A Hellish Start, Far Too Unlucky

A murky swamp stretched as far as the eye could see, all the way to the horizon, where it traced a faint curve in the distance.

Countless indescribable things writhed through the vast marsh. From time to time, worm-like creatures poked their heads out of the pitch-black sludge, screeching as they opened terrifying, blood-filled maws large enough to swallow an adult whole.

Or elongated creatures covered in egg sacs would burst from the swamp, shake off their dark green sacs, and dive back beneath the mire. The sticky dark green sacs then extended jointed limbs and crawled in swarms toward a certain direction.

Yet none of those scenes, like something out of a demonic lair, drew Lu Shang's attention the most. His gaze was fixed on the artificial object above the heavens.

A circular opening occupied a tenth of the sky. Within it was a flickering glow, yet it did not feel weak and wavering like candlelight. Instead, it pulsed like a giant's heartbeat—steady, powerful, and as terrifying as the throbbing of the earth itself.

It was the muzzle of a colossal cannon on the scale of a celestial body!

Lu Shang did not know what made him so certain it was a giant cannon, but he was certain of it.

As the light within the cannon muzzle flickered brighter and dimmer, it grew ever more intense and blinding. At the same time, more and more creatures with membranous wings and crab claws burrowed out from the swamp around Lu Shang.

They swelled and writhed into lumps of flesh as tall as skyscrapers before exploding, transforming into massive creatures clad in chitinous shells that exhaled scorching plasma beams and dark green acid. They continuously poured firepower into the heavens, their hissing breaths echoing in Lu Shang's ears.

When the brightness at the center of the cannon muzzle in the sky reached a certain threshold, an indescribably terrifying force suddenly disintegrated everything around Lu Shang, drowning it in a sea of dazzling light!

Lu Shang broke free of gravity, and his view gradually pulled back. He left the swamp planet where he had been standing and saw countless wrecks, corpses, and fragments drifting through space. This vast space graveyard had even formed a nebula enveloping the star, making the blazing sun appear much dimmer.

Beyond that, Lu Shang saw an interstellar fleet so immense he could not possibly count it. Its sheer mass had already affected the orbital trajectories of the major celestial bodies within the star system.

At the center of the fleet stood that peerless celestial-scale cannon, protected on all sides. Its high-energy strike formed an incomparably dazzling blue-white pillar of light amid the scattered planetary dust!

Red Lotus's core was completely exposed, magma spraying through space like blood. The solid planet, once covered in swamp, shattered and disintegrated beneath the cleansing beam of light that resembled divine punishment, heading toward total destruction...

"Holy shit!"

Lu Shang cried out and bolted upright.

He instinctively looked around and found himself lying in a not very large cave.

The cave was dim. Lu Shang could only barely make out his surroundings by the faint green glow emitted by some fungi growing along the rock walls.

"Wh-where is this... Hiss!"

A piercing pain shot through his brain. Fragments of memory flooded into Lu Shang's still-dazed mind. He clutched his head in agony, his expression shifting from initial confusion to horror.

There was a civilization in the universe called the Babel Swarm. Extremely cruel and bloodthirsty, it relied on hive thinking and overwhelming numbers to spread across its entire planet in a short time, exterminating every species on the surface and transforming its homeworld into its first hive planet.

However, because their genetic engineering had always been limited to the chemical level, and chemical propulsion had its limits, the swarm could not reach even the nearest neighboring star no matter how many hundreds of millions of years it spent. Thus, the Babel Swarm remained trapped within its home star system.

Until four hundred and thirty thousand years later, when a Void God found them and took a liking to the swarm's centralized nature.

The Void God granted them a power called "psionics," a force capable of influencing space and time at will. Swarm individuals could use psionics to create spacetime warp bubbles, allowing them to move faster than light and traverse distances measured in light-years. In return, the swarm had to pledge absolute loyalty to the Void God.

The Swarm Overmind gladly accepted those terms, and thus began a galactic war that swept through countless civilizations.

At the Void God's behest, the cruel and bloodthirsty swarm joined forces with several other races under the Void God's command and launched a genocide that engulfed the entire galaxy. Hundreds of millions of civilizations were destroyed as a result.

But the good times did not last. The civilizations struggling to develop under the Babel Swarm's ravages joined together to form the Galactic Alliance. The fusion of their cultures led to a series of technological explosions, while reverse-engineering psionics from swarm corpses allowed them to develop technology capable of sealing the Void God.

In the final battle, the Void God was sealed within the Frozen Cycle. The swarm and the main forces of several other races serving the Void God were also completely annihilated in a supernova triggered by the Galactic Alliance. Their defeat and extinction had become irreversible.

At that critical moment, the Swarm Overmind decided to exhaust all its psionic power to pierce through space and time and release the Void God trapped within the Frozen Cycle.

Unfortunately, something went wrong somewhere. The Void God within the Frozen Cycle was not released. Instead, Lu Shang, a human from Earth, was dragged over here...

"...I really want to curse someone out right now."

After figuring out how he had transmigrated, Lu Shang felt no joy at all. Instead, he was on the verge of tears. This was like being seized as cannon fodder by the Nationalists on the eve of liberation in 1949!

The key was that the Babel Swarm's central brain saw how pathetically weak he was and concluded that he could not be of any use to the swarm. With the Galactic Alliance's main fleet about to arrive, it had simply abandoned him on this hive planet to fend for himself?!

The Galactic Alliance's main fleet was no joke. Before bombing a planet, they did not even bother landing to check whether anyone was on it. Whenever they saw an enemy planet—especially a hive planet whose surface was covered in swamp—they would fire an Earthburst Star without a word!

The kind he had seen in the dream while receiving the swarm's memories—one that could blow out the planet's core along with everything else!

"Fuck me! Those inhuman bastards dragged me here from Earth for no reason, then just threw me away without a care?!"

"Pah! What am I even saying? Those bastards weren't human to begin with. Where would they get any humanity?"

"No, that's not right either! This isn't the time to complain about that! The Galactic Alliance fleet is almost here. An Earthburst Star isn't something to joke about! They ran off, so what am I supposed to do?"

Caught in a spiral of panic, Lu Shang cursed and mocked himself at the same time, anxiously pacing in circles. If this continued, his little life would be over!

But no matter how hard Lu Shang racked his brains, he could not figure out what a human of flesh and blood like him could possibly do to survive the firepower of an interstellar fleet.

"Or should I just find myself a grave in advance... No, that won't work either! An Earthburst Star can shatter even the planetary core. What kind of grave could possibly remain intact?" Lu Shang muttered frantically.

Suddenly, a voice interrupted his thoughts. Lu Shang turned and saw a floating creature. Its body was covered in a chitinous shell, thin membrane-like flippers extending from both sides, along with a pair of pincers larger than Lu Shang's head. The sight made his scalp tingle.

A swarm worker!