A gentle violin played, faint as breath, the aroma of coffee curling through the music.
Su Qingyue demolished the canelé at astonishing speed, took a sip of coffee to cut the sweetness, and without looking up trained her spoon on the mango sorbet next.
“Mm.”
The coffee she had just set down swayed in its cup and slopped over a little; the cool liquid spilled onto the back of her left hand.
Without raising her head, Su Qingyue extended her right hand forward, as if waiting for something.
Across from her, Sang Ling sat with her back straight, brows rising involuntarily. She didn’t understand what this meant.
As the Eldest Miss of the Su Family, Su Qingyue had grown up attended by countless servants and was used to having an exceptionally perceptive Butler at her side, always watching for her needs.
At a moment like this, the Su Family’s Butler would present a warm, damp towel, and Su Qingyue could wipe her hands clean with perfect composure, the least bit flustered.
These aristocratic rituals meant nothing to Sang Ling, of course, so she simply watched.
Su Qingyue waited and waited, and no service came. She looked up, brow furrowing, on the verge of reprimanding someone—only to see the silver-white-haired Alpha gazing calmly at her, and at her outstretched right hand.
Only then did it suddenly occur to her: she wasn’t dining at home, and the person across from her was no Butler of hers, but a distinguished Alpha.
A faint embarrassment rose in Su Qingyue’s heart, though nothing showed on her face. Composed, she moved to withdraw her hand—
And the Alpha abruptly leaned over, resting that handsome face of hers in her right palm, looking up at her with wide, innocent eyes.
The skin beneath her hand was fine as jade. Su Qingyue was stunned by the Alpha’s motion, heart hammering, and her right hand gave that cheek an involuntary little squeeze.
The Alpha sprang back as if scalded, returning to her seat, head tilted, watching her with a smile in her eyes.
“Qingyue, that hurt, you know.”
She said, smiling.
Ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump.
Her heart beat faster still.
Su Qingyue felt she could hear her own heartbeat, that heart straining to leap out of her body and proclaim its rhythm to the whole world.
The loss of control made her grind her teeth, even as a faint red rose to her ears.
Would Chu Zhou do this?
She didn’t know. As she remembered her, Chu Zhou was gentle but self-possessed; in theory she would never overstep boundaries like this Alpha, so effortlessly showing weakness and playing cute.
Perhaps she should stop her. Demand that she portray Chu Zhou exactly, to the letter.
But when the words reached her lips, they changed meaning. Against her own control, she followed the other’s lead.
“Does it hurt?”
Of course it didn’t hurt. But this was a date—of course the client should get to feel what it was like when a lover acted spoiled.
Sang Ling had been about to say “a little,” when her expression abruptly changed. Bracing one hand on the table, she flipped lightly around to Su Qingyue’s side.
Su Qingyue’s face went cold at once. Why did this Alpha have no sense of distance whatsoever?
But the next second, Sang Ling went further still, pushing her down flat onto the booth sofa.
“Are you insane!”
Su Qingyue was furious enough to curse. When in her life had she ever met such a person?
But in the next instant came a shattering crash. Pressed against the booth, Su Qingyue’s gaze traveled past Sang Ling—and she watched, helpless, as a massive Zerg forelimb swept through with unstoppable force. In an instant, that supposedly bulletproof glass shattered, bursting apart like diamonds.
Su Qingyue instinctively squeezed her eyes shut—and felt a hand press her down, tucking her beneath Sang Ling’s body.
Glass shards scattered across the floor like jumping beads. Sang Ling waited until she judged the shards had settled and could fly and cut no longer, then straightened and pulled Su Qingyue up.
At the same moment, every Light Brain on the premises emitted a piercing, enormous alarm.
Woo—! Woo—!
Alarms rose and fell, answering one another, resonating, spreading boundless panic.
Sang Ling knew she had muted her Light Brain just now. Only one thing could break through a mute setting.
She exchanged a look with the pale-faced Su Qingyue.
Zerg Attack!
Su Qingyue was still sprawled on the booth, hair spilled across the seat, gold-rimmed glasses askew. She seemed about to say something.
But Sang Ling’s earlier gentleness and consideration vanished without a trace. Not a word, face cold, she hauled Su Qingyue up, seized the Beta’s hand, and charged for the door.
She always seemed to be a step ahead—only in the next second did Su Qingyue hear her own Light Brain sound its warning.
“Please proceed immediately to the nearest air-raid shelter!”
The cold mechanical female voice repeated its emergency instructions over and over. Everyone’s Light Brain activated its shelter protocol automatically, pointing the way to the nearest air-raid shelter.
Su Qingyue was still in slender high heels, running with great difficulty—but Sang Ling showed no mercy, gripping her wrist hard, dragging her forward so roughly it was nearly hauling her along.
Su Qingyue—Eldest Miss Su, raised from birth in silk and luxury, precious as gold—when had she ever been treated like this?
And though Sang Ling still wore Chu Zhou’s clothes, she no longer resembled that gentle AI in the slightest. Her face was expressionless, and the danger of those over-sharp features, no longer suppressed, came pouring out all at once.
Su Qingyue knew the situation was dire. Too many people filled the plaza—if they didn’t run now, while everyone was still in chaos, then once everyone came to their senses they’d be jammed solid in the streets. They wouldn’t even need the Zerg to kill them; a stampede would claim plenty of lives on its own.
But she had just twisted her ankle, and it hurt down to the bone. Cold sweat beaded up on her forehead layer by layer. Su Qingyue clamped her lower lip between her teeth and refused to make a sound, only burying her head and following Sang Ling’s lead.
The Alpha’s stamina was superhuman; Su Qingyue soon couldn’t keep up, the pain in her sole coming wave after wave.
“My foot……”
Just as she couldn’t help opening her mouth, the Alpha abruptly stopped—and it was Su Qingyue who, braking too late, slammed face-first into that back.
She saw Sang Ling staring, expression frozen, toward the horizon, and followed her line of sight.
It was the first time she witnessed a true Zerg Attack.
A vast swarm blotted out the sky, like an enormous rolling storm cloud—wherever it passed, the sky went dark.
These were not the little insects of daily life. Every single one was immense, human-height or taller. Their forelimbs were like the sharpest chainsaws; their mouthparts like an abyss, dripping venom that glittered green.
Su Qingyue had once read a book recording that on Earth, cradle of humankind, there had been an age called the Carboniferous Period—an age before humans existed, when the masters of the planet were countless giant insects that blotted out the sky.
Back then Su Qingyue had been young. Even though the Zerg problem had plagued humanity for centuries in the interstellar era, she, the precious Eldest Miss of the Su Family, had never experienced a Zerg Attack—so she had no real impression of how terrible insects could be.
She had once thought the giant insects of the Carboniferous Period and the present Zerg crisis were nothing more than a joke God had played.
But now, staring at the Giant Dragonfly bearing down on her at high speed—wingspan ninety centimeters, body two and a half meters—staring into those cold, labyrinthine compound eyes, she suddenly understood: God’s joke was deeply, deeply hellish.
Too fast—like a bolt of lightning, the Giant Dragonfly came at her. Su Qingyue’s eyes went wide; deep inside, she was screaming with everything she had, yet not a sound came out. Her legs might as well have been glued to the ground, unmoving no matter how she commanded them.
The dragonfly was already upon her. In that instant, Su Qingyue saw clearly, in the Giant Dragonfly’s cold, horrifying compound eyes, thousands upon thousands of terrified reflections of herself.
BANG—!
A light gunshot rang out. A dazzling white flash—and the Giant Dragonfly’s head was blown apart mid-flight, the entire horrifying head obliterated, leaving only the weightless body to hang dazed in the air for half a second before toppling like a great felled tree.
“Stop gawking. Run.”
Sang Ling holstered the Light Energy Gun at her waist and hauled at her again, and only then did Su Qingyue tear free of the terror of near-death, her legs regaining strength at the pull.
Now even the sprained ankle meant nothing. Su Qingyue stuck to Sang Ling’s back like a shadow, terrified of falling even one step behind.
But how could human speed match the Zerg’s? Within two minutes, the two of them were cut off by a giant Millipede and a giant Mantis.
Sang Ling strove to keep her face composed, and swallowed, silently.
Millipedes—also called thousand-leggers—phylum Arthropoda, dark brown all over, reddish-yellow along the back’s flanks and legs, one of the most common insects of Sang Ling’s childhood, often mistaken for centipedes. The Asian millipedes Sang Ling had seen back then were barely fifteen centimeters long. But the Millipede before her now, as if it had eaten one of Alice-in-Wonderland’s giant mushrooms, had swollen beyond belief—three hundred centimeters from end to end!
The Mantis was more terrifying still. Three meters tall, its scythe-like forelimbs over a meter long, flashing with a keen cold light—like its own personal knife and fork, waiting only to dismember Sang Ling and deliver her to that horrifying square mouth.
Humans, with no sharp teeth and no armor, were before these monsters nothing but walking sausages, no peeling or shelling required.
Su Qingyue’s whole body trembled. She remembered how, just days ago, she had haggled with military men across a negotiating table, shamelessly proposing cuts to military aid—and now she wanted to double it, triple it, anything!
God had created giant insects in the Carboniferous Period, and it was no joke—it was a warning issued before humanity’s birth.
Mankind had fancied itself master of the universe, walked out of Earth, out of the solar system—and in the end would still perish at the hands of the insects it once disdained.
Amid the panic, Su Qingyue suddenly found the female Alpha before her releasing her wrist.
The Alpha in the white uniform had come today only for a simple, absurd game of pretend—an Alpha who had volunteered to be a Beta’s plaything, without a shred of a soldier’s pride.
But when she turned around—no more playacting, no more smile, only gravity—Su Qingyue’s blood abruptly raced.
“In a moment I’ll draw their attention. Run as far as you can.”
“You……” What are you going to do—Su Qingyue couldn’t help wanting to ask.
“Run forward. Don’t look back.” The woman said.
She smiled—a smile nothing like Chu Zhou’s restraint and elegance, but one as heartbreaking as a silly dog’s. “Roleplay paused.”
“I am Sang Ling, second-year cadet of the Military Academy.”
“If I die, please notify the military for me. All of my death benefits go to my family—even if she is an Omega.”
Her long hair streamed in the wind.
