The Alien Queen in the Strange Space

The Alien Queen in the Strange Space

Although Fate had not figured out what was going on with that Magic Beast egg, he did not dare ask. This Windfire Town had a strange, mysterious air permeating even the breeze. Even Xiaoshan—from his speech and bearing to the mysterious way he had just released the Magic Beast egg and then put it away again—how did any of it make him seem like a youth?

What surprised Fate was that although he had not helped Xiaoshan solve his problem, Xiaoshan did not drive him away. Instead, he even cleaned up a room for him to stay in temporarily. The proprietress, Anna, was clearly a little unhappy and muttered under her breath, but thankfully, she did not fall out with them.

Lying on the warm, comfortable bed, Fate soon sank into a drowsy sleep.

He slept sweetly enough, but Xiaoshan next door was not so fortunate.

It was already deep into the night. Li Junshan tossed and turned in bed, his brows locked tight as he sighed endlessly.

"Fuck, what the hell is going on?"

Li Junshan felt as if he was about to collapse.

He was not from this world. The world he had originally lived in had a name—Earth. One day, he had been playing a newly released online game, Alien vs. Yautja. Using a bug, Li Junshan lured the final boss, the Yautja, to the Alien Queen's nest. While the two ultimate bosses fought savagely, Li Junshan quietly hid off to the side, preparing to pick up equipment. Just as they were about to perish together, he saw a golden epic weapon appear on the ground. Li Junshan was so excited that his hand trembled, knocking over a huge cup of water on the desk and spilling it onto the monitor. That ancient CRT monitor exploded on the spot, and a shard of glass from the blast cut through his carotid artery. Blood sprayed several meters, and he could not even cry out for help before he lost consciousness.

When he woke up again, Li Junshan found himself lying at the edge of a forest. Beside him lay several strange corpses, an overturned carriage, a large chest split in two...

Every sign showed that these people had been robbed, perhaps including himself, because Li Junshan discovered that he was wearing clothes he had never seen before, and that he had become a boy of thirteen or fourteen.

Borrowing a corpse to return the soul?

Terrifying roars of wild beasts came from all around. Li Junshan did not dare linger, and struggled his way to Windfire Town. There were many people like him in the town, and no one paid him any attention. Perhaps because some lingering memories from the original owner of this body remained, he had no problem with the language. After spending some time understanding things, Li Junshan finally realized that he had come to a strange world.

Here, there were Magic Beasts comparable to Xenomorphs, mages whose magic was more powerful than airplanes and cannons, and mercenary guilds more organized and disciplined than the underworld...

What Li Junshan could not understand was that the skin colors and races of the people in this world were extremely bizarre—white, black, yellow, and green all existed—and they also had all sorts of messy surnames. Blond people had names similar to Chinese names from his old world, while black-haired people had strange Western names. All of this easily overturned his original worldview.

Nothing was more important than staying alive!

After spending three days confirming that he had borrowed a corpse to return the soul and transmigrated, Li Junshan pulled himself together and walked toward the fat woman's tavern on West Street, a place no one ever set foot in. His left hand clutched a large handful of strange plants he had picked in the forest, while his right hand carried a pig bone he had found, one that had been gnawed completely clean by a Magic Beast.

"I only need a little time. If you agree, it will bring you enormous wealth."

As if bewitched by ghosts and gods, Anna nodded and did not drive away this dirty child who looked like a beggar. In fact, the reason Li Junshan had come to her was also because, during those three days, Anna had brought him food several times.

Under Anna's astonished gaze, in less than half an hour, Li Junshan completely conquered her sense of smell. Anna swore she had never smelled such a fragrance before; it was enough to drive a person mad. Under her scorching stare, Li Junshan picked up a bamboo skewer used by diners for picking their teeth, threaded onto it some hard, dried-out pieces of meat that had been sitting there for who knew how long, tossed it into the pot giving off that extraordinary aroma, boiled it for a while, then took out some strange powder and sprinkled it on before handing it to Anna.

"Try it. These aren't food. You'll find that they're all glittering gold coins."

Anna froze after just one bite. Once she came back to herself, she grabbed the large pot at the doorway and ran into the tavern. Then, like a mammoth, she charged back out, clamped Li Junshan under her armpit, and slammed the door shut with a bang.

On the second day after Li Junshan entered Anna's tavern, Otherworld Malatang became famous throughout Windfire Town, with diners arriving in an endless stream. On the first day, over twelve hundred skewers were sold. On the second day, over three thousand. On the third day, over five thousand...

Just like that, Anna struck her first bucket of gold, and Li Junshan also found a temporary place to roost.

The days passed one after another like this. After Li Junshan became familiar with Windfire Town and was beginning to plan for his future, he suddenly discovered a secret that horrified him to the extreme.

One night, just as Li Junshan, who had been busy all day, was about to fall asleep, his mind suddenly buzzed, and a mysterious space appeared. The pitch-black space was extremely large, so large that he did not know how to describe it. What horrified him was that there was an enormous Magic Beast in the space... Uh, no, it should be a Xenomorph.

Li Junshan could swear to the heavens that it was absolutely a Xenomorph, and it was even an egg-laying Alien Queen with some of the Yautja's physical characteristics. It lowered its head and stood silently in that space, as if it had sunk into a deep sleep.

On the empty, illusory ground within the mental space were countless Xenomorph Eggs. They were packed densely together, making Li Junshan's scalp crawl, and he could even sense that some of the Xenomorph Eggs had an urgent desire to hatch.

Li Junshan spent a full half month finally confirming that the space truly existed, because with a turn of his will, those Xenomorph Eggs would obediently appear before him. Afraid that he would become a Xenomorph host, Li Junshan would then send them back into the strange space at lightning speed.

Li Junshan did not dare tell anyone this secret. In truth, no one would believe him even if he did. Every day, he repeatedly told stories about Xenomorphs and Yautja among a group of children; what he wanted was to beat the grass and startle the snake, probing the reaction to Xenomorphs in this world.

In the stories, Xenomorphs were changed into a certain kind of Magic Beast, while the Yautja's super-technology weapons were changed into magic.

"Brother Shan, my grandpa said your story is pretty good, but there isn't a bit of basis to it. In this world, there are no Magic Beasts that grow by parasitizing humans or other Magic Beasts, let alone ones that are that powerful."

"Brother Shan, my father said that no powerful warrior can also possess mighty high-level magic at the same time. That Yautja couldn't possibly be real."

This was the feedback he received. Every child who had listened to the stories meant the same thing, with only minor differences.

In order to gain a clearer understanding of Xenomorphs, Li Junshan tried summoning a Xenomorph Egg into real space. He discovered that when he was alone, after summoning a Xenomorph Egg, it needed a very long time before it could hatch. If another person was nearby, however, the hatching speed of the Xenomorph Egg increased by more than tenfold, almost happening in an instant.

Usually, at such times, Li Junshan would send them back into the mental space at lightning speed, and the Xenomorph Eggs would close up automatically again, as if sinking into a heavy sleep.

Thinking of all the bizarre Magic Beasts in this world, then thinking of the Xenomorphs fused with Yautja genes—if they parasitized the bodies of these Magic Beasts and then fused with their genes, what kind of change would be produced?

Whenever he thought of this, Li Junshan's heart would beat violently.

He did not dare verify it. Li Junshan, who liked the Alien film series, had watched them many times, including the later online game that used Xenomorphs as a gimmick. He clearly understood what kind of disaster it would bring to this world if the summoned Xenomorphs were not under control.

Destruction? The disappearance of civilization?

Li Junshan asked himself and knew he did not possess any especially noble sentiments, but these things were connected to his own survival, so he had no choice but to be careful.

This was not a movie, nor was it a game, but a living, breathing world.

And there was another, most important problem. This problem twisted in Li Junshan's brain every moment like a sharp knife, leaving him unable to find peace.

Just like the heroine Ripley, cloned by the scientists in the fourth film of the Alien series, Li Junshan once accidentally cut his finger and bled, and discovered that his blood, just like a Xenomorph's, possessed a perverse and terrifying corrosive power.

Compared to the Alien Queen and Xenomorph Eggs in the strange space, this discovery horrified Li Junshan even more.

Moreover, Li Junshan discovered that he did not possess the freakish physical abilities of the cloned Ripley, who had fused with Xenomorph genes. It seemed he only had the corrosive property in his blood. To test it, he separately mixed bodily fluids such as sweat and saliva into food, then fed it to some small animals. Fortunately, the negative effects he imagined did not appear, and those small animals did not die. It seemed only his blood possessed corrosive properties.

A clumsy death, a bizarre borrowing of a corpse to return the soul, a strange world, an inexplicable space, an Alien Queen, countless Xenomorph Eggs, inheriting part of a Xenomorph's abilities, and even Li Junshan's current body itself had not passed down any memories. He did not even know who he was...

Li Junshan felt that the fact he had not gone insane was simply a miracle.

"I'll ask that mage again tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll discover something." Li Junshan, busy all day, let his thoughts run wild for a long while. Unable to withstand the heavy drowsiness, he turned over and fell asleep.

Anna was an odd sort of existence in Windfire Town. She herself had no strength at all, no battle aura, and did not know magic; aside from her voluptuous figure, it seemed she had no other merits. And yet, in Windfire Town, not a single person dared bully her.

There was naturally a reason for all this. Ten years ago, when the ugly Geryon Giant came to Windfire Town to plunder, everyone in town fought a bloody battle. After resisting for three days, they still had not received support from any force. And just then, the Geryon Giant's friends, the Dwarf Race, appeared—more than three hundred dwarf warriors hefting great hammers, shattering their confidence in an instant.

Anna's husband stepped forward, a down-and-out middle-aged man who spent his days doing nothing but drinking. The residents of Windfire Town had never looked him in the eye; quite a few had even bullied him. And yet it was precisely such a man who cast a forbidden spell—Death Space—and in the blink of an eye sent every enemy on the battlefield into the Death Space.

The forbidden spell Death Space was cast at the cost of burning away the mage's life, and after Anna's husband finished casting it, he died on the spot. From that day on, everyone respected this nameless mage from the bottom of their hearts, and Anna became part of their lives. Even if she did not have a single bit of business for an entire year, there would always be people leaving Magic Beast carcasses or daily necessities in front of Anna's door. Anyone who dared offend Anna was the common enemy of all permanent residents of Windfire Town.

As the crisp cries of the diligent Chirp Bird rang out, Anna woke up, still tightly clutching several gold coins she had not finished counting. Holding the gold coins, it was as if she held the whole world, so full, so peaceful and secure.

More than three months had passed. Now, Malatang's business had returned to a normal level as well, roughly about two thousand skewers a day, and this already left Anna very satisfied.

When she went downstairs, Anna saw the mage she had met yesterday wandering around in the tavern. Li Junshan was already sorting out the meat skewers.

"Idiot." Anna's thunderous voice barked, "You really plan on eating for free? Go help with the work."

Fate looked left and right, and after making sure she was talking to him, he could not help giving a bitter smile. "I don't know how to do anything."

"What element mage are you?" Anna came down the creaking stairs.

"Madam Anna, I am a noble water mage."

"Then cast one and let me see." Anna sat down in front of Li Junshan and started cutting chunks of meat.

Fate was unhappy in his heart, but he did not dare show it. He chanted a magic incantation, and as mist condensed around him, a Water Arrow appeared out of thin air and shot onto the door panel with a puff, blasting out a huge... er, it should be a huge puddle of water stain.

Li Junshan had been somewhat curious at first as well, but the moment he saw this scene, he could not help bursting out laughing.

Fate's face reddened, and he stammered, "I'm still elementary right now. If I advance to intermediate, the power of my magic will be much greater."

"Useless trash." Anna did not spare his face at all, then complained to Li Junshan, "Anyone picked at random would be stronger than him. A low-level mage is useless in a fight and has no strength for work either. What are you keeping him for?"

Li Junshan could not help laughing loudly. Only after a long while did he say, "Who says he's useless? Look over there." As he spoke, he pointed at a huge wooden basin filled with water beside them. Next to it was a large pile of chunks of meat and vegetables waiting to be washed.

Anna's eyes lit up, and she smiled. "You little monkey brat, you really are sharp. You, mage, hurry up and wash the meat and vegetables."

Fate's face darkened until it nearly dripped water. He huffed and puffed, panting heavily. Gritting his teeth, he turned and walked toward the door.

"If you can't even endure this little bit of hardship, if you can't even bear this little matter, what right do you have to want to become a great mage?"

Anna's voice came from behind Fate. She said, "Once you walk out of here, I dare say not a single guild will hire you. An elementary water mage as old as you has no use at all besides studying and advancing. Never mind that this is Windfire Town—even anywhere else, aside from going off to swindle people, you simply wouldn't survive."

"That's right, Mr. Fate. Eating by your own ability—what is there to be angry about or ashamed of?" Li Junshan added as well. He had many questions that might have to rely on Fate to answer, so naturally he did not want him to leave just like this.

Fate stopped at the doorway and stood there blankly for a long time before finally turning back and walking in. He threw a few large chunks of meat into the wooden basin, and without much chanting of a magic incantation, the water in the basin began driving the meat to spin rapidly. In no time at all, it had washed the blood from the meat completely clean.

"This is even more awesome than a drum washing machine." Li Junshan watched from the side, holding back his laughter until his face turned red.