Success or failure

The Scavenger Alliance's Underground Fortress.

The Drug Laboratory.

The rust-covered metal door slowly opened, and a cloud of white steam spread outward.

Through the mist, a tall, alluring figure came faintly into view.

Long, slender legs, a narrow waist, a full bust, and shoulder-length hair formed a striking silhouette.

She walked slowly, her steps steady as she made her way outside.

Outside.

The president of the Scavenger Alliance, seven or eight senior members, and Hana, dressed in red, watched the figure anxiously.

Her face gradually came into focus.

She had a cold, stunning beauty, aloof from the world.

Tight shorts hugged her small, perky bottom. Beneath a cropped leather jacket, she wore a low-cut black short-sleeved top that exposed the rounded curves of her cleavage and her snow-white collarbones.

She was the woman of countless people's dreams, the object of countless fantasies.

But now.

They noticed a deathly pallor over her beautiful face.

Her leather shoes clicked against the floor, but after only a few steps, she began to stagger.

Then blood began to trickle down the insides of her thighs.

The bright red blood left stark trails across her long, snow-white legs.

Splurt!

Suddenly, unable to hold it back, she spat out a mouthful of blood, stumbled, and fell to her knees.

"Hongyun!"

"Sis!"

Everyone hurried forward, scrambling to support the ashen-faced woman.

But tears filled Hongyun's eyes, and her red lips trembled. "I've let you all down. I... failed."

At that moment.

There was still only a single pale blue ring of light in her pupils.

And after the severe damage she had suffered, even that ring had grown dim.

The elderly president's vision went black, and he swayed on his feet.

He had poured nearly ten years of accumulated wealth into this, yet failed to gain a single D-Level gene-enhanced human.

His eyes were full of regret. Then, as he looked at his weakened daughter, an indescribable anguish rose in them.

"Sis..."

Tears spilled from Hana's eyes. She wrapped her arms around her sister's shoulders and choked out, "If I'd known it would turn out like this, I'd rather have gone through it myself."

"President."

A member of the Scavenger Alliance stepped into the crowd and said nervously, "The Interstellar Alliance's combat team has arrived."

The president stiffened slightly.

At this point, that was no longer particularly good news for him.

After a pause, the elderly president asked gravely, "How many people did they bring?"

"Two Hawk-Class transport Starships."

The member swallowed, looking frightened. "In their dozen or so previous visits, they've never sent two Starships at once. A Hawk-Class can carry two thousand people at full capacity. That means their force this time is at least two thousand strong!"

The president felt his hands go numb. "That many?!"

"Father... we have to seize this opportunity."

Hongyun lifted her deathly pale face. "There must be high-ranking military officers aboard those Starships."

A bleak expression crossed the president's face. "How? We only have E-Level gene-enhanced humans, and even counting you two sisters, there are only three of us. In their eyes, being E-Level earns us a few respectful words at most. It gives us no say whatsoever."

"Father, I happened to come across these a while ago."

Hongyun took a small case from the pocket of her leather jacket. When she opened it, two black films the size of fingernails lay inside.

"These are contact lenses made from a biological material."

Hongyun slowly exhaled and placed one of the contact lenses over her left eye.

The tiny film quickly softened and fitted itself to her eye. A second later, a small blue ring of light appeared on its surface.

Combined with Hongyun's original E-Level genetic manifestation, two rings of light now shone in her pupil.

"You...!"

The president's voice was distorted with emotion. "Child, you're faking it!"

"I happened to get these lenses from a scavenger."

Hongyun frowned. "Devices like these once circulated on the Interstellar Black Market. They were indeed used by shady people to deceive others, but the technology in these lenses is quite sophisticated. Ordinary equipment can't detect them."

"And the Interstellar Alliance's combat team is, after all, a fighting unit."

"They probably won't carry highly precise genetic testing equipment with them."

Hongyun gritted her teeth. "So I have a chance."

"This is madness!"

The muscles in the president's face trembled. "Do you know what consequences you'll face if they discover the truth?"

A resolute light shone in Hongyun's eyes. "All I know is that if we don't get support soon, every scavenger on Earth will be left with no way out."

Silence hung in the air for a long, long time.

The president trembled, unable to speak.

With Hana's help, Hongyun slowly stood up. "Sis, help me wash up. Then, sorry for the trouble, but please make me look as beautiful as you can."

The president watched his two daughters support each other as they disappeared down the corridor.

Beside him, a physician from the Scavenger Alliance said, "President, Miss Hongyun's body has suffered a backlash from the Genetic Serum. First, she's extremely weak right now. Her overall health is less than a third of what it normally is."

"Second..."

The physician hesitated. "She has lost the ability to bear children."

A visible tremor ran through the president's body.

He tilted his head toward the ceiling, and a trail of cloudy tears slid down his cheek.

Faced with all this, he was powerless.

"Dual Gene Sequence!"

Cheng Qi looked at the serum in his hand. Its container was still a glass test tube.

But the serum inside looked like clear water, utterly ordinary at first glance.

Yet when Cheng Qi raised it against the lights of the underground shelter.

His pupils contracted. He saw countless tiny points of light drifting through the transparent serum, crystal clear and scattered throughout the liquid like stars in the universe.

He gently rotated the test tube.

It was as though Cheng Qi were observing from a higher dimension, holding the universe in his palm and watching it turn quietly.

No matter the source.

Cheng Qi had never heard of a human becoming a silicon-based organism.

Of course, he had never heard of humans with a dual gene sequence existing in this world, either.

Or rather, once someone possessed a silicon-based gene sequence, would they still count as human?

What did the legendary silicon-based lifeforms actually look like?

Cheng Qi's eyes flickered.

A 67.7% success rate was absolutely worth a try!

Then.

Cheng Qi uncapped the test tube and took a deep breath.

Tilting his head back, he poured the entire mysterious serum into his mouth.

Cheng Qi didn't want to waste even the slightest bit.

He kept his head tilted back and his mouth open.

He watched the last drop of serum slide down the wall of the test tube and fall toward the tip of his tongue.

As that crystal-clear droplet hung in midair.

Cheng Qi had the illusion that time had slowed.

He could clearly see his own face reflected on the droplet's surface.

It was as though time were flowing at different speeds.

The droplet descended slowly, but Cheng Qi's eyes widened in an instant.

He saw that his pupils were no longer the black circles they had been before. Instead, they had become some kind of interlocking geometric structure.

Deep within his pupils, tightly connected triangles appeared. Then, like blooming flowers, those triangles began turning outward, layer by layer.

Cheng Qi could hardly believe it.

At the same time, a clear warning arose in his mind, like a sixth sense triggered by danger.

He felt his body growing looser and looser, on the verge of breaking apart.

In that instant.

Those tightly connected triangles spread across Cheng Qi's face.

His face, too, bloomed like a flower.

Then came the rest of Cheng Qi's body.

Pop!

Like a tiny firework without any flame.

Cheng Qi's body shattered into countless tiny triangles and vanished from the spot.