The Visitor

After nightfall, lights glowed in many of the luxurious mansions of the Bird of Paradise community. By day, the male insects were pampered students whom the Empire held in the palm of its hand and could not bear to scold; by night, they were eager participants in all kinds of "adult games." The nightlife of male insects was not especially rich, but they always liked to make themselves feel important through the bodies of female insects or sub-females.

Gu Ting, who had been a human in his previous life, had none of those strange hobbies. Rather than any activity tainted with lust, he would much rather be treated by Tuantuan as a fifteen-year-old giant baby, tucked into bed and told stories.

After the Prisoner's modifications, Tuantuan's chip had acquired a lot of new functions. Even its original repertoire of male insect fairy tales had turned into histories of female insect resistance, but that did nothing to stop Gu Ting from getting sleepy.

As Tuantuan narrated lines like "the limbs of the female insects dyed the banner red" and "at that moment, the male insects finally began to tremble and beg for mercy," Gu Ting grew drowsier and drowsier. His hazy vision slowly blurred until he sank into darkness.

In his dream there was a sea of flowers. He walked along a gravel path, and ahead of him a ray of dawn light burst open. Beyond that light seemed to be the world where he had once lived...

—Crash.

Something seemed to have been knocked over.

The little male insect, a light sleeper to begin with, opened his bleary eyes. Tuantuan, which had also been startled awake and had switched into alert mode, grew sharp blades out of its mechanical tentacles. That, of course, was also the Prisoner's handiwork.

"Tuantuan, don't move."

Gu Ting climbed out of bed. He picked up a small night-light and stepped barefoot onto the floor. His slight frame all but merged with the darkness, and even his footsteps were excessively light.

"Baby..."

"Shh." Gu Ting made a silent gesture and whispered, "Tuantuan, stay behind me."

Tuantuan strongly disapproved of what its little master was doing, but the command "obey" had been engraved into its chip, so it could only raise its mechanical arms and follow closely at Gu Ting's heels.

The short male insect youth went up on tiptoe and moved through the darkness, following the noise. The sound that had disturbed his sleep seemed to be coming from the small yard outside the apartment.

—Click.

A window on the other side seemed to have been pushed open.

Gu Ting stopped in his tracks, then turned and headed that way.

On Planet Firenze, the Bird of Paradise community could be called the safest place of all. On top of that, the male insects were hard to please, so there were no female insect guards stationed inside the community. After all, in all the years since the Bird of Paradise community had been established, there had never been a single incident, and so a sense of "safety" had naturally taken hold.

Gu Ting switched off the night-light in his hand. He and Tuantuan hid in the darkness and cautiously poked their heads out toward the window.

Cold moonlight still shone outside. A blurry figure struggled in through the window, and almost as soon as the figure landed, the unknown visitor went completely limp and crashed onto the floor with a muffled groan.

The little male insect compared his own build with the stranger's. Judging by the visitor's size, it had to be a sub-female.

—What was a sub-female doing here?

Gu Ting frowned. Male insects usually kept sub-females with soft, graceful figures in their residences as playthings for their amusement. Sub-females taken into the Bird of Paradise community would never have to worry about food or clothing again, but they were strictly controlled and could not set a single foot outside the residence without a male insect's permission. As a result, it was almost impossible to see a sub-female on his own in the community.

But the one in front of him was an exception.

Gu Ting slowly and quietly took two more steps closer, and at the same time the distinct smell of blood reached his nose.

—It was an injured sub-female.

The little male insect unconsciously bit his lip. He was thinking about what to do with the sub-female in front of him. There was no telling whether this visitor's arrival would bring fortune or disaster... though in all likelihood, disaster was the bigger share.

"Mm..."

The sub-female curled up on the floor suddenly drew a labored breath. His senses, slightly less developed than a female insect's, told him that a male insect was standing in the darkness, and so he staked everything on a plea for help:

"M-my lord... please, save me..."

"Please save me..."

"I'll do anything for you..."

"I'm begging you..."

Gu Ting hesitated, but a flashlight beam sweeping past outside the window soon interrupted his thoughts.

Inside the little male insect's body lived a human whose kindness had never been snuffed out. He could not stand by and watch someone die without helping. In the end, all he could do was grit his teeth and, with Tuantuan's help, drag the injured sub-female into the bedroom.

"Tuantuan, keep an eye on him. Don't follow me." Gu Ting felt that he still had to deal with the half-open window.

"Be careful, baby!" Tuantuan nodded, and its extended mechanical tentacles pinned down the weakly struggling sub-female.

Gu Ting went back to the "crime scene." He looked down and studied it for a while. The window had clearly been pried open, so the insect must still have tools hidden on him somewhere, but none of that mattered right now. Having already become an "accomplice," the little male insect carefully climbed out, fluffed up the flattened grass on the lawn in a few quick moves, and then shut the window properly on his way back in.

Almost as soon as he had finished, a flashlight beam swung over from the other side.

"Phew—"

Gu Ting hid behind the curtain and looked out the window—

Several female insects dressed in finery and dripping with gold and silver were staggering along the roadside. They carried liquor bottles and flashlights, and even in the dead of night they were loudly horsing around, seemingly clamoring about finding some insect.

Gu Ting narrowed his eyes. Under the cream-colored streetlight, he saw the male insect being propped up by the sub-females.

It was Klein Wardens.

What was he doing here? Was he looking for that sub-female?

Just as Gu Ting was, for once, putting his not-very-roomy brain to work, the drunken Klein seemed to have already lost interest in continuing the search. He waved a hand and headed back the way he had come with his crowd of "partners in crime" trailing behind him.

Gu Ting let out a quiet breath. It was best if no insect came knocking at his door.

He went back to the bedroom, but the scene in front of him made the corner of his mouth twitch—every one of Tuantuan's mechanical tentacles was wrapped around the sub-female, practically bundling the insect up like a rice dumpling.

The little male insect turned on the bedroom light. In the glare, the sub-female knitted his brows, and his half-closed eyes opened slightly.

The sub-female had grey-blue eyes, and beneath their luster there always seemed to lurk a faint sorrow. His long hair spilled over his shoulders, and together with the wounds covering his body, it lent him an abused kind of beauty, the sort that might even tempt male insects to do even crueler things to him.

But Gu Ting was not that kind of male insect. All he could do was spend half the night wringing out towels over and over, wiping the grime and blood off the sub-female bit by bit, and then take out the first-aid kit and dress the other's torn, gaping wounds.

The sub-female was already at the end of his strength. After that first desperate plea for help, his mind had sunk into confusion. Even with his eyes half open, all he could see was a blur, and in the end he could not hold on and slipped completely into unconsciousness.

The injuries on his body included knife wounds and whip wounds, and nearly all of them had deliberately avoided his face, leaving marks only on his torso and limbs. Many of the scars could even be traced back as far as a year.

Gu Ting had no curiosity about the sub-female's identity. After bandaging him up, he gave up his own bed for the time being and, to Tuantuan's displeasure, carried his blanket over to the sofa.

Tuantuan: "Baby should be the one sleeping in the bed!"

"We have to make room for the patient!" Gu Ting patted Tuantuan's round head and said softly, "Tuantuan, good night."

"Good night, baby."

The night was deep when Sanan woke up, parched.

He opened his grey-blue eyes to unfamiliar bedroom décor. The style was simple and minimalist, a far cry from the extravagance he had so often seen before, yet it gave him an inexplicable sense of comfort—this looked like a place where someone lived and rested, not a cradle of desire where male insects sought amusement and release.

The dizziness in his eyes gradually faded, and his memories began to come back—

Sanan remembered the rules of Klein's "game," so he had run for his life with every ounce of strength he had. In the case of the female insect Alai back then, all the blame had been heaped onto his head. But if not for Klein's greed and cruelty, how could there have been any talk of him "egging it on"? It was Klein who had set his sights on Alai's insect wings in the first place, and if Sanan, who served the male insect, had not gone along with it, the next one to die would have been him.

Sanan did not want to die. Years ago, because he had been born beautiful, Klein had taken a fancy to him and forcibly dragged him into the Bird of Paradise community.

For other sub-females, that might have been a heaven-sent chance to rise to the top in a single step. But for Sanan, who had already received his letter of admission to the Empire's First Military Academy, it was a bolt from the blue—

Sanan's male father was a very low-ranking male insect, and his female father was a military female. Father and son both held a very low position in the family and were even bullied by the secondary mates their male insect favored. Sanan hated that life with every fiber of his being, which was why he had set his heart on getting into the First Military Academy to change his fate. Even if he was not a military female who could go to the battlefield, he could still become a military medic. Anything was better than staying at home waiting for the day some male insect took a fancy to him.

But the day before he was due to leave, Sanan was sold to Klein by his own male father.

Even then, Klein was an A-grade male insect who enjoyed all sorts of privileges, and Sanan's male father wanted to curry favor with him, so he willingly offered up his beautiful sub-female son as a gift, even using Sanan's female father as leverage.

And so his letter of admission to the First Military Academy was torn to shreds, and Sanan grew up completely that day.

In the days that followed, he gradually shed the sharpness he once had and became a sub-female who lived by clinging to a male insect. His daily task was to make himself look pretty and serve Klein, until the day his female father was beaten to death by his male father—even though Klein had promised Sanan that he would take good care of his female father.

It was on that day, too, that Sanan, his heart full of venom, coaxed Klein, who had already set his sights on Alai's insect wings, into reaching for that poison-laced "apple."

Sanan had deliberately put only half the dose of the drug into Alai's cup. His plan was for Alai to wake up partway through the removal of his wings and undergo insectification from the pain—ideally killing Klein in the process. But for all Sanan's careful calculations, he never expected the female guard corps to arrive so quickly, and as a result, both he and Alai became cannon fodder to bear the brunt of the male insect's rage.

Alai was exiled to a barren planet, while he was kept at Klein's side and subjected to endless torment.

Fortunately, though, he had escaped. At least this time, he was no longer Klein's property.

At this thought, the sub-female lying on the soft bed suddenly let out a scoffing laugh. He slowly braced himself against the bed and stood up. Everywhere his gaze landed, he saw choices that differed from the tastes of most male insects.

—How remarkable. A male insect had actually given up his bed to an injured sub-female.

This was something Sanan had never seen before. He was suddenly a little curious: what kind of male insect would take him in in the middle of the night?

Enduring the pain in his body, Sanan made his way out of the bedroom step by step. His eyes, already adjusted to the light, were more than capable of picking out everything in the darkness.

Among the insect race, female insects had the keenest senses; their vision allowed them to move through darkness as easily as on level ground. Sub-females came second—inferior to female insects in physical ability and the five senses, but still far superior to male insects. As for the noble male insects, they could be called weaklings when it came to physical ability. Apart from psionic power and looks, they had nothing to show for themselves, and yet male insects with high psionic power were exceedingly rare, so much so that even a scrawny sub-female could turn the tables and kill a male insect.

It was just that no sub-female dared to do so.

He walked into the living room, and the first thing he saw was black hair peeking out from under a blanket, soft and ebony-dark, a little tousled from rubbing. He could faintly make out a stretch of neck dusted with stray wisps of hair.

Whoosh—

The robot coiled beside the little male insect trembled slightly. To be precise, a pair of blood-red bean eyes had appeared on its electronic screen, far more murderous than they were cute.

This was the protective mechanism the Prisoner had set up for Tuantuan in its chip.

The sub-female Sanan stopped short. He silently raised both hands, bearing the throbbing pain in his body, to show that he meant no harm.

Tuantuan's bean eyes changed from blood red to silver-grey. Its electronic screen brightened for a moment, its expression shifting from "●＿●" to "▔＿▔," and then it went dark completely.

Sanan let out a breath of relief inwardly, but he did not dare go near the sofa again.

He leaned against the wall. Light drifted through his grey-blue eyes, as if he had at last glimpsed a glimmer of light in the heavy darkness.

Meanwhile, on a barren planet—

A dark-skinned, silver-haired female insect wore a dark grey leather suit that clung tightly to his chest and limbs. A section of insect carapace extended from the small of his back to cover his vulnerable abdomen.

He stood over 1.8 meters tall, and the snug leather suit outlined the female insect's beautiful waist and abdomen. Beside his tightly packed eight-pack, the sexy lines of his Adonis belt were visible. His chocolate-colored skin in particular peeked out faintly from beneath the leather, like treasure hidden in the depths, tempting others to explore.

In his hand, the female insect held a bloodstained long blade. A weapon like this was rarely seen in the Imperial army; it was an obsolete cold weapon by now. But in the hands of the silver-haired, dark-skinned female insect, it was swung with ferocious force, and in the instant the blade fell, it dispatched the alien beasts charging out from the edge of the barren planet.

His face was spattered with the ice-blue blood of the alien beasts. The two sharply clashing colors were intense and aggressive, and together they gave the female insect, whose features were bold yet handsome, an indescribable allure.

On the other side, within the safety line, Ye Lai, with his long golden curls, stood behind the red line holding a cup of coffee and remarked leisurely, "Campbell's as fierce as ever."

Compared to the female insect immersed in slaughter up ahead, Ye Lai, also a female insect, appeared far more elegant. He was like a prince attending a banquet, and his exquisite, dazzling face could very likely captivate every male insect who ever laid eyes on him.

Englie, who was repairing equipment, flicked the sweat off his bronze arm. He raised a hand to run it over his silver-white buzz cut, glanced at the female insect battling the alien beasts, and replied, "The boss is really strong."

His voice was flat, almost without a ripple, and as soon as he finished speaking to Ye Lai, he immersed himself again in his world full of all sorts of machinery, large and small.

Ye Lai finished his coffee in boredom and said in a low voice, "Forget it. I've got nothing to say to you bunch of battle maniacs and repair maniacs."

Englie didn't even turn his head. "Then go find Amor. He's probably bored out of his mind."

"Forget it," Ye Lai said, pressing a hand to his forehead. "Going to Amor is just asking to be tormented. I'd rather wait for Little Jewel to come online tomorrow."

"Mm. I'm waiting for him too."

The moon over the barren planet gave off an eerie red glow. Compared with the tranquility of Firenze, this place was like a hell on earth—desolate and steeped in slaughter.