Xi Yujin was escorted aboard the aircraft. He glanced back at Gano, who was still engaged in fierce combat, and took a deep breath to stay calm.

Their escape plan began from this very moment.

When Baiying saw several high-ranking Zerg join the battle as well, he couldn't help but think that Haiying truly managed to embarrass himself for the second time.

The aircraft shot away from the planet's surface. In the blink of an eye, they were already in space.

Xi Yujin had always thought he preferred life on the ground. Yet at this moment, his entire body felt lighter, as though the shackles of gravity had been removed in an instant, awakening his instincts for travelling that had long lain dormant. Even the endless darkness surrounding him stirred a powerful sense of nostalgia.

The universe was so vast. Compared to it, the view from a planet's surface was unbearably narrow. He felt like a frog that had only just climbed out of the bottom of a well, his entire being surrendering to the boundless heavens.

Only then did he realize that he was already accustomed to wandering this universe.

Perhaps his expression changed too obviously, causing Baiying to suddenly ask, "What are you looking at?"

"The universe." Xi Yujin answered honestly.

Baiying tapped on the window. The Zerg aircraft had no glass; instead, the opening was sealed by a tough membrane.

"What is there to look at?"

Xi Yujin said nothing. Privately, he compared the Zerg in his mind. Some Zerg could stare at the universe forever and feel nothing, while others could look upon it and awaken a longing for freedom.

Gano was clearly the better one.

The two traveled in silence until they reached the planet that housed the Cave Prison. Viewed from above, countless patrols circled the central structure. Among them were many grotesque Zerg subspecies, and some even had bodies so tall that they reached dozens of meters into the air.

In a teasing tone, Baiying asked, "Still thinking about escaping like that Level Four soldier?"

Xi Yujin ignored him.

As the aircraft descended, Xi Yujin finally saw the Cave Prison. It resembled an enormous lotus seed pod, with countless holes arranged according to size. Surprisingly, no patrols stood around the prison itself. It was likely a forbidden zone. But if anything crawled out of one of the openings, the surrounding patrols would immediately notice.

Xi Yujin could faintly sense the presence of Tidal Peace nearby. His asteroid Typing Machine was still aboard it. Of its six Typing Machines, all except the armor core were fragments of a star that resonated with him. At the very least, coming here to find the Tidal Peace was a correct decision.

The aircraft landed at the edge of the lotus-shaped prison, and Baiying fastened a pair of vine-shaped handcuffs onto Xi Yujin's wrists. Tiny white flowers decorated the vines, making them look like something a flower fairy would wear.

Xi Yujin curiously shook his hands. Though the vines looked soft, they tightened with surprising force. He walked a few steps toward the prison, but Baiying did not follow.

Turning around, Xi Yujin asked his very first question: "Which cell is mine?"

"The Zerg cannot enter the Cave Prison." Baiying remained behind the warning line. "The transport platform beside you will carry you to the appropriate cell based on your size and weight."

"So I have to imprison myself?" Xi Yujin muttered under his breath.

But thinking that he would now earn the distinguished title of imprisoned novelist, he accepted it.

He climbed onto the nearby platform, which resembled a skateboard made from a giant flower petal. Several pistil-like plant structures held its passenger securely in place.

Xi Yujin found a comfortable sitting position. Below the board was a rail track, behind it sat a launching mechanism, and ahead was a tightly sealed passageway.

For some reason, he suddenly felt nervous. He was about to officially enter prison.

Some novelists had gone to prison for embezzlement, like O. Henry. Some had gone for homosexuality, like Oscar Wilde, while others had gone for revolution, like Dostoevsky. No matter the reason, imprisonment seemed to be an essential qualification for becoming a famous novelist.

And this prison was incredibly fashionable. It was the famous Cave Prison of the Zerg, which was renowned throughout the universe.

Someday, he would write another novel. Perhaps something like The Count of Cave Prison.

Baiying noticed Xi Yujin's mood suddenly improve, adding another layer to his confusion.

Why does it feel like I'm rewarding this alien?

After hesitating briefly, he pulled a lever.

The launcher behind Xi Yujin's platform activated instantly, and the gate before him flew open with a loud bang. Together with the platform, Xi Yujin was shot forward like a cannonball.

The fierce wind slammed against his face, and the sudden acceleration caught him by surprise. The platform raced through several sharp turns, reaching astonishing speed. Then light suddenly appeared ahead. Finally, the narrow tunnel was ending.

As the platform burst out of the exit, Xi Yujin felt as though he had grown wings. If the restraint didn't hold him in place, he would have already been thrown away.

Beneath him was a colossal abyss two hundred meters in diameter. The platform soared over the giant pit before landing smoothly on the opposite edge.

The track gently sloped downward, and because of its tremendous speed, the platform continued onward. After another curve, another opening appeared. This one was smaller than the previous one, and he flew right past it again.

Only then did Xi Yujin suddenly understand. The Zerg possessed no machinery, so their warriors couldn't enter the prison. Thus, the prison's cells were allocated entirely according to weight and size. Heavy and large prisoners would fall into the earlier openings, while lighter and smaller prisoners would simply keep sliding farther down the track.

Xi Yujin could regulate his own gravity. Currently, he weighed about the same as an ordinary adult, so he would probably travel quite far.

He understood the mechanism. But he absolutely didn't expect that the prison intake would begin with a roller coaster.

"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH...!!"

"So much fun!"

Unable to help himself, Xi Yujin completely embraced the roller coaster experience, cheering into the rushing wind.

Standing at the prison entrance, Baiying heard Xi Yujin's voice echoing back through the tunnels. He found himself both exasperated and amused. How could anyone be so happy about going to prison? He had truly seen everything now.

Without realizing it, his own mood improved slightly.

Meanwhile, Xi Yujin's platform gradually slowed. He guessed that he would finally fall into the next pit, so he prepared himself.

Just as the platform reached the opening ahead, the hole suddenly sealed shut. The platform glided safely over it and continued all the way to the center of the Cave Prison. Then, section by section, it climbed back up until it returned to the prison's outer edge.

"What happened?" Xi Yujin found himself meeting Baiying again.

Crossing his arms, Baiying replied, "The intake procedure continues. Next stop: the Interrogation Court."

In truth, the ride served another purpose as well: to detect signals from the Intelligent Machines. The remains of Intelligent Machines were hidden within several of the holes. But this Grade A was apparently only interested in enjoying the experience.

Xi Yujin stepped off the platform and walked back outside. "I thought I was going to fall down."

Baiying walked off in another direction. "You looked like you were having fun."

The Interrogation Court was not inside the prison itself. Instead, it occupied a small structure resembling a giant nut some distance away. The two walked there on foot.

Baiying sensed Xi Yujin's emotions sink again.

So he finally knows fear, Baiying thought.

He wasn't sure if he could tolerate a thought criminal who remained cheerful. Happiness was contagious. The emptiness that followed its sudden loss was terrifying.

He glanced toward Xi Yujin, only to discover that Xi Yujin was staring intently at the workers of the Interrogation Court.

The workers mainly handled repetitive mechanical tasks such as cleaning and massaging the Interrogation Main Brain to help it dissipate heat. Accordingly, these jobs were almost entirely performed by the weakest caste within Zerg society.

The Zerg called them La.

The La were bald, short in stature, with coarse skin folded upon itself and muscles that had prematurely lost their elasticity. Their expressions were vacant, as though they existed in a state of perpetual happiness.

Every society required lower classes to fill its menial roles. Thus, these underdeveloped La had come into existence.

"I love the earth beneath my feet, I love the kin at my side, just as you all love me..."

A group of La, humming their little tune and carrying cleaning tools, passed by.

Baiying crossed his arms over his chest and bent slightly in salute, stepping aside to let the group of La pass through.

The Zerg were sharply divided by rank.

A high-ranking Zerg was obliged to cherish the lower ones, and would even indulge some of their small pleasures, such as letting them go and play in the park.

Just like how the Zerg treated the Brood Hosts.

If one of the La asked Baiying, "Do you love us?"

Baiying's only possible answer would be, "I love you all."

That group of La passed by Xi Yujin, and their eyes met his.

Xi Yujin recalled the La aboard the starship. Aside from their shared baldness, they looked completely different from the native La.

Did the starship La know where they were returning? Would the native La understand that if they reproduced freely in a land of abundance, they could gradually repair their genetic defects and one day produce artists unlike anything even the native Zerg had ever seen?

The La could evolve into forms vastly different from one another. Gano could overcome his own genetic limitations and awaken a desire to explore. If that was the case, what purpose did the Zerg's rigid hierarchy of genetic superiority and inferiority truly serve?

Xi Yujin's nature made him instinctively despise all of it.

He did not allow emotion to dominate his thoughts. Instead, he continued reasoning.

The Zerg was divided into numerous castes, and a great proportion of them were warriors. But now, they could fight only by reenacting battles inside the Egg Brain World. The result was a tremendous surplus of soldiers.

That excess productive capacity could have been devoted to developing art. Yet Zerg society had stagnated until the present day. The Queen must surely have something to do with it.

Lost in thought, Xi Yujin entered the spacious Interrogation Court. Inside, there was no one else. Only a gigantic, pure-white Egg Brain.

Egg Brains were a Zerg subspecies. This particular Egg Brain had once hatched alongside the Queen herself. It had received abundant resources during development. Unfortunately, its mutation had failed, so it was repurposed into the Interrogation Main Brain, requiring workers to massage it regularly to release accumulated heat.

Baiying gestured toward the giant Egg Brain. "He is a Brood Host under my jurisdiction. I request permission to assist with the interrogation."

The Egg Brain emitted signals Xi Yujin could not understand, then Baiying sat down nearby.

He handed the manuscript to the Egg Brain. The enormous organism twitched, mimicking the act of swallowing, and devoured the manuscript completely. A few seconds later, it emitted another signal.

Baiying listened quietly. After a while, he turned to Xi Yujin.

"The Interrogation Main Brain has determined that you are guilty of ideological crimes. What do you have to say for yourself?"

"I should be allowed to defend myself, right?" Xi Yujin's voice echoed through the empty chamber.

"I'd first like to ask a question. Writing novels is one of the Brood Hosts' common forms of entertainment. Exactly what did I write that crossed the Zerg's boundaries?"

The Interrogation Main Brain transmitted another burst of electromagnetic signals.

Baiying translated: "You should not have written about the Butterfly Tribe."

Xi Yujin replied, "The Butterfly Tribe is a completely fictional species. Fiction is one of the major categories of literature.

I don't understand what crime ordinary writing is supposed to be guilty of. Or is it that I wrote about butterflies... but you were reading about the Zerg?"

Baiying received a second transmission from the Interrogation Main Brain and translated it: "You should not have depicted emotions so excessively."

"If the Zerg truly have no emotions," Xi Yujin replied, "then I'm willing to admit that possessing emotions is a crime. But you clearly do have feelings.

You care about your own kind, you cherish your Mother, you hate your enemies... aren't those all emotions? So why treat them as if they're a flood that must be contained?"

The Interrogation Main Brain chattered indignantly that the whole parent-lover storyline had gone far beyond the Zerg's moral standards.

Pretending to faithfully translate, Baiying simply told Xi Yujin, "That is morality, not love."

Xi Yujin recalled that group of La, carefree and humming their little tune as they passed.

He asked again, "Do you not love the Queen?"

Baiying did not answer.

"I understand now." Xi Yujin's tone remained calm. "The so-called crime of thought is simply that I wrote a protagonist who longed for freedom."

The Interrogation Main Brain paused before transmitting another burst of signals:

How awkward. This novelist is obviously a thought criminal... but I was still hoping for the next update.

Something in Baiying's expression shifted.

"I wish to defend myself." Xi Yujin's voice echoed through the chamber. "The freedom to travel is the right of all life in the universe. The universe is vast. Do you know that the Zerg Queen once lost an entire brood of La outside her territory? After years of evolving freely, they've already built a city devoted to art and freedom.

In the outside world, because of the Intelligent Machines' technological restrictions, translation AIs no longer exist, so translators are a common profession. Right now, you are acting as a translator. If you lived out there, you could freely read countless works of art that no one else could understand. Do you know how many beings would envy you?"

Because Baiying had always seemed approachable, Xi Yujin couldn't help nurturing a faint hope. He softened his voice.

"Don't you... want to see the deeper reaches of the universe?"

The Interrogation Main Brain raged:

What an arrogant thought criminal! Recruiting people right in front of me! Only an idiot of a Zerg warrior would agree to that!

Baiying remained utterly expressionless.

Xi Yujin shifted his gaze toward the Interrogation Main Brain. It hadn't spoken aloud, but that didn't mean it couldn't understand him. It was probably cursing him internally this very moment. The Zerg's biotechnology was not to be underestimated.

At that moment, Baiying suddenly spoke. "We have no need to see the depths of the universe, because all we seek is to return home."

Return home?

Thinking of Gano. Thinking of the La. Thinking of Baiying. Thinking of everything he had witnessed since arriving among the Zerg. Gradually, Xi Yujin strung all the scattered pieces together like pearls on a necklace.

The first-generation Zerg Queen, Ers, was born out of revenge. Her deeds were carved into the center of every Nest Tree. Each Queen who followed passed down her thinking, so that every Zerg grasped her ideology from the moment it was born.

Yet Ers's ultimate goal was not merely revenge. It was also to return home.

When the La learned that the Zerg Queen existed, their first instinct was to return. That wasn't emotion. It was instinct engraved into their genes.

The Zerg possessed a special class of warriors known as Botanical Officers. The Queen transformed planets through them, yet never lived upon those worlds. Because all she truly wanted was to recover the blue mountains and clear oceans of the planet that existed only within her dreams.

"The war is already over. Don't you understand yet? The target of your revenge was wiped out by your own hands long ago, but you can never return home." Xi Yujin said it without mincing words.

"Because the Zerg's homeland... died the moment Ers was born."

Even after invading countless billions of planets, scouring the civilizations from their surfaces, and draping them all in green, not one of them was the original home...

The Interrogation Main Brain shrieked that such words were utter treason.

Almost enraged, Baiying said without mercy, "Go sit in prison."

Then he grabbed Xi Yujin and dragged him back toward the prison.

After confirming that he wasn't being hauled toward an execution scaffold or something equally unpleasant, Xi Yujin continued provoking him.

"I have my own name. My name is Shanhui. Even if someone else shares my name, I remain unique. Is your name truly yours?"

"Shanhui..." Baiying answered coldly. "I've seen you roast honey into ashes before."

Xi Yujin instantly realized it. This Zerg was a complete pervert. He had actually been spying on his dates with Gano.

He continued: "I know there are many Zerg named Gano. But my Gano is one of a kind."

Baiying merely snorted.

Although Xi Yujin spoke casually, his thoughts raced. If the Zerg Queen had already finished her war against the Intelligent Machines, then she should know that the First Queen Ers's mission could never be completed. So why did the later Queens fail to reform Zerg society? Why did they allow it to become ever more rigid until reaching today's dead end?

Then inspiration struck him.

The Machine Mother Box had once told him something.

The Queen was afflicted with a severe mental disorder!

Then... how did the Queen treat that disorder?

Xi Yujin returned to the prison grounds.

Standing outside, Baiying said, "Get onto the transport platform and return to your cell."

Xi Yujin protested, "Why should I deliver myself into prison? Aren't you coming in?"

Baiying recited the rule almost mechanically. "Zerg warriors are forbidden from entering the Cave Prison. But don't think I lack other methods."

Xi Yujin stared at him blankly.

The Cave Prison existed to confine foreign objects. Inside, there must certainly be Intelligent Machines' remains. Within Xi Yujin's mind, the final missing puzzle piece finally clicked into place.

Back in the Deep Space Prison, when the Intelligent Machines had seen Gano, they said: "If he serves beneath the Zerg Queen, we are willing to regard him as one of our own."

The Intelligent Machines hated the Zerg Queen.

And yet the Zerg warriors...

were regarded as their own kind...

He had been misled all this time by the rumors that circulated about these two races throughout the universe.

In truth, Gano's earliest choice of words, "overload," "reboot," his early mechanical stiffness, and the vacant conduct of countless Nest-class warriors...

Weren't they far more like intelligent machines in the traditional sense?

A shocking scheme detonated in Xi Yujin's heart. His hair shimmered with a diamond-like radiance, and any creature born toward the light could not help but be drawn to it.

He spoke, both to Baiying and to the sky itself:

"My true form is a star. If I reveal it here, I will initiate carbon mass transfer with this system's own star, creating a chain reaction. When that happens, fewer than one in ten living beings here will survive. In the name of the stars, I demand an audience with the Zerg Queen."

...

Long ago, the Machine Mother Box was born from collective peace. Its vision was a future where the universe would be unified in harmony, with every civilization uploaded into eternity.

On the other hand, the Zerg Queen was born from boundless wrath. She only sought to recover the planet that existed solely in the past and to destroy every civilization she encountered.

The two never met, yet they fought across space and time as though bound by a blood feud. Now that the war had finally ended, for the first and only time, they spoke.

"It really hurts..."

"I've thought of a good way to relieve mental disorder."

No one could have imagined that these lifelong enemies would exchange treatment advice like patients sharing the same hospital ward. Their illnesses were perfect opposites.

The Intelligent Machines could no longer find their past, while the Zerg... had no future. It's quite clear that fate always seemed to delight in cruel coincidences.

The Zerg Queen said, "I'll teach you how to make machines imitate living creatures. Our Egg Brain technology produces the finest processors. Recreate your collections upon the surface world. Perhaps you'll deduce the correct timeline that way, Machine La."

The Machine Mother Box replied: "Information received successfully. Replica generation commencing. Please accept the following in return, illiterate carbon lifeform."

An ocean of information surged into the distance like a great tide.

"The following concerns how to make living beings function like machines."