Tang Jianxi straightened herself up in the lounge mirror. Seeing that she looked more or less the same as when she had first come in, she opened the door, ready to deal with the rest of the banquet.
Before leaving, a mischievous thought crossed Miss Tang’s mind. With a teasing glint in her eyes, she turned to Yun Chuji, who was still huddled in the corner of the sofa like a mushroom, and said slowly, “If I recall correctly, you responded just now, didn’t you?”
The mushroom trembled, but alas, it wasn’t a real one, so no spores fell off.
Tang Jianxi smiled in satisfaction, closed the door, and left.
The mushroom-cloud lifted her face from between her knees. Honestly, a bolt of red cloth couldn’t have been redder.
Once the effects of the alcohol wore off, the borrowed courage was naturally returned. An overwhelming wave of shyness washed over her, leaving her unsure of her own feelings.
Were love and the desire for intimacy the same thing?
Yun Chuji was lost in confusion, but a knock on the lounge door soon interrupted her thoughts.
Through the light screen, she could see a stranger outside—an alpha.
Yun Chuji immediately guessed the person’s identity: a messenger from Glory.
Due to her rising status and importance, her rank within Glory had also been elevated. According to their rules, her credentials needed to be upgraded to a higher level, a task always handled by a messenger.
But what surprised her was that, if she remembered correctly, this female alpha was a guest at the banquet. That someone like her had been recruited as a messenger spoke volumes about the vastness of the network Glory controlled.
After all, messengers weren’t even considered official members of Glory.
Glory had three ranks. Unlike its public-facing image as a casual interest club, its internal structure was strictly hierarchical. To prevent information leaks, Glory typically left no trace on StarNet, and even in chat rooms, members used pseudonyms.
In reality, everyone knew each other’s identities, and the key to this was a thin card.
Yun Chuji opened the door and let the female alpha she had never met before inside.
The woman said nothing after entering. She handed a pure black box to Yun Chuji and left just as quickly.
Inside the box was a black card. Her original white card had already been sent via interstellar express to an address that may or may not have been real.
These cards were Glory’s true communication devices. Strictly speaking, they were a type of photon computer system. By connecting one to a personal photon computer, a member could enter the true world of Glory to exchange information and trade human lives.
StarNet was merely an outer square where messengers and prospective members without cards could speak. The resources exchanged there were of little consequence, and even if discovered, it could be dismissed as nothing more than a pornographic website.
The highest rank in Glory was red. Alphas with red cards had extremely high privileges within the system and could access the visit records of internal members. Alphas with black cards could learn the locations and times of various omega auctions in advance. As for alphas with white cards, they could only receive notifications.
The original owner of this body had received her white card for accepting the mission to get close to Tang Jianxi. But not long after starting the operation, she met an untimely end and her soul was replaced. She had barely used the card, let alone attended any auctions.
Yun Chuji had forgotten where the original owner had put the card. It was only thanks to Tang Jianxi scanning the entire house that they found it in a hidden compartment inside a cabinet. They had considered trying to crack the technology to extract Glory’s internal member list and criminal evidence.
Unfortunately, Glory’s firewall technology was highly advanced. If they tried to infiltrate using the meager permissions of a white card, their identities would likely be exposed the moment they began.
Furthermore, the system ran primarily on bio-electricity, did not support external public displays, and could only be accessed by the owner, making it impossible to use third-party means to record or film evidence.
Therefore, after much deliberation, Yun Chuji and Tang Jianxi decided that she would go to an auction in person to obtain evidence.
Unlike the videos circulated within Glory, which focused on the items being auctioned, this time they would turn the camera on the buyers and sellers.
Yun Chuji logged into the Glory system. With her elevated rank, the interface was much richer. On the left were three function rows: Trade, Meeting, and Purchase—two more options than before. On the right were her inbox and personal information.
A red, unread message was particularly conspicuous.
Yun Chuji clicked on it: 【Find the formula for the Tang Group’s military-grade inhibitor.】
There was no sender, but Yun Chuji knew it was from the Third Princess.
Just as Tang Jianshen had told them, the Third Princess’s series of actions were all for military power. Or rather, the Empire’s actions for the past several decades had all been for military power.
And for that, they wouldn’t hesitate to place batch after batch of innocent omegas on the chessboard.
The Imperial family couldn’t gradually erode the power of the omega officer corps through marriage or bestowing titles, because the officers of the Omega Legion, unlike those of the alpha legions, did not come from ancient noble families. They were graduates of the Empire’s three omega military academies. Their bond was not one of blood, but of the conviction that omegas must have their own weapons. This was the fundamental reason why the Omega Legion had stood strong for the three hundred years since the Empire’s founding.
But now, it seemed, the royal family intended to attack the omegas’ inherent weaknesses.
How despicable, Yun Chuji couldn’t help but think.
Perhaps she wasn’t the only alpha to receive this directive. In this world, how many alphas could resist the price Glory was offering?
Omegas, money, and power.
This was what Glory had promised her, and presumably, what they had promised every alpha who sold their life to them.
Truly despicable.
When Tang Jianxi ended her appearance at the banquet early and returned to find Yun Chuji, she was met with a dejected face.
Tang Jianxi’s heart skipped a beat. Was she this upset because Tang Jianxi had challenged her prized self-control?
But it didn’t seem that simple. After all, the person with the dejected face was still busy writing notes on a piece of paper.
When she saw what was written on the paper, Tang Jianxi’s expression grew grave. “Someone from Glory came?”
Yun Chuji nodded. A moment later, after she finished jotting down the information, she handed the filled sheet to Tang Jianxi. “I didn’t expect there to be so many.”
With the permissions of a black card, Yun Chuji could see the schedule of Glory’s auctions for the next month. What she couldn’t have imagined was that in just one month, Glory had organized 110 auctions across three of the Empire’s planets.
This could no longer be called an auction house. This was a market!
The paper was incredibly light. Tang Jianxi knew its dimensions because it came from a machine she had bought, with parameters she had set herself, all to satisfy Yun Chuji’s desire to write by hand.
Logically, the paper should weigh less than twenty grams, but holding it, Tang Jianxi felt her hand tremble. It was too shocking.
An average auction sold about fifty omegas, which meant this single sheet of paper carried the freedom and hope of 5,500 omegas.
Tang Jianxi opened her mouth, but no words came out.
Yun Chuji spoke for her. “Jianxi, should we stick to the original plan?”
Their original plan was for Yun Chuji to gain the Third Princess’s trust as much as possible, earn an audience with her and the other leaders of Glory, and then obtain evidence of their crimes.
At first glance, there was nothing wrong with the plan, but in light of reality, a problem emerged: the plan would take too long.
It might take half a year, or even longer.
And knowing that 5,500 omegas were being put on the market for sale every month made that time seem especially long.
It wasn’t that they didn’t have a way to speed things up. They could go to one auction, immediately hand the evidence to Tang Ji, and as a neutral party, she would not fear the Third Princess’s power. These auctions would be shut down, and those gangs would be annihilated.
But the people who truly organized all of this would escape.
As long as the outermost ring remained neglected by the Empire, the soil for gangs to grow would remain fertile, human life would remain cheap, and this market could restart at any time. The only difference would be that next time, they would be even more secretive.
“Let’s talk when we get back,” Tang Jianxi managed to say.
She needed to think. And think again.
It was just like that ancient philosophical problem: kill one person to save a hundred who might die, or save one and let the hundred die.
It was too difficult. Either choice felt like murder.
The hovercar sped through the sky above Cang Star. The planet was rich in minerals, with G-District being a major producer of the precious Blue Cherry Steel. The people of Cang Star were not short on money, so they built all their structures to be extremely tall and luxurious. Massive pillars of light coiled around them, and traveling at night felt like moving through a forest of light.
Neither of them spoke much. They were still in their formal attire from the banquet. Without a doubt, they lived in the light, even basked in it.
But those who lived in darkness—precisely because they lived in darkness, sometimes the darkness had become a part of them—could be killed by the light. Although the gangs were a festering sore on the outermost ring, it was undeniable that they were also the source of order in the absence of Imperial governance. Rashly uprooting the gangs would undoubtedly cause even greater chaos in the short term.
And Tang Jianxi didn’t expect the officials, who had long regarded the outermost ring as the Empire’s poison, to understand this. They would just plow through the entire area without a second thought for the panic it would cause.
And yet, how much did she truly understand? Wasn’t everything she knew from the stories Winona had told her, and stories from other omegas from the lower classes?
Yun Chuji’s thoughts were not as deep as Tang Jianxi’s. She lacked the education and experience regarding class issues. Even though she tried hard to see herself as equal to everyone else, she still couldn’t understand what life at the bottom meant to the people living it, couldn’t grasp what Winona meant when she said that people at the bottom could only sell their bodies if they couldn’t sell their labor. She was just thinking about the 5,500 omegas about to be sent to the auction block.
Thinking of those 5,500 omegas, she thought of Johansen, who had bought three omegas.
That was it. Exposing the auctions wouldn’t touch the people behind Glory, but as long as she wasn’t the one doing the exposing, she could continue to lie low within Glory. After all, she had a more important mission.
This might not make the Third Princess and her cohorts pay the price in the short term, but since they had already set their sights on the military, she could hand the corresponding evidence to the military when the time came. The military would certainly not let them off easy.
If she remembered correctly, from her previous conversation with Johansen on the Glory system, he also had a black card.
Yun Chuji’s downcast face immediately brightened. She turned to Tang Jianxi and said, “Jianxi, I have an idea!”
Tang Jianxi, who was still pondering how to implement public facilities in the outermost ring, stirred at her words and looked at Yun Chuji with a hint of surprise. “Hm?”
“We can get Johansen to report Glory.”
As soon as Yun Chuji said this, Tang Jianxi’s eyes lit up. The fog in her mind dissipated. Of course, how could she have forgotten about the ready-made treasure that was Johansen?
Their previous plan was merely to ruin the hypocrite’s reputation, but it now seemed he had a greater purpose to serve society.
Following this line of thought, Tang Jianxi added, “We have to cut off Johansen’s path to the Third Princess first, then force him to become an informant and gather evidence at the auction.”
They looked at each other, and then, in unison, they thought of the same person: “Qi Sheng.”
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