Chapter 1 Cold Wind We can simply hand over your corpse. ...

When the gun was pressed against her forehead, Shi Wei gasped.

She had only been in the Manla Empire for less than a week.

I first explored the cities near the space hub before arriving in Beijing three days ago.

The route took her to some very famous tourist attractions. Because the Manla Empire does not prohibit firearms and other weapons, as an Omega, she was more careful than in her homeland and paid close attention to safety throughout the entire trip.

Just minutes before she was abducted, she had finished visiting the monument and laid a bouquet of flowers at the Mausoleum of the First Lady to express her respect.

Just a second before she was taken away, she was standing in front of the Starry Gate, with the Moonlit Square of the Manla Empire behind her—three months earlier, the 60th anniversary of the victory in the counterattack against foreign powers was commemorated here.

It's hard to imagine that such a thing as kidnapping an Omega in broad daylight could happen in the capital square of this powerful empire.

Just around the corner, outside of Sky Eye's blind spot, two men in black appeared before her, coldly asking her to come over, while there was no one else around.

Shi Wei immediately headed towards the exit, but within a second, she was pulled back forcefully.

"We are investigators from the National Security Bureau. Please cooperate with our investigation."

The other party took out a miniature particle gun from his sleeve, leaving Shi Wei stunned.

She felt that her trip might be ruined.

After being locked up, Shi Wei looked back on the entire trip and couldn't understand how she had offended these people.

When she left ACE Era, she felt that her hard work over the past twenty-odd years had been worthwhile. As a graduate of the Imperial Public Academy many years ago, a liberal arts student who studied interstellar ancient history, she had achieved such success in just over twenty years.

She was just a child from an ordinary family in the Fran Empire. She entered the Imperial Public Academy at the age of eighteen, graduated at the age of twenty-six, and is now only in her early fifties. Considering that the average human lifespan has now reached one hundred and eighty years, she is still a young and beautiful girl.

Shi Wei had a very unpleasant argument with her family because of her resignation. Her parents felt that it was a waste for her, as an Omega, to quit a stable job, especially at such a young age.

However, she felt that she had earned enough money and didn't want to be pressured to get married every day.

Since the Queen Mother Omega enjoys fewer benefits, she can decide her own life—avoiding the fate of being forced to marry and have children after the age of sixty.

She told her parents, "I want to go to other planets."

Her parents eventually gave in, thinking it wouldn't hurt to let her go out and clear her head. Little did they know that this trip would completely change their daughter's life.

Shi Wei's travel destination is Planet Esther. She has always wanted to visit the Manra Empire, a super empire that was brought to glory by the Queen Mother and Emperor Skrag—shining with a thousand years of glory, and having survived several wars and near collapse, it has stubbornly continued to this day.

Almost every highly educated Omega wants to see the traces left by the First Lady Asta.

This is a belief. Asta gave them the ability to survive, removed the halo of reproduction, and allowed them to show the various shining qualities of Omega.

She really liked a quote from Asta: "If an Omega wants to get rid of the burden of reproduction, he must make himself have a value that is more important than reproduction." After Asta became famous, he was keen to establish academies in various star systems and recruit students of all genders without restrictions. This is an important reason why ordinary people in later generations liked her.

When Shi Wei was a child, her family was not well-off. She lived in the Alliance and could only attend the most ordinary lower-level school in the Alliance.

The Fran Empire firmly adhered to the education policy of the Queen Mother. Only after her parents brought her back to the Empire did Shi Wei have the opportunity to receive a higher education for eighteen years.

Studying history is very tedious and difficult to earn an income, but the Imperial Public Academy is very interesting. The dean bluntly stated at their entrance ceremony: "If a discipline cannot create basic economic value for survival, then that discipline cannot last."

Any discipline, regardless of the era, requires countless people to dedicate themselves to it. There are countless paths, and countless trials and errors, before it may be possible to find the right route.

One of the requirements for graduating from the Imperial Public Academy is that the student's legal income must reach the Empire's minimum income threshold.

This regulation, while increasing pressure to some extent, is actually reducing the burden—the economic boom of the Fran Empire is only a recent phenomenon, dating back a century, and it is far less well-established than other empires. It also boasts the most densely populated population in the entire universe, making it the most competitive place.

Most students at the Imperial Public University come from ordinary families, and many are in less popular majors. Upon graduation, they face unemployment—they can only find work in the most basic service industries, as technology has destroyed the human resources needed by ancient industries.

The universe needs smarter humans, but the birth rate has been declining ever since the technology tree was lit up in human history, and it has never recovered.

Human resources are valuable, yet cheap.

She was just an ordinary person from the beginning, an ordinary Omega. She wasn't particularly beautiful or outstanding. Even after leaving her job, when she looked back on her life over the past few decades, she felt that luck played a large part in everything.

She thought she would live a peaceful and ordinary life, traveling the universe to see all the sights and read more books... Many years later, when Shi Wei recalled her first departure from the Fran Empire, she still felt that fate was so incredible.

Actually, Shi Wei wasn't tortured after being taken away. The other party simply took away her personal computer and identity chip, then dumped her in this room, telling her that this was the Security Bureau and that they would "communicate" with her after verifying her identity.

Shi Wei protested, telling them that she was a citizen of the Fran Empire and that they had no right to take any action against her.

However, the other party only casually released a few pictures—it turned out that there was a defector spy on her spaceship who happened to be her seatmate. The two chatted happily, and the other party was a Beta male who even gave her a paper book before parting.

Shi Wei was completely bewildered, but soon these people told her that there was a chip hidden inside the book.

These people dressed in black were clearly not ordinary people. They immediately confiscated her chips—with just a casual glance, they took away three chips from her, including the most important one: her identity chip.

The repeated interrogations nearly drove Shi Wei insane:

"What was his expression like when he handed you this book? What did he say to you?"

Did you notice anything unusual about his body during the journey?

What were you doing at 10:56?

...

These memories were already blurred, but the interrogator's repeated questioning forced her to try to recall them. To be honest, she only regarded the Beta as a friendly stranger she met on her journey, and they only spent three short hours together. How could she remember him so clearly?

Besides being interrogated, Shi Wei also underwent dozens of physical examinations and countless lie detector tests. For more than ten days, her mind was filled with thoughts of that Beta.

At first, she tried to reason with these people, talking about human rights and universal law, but the interrogators just smiled contemptuously: "In Manla, universal law comes after the constitution."

This was undoubtedly a contempt for the interstellar alliance. Just as Shi Wei was about to say something, she heard the man say, "Miss, you should know that this is the Kasri National Security Bureau. The Emperor is very concerned about this case."

The emperor he referred to was Skrag II, the ruler of the Manra Empire.

He is known as the most ruthless dictator of the new era.

Shi Wei took a deep breath and said, "I have told you everything I know. I didn't even know that chip existed, let alone what secrets it contained. How long are you going to keep me locked up?"

Although she was a foreign citizen, in the Fran Empire she was only considered a civilian, and the Security Bureau wouldn't care about the life or death of an ordinary foreign citizen.

The interrogator did not answer, only saying, "You just need to cooperate with our work."

That same phrase again! Shi Wei was furious, but the interrogation didn't end, and she couldn't even stand up from her chair.

On the nineteenth day, Shi Wei was almost in despair. She was locked in a secret room with no windows and no way to get any information from the outside world. Her thoughts were in turmoil, and she couldn't help but wonder: Is my brother going crazy with worry? I wonder if Mom and Dad know yet? It's been so many days... Can she still go back to Fran?

Shi Wei couldn't help but cry, wondering why fate was treating her this way.

She only spoke a few words to a stranger, why was she treated like this?

The door opened, and a man in black entered. He had an ordinary face, but Shi Wei remembered him; he was the person who interrogated her the most.

The man, named Lu Qi, had a very deep voice and no emotion in his eyes. He said to Shi Wei, "The interrogation has been forced to stop—your brother has asked the Fran Empire for help, saying that his sister has gone missing in Moonshine Square. The Fran Empire is now requesting our search assistance."

Shi Wei seemed to see a glimmer of hope. The white light shone on her pale face, and her voice trembled slightly: "So?"

Lu Qi's lips curled into a mocking smile: "The Fran Empire is just going through the motions. We can hand over your corpse in any unexpected way."

He looked at the girl who looked panicked and said casually, "But you also have other options."

Shi Wei stared at him blankly.

Lu Qi left the documents behind and let out a sigh of relief as he went out.

It's really hard to understand why the higher-ups are so fixated on this girl. From Dekali's defection to the discovery of his body, the security bureau has been on high alert for the past six months. There's no way around it; with the Emperor's top secretary betraying him, no one dares to relax.

However, Decali did not take the chip with him.

Why did he abandon his defection before his death and entrust such an important chip to a stranger, Omega?

This girl's life was perfectly normal. She had never been to the Manla Empire, had no connection with the Alliance, and her entire family were pure Fran Empire citizens. The whole team studied her file thoroughly, reviewed the interrogation records daily, but still couldn't provide a reasonable explanation for the higher-ups.

Dekari must have gone mad, otherwise he wouldn't have gone to the far north to commit suicide.

When the body was pulled from the icy sea, his face was serene yet broken amidst the broken ice.

A note from the author:

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