SZAR Chapter 88

Erwen was pressed down by the shoulders and forced to kneel stiffly on the auction platform.

This handsome yet cold-looking admiral was covered in blood. His hair was messy and his clothes were torn. The shoulder insignia on his uniform had been ripped apart by the violent blast wave of an explosion. His military uniform now hung on him like strips of cloth. He lifted his eyes, but they were clouded with darkness.

The violent explosion of the aircraft had injured his eyes. Now Erwen could not see, there was nothing but darkness before him.

He knelt on the cold ground, listening to the guards beside him chatting casually.

“Damn it, where did this military female come from? That long scar on his face, and he can’t even see. Can he really sell for a good price?”

“I heard the boss’s group picked him up on a junk planet.”

“Pamir’s been fighting wars every day lately. Probably some poor fool who got separated and happened to be picked up by the boss.”

The Pamir Star System lay on the edge of the territory and was also a war zone, infamous for its darkness and chaos. Local gangs were everywhere, and shady dealings were common.

Erwen’s aircraft had been sabotaged by the enemy and crashed straight down nose-first. Relying on years of piloting experience, he barely managed to land it on a junk planet before losing consciousness from excessive blood loss. By the time he woke up, he had already been captured by a local gang.

Because his military uniform was torn and he looked so miserable, and because the long scar across his face blurred his appearance, no one recognized him as an Imperial Admiral. They simply treated him as an ordinary military female and dragged him to this auction house.

This was actually a good thing. Many of the gangs on these barren planets were made up of exiled criminals who hated the Imperial government. If Erwen’s identity were exposed, it would only bring him more trouble.

One of the guards cracked sunflower seeds and said, “But I heard the strategist from the gang next door wants a test subject. Military females can endure a lot of punishment. Maybe that strategist will want him.”

Another guard asked, “You mean that strategist who’s always messing around with strange potions?”

He shivered. “I heard he’s studying the mental sea. No idea what kind of experiment he’s doing.”

The mental sea was the most hidden and fragile part of a female Zerg. Even the slightest disturbance could cause unbearable pain. The Empire’s central interrogation room had many devices designed to affect it. Research on the mental sea was also widely recognized as the most complex field and the hardest to produce results in.

Now a gang strategist on the frontier, someone with no official qualifications at all, was studying the mental sea. There was no need for anyone to explain further. Erwen already knew what he wanted to study.

He wanted to study torture devices.

An Imperial Admiral was an S-rank female Zerg, with a vast and resilient mental sea. However, after becoming widowed and going a long time without any soothing, Erwen’s mental sea had been hovering at the edge of collapse. He was holding it together purely through willpower. If strong external stimulation were applied, he might not last long enough to wait for the Empire’s rescue forces.

Calmly, he calculated in his mind:

“With my current condition, I can probably withstand the level of impact from the central lie detector three times. The military’s scan of this region will take ten days. I just hope that within these ten days, this strategist’s research doesn’t go too far.”

The guard’s communicator beeped three times. He grabbed Erwen by the hair and pulled him to his feet, dragged him to the front desk, and then threw him into the center of the auction hall. A spotlight focused directly on him.

Erwen could not see, but he still frowned under the harsh light.

He heard the auction hammer rise and fall one after another. The guests were all using voice modulators, their voices carrying a distinctive hoarse tone with the crackle of electric current. With his sharp perception, he sensed that the guest in the very front was the first to place a bid. The price he offered seemed impossible to surpass.

Soon the entire hall fell silent.

The auctioneer struck the hammer, finalizing the sale.

The guard beside him muttered to himself, “Damn… it really is the strategist.”

Right after that, Erwen was roughly pulled to his feet and shoved into a small cage. Then came the sound of wheels rolling and the lever of a flying craft being pulled. He was transported to the strategist’s home.

………………

Qu Xia sat on the sofa, waiting for his ‘experimental subject’ to be delivered.

He adjusted the tightness of the voice modulator around his neck, opened the refrigerator, and stared worriedly at the canned food inside.

As a weak and sickly male Zerg, he could not open these deformed cans.

Supplies on this barren planet were extremely scarce. Although Qu Xia had managed to become a minor leader in the gang, the place he lived in was still just a shabby little standalone house. All the food in the kitchen consisted of defective goods rejected by the main planets. The metal pull tabs on these cans had been crushed and warped, making them extremely difficult to open.

Qu Xia tried prying one open and found that he couldn’t.

Whether as a male Zerg of the Empire or as a top-level researcher from Earth, Qu Xia’s life skills were basically less than zero. He was completely helpless when facing these cans. In the end, he could only put them back into the refrigerator.

Qu Xia had transmigrated into the Zerg world half a year ago. The original owner of this body had been a sickly high school student whose head would start hurting once every month. The pain was like a power drill boring into his skull. When Qu Xia first arrived in this body, it happened to be during one of those attacks, and the pain had nearly killed him.

The original owner’s family was poor and could not even afford hospital treatment. He lived every day on the edge of starving to death. Enduring the headaches, the top scholar Qu Xia downloaded a pile of pirated medical materials from StarNet. After studying them for half a month and learning most of what he needed, he finally reached a conclusion—

The original owner was actually a male Zerg. Because he had been injected with hormones that suppressed the development of his male traits, the side effect caused the headaches.

Qu Xia then downloaded a pile of pirated sociology papers and discovered the unbalanced ratio between male and female Zergs in this world. On this barren planet, male Zergs were more precious than gemstones. Combined with the terrible law and order here, if he revealed his identity as a male Zerg in this frontier region, it would be like a child carrying gold through a busy market, before long, he would be skinned, devoured, and swallowed whole.

So Qu Xia continued the monthly injections.

But the pain was extremely difficult to endure. He needed to find a way to ease it as soon as possible.

Using simple equipment, Qu Xia built a device to detect brainwaves. The headpiece was basically a metal basin. Once someone put it on, they could no longer see the outside environment, so he could not both run the test and observe the brainwaves at the same time.

That was why he wanted to buy an assistant.

When he saw that female Zerg at the auction house, Qu Xia happily clapped his hands.

Handsome face, firm features, eight-pack abs, a military female Zerg, and even from the main planet. Qu Xia had heard that female Zergs from the main planet were virtuous and good at taking care of the household, skilled in cooking all kinds of dishes. If he bought him and brought him home, he could have him cook. Thinking of this, Qu Xia,  who had been eating boiled cabbage for almost half a month. felt like tears were about to fall.

— It wasn’t that the strategist only had cabbage. It was simply that Qu Xia didn’t know how to cook.

A precious researcher who had always been served hand and foot, cooking? That was some kind of advanced skill.

Another thing that attracted Qu Xia even more was that this female Zerg was blind.

He himself was a male Zerg, and this secret absolutely could not be exposed in front of others. Ordinary female Zergs had sharp vision and could easily notice that the insect pattern at the back of his neck was unusual. With a blind one, he would not have to worry.

So he decisively pressed the auction button and took this female Zerg for himself.

Just then, the doorbell at the entrance rang three times.

Qu Xia slipped on his slippers and ran over with quick steps to open the door.

The guard respectfully pushed the cage inside, nodding and bowing toward Qu Xia. Then he handed over the key to the cage and took out a wrinkled piece of paper. “Hello, Strategist. This is the password for the suppression ring.”

Around Erwen’s neck was a dark iron suppression ring that restrained most of a military female Zerg’s strength. This thing was an outdated relic eliminated from the main planet. It had no fingerprint unlocking function and could only be opened with a password.

Qu Xia took the slip of paper and put it away casually, then dragged the cage into the house.

Erwen lowered his eyes and silently memorized the path as he was dragged.

It was a small two-story house. The strategist dragged him toward the middle of the living room. There was a carpet on the floor, and the flooring underneath seemed worn and damaged. When the cage rolled across it, he could feel slight bumps.

He noted all this information and guessed where the strategist would drag him.

Most likely to the so-called laboratory. Experimental subjects should be kept there.

The long period of kneeling and blood loss had left the admiral somewhat dehydrated. Leaning against the iron bars of the cage, he wondered when the strategist would begin the experiment.

Once he experienced the first experiment, he would be able to estimate how many more times he could endure it.

The cage finally stopped moving. Ahead came the sound of a cabinet door opening and closing, followed by the clinking of glass bottles.

It seemed the strategist had taken out some kind of medicine.

Erwen frowned slightly, feeling that the situation was somewhat troublesome.

The Empire also used chemical agents, for example, ones that heightened sensitivity or numbed the mental sea. Compared with purely physical impact, these chemical substances posed a far greater threat to the mental sea.

He had to do something.

Erwen raised his vacant eyes and lifted a hand to grip the cage bars, trying to communicate with the strategist. He put on a weak and exhausted expression.

“Sir, could you allow me to rest for a moment?”

He pointed to the bottom of the cage. “Just this carpet will be enough.”

Showing weakness at the right time could lower the other party’s guard. Besides, Erwen truly needed rest. His near-death condition might remind the strategist that this female Zerg’s body could not withstand excessive experimentation. If the strategist did not want the female Zerg to become a mere disposable consumable, it would be better to allow some recovery.

But at the same time, his heart sank.

He only hoped that this strategist did not need a consumable.

“Oh.” Qu Xia certainly did not want a consumable. What he wanted was a live-in housekeeper, or basically a female mother. Otherwise, sooner or later he would starve himself to death. And this female Zerg he had bought had impressive chest muscles and came from the main planet, the supposed holy land of female virtue. At a glance, he looked perfect for the role of a live-in housekeeper.

“I bought him at the auction house. It shouldn’t be too much to ask him to do a little work, right?” Qu Xia thought. “Those gang members wouldn’t even blink while chopping off hands and feet, and all I want is for him to help with cleaning and cooking.”

Without suspecting anything, he opened the cage with a click.

Erwen quietly let out a breath of relief.

His gamble had paid off. This strategist had spent an expensive price to buy him, so he clearly did not intend to use him only once. As long as he remained this man’s experimental subject, he would at least receive basic care.

Erwen politely expressed his thanks. Feeling his way forward, he walked out of the cage and knelt down on the floor. He rested in a very restrained posture; on the first day here, it was best not to anger this strategist whose temperament was still unknown.

Qu Xia looked at him strangely.

Could someone really rest well in that kneeling position?

Suddenly, he remembered something and said, “Wait a moment, don’t sleep yet!”

Erwen’s whole body tensed. He frowned slightly, not knowing what this strategist was about to do. Then his fingertips touched something cold.

Qu Xia rubbed his hands a little awkwardly and said, “You’re a military female Zerg. Your strength must be great, right?”

“Can you help me open this can?”