On this day, many omegas gathered on Tang Jianxi’s StarNet account. An hour earlier, they had seen a live stream announcement. It didn’t specify the content, but the omegas, with their preconceived notions, naturally assumed it was a signal that Yun Chuji was going to make an appearance.
Ever since her last live stream, Yun Chuji had vanished from StarNet, showing no intention of capitalizing on her immense popularity. The omegas she had attracted could only resort to the humble act of begging on Tang Jianxi’s public StarNet account every day, pleading for her to let her wife come out and promote the wonderful A-Virtue, to purify the AO environment.
But Tang Jianxi wasn’t active either.
No one knew what she was busy with lately; she hadn’t even been forwarding ads for the Tang Group.
The omegas felt quite aggrieved, like they were flirting with a blind person every day.
Fortunately, this person wasn’t truly blind, and President Tang was generous. When she did something, she did it big. Omegas called their friends and gathered around. Even many unconvinced alphas decided to watch, hoping to find some dirt on this so-called grandmaster of A-Virtue enlightenment.
They insisted this person was either a fraud or a lunatic, and only naive omegas would be fooled by her.
Regardless of the audience’s intentions, the live stream began as scheduled.
But the person who appeared on camera was not Yun Chuji, but a haggard-looking male alpha.
Before people could cry foul, the male alpha began with a shocking statement: “My name is Johnathan Kerry. I am here to report that members of the Glory club, in collusion with gangs from the outermost rings of multiple districts on the Imperial Capital Star, Cang Star, and Qinglan Star, are engaged in the trafficking of omegas.”
StarNet exploded.
It was now the year 368 of the Imperial Calendar. Omega trafficking—wasn’t that something from the era of the Activation War?
Many thought it was just a malicious joke, that perhaps Tang Jianxi’s StarNet account had been hacked by some bored group of space pirates. This was especially true for the alphas. They couldn’t believe that in an age where most alphas couldn’t even find a wife, someone was actually involved in omega trafficking. Were they insane?
Yes, they were insane.
As two videos played, everyone went insane.
One video was from the auctioneer’s perspective. The auctioned omegas were carefully pixelated, but their trembling bodies still betrayed their fear and unease at being treated as merchandise. The other video was from the perspective of a bidder. Not only was there no pixelation, but the video quality had been artificially enhanced. People from G-District on Cang Star were surprised to see several familiar faces. They calmly raised their paddles, occasionally smiling and sharing their auction experiences as if they were buying ordinary jewelry or antiques.
The people going insane weren’t just those discovering this crime now. Within five minutes of Tang Jianxi posting the live stream announcement, Tang Jianshen had called her.
Tang Jianxi looked at the caller ID with a sense of weariness. She could guess what her brother would say. After the call ended, she leaned on Yun Chuji’s shoulder and let out a deep sigh.
A second call came quickly.
Tang Jianxi answered it but declined the video call.
Tang Jianshen’s voice was still as cold as ice. His first words were a command: “Tang Jianxi, stop.”
A mocking smile touched Tang Jianxi’s lips. She had already figured the whole thing out—her brother had heard their entire plan. With his intelligence, it wasn’t surprising he could react so quickly. But for the first person to try and stop her to be her own omega brother was absurd from any angle.
“Why should I stop? Isn’t this what we decided on together?”
“There’s no need to go this far,” he said, his tone as steady as ever.
“Then how far did you think we should go?”
“I’ve almost finished collecting the entire chain of criminal evidence against those gangs. In a few more days, I can uproot them completely. The auctions will never happen again. It’s the same outcome, isn’t it?”
Tang Jianxi scoffed, piercing through Tang Jianshen’s carefully considered facade to his true intentions. “Of course. I knew it. With your intelligence, how could you not see the flaws in our plan? Or rather, the flaws in our plan were guided by you, weren’t they? While we were struggling on Cang Star, you used those gangs as scapegoats, cutting off the funding for Warm-O without offending too many nobles.”
Tang Jianxi’s undisguised mockery made Tang Jianshen’s breathing quicken slightly. He realized the situation might be more serious than he had imagined. “They aren’t scapegoats. They’re executioners.”
“They’re executioners who get paid to do the job,” Tang Jianxi said coldly.
Sensing his sister’s unyielding determination, Tang Jianshen dropped his mechanical, cold tone and tried to sound gentle. “You don’t have to reveal all of this. Those who should be exonerated will be. The entire upper circle of the Empire won’t be reshuffled because of this. Only you will be in danger. History is written by the victors. Even if you’re on the right side, you’ll end up being smeared as an evil force trying to subvert the Empire. This isn’t a difficult concept to grasp, Jianxi. The real world isn’t as simple as the omega slogans you recite.”
Tang Jianxi fell silent for a moment, then sighed. “But brother, you never even thought about fighting.”
“You chose to surrender from the very beginning, didn’t you?”
Tang Jianshen retorted, “But at least I won’t make a pointless sacrifice!”
“A pointless sacrifice. Ha. That’s the phrase. That’s the phrase I’ve been thinking about the most these past few days. Every time I think of it, I feel sick.” As Tang Jianxi spoke, she leaned closer to Yun Chuji, inhaling her scent before continuing, “You and I haven’t been sacrificed, but what about those who were sold, who have already been sacrificed? They didn’t want to be sacrificed either, did they?”
Tang Jianshen faltered but quickly regained his composure. “That’s not what I meant. I’ve already made a plan. They will be given sufficient compensation and resettled. But if everything is made public, the situation will become chaotic.”
Before Tang Jianshen could elaborate on his meticulous plan, Tang Jianxi found the conversation utterly tedious and cut him off. “I told Grandmother. Grandmother will make a better plan.”
“That will lead to war!” Tang Jianshen exclaimed, losing his composure.
But Tang Jianxi had already hung up.
Imperial Capital Star, A-District, Omega Legion Base.
A female omega with half-gray hair but a vigorous spirit was watching with great interest as Johnathan, on the light screen, exposed the alpha scoundrels, prodigies, and hidden figures among the nobility one by one. The list was long, so he kept drinking water as he spoke. Perhaps he was drinking not because he was thirsty, but because he was afraid. After all, the list was very long.
Several other omegas sat beside her, all familiar faces from StarNet’s political news programs. But these important figures sat deferentially in the lower seats, their expressions a mix of restraint and trepidation.
They certainly weren’t shocked by the crimes just made public on the light screen. Although they were also omegas, they held great power, commanding the Empire’s most elite omega army. No alpha dared to cross them. Even if some had in the distant past of their youth, they had either forgiven them or retaliated, and most had forgotten by now.
Moreover, they were not entirely ignorant of this crime.
When the gangs transported people, their methods weren’t exactly clean. There were a few, like Winona, who had escaped from the outermost ring. Over time, rumors had begun to spread.
Some people suppressed the rumors and joined the evil carnival.
But the rumors continued to leak out. Two months ago, an omega came to an omega recruitment office to report human trafficking in the outermost ring. It was the recruitment office in the ninth ring. By the time the omega arrived, he had been starving for three days, a rare occurrence in the Imperial era—no omega went hungry unless they were dieting.
So, although there was no concrete evidence, the omega’s miserable state earned the preliminary trust of the recruitment officer.
To be honest, if it weren’t for the fact that the outermost ring had become a lawless zone, where gangs could even artificially cut off communication channels with the inner rings, omega auctions would never have become so prevalent among the Empire’s upper-class alpha nobility.
If the Empire had paid even a little attention, things wouldn’t have gotten this bad. Those gangs were like paper tigers in front of professionally trained soldiers. The officers easily found conclusive evidence.
The matter was reported up the chain of command, but it was ultimately suppressed by a single fear.
The fear of war.
The situation was extremely awkward. Faced with this provocation against the AO Peace Treaty and the Imperial Constitution, the Omega Legion could only respond with war. Otherwise, the treaty and the constitution would become a true joke, and the Omega Legion would become a laughingstock, a mere decoration.
But should they really go to war?
Peace had only lasted for just over three hundred years. The shadow of the Activation War still hung over everyone’s heads. It had taken the Empire a full century to restore its population to pre-war levels.
And this was the ABO era, with its significantly increased birth rates.
The Activation War was bloody, but a second one would be even bloodier. And unlike the last time, many omegas had now been tamed into domestic dependents. They couldn’t face a war. Of course, the war might not affect ordinary people. The Omega Legion had weapons, weapons that made the Empire tremble. But after shattering the Empire with those weapons, what then?
How would they rebuild?
Moreover, an omega’s biology was an objective reality. Even with inhibitors, they were only a temporary substitute. They couldn’t live without alphas. War would push the two genders further and further apart, but their AO biology would stitch them back together again, creating another unified empire, one scarred by a second Activation War. This wasn’t a war between two countries; it was a war between two genders. And these two genders needed each other to define themselves. Therefore, it would be a futile war.
This was all a foreseeable future. And so, the omega who had reported the crime had yet to receive a definitive response.
They were hesitating, hesitating so much that they had delayed telling the omega before them.
And now she had found out through other means.
And now all omegas had found out through other means.
The omega at the head of the table seemed to have grown tired of watching. She turned, smiled at her subordinates of many years, and said gently, “What do you think we should do?”
The others looked at each other, unsure of what to say.
Finally, a stern-faced middle-aged male omega stood up and said in a low voice, “Marshal, we cannot bear the cost of war.”
The omega—the renowned Marshal Chu Meng—nodded lightly at his words. She placed her hands flat on the conference table before her and gazed into the distance, as if seeing the phantom of a battlefield. “Jason, do you still remember the motto of the First Omega Military Academy?”
A shiver ran down Jason’s spine. He bit his lip, his face pale. “To fear war is to invite war. To be fearless in war is to attain peace.”
“Correct. You remember it well. A worthy famous alumnus of the First Military Academy,” Chu Meng’s fingers tapped lightly on the conference table. She paused, then continued, “Then why did you hide this matter?”
Jason hung his head powerlessly, saying nothing.
“You are all the backbone of the Omega Legion. But you have forgotten that the Omega Legion is the backbone of all omegas. If you can’t even stand up for omegas, then what is the point of the Omega Legion’s existence?”
“I taught you back at the academy: war requires reparations, but so does surrendering without a fight. And for the past hundred years, we have been paying a lot of war reparations.”
Chu Meng withdrew her gaze and looked quietly at the five prized disciples sitting below her. “Jason, Song Xie, Xue Mingxue, Gao Rui, Victoria. You may all tender your resignations.”
At that moment, the live stream was coming to an end. The screen lingered on a single line of text: 【The investigation of subsequent events will be handed over entirely to the Omega Legion for handling.】
Simultaneously, on the outskirts of Golden Phoenix Star, a starship was slowly making its way toward the Imperial Capital Star.
Get instant access to all chapters now.
