Extra Update: Xiao's Diary (II)

Xiao's Diary

Today was an unlucky day. I didn't want to remember what date it was at all!

Gu Xiechen? The Holy Unicorn Mercenary Group?

They should all die! They should all go to hell!

What did the Holy Unicorn Mercenary Group's losses have to do with me? They were nothing more than greedy parasites clinging to the bodies of Roam people and Earthlings. But what about the components I ordered? What about all those parts I ordered? All my savings from the past few years had already been transferred into their account, yet they were attacked! The components that were supposed to be delivered to me... were all lost!

Damn bastards!

Gu Xiechen? The Holy Unicorn Mercenary Group?

I'll remember you!

Two brilliant blue lights flickered in Xiao's black eyes as he furiously closed his diary document. Grabbing a discarded mechanical arm beside the workbench, Xiao absentmindedly twisted the high-strength alloy arm, which could withstand loads of up to ten tons. Terrifying strength erupted from his seemingly slender arms. The mechanical arm let out an ugly creak, and furious Xiao twisted the thick arm into a mangled, ruined spiral.

The blue light in his eyes grew even brighter. Xiao suddenly drew a deep breath, his swollen muscles gradually shrinking as the light in his eyes slowly faded away.

He lightly swung his arm and threw back his head with a mocking laugh. After standing there in a daze for a while, Xiao helplessly looked at the large machine in his room that was nearly complete. Without saying a word, he grabbed his tools and dismantled it into its most basic components. The Holy Unicorn Mercenary Group had been attacked and suffered heavy losses, along with a first-class battleship of the Holsom Family. The custom components and parts Xiao had ordered clearly could not arrive on schedule. Nor did he have any new channels through which to order replacement parts—after all, he was merely an insignificant mixed-blood descendant of the Holsom Family. Few Roam people were willing to deal with him—and he had no desire to deal with more Roam people either.

If this treasure that had consumed all his effort could not be completed, then he would let it remain in his mind.

"Gu Xiechen? The Holy Unicorn Mercenary Group?" Xiao kept repeating those two names.

Throwing down the multifunctional tool arm in his hand, Xiao dejectedly walked out of his room. When the automatic door opened before him, he even felt a trace of fear. How long had it been since he had last left his room? Three months? Six months? Or... more than nine months? This spacious workshop was like Xiao's snail shell. It protected him, yet also bound him. As Xiao stepped through the automatic door, he instinctively lowered his head.

Twelve proud Holsom Family warriors marched past Xiao in neat formation. When their captain passed him, he merely gave Xiao a slight nod out of a servant's instinct. All twelve family warriors wore the latest Energy Armor. A three-centimeter-thick layer of dim blue radiance covered the exquisite, magnificent metal armor. It was said that this latest Energy Armor could withstand the main guns of a third-class Earthling battleship. Every set was extraordinarily expensive, and even the Roam people's main battle legions had yet to receive them.

Yet within the Holsom Family, even the lowest-ranking family warriors were equipped with this Energy Armor, known as the Radiant Dragon Wing VII.

"The glorious, great Holsom Family!" Xiao's lips twitched. As expected of the Holsom Family, the second-ranked Elector Family among the Roam people.

The floor, paved with a material fused from Zakla Energy Crystals and specialized metallic monocrystalline materials, gave off an eerie blue glow. The circular hall outside Xiao's workshop had a diameter of two hundred meters. Its Gothic vaulted ceiling, learned from Earthlings, rose more than four hundred meters high. The vaulted ceiling was made of transparent crystal, and sunlight streamed through the ceiling carved into focusing planes. Splendid pillars of light poured down, making the hall exceptionally grand and imposing.

Twelve radial corridors surrounded the circular hall, each leading to an important building of the Holsom Family. Xiao's workshop and living quarters stood beside one of those corridors. His workshop had originally been a rest room for the family's servants. A workshop converted from a servants' lounge suited Xiao's status as a mixed-blood perfectly.

Eight family warriors, completely shrouded in Energy Armor, stood at the entrance of every corridor. Nearly three meters tall, they looked particularly imposing. Their left hands rested on their waists while their right hands gripped specially made long-shafted axe-spears. The five-meter-long weapons were likewise covered in thick dim light, and powerful arcs of electricity occasionally shot from their tips with sharp crackling sounds. These family warriors seemed to have no concept of conserving energy. They kept these specialized energy weapons at full power at all times, seeking only that dazzling, glamorous display.

Even their Energy Armor—Xiao truly wanted to tell them that there was no need to keep the armor's energy shields activated everywhere they went. The Zakra Crystals they wasted every hour could propel a light tank for thousands of kilometers. But this was the Holsom Family's grandeur. This was the style unique to the Holsom Family!

Twenty-four disc-shaped aircraft, each two meters in diameter, flew out from a corridor to Xiao's left with a faint hum. Twenty-four handsome young men in flowing white robes stood atop them. They were tall, beautiful, healthy, and strong as Heavenly Gods. They spoke excitedly in low voices, while a faint blue halo covered their bodies, constantly swelling and receding with their moods. The overflowing psychic fluctuations made the hall feel as though a tide were rising. Xiao's body was forced back several steps, and his back pressed tightly against the wall.

One Roam youth noticed Xiao, but his gaze passed over him as if he did not exist. No one took Xiao seriously. Especially to these pure-blood direct descendants of the Holsom Family, there was no need to acknowledge his existence. He was merely a lowly mixed-blood, born only because Nanket Holsom had wanted to try his luck and see whether an exceptional genetic mutant might appear among his offspring. Since Xiao's genes had not mutated, and since his talent was so mediocre, he was nearly worthless.

The twenty-four arrogant direct descendants of the Holsom Family rode their disc-shaped aircraft out of the hall. A large contingent of family warriors stood in orderly ranks outside, waiting for them. Each young man had a varying number of family warriors guarding him. This too was part of the indispensable ceremonial display of the Holsom Family.

Xiao slowly walked out of the hall. Not a single family warrior gave him a proper glance.

Outside the hall was a plaza. Two purple-black battleships over three hundred meters long and hundreds of combat vehicles of various types were parked in orderly rows across the plaza, which was roughly a kilometer in length and width. Gale winds swept in with sand and gravel. The energy shields operating at full power around the battleships and combat vehicles emitted blinding light. Each grain of sand was constantly vaporized by the energy fields into wisps of blue smoke. The dense crackling of exploding grit never ceased, making the enormous plaza sound as though thousands of popcorn machines were running at full blast.

Thick clouds covered the sky, and faint thunder rolled across the horizon. A massive shadow could vaguely be seen slowly passing through the clouds. When it passed above Xiao's head, the active electrons in the air suddenly became nearly a hundred times denser. Xiao's long hair stood on end, and with just a light rub of his fingers, a small electric arc shot more than ten centimeters from his fingertips. The powerful electromagnetic field charged even the sand and gravel in the gale. As the windblown grit rubbed against itself, an electromagnetic storm suddenly erupted in the plaza ahead. Blinding purple lightning engulfed everything, while blue arcs several meters long burst from the energy shields of the battleships and combat vehicles. The sizzling explosions made one's scalp tingle.

This was a hellish world.

The enormous black shadow flying overhead was Mars's defense platform known to the Roam people as Thor's Roar. It was an artificial monster with terrifying firepower and formidable defenses. The metal platform, more than ten kilometers in length and width, could only drift slowly through low orbit. Its massive magnetic levitation engines constantly poured enormous quantities of electromagnetic pollution into the Martian atmosphere below. Wherever it passed, not a blade of grass could grow.

If not for the Roam people's powerful psychic fields, an ordinary Earthling would never survive for more than three minutes in such an environment.

At the edge of the plaza stood a patch of withered woodland. Yellowed trunks as thick as a child's wrist stood crookedly and weakly in the ground. The gale swept a vast amount of sand and gravel toward those pitiful trees. After a series of crackling sounds, several utterly charred trunks burst into flame at once.

Several Holsom Family warriors ran over upon hearing the sound. One of them solemnly pointed at the burning trunks, and a stream of white frost surged from his fingertip. The temperature in the small area plummeted to around one hundred degrees below zero. The burning trunks froze under the frost, and the flames naturally vanished.

This was the Mars the Roam people had painstakingly developed for nearly three hundred years—a terrifying planet barely suitable for Roam people to live on.

Xiao often could not understand why the Roam people constructed defenses like Thor's Roar. Even if the Roam people paid Earthlings to come, Earthlings would not want to live on a planet like this. Xiao had seen many pictures of Earth in the diary left behind by his mother. Its beautiful natural landscapes were simply like heaven. Would Earthlings cross the stars to attack a hellish Mars? Only if all Earthlings had gone mad!

"Ridiculous." Muttering a fitting assessment of the Roam people's current leaders, Xiao walked toward a battered Sand Scorpion I off-road vehicle in a corner of the plaza. This combat vehicle was far older than seventeen-year-old Xiao. It was said to have taken part in nineteen local conflicts with Earthlings. Xiao had found it among a pile of war junk transported back to Mars, and it had taken him over a year to restore its mobility.

Beside the Sand Scorpion I sat a brand-new Sand Wolf VI assault vehicle equipped with its own energy shield. That was the vehicle the Holsom Family had assigned to Xiao. After all, the Holsom Family was the Roam people's second-ranked Elector Family, so Xiao needed at least a little dignity when he went out. Yet Xiao favored this ancient off-road vehicle he had salvaged from a junkyard and refused to use the family car assigned to him. The Holsom Family could do nothing about it, and he became even less valued within the family.

He climbed into the cockpit, which was overly spacious for him, shut the poorly sealed door, and skillfully started the vehicle toward the valley where the Holsom Family resided.

Mars's harsh environment forced the Roam people to live in natural or artificial valleys. Valleys a thousand meters high could shield them from more than eighty percent of the violent storms. These dense, interconnected valleys formed the Roam cities and city clusters on Mars. Deep valleys and hidden underground passages ran throughout the entire planet, extending in every direction. After several centuries of recovery and growth, more than four billion Roam people lived in this distinctive semi-underground environment.

The Sand Scorpion I entered a narrow passage on the western side of Holsom Valley, which belonged to the Holsom Family. After more than an hour of travel, Xiao drove off the transportation network developed by the Roam people and into a natural wilderness valley. After Xiao's modifications, although this Sand Scorpion I looked battered and ancient, its performance was twenty percent better than even the latest Sand Scorpion VII. The vehicle nimbly crossed chunks of fiery red sandstone throughout the valley before finally arriving outside a cave at its end.

Three-hundred-meter cliffs surrounded the area. Beneath the eastern cliff was a cave entrance less than three meters high. A compact Sand Scorpion II off-road vehicle was parked on a patch of sand outside. When the always-indifferent Xiao saw the Sand Scorpion II, his expression thawed unusually, and a gentle smile appeared on his face.

This Sand Scorpion II had also come from Xiao's hands, salvaged from the same pile of war junk as his Sand Scorpion I. Xiao had invested far more effort into this Sand Scorpion II than his own vehicle, because it belonged to Xiao's only friend—a lovely young girl named Lily from the Spirit Race, a servant race of the Roam people.

The Spirit Race was a humanoid race similar in build to Earthlings, with pale green skin, pupils, and hair. Every member of the Spirit Race was slender, delicate, beautiful, and adorable, and they possessed a unique gift. No Spirit Race member had particularly powerful psychic strength, but their psychic power was delicate and gentle. Believing that all things possessed spirits, they could communicate with every living thing between heaven and earth.

The Spirit Race's role could not be overlooked in the Roam people's foothold on Mars, alongside the Roam people's powerful technology. It was the Spirit Race who had used their racial abilities to catalyze several primitive algae species native to Earth, beginning Mars's transformation. The new oxygen-rich atmosphere capable of supporting life on Mars had been created by the Spirit Race.

Xiao had discovered this cave by accident when he was young. It contained a strange energy that no instrument could detect, yet unquestionably existed. That energy was filled with peculiar vitality and could help plants grow and evolve more effectively. Xiao could not sense this wondrous energy at all. Lily was the one who sensed its existence, and from then on, this place became their little secret.

A green blur flashed, and a slender, petite figure cautiously poked her head out from the cave entrance. When she saw that it was Xiao who had driven over, her small face immediately broke into a dazzling smile. Before Xiao could even see Lily's movements clearly, the tiny figure pounced into his arms, trailing a string of afterimages.

"Xiao, why did you take so long to come see me this time?" The petite, lovely Lily excitedly wrapped her arms around Xiao's neck. In a clear, sweet voice, she chirped away as she rapidly asked about everything that had happened to Xiao over the past few months. Her beautiful tone was like a spring thaw, nourishing Xiao's heart, and his heart gradually softened amid that wonderful voice.

Lily's body was petite and soft, as though she had no bones. Hanging from Xiao's body, she did not weigh anything at all. Xiao affectionately rubbed Lily's long green hair and said with a bitter smile, "I've been busy lately, very busy. You know the things I've been building."

Lily's eyes lit up. She tightly grabbed Xiao's ears and tugged on them. "Then you had time to see me because you succeeded? You succeeded? Really?"

Lily knew what Xiao had been building. It was something capable of changing Xiao's fate. If Xiao could truly build it, his status in the Holsom Family would rise enormously—he might even enter the Roam people's highest academy of science directly because of it. What Xiao was building was a new generation of engines that could improve the utilization rate of Zakla Energy Crystals. Whether Earthlings or Roam people, both sides had countless researchers studying this problem.

More advanced engines, higher energy utilization, and greater output per unit meant larger battleships, faster speeds, and more powerful high-energy weapons. It meant traveling farther through the universe, exploring more celestial bodies, finding more and newer resources. It meant greater overall strength, and the hope of completely suppressing or even destroying the other side!

A mixed-blood Roam youth not even eighteen years old dared to speak of creating a completely new engine? If word got out, countless researchers from both races would laugh themselves to death. Yet this was precisely what Xiao had been researching for years. It was also another secret between Xiao and Lily—Xiao truly was the genetic mutant Nanket Holsom had dreamed of, possessing exceptionally gifted abilities. But his gift did not lie in the psychic cultivation the Roam people prized so highly.

Xiao possessed a terrifying gift for physical strength. It was seven-year-old Xiao who had pushed aside a falling boulder weighing several tons to save the equally young Lily, forging the bond between them.

But even more terrifying than Xiao's talent for physical strength was his talent for machinery. It was an instinct, an indescribable instinct that was almost heaven-sent! Lily had witnessed the miracles Xiao created countless times.

With a bitter smile, Xiao helplessly shook his head. "No, I failed. Or rather, I failed for now."

Lily never doubted that Xiao would succeed, so her beautiful green eyes looked at him in surprise.

"Why didn't you succeed?" Lily nearly burst into tears. Her large green eyes filled with tears as she looked at Xiao with deep distress. She knew what this engine meant to Xiao. As long as Xiao delivered it before the academicians of the Roam people's highest academy of science, his fate could undergo a world-shaking change.

"Uh!" Xiao's expression turned ugly. Once more, he muttered the names "Gu Xiechen" and "Holy Unicorn Mercenary Group," then furiously shook his head. "This... isn't my fault, Lily. It isn't my fault. It was caused by other people. It was an extremely unfortunate coincidence. The only unlucky ones weren't just those bastards from the Holy Unicorn Mercenary Group. I was one too."

After a few bitter laughs, Xiao shook his head. "Now it seems I can only undergo the Christo Fusion Ceremony."

"No!" Lily cried in terror. "Absolutely not! You'll die!"

Yes, people died. Lily's family held some status among the Spirit Race, and from childhood, she had heard countless stories about the terrifying Christo Fusion Ceremony. Basically, not a single person in those stories had survived. Everyone who underwent the ceremony either died or became horrifying demons. In the Spirit Race's tales, those demons who failed the fusion were cannibalistic monsters that treated Spirit Race members as appetizers and Roam people as their main course.

Would Xiao, who gave Lily endless warmth and security, become such a monster too?

Large tears rolled down Lily's face as she sobbed, "Can't you think of another way?"

"Another way?" Xiao shook his head. Unless he could finish that engine, but he lacked several extremely important custom-made components.

The rigidly hierarchical Roam people would never provide those things for him, and he had neither the money nor the authority to demand that anyone supply them. As a lowly mixed-blood of a Roam person and an Earthling, no one would believe him—or rather, no one was willing to believe him. That included Nanket Holsom. Even if Xiao ran around telling people that he had invented a new engine capable of improving Zakra Crystal energy utilization, his only fate would be to be mocked as an idiot by countless arrogant Roam people.

Not to mention those stubborn, rigid, conservative academicians of the Roam people's highest academy of science. If Xiao dared to bring his blueprints to them, they would absolutely order the guards to execute him on the spot—even his nominal father, the head of the Holsom Family, could not save him.

Who would believe a lowly mixed-blood?

In the entire universe, the only one who had faith in Xiao was Lily, crying in his arms.

After a moment of silence, Xiao laughed softly. "Come, Lily, don't cry. Let's go see your treasure. Mm, my treasure too!"

The spacious cave was filled with a faint green glow, a magical green light seeping from deep within the rock walls. A nursery one hundred meters long and wide had been cultivated from the sandy ground. Nearly a thousand fresh, emerald-green saplings grew within it. Every sapling stood more than two meters tall, brimming with vitality, every leaf filled with lush green that seemed ready to drip.

This was Xiao and Lily's little secret.

The cave's magical power could promote the growth and evolution of plants, and it could stimulate Lily, greatly enhancing both her physical strength and psychic power.

The air inside the cave was wonderfully fresh. The inside and outside of the cave were practically two entirely different worlds.

Xiao held Lily as they sat comfortably in the nursery. He took a deep breath, and fresh, cool air swirled through his lungs as dense vitality slowly seeped into his body.

"This is truly wonderful!"

Xiao gazed blankly at the grove.

If it were not for the trouble caused by those two bastards, Gu Xiechen and the Holy Unicorn Mercenary Group, then this world would truly be wonderful.

If he could successfully build that engine, and have Lily and this marvelous grove as well, then this world would truly be wonderful!

"Gu Xiechen!"

"Holy Unicorn Mercenary Group!"

Xiao repeated those two names over and over in his heart. He had come to deeply hate them.

Because of them, Xiao had no choice but to take part in the Christo Fusion Ceremony, where nine chances out of ten meant death.

Feeling Lily's smooth skin, Xiao sent the most vicious curse he knew toward Gu Xiechen and the Holy Unicorn Mercenary Group.

An extra side story chapter... more than six thousand words...

Sigh, everyone, a new week is about to begin... throw in your recommendations and clicks...

Hehe...

A new month will be here soon...

Give me your passion, and I'll give you an outburst...

Gahahahahahahahahaha... (To be continued)