Chapter 1: Death Is Not the End; Hunger Is the Beginning of Evolution

 Damn it, I'm going to be late!

Jiang Zhe's chest tightened. He grabbed his canvas bag and shoved his way through the crowded corridor, sprinting outside.

Getting from the academy to the District 17 Processing Center took two hover-bus transfers. If he was even a few minutes late, that bastard Old Sun would absolutely find an excuse to dock his pay.

He had just rushed out the academy gates when the ear-splitting roar of an engine exploded right behind him.

Every hair on Jiang Zhe’s body stood on end as he slammed to a halt.

A scarlet mag-lev sports car drifted hard, its front bumper scraping past Jiang Zhe’s knees before screeching to a stop, blocking his path. The exhaust wave kicked up a cloud of dust, blasting him right in the face.

Jiang Zhe squinted through the grit. This same old trick again.

The window slid down. An arm sporting a limited-edition mechanical watch draped lazily over the sill.

Chen Zixuan leaned out, his chin tilted upward in that perpetual look of arrogance. A C-Rank Genetic Awakener, and... the absolute worst kind of bastard.

"Well, well, if it isn't the academy's resident 'Gene Trash'?" Chen Zixuan whistled. "In such a hurry, are we? Rushing off to get reincarnated?"

The surrounding students recognized the car's logo and immediately gave it a wide berth. A few muffled snickers leaked from the crowd.

Jiang Zhe stared at his own somewhat disheveled reflection in the polished car door. According to the memories he had inherited, this kind of humiliation was a daily occurrence. In an era where genetics dictated destiny, an unawakened "Impurity" had to ask for permission just to breathe.

"Ugh, Xuan, why are you even wasting breath on this lower-class trash?" The woman in the passenger seat fanned the air in front of her nose in disgust. "You promised me yesterday that you'd get me that necklace today..."

The cloying, pungent scent of her perfume drifted over on the breeze, making Jiang Zhe’s skin crawl.

Jiang Zhe said nothing. He was doing the math.

If he threw a punch right now, he had a 30% chance of breaking Chen Zixuan's nose. He had a 100% chance of having all four limbs broken by Chen’s bodyguards. The resulting medical bills and compensation fees would mean working at the corpse processing center for fifty years without eating or drinking.

It wasn't worth it.

Lowering his gaze, Jiang Zhe turned to leave.

"Stop right there."

Chen Zixuan seemed provoked by being ignored. Reaching back, he pulled a glass vial from the car's mini-cooler.

A thick, deep-blue liquid sloshed against the glass.

A Basic Gene Inducer. Official retail price: eight thousand Star Credits.

Jiang Zhe froze. This was the one thing the body’s previous owner had dreamed of obtaining. Just one vial could potentially shatter his genetic locks and rid him of the "Impurity" label forever.

"Want it?" Noticing Jiang Zhe’s gaze, Chen Zixuan pinched the vial between two fingers and dangled it out the window, gently swaying it back and forth.

"I heard your mandatory deportation order just got approved. If you don't awaken in the next month, you're getting shipped off to the resource planets to mine dirt, right? Tsk, tsk. Tragic, really."

Jiang Zhe kept his eyes lowered, fixated on that sliver of blue. An instinctual thirst left his throat feeling like sandpaper.

Seeing Jiang Zhe standing there as stiff as a board, Chen Zixuan suddenly lost interest. He slowly opened his fingers.

Smash.

A crisp shatter. The blue serum hit the pavement right at Jiang Zhe’s feet, sending glass shards flying. The blue liquid quickly mixed with the grime on the street, hissing as it released a pungent wisp of white smoke before settling into a worthless puddle of sludge.

"Oops. My hand slipped." Chen Zixuan feigned surprise, leaning halfway out the window, his eyes brimming with malicious mockery. "Why don't you... lick it up? Who knows, maybe you'll get a miracle."

Jiang Zhe kept his head down, staring at the bubbling, dirty puddle inches from his toes. His arms hung at his sides, hands balled into such tight fists that his fingernails dug into his palms. Beads of blood welled up.

It hurt. But the sharp sting was just enough to suppress the murderous rage surging to his head. When you had no power, anger was a useless commodity. All suffering stems from weakness.

Jiang Zhe lifted his leg and stepped over the shattered remains.

"Leaving so soon?" Chen Zixuan called out, staring at Jiang Zhe’s retreating back. "If you get on your knees and beg, who knows? If I'm in a good mood, I might just bless you with another bottle!"

The footsteps ahead remained steady, growing fainter and fainter.

The woman in the passenger seat leaned over, clinging to Chen Zixuan’s arm. "Xuan, stop wasting your time on that trash. Let's just go."

Chen Zixuan violently shook off her hand, his eye twitching.

"Useless trash," he muttered through gritted teeth, spitting in the direction of Jiang Zhe's retreating figure. "A genetic reject like you deserves to spend the rest of his life rotting alongside those stinking alien corpses!"

VROOM—!

A violent blast of exhaust knocked over a nearby trash can as the sports car blew right through a red light, disappearing into the distance like a streak of scarlet light.

Jiang Zhe didn't look back. As he power-walked, he glanced up at the flickering digital clock at the intersection.

17:48.

"Damn it, I'm really not going to make it now," he cursed under his breath. Gripping the straps of his backpack, he broke into a dead sprint toward the bus station.

...

One hour later. District 17.

The Third Biological Processing Center.

Jiang Zhe swiped his keycard with practiced ease and pushed into the locker room.

Biological Technical Processor (Intern).

It sounded fancy. In reality, he was just a corpse collector.

His job was to process the alien carcasses shipped back from the front lines. High radiation. High contamination. A constant risk of alien viral infection. No one wanted to do it. But the hourly wage of thirty-five Star Credits was a small fortune that everyone in the slums would kill for. More importantly, it was Jiang Zhe’s only lifeline.

"Kid, you're here."

The floor supervisor, Old Sun, was leaning against a cleaning bot, blowing a thick ring of smoke. His single good eye flicked over to Jiang Zhe. The look was surprisingly calm.

Jiang Zhe’s hands paused on his hazmat suit's airlock valve. He shot the older man a wary look.

No yelling?

No mention of him being late?

He hadn't even dropped his signature line, "That's fifty credits docked"?

Has this old bastard been possessed?

"Don't look at me like that. I'm in a good mood today."

Old Sun spat out his cigarette butt and crushed it beneath his boot.

"The military just dropped off a big one. Cold Storage No. 3. A King Bug. Has to be completely dismantled before midnight."

Jiang Zhe frowned.

A King Bug. A Tier-5 unit of the Swarm. A mobile fortress on the interstellar battlefield. The residual neurotoxins and parasitic spores in its corpse could instantly kill a normal human.

"Can't do it."

Jiang Zhe refused flatly, turning around to grab his standard work orders. Money was important, but his life was more important.

"Hold on now." Old Sun took a step sideways, blocking Jiang Zhe's path. "Relax. Those rich-kid soldiers in the military already did a preliminary purge. It's dead as a doornail."

Old Sun held up a single finger.

"An extra thousand Star Credits."

"Paid in cash, right now."

Jiang Zhe's hand, reaching for the work orders, froze in mid-air.

The official Basic Gene Inducer was priced at a steep eight thousand Star Credits. Even relying on his thirty-five-credit hourly wage, working without food or water until his mandatory deportation date next month, he wouldn't be able to scrounge up enough.

But with this extra thousand, plus his savings... he might be able to gamble on a defective batch at the black market.

Slave away on a mining planet waiting to die, or roll the dice?

Jiang Zhe turned his head, staring into Old Sun's flickering cybernetic eye.

A few seconds later.

He pushed past Old Sun, yanked open his locker door, and grabbed the heavy-duty rotary saw.

"I'll do it."

...

Cold Storage No. 3.

The heavy metal doors hissed as they slid apart. A biting white mist rolled out, carrying the putrid stench of the carcass.

In the center of the room lay a monster the size of a small mountain. Measuring over twenty meters long, its dark purple carapace was pitted with craters and the scorched marks of energy weapons.

Even though it was completely dead, the lingering oppressive aura of a high-tier alien species triggered the hazard monitors in his hazmat suit, causing them to emit a steady beep-beep warning.

Vrrrm—!

The heavy saw roared to life, the ear-piercing noise echoing through the cold storage unit.

Jiang Zhe aimed at the King Bug's relatively soft underbelly and shoved the blade down hard. The shell gave way with a crack, and dark green ichor sprayed out, sizzling violently as it splashed against his hazmat suit.

Cut. Sever. Seal the venom glands with a liquid nitrogen blowtorch.

The body's original owner had been doing this for a year; muscle memory was far more reliable than a mind that had only transmigrated into this world three days ago.

Time ticked away. The temperature in the cold room was down to minus thirty degrees, yet Jiang Zhe was already drenched in sweat inside his suit.

Two hours later.

The massive abdominal cavity was fully pried open. Dragging the slime-covered saw, Jiang Zhe slipped through the incision and crawled into the King Bug's thorax.

Inside was a vast, slick cavern. Bizarre organs, still weakly convulsing, hung from all sides, radiating a nauseating heat.

The beam of his headlamp cut through the darkness. Stepping on the squishy walls of flesh and vaulting over corrosive sacs secreting strong acid, Jiang Zhe headed straight for the deepest part of the cavity.

Deep within a massive, coral-reef-like nerve center, suspended in the air, was a two-meter-wide spherical core emitting a faint, eerie blue light.

The core brainstem. The most valuable part.

If he could just cut it out, that thousand Star Credits would be his.

"Looks like it really is inactive." Seeing the dim light, Jiang Zhe let out a small sigh of relief.

Did Old Sun actually tell the truth for once?

He hoisted the heavy saw with both hands and pushed forward with all his might!

Just as the spinning teeth were about to touch the nerve bundle... the supposedly dead nerve center suddenly flared with a blinding burst of electrical light!

Jiang Zhe's eyelids twitched violently.

His brain screamed alarms as adrenaline flooded his system.

Retreat!

Get back!

But his body couldn't keep up with his reaction time.

From the "completely dead" brainstem, a pitch-black shadow shot out like a bullet!

No sound.

No warning.

Schlick!

The heavy hazmat suit tore like paper.

A meter-long, black bone spike impaled Jiang Zhe straight through the chest.

He felt a hollow emptiness in his thorax. There was no pain. Instead, a bone-chilling cold flooded his veins from the spike.

The heavy saw slipped from his grasp and crashed down.

Jiang Zhe's knees buckled, and he collapsed against the warm, fleshy wall. His vision began to blur, the world fading to a dull, ash-gray.

Bloody foam bubbled up his throat. Jiang Zhe opened his mouth, but couldn't make a sound.

It's only been three days since I transmigrated... and my free trial is already over...

What a pathetic, suffocating way to die.

His consciousness plummeted, and darkness swallowed everything.

Then, at the very bottom of that endless black void, something suddenly sparked.

Thump.

His already-shattered heart suddenly gave a beat.

Hungry.

So hungry!

A ravenous hunger, originating from the deepest depths of his genetic code, devoured Jiang Zhe's remaining consciousness!

The flesh around the gaping wound in his chest suddenly came alive. Countless tendrils of raw meat began to writhe and crawl with frantic energy.

The fatal nerve spike was being "eaten" by his flesh, inch by inch!

His dull, gray pupils slowly filled with a blood-red sheen.

Energy.

Need more... biomass!

Suddenly, this massive nest built from the King Bug's flesh and blood was emitting an irresistible, fatal aroma!

Driven entirely by instinct, Jiang Zhe ripped off his cumbersome helmet.

He threw himself onto the King Bug's weakly pulsating tissue.

He opened his mouth. Bared his teeth.

And bit down!