Chapter 184: Could You Endure a Life as Still as Dead Water?
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: Karai
“Iris verification passed.” New text appeared on the screen. Lin Xu released his grip and dropped the half-dead Alfred at his feet. He didn’t look at him again as blood quickly pooled on the floor. His own hands were covered in blood, but he didn’t have the luxury of caring. His fingers flew across the console, smearing bloody fingerprints with every strike. The marks grew lighter with each press, fading as the blood dried. The metallic tang of blood filled the air around him, drying his throat, but he was too focused to notice.
Alfred’s body continued to twitch. One command after another appeared on the screen.
All Zerg: cease attacks on humans.
Withdraw from the Long Whale Region.
Withdraw from Dionysus District.
Withdraw from Crescent District.
…
The glow of the screen reflected in Lin Xu’s gray eyes. He stared at the cascading lines of text, hardly remembering to blink.
Each command was transmitted through the whirring processors, frequency emitters, and radiators in the underground chamber. The equipment worked at full capacity, sending orders to every single Zerg mind across the stars.
Amid the stardust, Blizzard fired and shattered the S-class Zerg queen’s shell whip. But Heinrich quickly realized that the attack had only been a diversion. The true danger came from the queen’s venom-dripping, nightmarish mandibles.
Even with Blizzard’s specialized armor and reinforced materials, its hull would be corroded by the queen’s venom. If the toxin burned through a joint, the mecha could fail entirely.
The queen’s mandibles—almost as long as one of Blizzard’s arms—snapped forward with deadly precision, lined with razor-sharp teeth, ready to pierce straight through its chest.
In that instant, time seemed to freeze. Blizzard kept charging her railgun. Even if the queen’s strike pierced the cockpit and left Heinrich to die in the vacuum and radiation of space, the railgun would make the Zerg queen pay.
Suddenly, the queen’s mandibles stopped. But the railgun’s charge did not. Power thrummed through the mecha, shaking its frame violently. Time itself hadn’t stopped—only the Zerg had. Every Zerg battling humanity’s fleets froze mid-motion. But humanity’s guns did not.
The Blizzard’s fully-charged railgun fired, piercing through the queen’s open mandibles and detonating inside her, ripping her apart from within. Countless bloodthirsty Zerg were slaughtered in that moment, unable to resist as human firepower tore them apart.
“Zerg…” Meng Zhenhua’s voice echoed in stunned disbelief over the comms. Heinrich drew in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and said, “It’s Lin Xu. He did it.”
The surviving Zerg broke and fled. They rammed blindly into human mecha formations, only to be obliterated in their panic. Mecha pilots in space stared in disbelief, and then unrestrained joy erupted in their cockpits—though none of them had anyone there to share it with.
Aboard the starships, however, soldiers erupted into wild cheers as they watched the Zerg retreat in disgrace. They tossed their caps into the air, hugging one another with tears of relief and triumph.
Far away at the Michael’s Sword defense line, Chen Jinshan saw the retreating Zerg swarm and immediately relayed the message to the Allied Fleet.
“All Zerg within Michael’s Sword have withdrawn. Prepare for the final assault!”
The long defensive line collapsed in fire and laser light, and at last, there was no barrier between the Einstein Galaxy and the Red Moon System.
On the Dionysus battlefield, an A-class Zerg’s forelimbs were about to pierce General Kalt’s mecha when Ryan lunged in with his own machine. He severed the Zerg’s limb and shoved Kalt’s mecha out of danger. As Ryan turned his head, the now-lamed Zerg opened its massive jaws, ready to crush his cockpit.
Ryan’s face went pale. He frantically charged his railgun and fired. The shot went wide. The blast streaked off into the void and vanished in the darkness.
Ryan thought death had come for him—until the Zerg froze. A heartbeat later, it turned away, abandoning him completely. His heart still pounded, but confusion overwhelmed him. General Kalt’s voice crackled over the comms. “What are you waiting for? Finish it off!”
Heinrich, after confirming the area was secure, immediately opened a comm channel to Lin Xu. He waited thirty seconds before it connected. A familiar face appeared on the screen.
Lin Xu’s facial muscles were still taut, like an arrow drawn tight against the bowstring, not yet released from tension. He saw Heinrich’s silver hair falling loose, damp with sweat and clinging to his forehead. But Heinrich himself simply sat in the cockpit, unmoving, no longer piloting his mecha.
“Did the Zerg leave?” Lin Xu asked.
“Yeah. All of them,” Heinrich replied. “Ika and Alonso just sent word—Haven and the Dionysus District are clear too. The Allied Fleet will keep advancing toward Capital Star. Capricciosa has ordered the First Legion to stand down. If nothing unexpected happens, the war will be over soon.”
Heinrich’s voice was steady and low, with a deep, magnetic timbre, like a breeze passing through a dense forest of pines, carrying the distant scent of the sea. It was almost over.
Listening to Heinrich’s voice, Lin Xu’s body finally began to loosen. His gaze went distant as he slid down against the console and sank to the floor. He dragged his fingers through his hair, rubbing at his scalp, then down over his face, as if trying to pull himself back from the edge of madness.
Blood smeared from his palms across his face, but he didn’t seem to notice. Heinrich opened his mouth, his tongue barely brushing his teeth as if he were about to speak. Then he closed it again, silently giving Lin Xu the time he needed.
From this angle, Heinrich could see the blood-soaked figure lying on the ground—the man whose eye socket had been impaled by a metal rod. Heinrich’s gaze lingered for a moment before he finally asked, once Lin Xu lifted his head and exhaled loud enough for him to hear over the comms,
“Is that… the Emperor?”
“Yeah,” Lin Xu said with a quick glance.
“Is he dead?”
The question made Lin Xu frown. He had been so focused on using Alfred’s iris that he hadn’t paid attention to whether the man was still alive afterward. Now, he leaned down and checked Alfred’s breath, pulse, and heartbeat. All of them were gone.
“Dead,” Lin Xu confirmed.
Maybe it had been fear. Maybe internal bleeding. Maybe blood loss. It didn’t matter. Somewhere in the chaos, Alfred had died without Lin Xu even noticing, reduced to nothing but a corpse.
The body was cooling rapidly. His face had been beaten until it was unrecognizable. Even the blue eyes Lin Xu had once known so well—eyes he could have recognized anywhere—were ruined beyond repair.
Lin Xu had done it. He had taken his revenge. Alfred was dead before his eyes, and this time there would be no coming back. The past was finally over. But instead of triumph, a heavy exhaustion settled over him. “What about Yuanxiao?” Heinrich asked.
Lin Xu blinked, pulling himself back to the moment. “He got out of the egg on his own. Alfred didn’t hurt him. Ika’s been monitoring the palace. No alerts, so Yuanxiao must still be there, hiding somewhere. I’ll go find him.”
The fatigue didn’t ease. He couldn’t summon the energy to care. The ground trembled faintly beneath the palace. Fighting still raged above. Lin Xu still had work to do. He braced himself on the console and slowly pushed to his feet. Just before leaving, he glanced at the console display that monitored the Zerg trajectories—and froze. A new prompt appeared on the screen. Would you like to change the authorized user?
He had already ordered the Zerg to return to the Ent Nebula. They obeyed, converging without resistance. This controller was a terrifying but obedient weapon, one that would never malfunction and would recognize only a single master.
The Empire had relied on it for six hundred years of unshakable dominance. And now, with the Alliance on the brink of seizing the Empire’s territory… who would become its next master? Who would wield terror and bloodshed to build their throne of power?
Lin Xu couldn’t trust anyone—not a person, not a faction—with the Zerg controller. His fingertip hovered over the YES option.
Could you endure a life as still as dead water? His hand trembled. Was he, perhaps, just like Alfred Nobleson—another madman obsessed with power and control?
Yes. Lin Xu admitted Alfred wasn’t wrong; the two of them were very much alike. Lin Xu acknowledged that within himself existed a deep, terrible desire for control. But he wasn’t the same as Alfred. He hadn’t abandoned morality or humanity.
Could he really live a life as still and stagnant as a dead pool of water? The answer was no. He carried ideals in his heart—dreams tied to the future, to people, to survival.
Lin Xu’s fingers pressed firmly on “Yes.” He couldn’t trust anyone else—no person, no organization—with the Zerg controller.
“Lin Xu?” Heinrich couldn’t see what Lin Xu was doing with his hands, only that he had suddenly gone silent. His voice carried a note of curiosity. “Give me a moment. I’m handling something,” Lin Xu replied. Following the system’s prompts, he transferred control authority to himself. Immediately afterward, he began issuing new commands.
The Zerg would be directed to gather on three planets within the Ent Nebula.
Watching the Zerg’s rapidly shifting trajectory on the screen, Lin Xu asked, “Heinrich, do you know how to activate the Imperial Star-Destroyer Cannon?”
Heinrich’s eyes widened slightly, utterly taken aback. He hadn’t expected Lin Xu to ask that—let alone with such seriousness. Did he still plan to blow up Capital Star?
“I’ve gathered the Zerg onto three planets,” Lin Xu explained calmly. “If we can use the Star-Destroyer Cannon to wipe them out in one strike, humanity won’t have to live under the threat of the Zerg ever again.”
Heinrich let out a small breath of relief and answered, “The firing control center for the Star-Destroyer Cannon is inside the Imperial Palace. It requires verification from three Imperial legion commanders and a direct member of the royal bloodline.”
“Good.”
When Lin Xu returned to the surface, the battle was nearly over. Capricciosa’s forces had secured the situation. The palace was in ruins, its lighting systems almost entirely destroyed, and the surrounding area had been swallowed by near-total darkness. Only the sky—stained a murky, light-polluted violet—cast a faint glow over the wreckage.
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