She was like a rare flower admiring its own beauty, blooming in the wind whether or not anyone was watching.

At this moment, this “rare flower” had tears in her eyes and a smile on her face, her picturesque features seemingly aglow with the light of human civilization. Looking at the choked-up and speechless Gordon on stage, she thought to herself: “I want your life in return.”

Since humanity entered the New Star Calendar era, there had been over two centuries of peace, but now, that peace—like a mirage—had split open with a hideous crack—

Chapter 2

Five years later.

New Star Calendar Year 275, Eighth Star System, Beijing Beta Star.

“Beijing Beta” was a dime-a-dozen planet name; every star system had a dozen “Beijing Stars,” “London Stars,” or “Zimbabwe Stars,” just like in ancient Earth times, when many Chinese cities had a “Beijing Road” or “Nanjing Road.”

Maybe because of the name, Beijing Beta Star had a distinctly Eastern vibe, and many residents carried at least a trace of ancient Chinese blood—of course, in the godforsaken Eighth Star System, even if you had the blood of the ancient dragon, you could forget about living a dignified life.

It was said that in the daily top ten headlines of mainstream media in other star systems, there was always one lamenting the people of the Eighth Star System living in dire straits.

They even gave this place a nickname: “the Wasteland.”

There were eight major star systems in the Alliance. The capital star, Votto, in the First Star System, was naturally the tip of the pyramid. The further down the list, the farther from Votto, the more backward the development—by the time you got to the Eighth Star System, it was basically the sewer of the pyramid.

The Eighth Star System became “the Wasteland” for both natural and historical reasons. Resource scarcity and poor transportation were part of it, but more was due to historical baggage. To explain it all would be like a child without a mother—a long, complicated story—

Over two hundred years ago, in the Old Star Calendar era, the Alliance was locked in fierce battle with the Interstellar Pirate Corps—the members of the Pirate Corps were also descendants of ancient Earthlings, not tennis-ball-eyed ETs. They didn’t originally call themselves “Interstellar Pirates,” a name that screams “villain,” and they weren’t just a single faction. After the Alliance government took control of most star system regimes, for convenience, they lumped all anti-government groups refusing to recognize the Alliance under the name “Interstellar Pirate Corps.”

The Eighth Star System was “isolated and alone,” like a pitiful island compared to the other seven star systems that stuck together. Back then, to resist the powerful Alliance, small anti-government factions were forced to unite, using the Eighth Star System as their base to stand off from afar. At the dawn of the New Star Calendar, the Eighth Star System was occupied by the Interstellar Pirate Corps for a full century, until New Star Calendar Year 136, when General Simon Foster, then an Alliance commander, reclaimed it and reestablished navigation routes with the other seven star systems.

For a hundred years, the Alliance developed at lightspeed under the twin spotlights of science and the humanities, while the Eighth Star System was tossed about in endless internal strife among pirates, each taking the stage in turn. The gap between the two ends of the navigation routes grew into an unbridgeable chasm, the difference between them almost like that between modern humans and ancient chimpanzees.

After General Simon Foster reclaimed the lost territory, the Alliance sent people to inspect the Eighth Star System, only to find this godforsaken place had nothing of value. So they set up a “democratic autonomous” government there—in other words, they released these chimpanzees into the wild and let them fend for themselves.

Whenever the Alliance needed the administrative chiefs of all the star systems to attend important events, the other seven star systems’ chiefs had their own nameplates, but the Eighth Star System’s representative had no name—just a simple “Eighth Star System” printed on the nameplate. It wasn’t regional discrimination; it was just that these “chimpanzees” were always fighting among themselves, and their administrative chiefs and governments were basically disposable. The representative changed so often that no one knew who was who, so they had to use the “species name” as a stand-in.

Anyone with any means tried every way to emigrate; those left behind were the poor souls abandoned by the times in the wasteland.

Within the Eighth Star System, Beijing Beta Star was considered quite respectable. It was the most populous planet; though it was chaotic and desolate, there were still some struggling industries and interstellar shipping routes in operation, allowing people to scrape by.

Night had fallen. On Beijing Beta Star, a sluggish public bus carried drowsy passengers, crawling along its route. The paint on the bus was peeling, and the four characters for “Galaxy Transport” were so worn that only “Sun Cloud Vehicle” remained. The AI driver was probably more “artificial idiot” than intelligence, with a failure rate over 95%. Only the “ultra-safe mode” still worked, so it crawled through the night, honking every five minutes.

Not a single window on either side of the bus was intact—they’d all been smashed by residents woken by the night bus’s horn.

Inside, the bus was drafty and dusty, with no one maintaining it. The “Galaxy Transport” company had gone bankrupt two centuries ago, and now only this one unstoppable city bus system remained, running half-dead on autopilot every day.