Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Ling Yue paced back and forth anxiously.

In the glass compartment across from him, a fellow native of Blue Star was "giving birth."

He was a strong, brown-haired man, now lying prone on the floor, barely moving, save for the occasional twitch.

He had been suffering for quite a while.

To prevent the test subjects from harming themselves, the glass compartments housing them contained nothing even remotely hard. The man, writhing in agony, had no outlet for his pain, so he could only rip at the loose-fitting experimental garment. The garment now hung off him in tatters, and through the holes, something could be seen squirming in his abdomen.

Ling Yue glanced upward. In the upper level of the glass enclosure, several Zerg researchers were observing the "birth" while making idle conversation.

The glass enclosure was designed to completely isolate pheromones, so Ling Yue shouldn't have been able to hear them... yet he could.

"No signs of the host undergoing Zerg metamorphosis. The eggs have finished incubating in the abdominal cavity."

"The gestational sac is rupturing. The young are looking for an exit. Should we lend a hand?"

"No need. Once they've fed, they'll come out on their own."

......

It was an unfamiliar language, yet through his psychic sense, he could "hear" and fully comprehend it.

The stirring in the man's abdomen grew more and more pronounced. The man, who had already blacked out, began to stir back to consciousness under the torment.

"Please... God... Mom..." the man slurred, blood trickling from his mouth and nose, his face, already a mess of tears and snot, growing even more pathetic.

Driven by survival instinct, he looked around wildly, and when his eyes met Ling Yue's, his bloodshot eyes, brimming with tears, were full of pleading.

Even though he knew the other man was just a prisoner too... what else was there to hope for?

Ling Yue nearly bit his fingers, but recalling the pheromone scent in his blood, he forced himself to lower his hands.

He needed to do something.

The Zerg above were keeping too close an eye on things.

Just as he was weighing the odds of extending his psychic power undetected, a researcher suddenly burst into the observation room above, shouting excitedly, "Broodmother!! A real Broodmother!!! The Lord's experiment... the Lord actually did it!!!"

As he spoke, immense waves of pheromone fluctuations radiated from the top-floor laboratory. This was... the Broodmother in the middle of laying eggs!!!

The researchers who had been working could no longer stay put. The test subject downstairs was clearly on death's door, hardly worth watching any longer.

The researchers bolted out like the wind. The one overseeing the subjects lagged behind, hastily issuing the order to "discard" the test subject before scurrying out as well.

Compared to seeing a true Broodmother with their own eyes, the newborn Zerg hatchlings in the belly of the soon-to-be-discarded test subject meant nothing.

The pheromone fluctuations grew stronger and stronger, and Ling Yue couldn't help but "look" upward. Even through multiple floors, he could "hear" the Broodmother drawing nutrients even as she produced.

As clutch after clutch of obviously high-grade eggs were laid, the excitement and glee of the watching Zerg became more and more obvious.

A sweet, maddening scent that made Zerg want to kneel and give everything! It was the Broodmother's pheromone, resurfacing after countless ages!!!

Ling Yue rubbed his temples. He had no idea what the Zerg were feeling, but this so-called Broodmother pheromone... to him, it reeked of cheap industrial perfume, and the longer he smelled it, the more he caught a whiff of rot...

This Broodmother didn't have long to live.

The thought surfaced in his mind out of nowhere.

But that didn't matter. The Zerg's celebration upstairs was a golden chance!

Ling Yue stopped holding back his psychic power. The glass compartment's door slid open slowly, and he walked over to the man across from him, placing his hand on the man's forehead.

His immense psychic power condensed, nearly taking shape as a faint blue glow, flooding into the man's sea of consciousness.

The man slowly closed his eyes. The pain ebbed away, and in the vast white light, his body gradually returned to its former self.

The Zerg that had taken him had inexplicably vanished. Guided gently by a fellow Blue Star native, they boarded a ship bound for home.

The suffering he'd endured in the lab felt like nothing more than a bad dream. He went back to his hometown, reunited with his family, and lived a plain but peaceful life.

With his family around him, he worked, traveled, and had a few lovers. He never married, but he eased into old age.

By a warm fireplace, in a wooden rocking chair, wrapped in the blanket his mother had left him, he came to the end of an unremarkable life.

A smile on his lips, the man's breathing slowly ceased.

Ling Yue no longer looked at the man's abdomen, now reduced to little more than a thin layer of skin. He withdrew his psychic power and turned to head for the lab bench upstairs.

He located his experiment number, "Yor," and ticked the box for "Scrap Pending Disposal."

Soon, a worker bug came in and hauled out the test subjects tagged "Scrap."

Ling Yue was dumped onto the disposal table in the lab's waste yard, where worker bugs were methodically injecting the final dose into each "scrap" in turn.

The agent worked fast. Across from him, the chests of the row of test subjects had already fallen completely still, and the worker bug's footsteps were getting closer.

Ling Yue's fingers twitched as he pressed on his slightly bulging lower abdomen—the gestational sac that had only recently formed.

The worker bug stopped beside Ling Yue, gave this frail scrap a once-over, and its gaze quickly locked onto Ling Yue's thigh—plenty of meat there for the needle.

The syringe needle had jabbed into scraps of all races, its barrel smeared with blood and tissue from their struggles, glinting coldly in the dim light.

Ling Yue listened quietly to the worker bug's movements. As it bent down, he pressed hard on the spot where his gestational sac lay.

In an instant, a wisp of an indescribable pheromone scent wafted out—extremely faint, yet utterly captivating to Zerg.

The worker bug's gaze dropped uncontrollably to Ling Yue's lower abdomen—it was here, the sweet scent of the Broodmother coming from this gland... It wanted it! It wanted more!!!

The worker bug crouched down, mandibles quivering, leaning in eagerly toward Ling Yue, hunting for more of that scent.

*Now!*

The instant their eyes met, Ling Yue's pupils snapped into vertical slits, with what looked like silver specks flickering around them.

The worker bug's eyes began to glaze over.

"The agent has been administered."

A flicker of resistance crossed the worker bug's face, its features made even more grotesque by the Zerg markings covering them. But in the end, it was just a low-tier worker bug. After a moment, it stood up stiffly and moved on to the next "scrap."

Watching the worker bug's retreating back, Ling Yue felt a weight lift off his chest.

The two abilities he'd gained since being dragged into this godforsaken lab had become his lifelines.

After scheming for so many days, he was finally safe, at least for now. Exhausted, Ling Yue bared his teeth in a grin and let out a few silent laughs.

Maybe the success of the Broodmother experiment had slowed the whole lab's workflow, because no other "scraps" were brought to the waste yard that day.

By nightfall, aside from Ling Yue himself, there was no other sign of life in the scrapyard.

His mental energy had been completely drained, leaving a throbbing ache in his skull. But what troubled Ling Yue even more was the fragile womb that had been harshly squeezed—the soreness spread through his entire abdomen, and his stomach churned with acid reflux. For a moment, he couldn't even tell whether it was his back, his stomach, or his lower belly that hurt.

This must be what his clients back on Earth called cramps...

If he ever made it back to Earth, he'd be able to comfort his clients with far more sincerity and empathy.

Though when telling the story, he'd probably say, "I have a friend named Yor..."

Amused by the thought for a second, he found a sliver of humor to bolster his spirits, then felt his way forward.

Deep in the night, the towering laboratory building stood silently in the darkness, like a ravenous beast.

After all these days, he'd finally made it out.

Trying to block out everything about the lab, Ling Yue pressed on.

The laboratory was located in a remote area, with dense forest behind it. Ling Yue certainly didn't dare go into the woods, so he stuck to the main road.

Having been implanted with so much insectoid genetic material wasn't entirely without benefit—Ling Yue walked the entire night, and his body managed to hold up.

Once dawn broke, the temperature started climbing.

The road was nearly empty—hardly any cars, and no people at all. Just clumps of... bugs scattered along the roadside every so often.

These bugs were about the size of a small Earth dog, their wrinkled shells coming in all sorts of colors—pale white, pitch black, purple, and even rainbow-hued.

Each one ugly in their own special way.

Ling Yue even saw this fat caterpillar, white with black spots, wriggling around and turning to show a creepy-cute baby face.

It was so messed up that Ling Yue instantly spat out a mouthful of stomach acid.

His stomach hurt even worse now.

These bugs couldn't really be called insectoids yet—their genes were all mixed up, and a lot of them were deformed, scattered all over the insect domain. Only after spinning cocoons and hatching did they have a slim shot at becoming real insectoids.

These little bugs were terrible hunters. Aside from being gross to look at, they weren't really a threat. Ling Yue kept his eyes forward, did his best not to look at them, and hurried along.

He just wanted to get as far away as possible—especially from Purification Clan territory, where all the insectoid experiments happened.

Preferably never coming back.

Ling Yue gritted his teeth and kept going, but as his body got weaker, his pheromones started going haywire.

Even though the scent was super faint, those bugs were crazy sensitive. They started trailing him from a distance, and one dumb one even shuffled up, trying to rub against him.

Well, "dumb" wasn't quite the word—the one trying to get close had two heads.

Ling Yue's expression went cold as he sped up.

That is, until—

A two-headed bug scurried up ahead of him and held out a fruit with its two black bug claws. Ling Yue could even make out a fawning look on those two faces where you couldn't tell the noses from the mouths.

Ugly in a way words can't describe.

But Ling Yue was seriously starving.

Food didn't do anything wrong.

As he bit into the fruit and kept walking, the two-headed bug behind him trembled with excitement, shaking pale white scale dust everywhere.

Once you get one, more follow. Ling Yue started getting more and more food—fruits, dead fish, dead birds that looked like bats...

More and more little bugs started trailing behind him.

One was ugly; a whole swarm wasn't just ugly—it was enough to set off trypophobia. Ling Yue didn't want to look back at all—until a sudden gust of wind kicked up behind him, and the next second, the bugs scattered, screeching in every direction.

Ling Yue spun around in a panic. A hover vehicle sat silently by the road, and out of it stepped... two pure bugs.

Ling Yue couldn't stop shaking. Were they here to grab him?

The Broodmother experiments had been going on for years, and who knows how many failed broodmothers had escaped—but once you got outside the lab's perimeter, the Purification Clan didn't bother with you...

Had they noticed something off about his mental energy? But he'd been so careful...

He knew he shouldn't—knew the odds were slim—but Ling Yue's face went visibly pale. His mental energy and pheromones were both totally drained; he was no different from the bugs on the roadside now.

The blinding white lights, the cold operating table, the stinging chemicals, the sound of scalpels cutting through skin, the stuff they shoved into his body for no reason...

His days as a test subject flashed through his mind like a slideshow, rooting his feet to the ground, freezing him in place. All he could do was stare at the pure bugs getting out of the vehicle.

But the two pure bugs just glanced at him, saw he was weak enough to ignore, and moved on—like he wasn't even there.

Ling Yue was briefly confused by being ignored.

The two pure bugs were already getting to work. They pulled out electric nets and started scooping up the bugs like they were fishing.

They didn't know why all these bugs had gathered today, but it made catching them easier and meant they'd finish the job faster.

Ling Yue watched for a second, then it clicked.

He remembered—these bugs were food for the "Broodmother." Eating these bugs made it easier for the alien test subjects to accept insectoid gene modification.

The first one caught was that cute baby-faced caterpillar—its face was too big, and it was too slow.

The two-headed bug that had been hopping around was in the net too, worn out from all that trembling earlier.

The bugs in the net were all squirming and screeching. The two-headed one, with two mouths, was wailing extra loud.

The sound made Ling Yue's stomach clench up, like it was stuffed with rotten rocks.

So blocked up he wanted to throw up the fruit he'd just eaten.

He wanted to leave, but his legs felt like lead, and he couldn't move.

As Ling Yue's head spun and his vision went blurry, a dark arm suddenly appeared in front of him. Its owner held the two-headed bug up in front of him: "You want this one?"

==========Author's Note:==========

Here's to a great start!!!