much metal, shifting from its original white toward silver.
When Qi Heng finally reached the lowest level and the Devourer consumed the last obstruction, a vast, dark space appeared before him.
To view the entire chamber, he fully activated the Starstone in his hand and threw it forward.
The Starstone exploded in midair, illuminating the chamber like a flash grenade for several seconds.
The underground space was extremely broad.
Rows upon rows of shelving stretched before him, but there was no sign of the Commander.
It was too dark.
The Starstone did not provide enough light. He would have to find another solution.
Qi Heng thought for a moment, walked forward two steps, then turned right and continued for more than ten meters before stopping in front of a wall.
The Devourer, now as tall as his thigh, shuffled after him with great difficulty.
Without an order from the Overlord or a Commander, it would not take so much as a single bite from its surroundings, even if hunger left it desperate to consume matter and convert it into energy.
It obeyed even when doing so violated its instincts.
“I wonder whether this can still be activated,” Qi Heng murmured.
He reached out and tapped the wall.
While examining the building’s interior blueprints earlier, he had noticed information about the lowest floor.
The lowest level possessed an independent energy system that could be activated as an emergency backup if an accident occurred outside.
Qi Heng pressed the concealed control.
Perhaps because it had remained sealed underground, the internal machinery had escaped corrosion from the atmosphere.
After several seconds, part of the wall successfully receded, exposing a control panel containing several buttons.
Embedded beside the control panel was a cylindrical crystal approximately as thick as an adult’s arm and around forty centimeters long.
Using an energy crystal merely as backup power.
This was the foundation Tianjia Civilization had possessed at its peak.
On second thought, however, it was not particularly surprising.
To maintain the normal operation of such an enormous, specially designed chamber, only an energy crystal would have been suitable.
Qi Heng sighed and pressed the blue button.
Light appeared within the cylindrical crystal.
Immediately afterward, the control panel’s display lit up, followed by the entire chamber around him.
The darkness was suddenly replaced by brilliant illumination.
Qi Heng found the abrupt change uncomfortable and needed several moments to adjust.
He operated the display.
The writing on it belonged to the old Tianjia Civilization. Perhaps because he had fused with part of the Overlord’s memories, Qi Heng encountered no difficulty reading it.
A soft sound was exceptionally distinct within the silent chamber.
A section of the metal wall near his feet slid outward.
Looking down, Qi Heng saw energy crystals identical to the cylindrical crystal above, arranged neatly inside.
Six formed each row, with twelve crystals in total.
Naturally, a backup energy system would never rely on only one crystal.
Qi Heng had already suspected as much after learning that backup power existed. This merely confirmed his assumption.
The war on Tianyun Star must have erupted extremely quickly.
After the upper Hatchery was bombarded, no one had thought to search the levels beneath it.
Otherwise, these energy crystals would never have remained here, and the Commander would probably have been discovered long ago.
Qi Heng closed the metal panel.
Did that mean these resources now belonged to him?
He did not dwell on the energy crystals for long.
He had not yet completed the purpose of his descent. Compared with acquiring energy crystals, locating the Commander was far more important.
Qi Heng turned and walked through the chamber that had remained sealed for ten thousand years.
He passed one tall, empty rack after another.
The racks should originally have held Zerg eggs brought here to be exposed to the Commander’s aura, but every space was now empty.
If the game’s layout matched reality, then the Commander should have been located at the exact center of this chamber.
With that thought, Qi Heng walked toward the middle of the enormous space.
Suddenly, his eyes widened.
The scene before him was completely different from what he had imagined.
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