The G6 wild area of the Blue Mother Star and that dilapidated small hotel formed Jiang Jianming’s earliest memories.
He grew up there until he was four years old.
At that time, the Holy Human Empire still controlled all of humanity with violent politics and cruel laws. The powerful and ruthless new crystal human Emperor Odin established the capital Eternal Paradise Star City in the Second Star System, making it a paradise for the nobles.
As for the birthplace of humanity – the Blue Mother Star – due to its resources having been nearly exhausted, almost 80% of the area was designated as “wild areas,” and people’s lives became poorer year by year.
Not to mention how hard the members of the White Dove Red Leaf Society had it. Every day they had to scrimp and save, every step they took was filled with fear, worried that their base would be exposed.
While maintaining their livelihood, Helga still had to persist in planning the next steps, attempting to revitalize the disbanded organization. A dozen or so members would often talk late into the night under a dim lamp.
On those nights, the female leader would write with her right hand while rocking a wooden cradle with her left.
She had no time to sing lullabies for her child. She could only soften her voice as she explained plans, using this method to lull her child to sleep.
The female leader’s child had soft black hair and clear black eyes.
Perhaps some will in the universe took pity on the unyielding warrior. That vagrant who defiled Helga left almost no trace on Jiang Jianming.
The child’s intelligence far exceeded his age. A disabled human, growing up in such harsh conditions, yet hardly ever caused any trouble for the base.
Even some members who were prejudiced against Jiang Jianming’s background had to admit that this child was so well-behaved it was heartbreaking.
It was another rainy night.
Sparse raindrops pattered on the leaves outside. The season was about to enter winter, and perhaps after a while, the rain would turn to snow.
“Mama, Uncle Dan said Mingming’s father was a bad person.”
In the room, there was only a simple bed and a pair of table and chairs. On the table were a lamp, a light computer, two notebooks, and several pens.
The woman sat at the table, pen in hand, writing. Her child was on the bed.
Jiang Jianming rolled between the blanket and pillow, only exposing one small white foot, gently hooking his mother’s clothes with his toes.
The black-haired child’s voice was soft and tender, “He did bad things to Mama, then there was Mingming. So Uncle Dan and Aunt Lin killed Father.”
Helga paused, reached out to catch that little foot, and tucked it back under the blanket.
“Did Dan tell you these things?”
“No, Mingming heard it himself.”
The lamplight shone on the worn bedhead and wall, casting long shadows of the woman and child.
Jiang Jianming coughed lightly twice. The child had been hungry and cold since infancy, his health wasn’t very good.
Helga sighed softly. The woman stood up, came to her son’s side, and lovingly stroked the child’s back.
“Mingming, you took Mama’s gun to play with yesterday, didn’t you?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Afterwards, Mama told you that was wrong, and now Mingming knows that guns are dangerous, and that it’s not okay to touch other people’s things without permission, isn’t that right?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“But if Mama hadn’t told Mingming? Mingming wouldn’t have known that it was wrong.”
The woman’s voice was like gently flowing spring water. She took off her outer clothes, shoes, and socks, and quickly slipped under the blanket, stretching out her arms to embrace her precious child.
“It’s the same principle with Mingming’s father. If father could have been like Mingming, if someone had loved and cared for him when he was very young, often hugged him, kissed him, taught him what was right and what was wrong…”
“Then Mama believes, father certainly wouldn’t have done bad things.”
Jiang Jianming crawled over, resting his head on Mama’s outstretched arm. “Really?”
Helga raised an eyebrow and smiled, poking her son’s cheek with her index finger. “Of course, because the Mingming he produced is such a good, well-behaved child.”
Jiang Jianming blinked twice, tilted his head and asked. “Then does that mean Mingming’s grandmother wasn’t good?”
A trace of sadness flashed in Helga’s eyes. She stroked her son’s black hair, seemingly talking to herself. “If only it were that simple.”
“But it’s very likely… when Mingming’s grandmother was little, she also didn’t have anyone to love her or teach her.”
This was the scar of this era, and of the entire human civilization.
The night deepened, and outside, the rain indeed turned to snow. An immense and irresistible sorrow rode on the damp rain and snow, blowing into this dilapidated hotel, enveloping this mother and child.
Helga turned off the light, pulled the thin blanket with lumpy cotton over Jiang Jianming’s small body, and tucked in the corners tightly.
“Mingming, are you cold at night when you sleep?”
“Not cold.”
“Really?”
“Mm-hmm.”
But the skin in her arms was clearly cool.
Helga could only endure the sourness in her nose and hold Jiang Jianming tightly to her chest, hoping her body heat could bring a bit of warmth to the child in the cold winter.
She closed her eyes, buried her head, and murmured. “Mingming… Mama wants so much to change this world. Mingming, Mama really, really wants to.”
However, at this time, the White Dove Red Leaf Society was already powerless to change the situation, and even these not-so-good times did not last long.
A few months later, several bases, including this small hotel, were exposed one after another, and the group had to flee again.
Faced with the Empire’s pursuit, Helga and her companions could only bring out their folding mechas, fighting and retreating at the same time.
The young son of the leader was hastily stuffed into the mecha’s decompression chamber, without even being given anesthesia—
At that time, mecha designs did not consider the physical standards of disabled humans, let alone accommodate a four-year-old disabled human child.
They used the mecha to make three consecutive jumps, engaged in two fierce battles in space midway, followed by five more jumps.
When they finally shook off their pursuers and opened the decompression chamber, the child inside was bleeding from seven orifices, pale and unconscious.
…His nails were all curled and broken, covered in blood. The inside of the decompression chamber was covered in bloody handprints from his struggles and beating.
Helga broke down on the spot. The female leader who had never shed a tear even when seriously injured multiple times, now held her child and wept loudly.
She couldn’t have known at that time…
For Jiang Jianming, this was only the beginning of his suffering.
The main force couldn’t stop for the child. Jiang Jianming had barely been rescued back to life when the mecha had to continue moving.
In the end, the remnants of the White Dove Red Leaf Society chose to emulate space bandits. After several scattered forces merged, they relied on their only remaining large starship to wander in space.
Helga and her son settled down again.
But Jiang Jianming’s body was already ruined. The child was already slightly malnourished, and that wormhole jump had severely damaged his foundation.
Doctors who examined him all shook their heads, and some even directly declared:
“This child would be lucky to live past thirty-five. Don’t think about anything else… With this constitution, he won’t be able to accomplish anything.”
Other members of the White Dove Red Leaf Society also had ambivalent attitudes towards Jiang Jianming.
On one hand, he was indeed the leader’s only child, her flesh and blood; but on the other hand, he was a product of shame, and a weak, powerless disabled human. It could only be said… he was nothing but a burden.
Only Helga still loved him without any reservations.
She personally taught her son to read and write, described the thousands of years of human war and peace history under the starry sky, and the old virtues that no one in this era cared about anymore.
…To be honest, Madam Helga’s level of child education was truly not commendable.
Perhaps there would never be another mother in the world who, after discussing topics like “human rights” and “equality” with a five or six-year-old child, would then require her son to memorize military classics from the old Blue Mother Star era.
Sometimes, even those members of the White Dove Red Leaf Society who were prejudiced against Jiang Jianming felt uncomfortable watching this.
But it was precisely Jiang Jianming who somehow managed to take it all in and digest it.
Sometimes, he would sit by the starship’s porthole with his light computer, quietly looking at the vast starry sky outside.
Or he would use a simulated sandbox as a toy, playing with it alone for half a day until his mother came to find him.
Another three years passed.
In the 40th year of the Old Imperial Calendar, a new tragedy unfolded.
The remnants of the White Dove Red Leaf Society split from within, collapsing without external attack.
No one had anticipated this outcome, yet it seemed somewhat inevitable.
It can only be said that Wen Helga was too pure, too unyielding an idealist.
But her followers were mostly just ordinary people, at best ordinary people with a bit more courage and ideals.
So more people couldn’t understand why, when the White Dove Red Leaf Society had been reduced to just one last starship, the leader still stubbornly insisted on fighting against the behemoth that was the Empire;
Why, whenever the Empire used innocent civilians as bait, the leader would still try to save them even knowing it was a trap, falling into the same pattern again and again;
Why, for the disabled humans or the old, weak, sick, and disabled they took in along the way, the leader would rather go hungry herself than not feed them until a proper arrangement could be found…
Such incidents happened again and again, and more and more members became unbearable.
“This woman is too stupid.”
Such sentiments accumulated, erupted, and became the root of internal strife.
So, in the year Jiang Jianming turned seven, the leadership of the White Dove Red Leaf Society changed hands, and Helga and her son were expelled from the starship.
With nowhere to go, the mother and son could only return to the Blue Mother Star. They hid in countless dirty street corners, endured hunger many times. Finally, they fled to the most remote and chaotic wild area – Z2 wild area.
It was on the third day after arriving in the Z2 wild area.
A dying remnant crystal old man, filthy and crawling by the roadside, as humble as an ant. He wept pitifully, begging this mother and son for help as they passed.
Helga unhesitatingly shared their meager food and water, helping the old man rest by the roadside.
When the cold night came, she let the old man come close for warmth, holding her son with one arm and the strange old man with the other.
In the early hours of the morning, an unusual crystal particle wave woke Helga.
The sky was still dark in the distance, dewdrops like tears on the weeds. The old man next to her had bulging eyes and convulsing limbs. The next second, crystal clusters began to grow all over his body – perhaps too eager for that bit of comfort before death, he had concealed the fact that he was in the late stages of chronic crystal disorder.
In that split second, the woman only had time to push her son as far away as possible with her crystal bones.
……
On the third day of arriving in the Z2 wild area, a nameless old man died by the roadside. A mother with her son was infected with chronic crystal disorder.
****
In the 43rd year of the Old Imperial Calendar, at the Gray Owl Laboratory.
“Your Majesty… Your Majesty, this way please.”
The Emperor followed the white-coated experimenter, striding quickly through the interior of the secret laboratory.
After so many years, Odin had aged considerably. Even though genetic surgery could maintain his youthful appearance, the weariness and vicissitudes in his eyes couldn’t be concealed.
The constantly erupting crystal disorder tides, failed experimental connections, the increase of space bandits and White Dove Red Leaf Society rebels… incompetent descendants, sycophantic subjects…
All of this was grating on the tyrant’s nerves, making him increasingly moody and prone to killing on suspicion.
Until this day, when the Gray Owl Laboratory urgently reported to the Emperor.
First, five years ago, an embryo had survived.
Through the glass of the sterile experimental room, everyone could see the scene in the culture tank: from the purest crystal formed by crystal particles, human bone, blood, flesh, and skin grew. It struggled every day, silently screaming, transforming under painful experiments.
The experimenters repeatedly used drugs and radiation to stimulate the human consciousness within, infusing more and more crystal particles each time.
Until the crystal particle content far exceeded the limit, breaking through one impossibility after another.
By now, it could no longer be called human, and certainly not crystal particles either. It was a mutated monster in a combined state.
Just an hour ago, the culture tank exploded, and the glass of the experimental room was splattered with blood.
Amidst the screams of the experimenters, crystals instantly filled most of the laboratory and began to “color” – crystal coloring was a symbol of the new crystal humans.
When Odin rushed in, all the scientists and experimenters had gathered outside the glass window.
“What have you done!?”
“Forgive us, Your Majesty!”
The person in charge fell to his knees in fear, “We didn’t do anything, we hadn’t even started today’s routine operation! It suddenly happened spontaneously like this…”
Inside the laboratory, abnormal crimson gold crystallized matter condensed in the center. White mist rolled upwards due to the high temperature, with a vague shadow in the center.
It was an incredibly beautiful human child.
Its eyes were closed, its features deep and sharp, its skin as white as snow, with silky platinum blonde curly hair flowing over crystal edges that jutted out in all directions.
But only the upper half of the body to the chest was human. Below the waist was a large patch of crimson gold crystal, like a legendary beast with a human head and a snake’s body.
“…”
Emperor Odin grimly stepped forward, looking at this product of the laboratory.
He stared at it motionlessly, wordlessly.
The Emperor, already showing signs of age, seemed to grow even older in this silence.
“… Your Majesty?”
The chief supervisor lowered his head in fear.
Odin suddenly spoke, his tone inscrutable. “If we kill this one, can you make a second one based on the data?”
The chief supervisor was stunned.
He thought for several seconds to choose his words, then said with difficulty. “It’s a probability issue, Your Majesty.”
“We spent twenty years and lost nearly ten thousand embryos to get this one, but its willpower is far beyond the average standard. Even if we use the same data to recreate it, we can’t guarantee getting a second one in another twenty years…”
The next second, the child in the crystal opened its eyes.
Its pupils were a cold green, slightly clearer than Odin’s eye color, like frost-covered jade.
The Emperor looked at it, and it looked back at the Emperor.
Odin’s lips curved into a silent smile, his throat vibrating with a sinister low laugh, “So…”
“Heh haha, so it’s you…”
The memory from twenty years ago was vivid.
Eight minutes of space-time disorder, that black-haired young boy from the future, that cursed history book, that page… the dazzling new king.
It was this one.
So it was the one he himself created.
Suddenly, under the terrified gaze of all the researchers, the Emperor threw his head back in wild laughter.
At this moment, Odin saw the tracks of history, needing only his command to decide the direction forward. The fate of his empire hung on the tip of his tongue, as did the fate of humanity.
The black eyes of the disabled human youth from a hundred years in the future gazed at him, so clear it cut his heart like a knife.
[Sir, why are you crying?]
“Monster, hybrid.”
Odin took a step forward, his eyes carrying a murderous smile, “All these years… it must have been painful, right? You must hate me, right?”
“Let me tell you, all these experiments were by Zhen’s imperial order.”
“Don’t you want to kill Zhen?”
Opposite, the half-human half-crystal child’s eyelashes fluttered, emitting a somewhat strange sound. “Kill…”
It raised its bloodied hand expressionlessly, pressing it against the glass. “Kill… you…”
“It can speak!!”
A scientist’s face was filled with terror, “Since when did it learn human language!?”
The next moment, crimson gold crystal bones burst from the child’s back!
The reinforced glass of the laboratory shattered with a bang, countless fragments reflecting those cold, inorganic green eyes—
This is the first toll of the new century’s bell, the tyrant thought hazily.
The surrounding experimenters cried out in fear. Odin roared, swinging both fists forward. Bright red crystal bones clashed with crimson gold, producing a sharp, piercing sound like swords clashing!
They separated after one strike.
Shards of crimson gold and bright red crystal splattered everywhere.
Odin stepped back with one foot, while the floor where the monster stood cracked and sank.
Their strength was almost evenly matched.
Two rows of guards behind the Emperor raised their guns simultaneously!
But the tyrant raised his hand slightly, signaling the guards to lower their weapons.
He grinned. “Don’t be rude. From now on, it is Zhen’s child.”
“—Your Majesty!?”
Odin twisted his wrist, walking towards the small monster opposite, speaking as he walked. “Its name…shall be Kaios. His Highness Prince Kaios.”
The chief supervisor exclaimed in shock. “Your Majesty! But it…”
“Shut up. Watch, Zhen will make this monster become a true god of killing, and an undefeated conqueror.”
“By the way, tell Zhen’s incompetent eldest son to continue being useless. The Holy Human Empire still has twenty years for him to squander.”
The tyrant spoke with narrowed eyes and a lazy tone. He stepped over the shattered glass, walking towards the small monster before him.
“Kaios” stared straight at the approaching emperor. The crystal bones around it sharpened, rapidly heating up, like flowing lava.
Odin shook his head, sneering. “Don’t be naughty, little one. You can’t kill Zhen yet.”
“But it doesn’t matter. From now on, Zhen will teach you…”
“How a devil should kill.”
