Chapter Fifteen: Xiao's Diary

Today was an unfortunate day; I don't even want to recall what the date was!

Gu Xiechen? The Holy Unicorn Mercenary Group?

They all deserve to die! They absolutely all deserve to go to hell!

What does the loss of the Holy Unicorn Mercenary Group have to do with me?? They are nothing more than a pack of greedy parasites clinging to the bodies of Rmen and Terrans. But what about the components I ordered? What about those parts I commissioned? All my savings from these past years have been wired to their account, and yet they were attacked! The components that should have been mine... all lost!

Damn them!

Gu Xiechen? The Holy Unicorn Mercenary Group?

I remember you!

Two intensely bright blue lights flickered in Xiao's dark eyes as he angrily closed his diary document. Grabbing a discarded mechanical arm from his workbench, Xiao unconsciously twisted the high-strength alloy limb, rated to withstand loads of up to ten tons. Terrifying raw strength erupted from his seemingly slender arms, causing the mechanical arm to emit a grating creak. In his rage, Xiao wrenched the thick arm into a mangled, twisted wreck.

The blue light in his eyes intensified, flashing brighter. Xiao suddenly inhaled deeply; his distended muscles slowly contracted, and the light in his eyes gradually faded into nothingness.

He gently swung his arm, a cold, mocking smile touching his lips as he looked up. After staring blankly for a moment, Xiao resignedly looked at the large piece of machinery taking shape in his room, wordlessly grabbing his tools and dismantling it back to its most primitive components. The Holy Unicorn Mercenary Group had been attacked, suffering heavy losses, which included a first-class warship belonging to the Holssam family. The components and parts Xiao had custom-ordered clearly wouldn't arrive on schedule, and he had no new channels to procure new parts—after all, he was just an insignificant half-breed descendant of the Holssam family, and very few Rmen were willing to deal with him—nor did he wish to deal with any more Rmen.

If this treasure, for which he had poured out his heart and soul, could not be completed smoothly, then let it remain only in his mind.

"Gu Xiechen? The Holy Unicorn Mercenary Group?" Xiao muttered the two names over and over.

Dropping the multi-tool mechanical arm in his hand, Xiao listlessly walked out of his room. As the automatic door slid open before him, a faint sense of apprehension touched Xiao's heart. How long had it been since he left his quarters? Three months? Six months? Or perhaps... more than nine? This spacious workshop was like Xiao's snail shell—it protected him, but it also confined him. As Xiao stepped through the door, he instinctively lowered his head.

Twelve arrogant Holssam family warriors marched past him in neat formation. When their captain passed Xiao, he offered a slight nod of acknowledgement out of servant's instinct. All twelve family warriors were clad in the newest model of energy armor; the exquisitely ornate metallic suits were shrouded in a three-centimeter-thick, faint blue halo. This latest energy armor was rumored to withstand direct fire from the main cannons of a Terran Level Three warship, and each suit was prohibitively expensive—even the main combat legions of the Rmen had not yet completed outfitting.

But within the Holssam family, even the warriors of the lowest status were equipped with this armor, designated the 'Radiant Dragon Wing Type VII'.

"Glorious, great House Holssam!" Xiao's mouth twitched. The Holssam family, truly worthy of being the second most prestigious electoral family among the Rmen.

The floor, paved with material fused from Zakra energy crystals and special single-crystal metal, emanated a cryptic blue luminescence. The circular hall in front of Xiao's workshop spanned two hundred meters in diameter, topped by a Gothic vault soaring over four hundred meters high, architecturally learned from the Terrans. The ceiling of the vault was made of transparent crystalline material, allowing sunlight to stream through, sculpted into focusing planes. Brilliant shafts of light cascaded down, lending the hall an exceptionally majestic atmosphere.

Twelve radial corridors extended from the sides of the circular hall, each leading to various important Holssam family structures. Xiao’s workshop and living quarters were situated along one of these corridors; originally, it had been quarters for the family servants. A workshop converted from a servant's rest area suited Xiao's half-breed status.

At the entrance of every corridor stood eight family warriors, entirely encased in energy armor. Their height, nearly three meters, made them exceptionally imposing. They stood with their left hands on their hips, their right hands gripping specialized pole-axes. The five-meter-long pole-axes were also covered in a thick layer of faint glow, occasionally emitting sharp crackling sounds as powerful arcs of electricity shot out from the axeheads. These family warriors appeared to have no concept of conserving energy, keeping their specialized energy weapons at full power at all times, seeking only the showy spectacle of intense illumination.

Even their energy armor—Xiao actually wanted to tell them they didn't need to keep the energy shields activated constantly; the Zakra crystals they wasted every hour could power a light tank for thousands of kilometers. But this was the Holssam style, the unmatched flair of the Holssam family!

Twenty-four disc-shaped flyers, two meters in diameter, emerged from a corridor to Xiao's left with a subtle humming sound. Standing on the flyers were twenty-four handsome youths clad in flowing white robes. They were tall, beautiful, and robustly built, appearing like celestial beings. They conversed in hushed, excited tones, a faint blue halo covering their bodies, constantly undulating with the shifts in their moods. The overflowing mental energy fluctuations made the hall feel like a rising tide, forcing Xiao to involuntarily step back several paces, his back pressed tightly against the wall.

One Rmen youth noticed Xiao's presence but dismissed him with a casual glance. No one paid Xiao any mind, especially not these pure-blooded direct descendants of the Holssam family; they had absolutely no reason to acknowledge Xiao's existence. He was just a lowly half-breed, born only because Nanket Holssam wanted to test his luck, hoping his lineage might produce a superior genetic mutation. Since Xiao’s genes hadn't mutated and his talent was so mediocre, he was practically worthless.

The twenty-four arrogant direct Holssam descendants departed the hall on their disc-shaped flyers, with large formations of family warriors already lined up outside. Each youth was accompanied by a varying number of family warrior guards—this was also a necessary ceremonial display for the Holssam family.

Xiao slowly walked out of the hall; not a single family warrior glanced at him.

Outside the hall was a plaza, roughly a kilometer square, where two purple-black warships, over three hundred meters long, and hundreds of various combat vehicles were neatly parked. A fierce wind whipped up sand and gravel, howling past. The energy shields of the warships and vehicles, operating at full power, emitted blinding light. Grains of sand continuously vaporized into puffs of blue smoke upon hitting the energy fields, and the sound of densely packed impacts echoed incessantly, making the massive plaza sound like thousands of popcorn machines operating at full capacity.

Thick clouds obscured the sky, and faint thunder rumbled from the horizon. A gigantic shadow could vaguely be seen slowly moving across the dense cloud cover. The active electrons in the air suddenly became nearly a hundred times more concentrated as the shadow passed directly over Xiao's head. Each strand of his long hair stood on end; with a slight rub of his fingers, a small arc of electricity shot out nearly fifteen centimeters from his fingertip. The intense electromagnetic field charged the wind-blown sand particles heavily. As the sand rubbed against itself, an electromagnetic storm suddenly erupted across the plaza ahead. Blinding purple lightning enveloped everything, and several-meter-long blue arcs leaped out from the energy shields on the warships and vehicles, the sharp hissing sound making one's scalp tingle.

This was a hellish world.

The enormous dark shape passing overhead was the Martian defense platform named 'Thunder Roar' by the Rmen—a mechanical behemoth possessing formidable firepower and extremely strong defense. This metal platform, over ten kilometers wide and long, could only drift slowly in low orbit. Its massive magnetic levitation engines constantly spewed immense amounts of electromagnetic pollution into the Martian atmosphere below, leaving nothing fertile in its wake.

If not for the Rmen, possessing extremely powerful mental force fields, an ordinary Terran could not survive in such an environment for more than three minutes.

At the edge of the plaza stood a small grove of withered trees, their dry, yellowish trunks, about as thick as a child's wrist, leaning weakly on the ground. The gale swept large swaths of sand towards this pitiful grove, and after a series of crackling sounds, several extremely charred tree trunks simultaneously burst into flame.

Several Holssam family warriors ran toward the grove upon hearing the noise. One of them pointed authoritatively at the burning trunks; a jet of white frost erupted from his fingertip, causing the localized temperature to plummet instantly to around minus one hundred degrees Celsius. The burning wood froze solid, and the flames naturally dissipated.

This was Mars, the planet the Rmen had painstakingly cultivated for nearly three hundred years—a dreadful world barely habitable for Rmen.

Many times, Xiao couldn't understand why the Rmen built defenses like the Thunder Roar. Even if Rmen paid Terrans to come, they wouldn't want to live on such a planet. Xiao had seen many photographs of Earth in his mother's diary; the beautiful natural scenery was like paradise. Would Terrans cross interstellar space to attack a hellish Mars? Only if all Terrans had gone mad!

"Fools," Xiao muttered softly, offering an accurate appraisal of the current Rmen leaders, before walking towards a battered 'Sand Scorpion Type I' off-road vehicle parked in a corner of the plaza. This vehicle was much older than seventeen-year-old Xiao; it was said to have participated in nineteen localized conflicts with the Terrans. Xiao had salvaged it from a pile of war scrap shipped back to Mars and spent over a year restoring its mobility.

Next to the Sand Scorpion I was a brand-new 'Sand Wolf Type VI' assault vehicle, complete with an energy shield. That was the transport designated for Xiao by the Holssam family; after all, as the second electoral family of the Rmen, Xiao needed a certain degree of respectability when traveling. However, Xiao was deeply fond of the ancient off-road vehicle he had dug out of the scrap heap and refused to use the vehicle provided by the family. The Holssam family could do nothing about it, which only further cemented his low standing within the clan.

Squeezing into the driver's cabin, which seemed overly spacious to Xiao, he closed the slightly leaky door and skillfully started the vehicle, driving out of the valley where the Holssam family resided.

Mars' harsh environment forced the Rmen to inhabit natural or artificial valleys; valleys thousands of meters deep could shield them from over eighty percent of severe storms. These dense valleys connected to form the cities and city clusters of the Rmen on Mars. Deep ravines and hidden underground passages connected the entire planet, providing passage everywhere. After centuries of recovery and development, over four billion Rmen inhabited this unique semi-subterranean environment.

The Sand Scorpion I slipped into a narrow passage on the western side of the Holssam Valley belonging to the Holssam family. After more than an hour of travel, Xiao drove the vehicle out of the Rmen's established transportation network and entered a natural valley in the wilderness. Due to Xiao's modifications, even though the Sand Scorpion I looked old and battered on the outside, its performance surpassed the newest Sand Scorpion Type VII by twenty percent. The vehicle gracefully traversed the fire-red sandstone formations within the valley, finally arriving before a cave entrance at the far end.

The surrounding cliffs towered over three hundred meters high. Beneath the eastern cliff face was a cave entrance less than three meters tall. A small 'Sand Scorpion Type II' off-road vehicle was parked on a small patch of sand outside the cave. The usually impassive Xiao’s expression softened remarkably upon seeing this Sand Scorpion II; a gentle smile bloomed on his face.

This Sand Scorpion II had also been fashioned by Xiao's hands, salvaged from the same pile of war scrap as his own ride, the Sand Scorpion I. Xiao had invested far more effort into this Sand Scorpion II because it belonged to Xiao’s only friend—a lovely girl of the Lings, a servant race to the Rmen—Lili.

The Lings were humanoid, similar in stature to Terrans, with skin, pupils, and hair all a pale green. Every Ling was slender, delicate, exquisitely beautiful, and possessed a peculiar innate talent. While no individual Ling's mental power was overwhelmingly strong, it was incredibly refined and gentle. Believing that all things possessed a spirit, they could communicate with all living beings in heaven and on earth.

The Rmen’s ability to gain a foothold on Mars was not solely due to their advanced technological capabilities; the role of the Lings could not be underestimated. It was the Lings, utilizing their racial abilities, who catalyzed the initial modification of Mars using several low-level algae native to Earth. The newly formed, oxygen-rich atmosphere capable of sustaining life on Mars was the work of the Lings.

Xiao had accidentally discovered this cave in his youth. Inside, it held a strange energy that no instrument could detect but which undeniably existed. This energy was imbued with a peculiar vitality, capable of promoting better growth and evolution in plants. Xiao could not perceive this marvelous energy at all; it was Lili who sensed its presence, and since then, the cave became a little secret between the two of them.

A green blur flashed, and a slender, petite figure cautiously poked her head out of the cave entrance. When she realized the approaching vehicle was Xiao’s, her small face instantly lit up with a brilliant smile. Before Xiao could even clearly see Lili’s movement, the small silhouette, trailing a series of afterimages, darted into his arms.

"Xiao, why have you taken so long to visit me this time?" Beautiful and petite Lili excitedly wrapped her arms around Xiao's neck, rapidly 'chattering' in a clear, sweet voice about everything Xiao had been doing these past months. Her beautiful tone was like the clear spring thawing in spring, nourishing Xiao's soul, and his heart slowly softened amidst the melodious sounds.

Lili’s body was small and soft, seemingly boneless, clinging to Xiao without him feeling any weight. Xiao affectionately reached out to stroke Lili's green hair, forcing a bitter smile. "I've been very busy, very busy. You know about the things I'm building."

Lili's eyes shone. She vigorously tugged Xiao’s ear. "Then you're here to see me because you succeeded? You succeeded? Really?"

Lili knew what Xiao was building—the things that could change Xiao's destiny. If Xiao could truly succeed in building them, his status within the Holssam family would rise dramatically—Xiao might even gain entry into the Rmen’s highest academy directly—Xiao was constructing the next generation of engines capable of increasing the utilization rate of Zakra energy crystals. Whether Terran or Rmen, countless researchers from both races were trying to solve this difficult problem.

More advanced engines, higher energy utilization efficiency, greater unit output power—this meant larger warships, faster travel speeds, and more powerful high-energy weapons. It meant they could travel further in the universe, search more celestial bodies, and discover more and newer resources, which in turn meant stronger overall power and the hope of completely suppressing or even destroying the enemy!

For an Rmen half-breed not yet eighteen to dare talk about creating entirely new engines? If word got out, it would make countless researchers from both races laugh themselves to death. Yet, this was what Xiao had been researching for the past few years. This was also Xiao and Lili's little secret—Xiao truly possessed the potential for the genetic mutation Nanket Holssam dreamed of, having extremely powerful innate talents, but his talent lay not in mental power cultivation, which the Rmen prided themselves on.

Xiao possessed a terrifying talent for physical strength. When he was only seven, Xiao pushed away a rock several tons in weight that had fallen to rescue a young Lili, thus forging the bond between them.

But even more terrifying than Xiao's talent for physical strength was his aptitude for machinery. It was an instinct, an ineffable, almost divinely bestowed instinct! Lili had witnessed the miracles Xiao created countless times.

He gave a bitter smile, shaking his head helplessly. "No, I failed. Or rather, I failed temporarily."

Lili would never doubt Xiao's eventual success, so her beautiful green eyes looked at him with surprise.

"Why didn't you succeed?" Lili was nearly in tears, her green eyes brimming with moisture as she looked at Xiao, feeling deeply wronged. She knew the significance of this engine to Xiao. If Xiao could present this engine to the academicians of the Rmen's highest academy, Xiao’s fate could undergo a seismic shift.

"Ah!" Xiao's expression was very grim. He muttered the names 'Gu Xiechen' and 'Holy Unicorn Mercenary Group' again, shaking his head angrily. "This, it’s not my fault, Lili, it’s not my fault. This is due to others, a very unfortunate coincidence. It's just that the unlucky ones, besides those bastards in the Holy Unicorn Mercenary Group, include me."

After a few bitter laughs, Xiao shook his head. "It looks like I'll have to go through the Christo Fusion Ritual now."

"No!" Lili cried out in terror. "Absolutely not! You'll die!"

Yes, people died. Lili's family held some standing within the Lings, and she had heard countless stories since childhood about the terrifying 'Christo Fusion Ritual'. Essentially, none of the people in those stories survived; everyone who underwent the ritual either died or transformed into horrifying demons. According to Ling lore, these failed fusion demons were man-eating monsters whose favorite appetizer was the Lings and whose main course was the Rmen.

Could Xiao, the one who provided Lili with boundless warmth and security, also turn into such a monster?

Lili’s tears streamed down, big drops rolling off her cheeks. Sobbing, she asked, "Can't we think of another way?"

"Another way?" Xiao shook his head. Not unless he could complete that engine, but he lacked some extremely crucial custom-ordered components.

The strictly hierarchical Rmen would never supply him with these parts, nor did he have the money or the authority to demand them. As a lowly Rmen-Terran half-breed, no one would—or rather, no one was willing to—believe him, including Nanket Holssam. Furthermore, if Xiao dared to tell anyone he had invented a new engine capable of increasing Zakra crystal utilization, the only outcome would be to be mocked as an idiot by countless arrogant Rmen.

Not to mention those stubborn, rigid, and conservative academicians of the Rmen's highest academy. If Xiao dared to present his blueprints to them, they would certainly order the guards to execute him on the spot—even his nominal father being the patriarch of the Holssam family couldn't save him.

Who would trust a low-caste half-breed?

In the entire universe, the only one who had faith in Xiao was Lili, who wept clinging to his embrace.

After a moment of silence, Xiao chuckled softly, "Come now, Lily, don't cry. Let's go see your treasure—well, our treasure!"

The spacious cavern was suffused with a faint, ethereal green light, a miraculous luminescence seeping from the very depths of the rock walls. On the sandy floor, a nursery spanning a hundred meters square had been carved out, holding nearly a thousand saplings, tender and verdant. Each tiny tree stood over two meters tall, vibrant with life, every leaf brimming with such intense, dripping green vitality.

This was the little secret between Xiao and Lily.

The magical energy within this cave could accelerate plant growth and evolution, while simultaneously stimulating Lily, granting her significant boosts to both her physical strength and spiritual power.

The air inside the cave was incredibly fresh; it was like stepping into two entirely different worlds upon crossing the threshold.

Xiao settled comfortably next to Lily amidst the seedlings, pulling her close. He took a deep breath, the cool, fresh air swirling in his lungs, the dense life force slowly integrating into his very being.

"It truly is magnificent!"

Xiao gazed at this small forest, lost in thought.

If it weren't for the trouble stirred up by those bastards, 'Gu Xichen' and the 'Sacred Unicorn Mercenary Corps,' this world would indeed be perfect.

If he could just successfully fabricate that engine, coupled with Lily and this marvelous grove! This world would truly be perfect!

"Gu Xichen!"

"Sacred Unicorn Mercenary Corps!"

Xiao repeated those two names over and over in his mind, his hatred for those two solidifying into something profound.

It was because of them that Xiao was forced to participate in the near-suicidal Christo Fusion Ceremony.

Feeling the softness of Lily’s skin beneath his hand, Xiao unleashed the most venomous curses he could conceive against Gu Xichen and the Sacred Unicorn Mercenary Corps.

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An extra bonus chapter, a side story... a chapter well over 6,000 characters long...

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A new month will arrive soon...

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