TCPUAAV Chapter 121

 

Rong Heng stood watch beside the med pod.

 

According to the data on the holographic screen, Ruan Shiqing’s vital signs were all normal. Aside from a minor injury to his ears, which the med pod was already rapidly healing, there was no physical damage.

 

But he showed no signs of waking.

 

Seeing the little one clinging to the edge of the pod with red-rimmed eyes, Rong Heng gently picked him up—whether to comfort him, or perhaps to comfort himself, he couldn’t quite tell.

“Don’t worry. Daddy will wake up soon,” he said softly.

 

One big, one small—they stayed beside the med pod in silence. Second by second, time passed, until cheers of victory echoed through the comms channel. Yet the man lying inside remained unconscious.

 

Fearing the situation might affect morale, Rong Heng had refrained from mentioning Ruan Shiqing’s injury when handing over command. The others merely assumed something had gone wrong with the Zerg specimen in the lab—they had no idea Ruan Shiqing had been hurt as well.

 

It had now been three hours since the incident.

 

Rong Heng’s heart grew heavier with each passing moment. Listening to the excited chatter of the young ones through the channel, he clenched his jaw to stop any trace of emotion from leaking into his voice.

 

“Tow the warship back. Bring it with us to Planet B3024.”

 

He hadn’t forgotten—Ruan Shiqing had shown great interest in that black warship.

 

A chorus of affirmations echoed through the comms. The young ones leapt down from their fighter jets and boarded the enemy vessel.

 

Having been forcefully boarded and bombarded, the warship was now riddled with holes. Its inner decks and bulkheads were warped and torn apart, leaving the interior in complete disarray.

 

“It’s blown up this badly… can Daddy still use it after we drag it back?” Nota asked, boots crunching against a buckled metal plate, her expression full of worry.

 

She turned and glared at Heli. “It’s your fault. I told you not to go all-out with the firepower!”

 

Heli snorted, clearly unconvinced. “If we didn’t go hard, we wouldn’t have taken it down that fast.”

 

The two cubs argued as they walked deeper into the ship, checking the remaining compartments. Thankfully, aside from the critical zones that had been heavily bombarded, the rest of the ship was mostly intact. If Daddy took over, he might be able to fix it… maybe?

 

The two exchanged a guilty glance, neither entirely confident.

 

Behind them, the soldiers who had boarded alongside them were escorting sedated prisoners out of the ship. Upon seeing the two cubs return, one of the officers called out:

 

“The aft compartment’s full of incubation units—hundreds of Zerg eggs inside. Orders?”

 

Thinking of Sally’s grotesquely swollen abdomen, Nota grimaced in disgust.

 

“Get rid of the eggs. Don’t damage the incubators—we might need them.”

 

She figured Daddy could find some use for them.

 

Aside from the three humanoid Zerg captives, there hadn’t been a single other combatant aboard the warship. The rest of the vessel was entirely filled with hatcheries and Zerg eggs. They had taken one look—and barely held back the urge to gag.

 

With the loot and prisoners accounted for, the operation was officially over.

 

The massive black warship, battered and broken, was hauled behind the main ship by a mechanical towing arm, as they began their return journey to Planet B3024.

 

The captured prisoners were temporarily detained in the lower deck’s improvised holding cells. After the young ones finished reporting the battle results, they returned to their rooms to wash up, cleaned themselves thoroughly, and finally shifted back into their cub forms. Excited beyond words, they eagerly made their way to the lab to find their daddy.

 

They couldn’t wait to show off their achievements!

 

The three cubs met up on the way and headed to the lab together.

 

But once they arrived, they didn’t see their daddy. Instead, they found Rong Heng and Ruan Jiao keeping vigil beside a med pod. Garland, Hector, and Merrell were also present.

 

The excited smiles on the cubs’ faces faltered. The little dragon cub tiptoed to try and peek into the pod, but he was still too short to see inside. He turned toward the group with hesitation, his voice uncertain. “Who got hurt? Where’s Daddy?”

 

Garland looked at the confused cubs and let out a soft sigh. He stepped forward and picked the little dragon up in his arms.

 

“Daddy just got a little hurt. He’ll be okay soon,” he said gently, doing his best to comfort them.

 

Now in Garland’s arms, the little dragon finally caught sight of the person lying quietly inside the med pod—Ruan Shiqing.

 

He let out a gasp and immediately wriggled out of Garland’s arms, scrambling over to Rong Heng and climbing onto his lap to get a closer look.

 

His golden eyes brimmed with tears—but he stubbornly refused to let them fall.

 

The little fox and the little mermaid quietly stepped closer as well. Seeing the person lying so still in the pod, they couldn’t help lowering their heads and rubbing at their eyes.

 

“How did Daddy get hurt?” the little mermaid asked softly.

 

But the lab remained silent. No one had an answer to give.

 

What Garland had said earlier wasn’t exactly a lie—he had checked Ruan Shiqing’s body after returning and found no internal injuries, no physical trauma. It was as if he had simply… fallen into a deep sleep and couldn’t wake up.

 

The worst possibility was that his spiritual core had been damaged, preventing him from regaining consciousness. Unfortunately, with the Empire’s current medical technology, there was still no effective treatment for spiritual injuries. Garland had seen cases before where patients with completely stable vital signs—people who were perfectly healthy—had never woken up again due to severe spiritual trauma.

 

But that possibility was too terrifying to speak aloud.

 

He buried the thought deep inside and told himself: just wait a little longer—maybe, in a few days, Ruan Shiqing would wake up.

 

Because of Ruan Shiqing’s injury and coma, the atmosphere aboard the ship remained heavy and subdued. By the time they returned to Planet B3024, there wasn’t the slightest trace of victory celebration despite their triumph.

 

Rong Heng personally carried Ruan Shiqing off the ship and took him back to the repair shop’s bedroom.

 

Garland had said that since there was nothing wrong with his physical body, there was no need for him to remain in the med pod. Placing him in a familiar environment might even aid in his recovery.

 

And so Rong Heng brought him home, laying him gently on the large bed in their room.

 

Thanks to 09’s preparations, the bedroom had already been cleaned spotless—exactly as it had been before they left. The only difference was a new vital signs monitor placed beside the bed.

 

Rong Heng, 09, and the cubs took turns caring for him. When there was nothing else to do, they would sit by his side and talk to him, keeping him company in quiet hope.

 

After leaving the bedroom, everyone grew noticeably quieter.

 

Especially Rong Heng. Since returning to the repair shop, he hadn’t stepped outside even once. He spent most of his time in Ruan Shiqing’s room, silently keeping vigil by his side. And when he feared his presence might disturb Ruan Shiqing’s deep sleep, he would retreat to the living room balcony, standing there wordlessly, gazing in through the tall floor-to-ceiling windows at the man lying peacefully inside.

 

The cubs no longer maintained their juvenile forms. They shifted fully into their human forms and consciously took over all the duties that had originally fallen to Rong Heng.

 

He took it all in without comment.

 

It took him five days to collect himself, to force himself out of the fog of helplessness and back into action. Then, he made his way to the prison on Planet B3024—where the three humanoid Zerg captives were being held.

 

Upon hearing the news, the cubs insisted on accompanying him.

 

The prisoners had all been injected with muscle relaxants and were being held separately in three cells. Each of them was shackled with electronic cuffs on their wrists and ankles, equipped with auto-alert systems to prevent escape.

 

Hector had already conducted a round of interrogations earlier, but the Zerg had been defiant and tight-lipped, revealing nothing.

 

Rong Heng entered the cell without a word, but stopped the cubs at the door.

 

An hour later, he emerged again—his expression unchanged, cold and unreadable—but the handkerchief he used to wipe his hands bore faint traces of blood. The cubs glanced inside the cell and saw the prisoner collapsed limply in the corner like a discarded sack of flesh. No visible wounds marked his skin.

 

Rong Heng had already moved on to the next cell.

 

Two hours later, he stepped out of the third cell, the stench of blood clinging to him like a second skin. Before the cell door could fully close, the prisoner suddenly lunged forward, the chitinous limbs on his back flailing wildly. But his strength failed him midway, and he crashed to the floor.

 

Eyes bloodshot and feral, the Zerg glared up at Rong Heng with a hatred so intense it seemed he would tear him apart if given the chance.

 

“The war’s already begun. Even if you caught us, it’s too late.”

 

Rong Heng remained unmoved. He kicked the prisoner back into the cell and shut the door behind him.

 

Afterward, he compiled all the information he had extracted and sent it to Garland.

 

As expected, these humanoid Zerg captives knew quite a bit. The most critical piece of information they revealed was this:

 

The larva that had injured Ruan Shiqing in the lab was a newly born Zerg Queen.

 

Reportedly, the project to create a new queen had been initiated in secret long ago, following the death of the last Zerg Queen. The remaining high-level Zerg had been working ever since to artificially cultivate a replacement.

 

The ten eggs inside Sally’s abdomen had been the most successful experiment to date—specimens closest to achieving queen-level potential. As for the larva that emerged and absorbed both Sally and the remaining nine eggs, that had been an unexpected and unusual outcome that even the prisoners hadn’t anticipated.

 

They knew little about it beyond that.

 

Unable to extract anything more, Rong Heng could only place his hopes in Garland—hoping he might find a breakthrough in the data they’d gathered.

 

“Let’s go,” Rong Heng said, his gaze never once turning toward the cubs.

 

But Ruan Jiao, who had been quietly following at his side, reached out and tugged at the hem of his coat.

 

This little one—still not yet fully grown and the only surviving larva of his kind—had become noticeably more subdued after everything they’d been through. Since returning to Planet B3024, he hadn’t cried once. But whenever he had a moment, he practiced speaking diligently. His speech had become much smoother than before.

 

Only now, no one was there to ruffle his hair and smile proudly, praising him for how well he was doing.

 

The cub’s antennae drooped, and in a small voice, he said, “That person just now—I know him.”

 

He had never seen that Zerg before, but he recognized his scent.

 

A long, long time ago, when he was still just an egg, the companions who had kept him company had disappeared one by one. In their place came those other Zerg—the ones with that awful, repulsive smell.

 

One of them had been that prisoner.

 

Back then, he had hated those Zerg. He never spoke to them, never responded—but they would prick him with sharp needles. At first, they were careful, and it only happened occasionally. But as time passed, the pricks became more frequent, and their actions more and more violent.

 

Ruan Jiao did his best to recall what the Zerg had said at the time, and quietly repeated it: “He said… ‘The experiment is showing results.’”

 

The cub looked up at Rong Heng, eyes filled with uncertainty—unsure whether what he remembered was of any value.

 

Rong Heng seemed thoughtful. A moment later, he reached out and gently ruffled the cub’s hair. He even gave a rare, brief smile.

 

“I see,” he said softly.

 

Ruan Jiao pressed his lips together, then returned a small smile of his own.

 

“You all head home first. I’m going to see Garland,” Rong Heng said, turning to Ruan Yuebai, gesturing for him to take the cubs back.

 

Heli and Nota had wanted to follow him—by now, they more or less understood that Rong Heng’s interrogation of the Zerg prisoners was an effort to find a way to help Daddy. Now that they’d finally gotten something useful, they were practically bursting with curiosity.

 

But seeing the deep furrow in Rong Heng’s brow, the cubs ultimately chose to be patient. Without a word, they obediently followed Ruan Yuebai back home.

 

 

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So we finally have the confirmation that Jiao Jiao is a genetically modified/made Zerg too! The only thing that is still mysterious is whether the kind Zergs made those eggs for the same reason as the “bad” ones (I doubt it, maybe it was so they survive but something went wrong? Who knows.)

 

Thanks for reading!

For every three ko-fis, I will upload a bonus chapter~