The first ray of artificial sunlight at dawn spilled across the ground.
In the office district of the α sector downtown, a sleek, silver-white building gleamed brilliantly. This was the Genetic Matching Inquiry Center of the Huimin City Government Administration Office.
The doors had long since opened, and the spacious lobby was as bustling as ever, with residents from across the Federation planets gathered in groups of two and three.
They varied in appearance and dress. Some were elegant, graceful aristocrats; others were plainly dressed locals. Some spoke Federation Standard, while others used the clumsy dialects of their home regions…
The moment Bu Hui entered, she drew the attention of several people nearby.
Black hair, black eyes, slender limbs, and a beautiful yet pallid face. Compared with everyone else’s careful attire, she alone wore a plain, loose-fitting set of classic sea-blue work clothes. At a glance, it was obvious that she was an outsourced worker from the municipal government’s logistics department.
—The only thing missing was a sign on her face reading: Honest country bumpkin.
Bu Hui was the only person in the entire lobby whose status as an outsider was immediately apparent. Under the scrutiny of those around her, she calmly found a seat in the corner.
With her arms folded, Bu Hui sat quietly in the inconspicuous corner, staring into space.
She had rushed out of the house and forgotten that she was off work today, so she had brought no nutritional supplements. Her empty stomach cramped painfully, reminding her of the unhealthy routine poverty had forced upon her.
Fortunately, those days would soon be over.
Bu Hui comforted herself with the thought that once her matching results were issued, she would be eligible to move out of Garbage City. She could live in an ordinary residential district with reliable water and electricity, apply for a more specialized job, earn more money, and finally fill the stomach that had been empty for so many years.
Snatches of whispered conversation reached her ears.
“Another low-class pauper… How many has Huimin City had this year?”
“It’s all because the Federation passed that new law requiring a certain number of slots to be allocated every year, giving these hillbillies delusions of crossing the class divide.”
“What’s there to worry about? As usual, people from lower civilizations will only be matched with one another. What happens when the bottom-dwellers get together has nothing to do with us.”
They had made no effort to lower their voices. The Federation residents around them responded with a wave of derisive chuckles. That was simply the reality of the interstellar age: everything an ordinary local resident possessed was a privilege these outsiders might not obtain even after a lifetime of hard work—never mind the powerful nobles and wealthy elite who stood above them all.
Last month, the mayor of Huimin City had held an engagement ceremony for his son and a young noblewoman in the extremely lavish Feiluo Sky Garden banquet hall. During the event, they had repeatedly dropped various citizen vouchers from airships, prompting the crowd to scramble for them.
At the mention of that wedding, the young men and women clicked their tongues in admiration and envy.
Only Bu Hui continued staring blankly out the window. Her stomach was empty from skipping breakfast, and the discomfort made her mind go hazy.
What should she eat for lunch?
A sweet nutritional drink, or a nutritional can with its unpleasant taste?
…
“Silence!”
The synchronized clatter of footsteps cut short their comparisons over how many vouchers they had managed to grab. A formation of tall, powerfully built guards in black military uniforms strode into the lobby through the main entrance, their heads held high. Each carried an electronic pulse rifle, and a pair of solemn eyes showed through every silver-and-red helmet.
The captain at the head of the group nodded to the several staff members seated at the workstations. They stood in a neat line against the wall, keeping order.
That meant the work was about to begin.
Sure enough, the holographic screens above the staff members’ heads lit up with numbers.
“Number One, step forward.”
“Number Two…”
As names and photographs appeared again and again on the holographic screens, excited cheers and disappointed sighs occasionally broke the silence of the orderly office building.
At the end of every month, before the matching program began, all the information in the matching database was automatically updated according to Federation regulations.
The residents of the entire planet were assessed by rank, and matching slots were allocated between ordinary Federation citizens and people from less advanced civilizations at a ratio of 10,000 to 1. Those from less advanced civilizations who matched successfully would be provided with free housing and various living benefits. After two years, they would receive official Federation citizenship, allowing them access to more opportunities for employment and advancement.
Bu Hui’s three consecutive years of A+ performance had earned her the only slot in the Logistics Department. At last, she had been able to submit her genes to the matching bureau.
People like Bu Hui—those who had drifted in from less advanced planets, possessed no evolutionary abilities, had no ethnic group to rely on, and had no home to return to—were considered to have such inferior genes that they had virtually no chance of being chosen.
Who could have imagined that as soon as the database was updated at the end of the month, it would show that she had successfully matched?
Even Bu Hui herself felt as though she were dreaming.
“Number Eleven, step forward.”
The electronic eye, half a person’s height, stared at her. In a gentle voice, it said, “Miss, please follow me.”
Bu Hui came back to herself and stood under the various gazes directed at her. She was the last number of the day, as well as the first person from a less advanced civilization to be selected and entered into the database in Huimin City that year. In a sense, she had attracted everyone’s attention.
Though not in a good way.
“I remember that three years ago, an alien citizen matched with an aristocrat and was so thrilled he went insane. A month later, he bit his partner’s family to death. Even when the police surrounded him, he still tried to go berserk, so they had no choice but to shoot him on the spot.
“Chun Ri.
“The incident had such a terrible impact that it made the Federation news. Everyone was terrified! For a while, people would cross the street whenever they saw them!”
“There’s a reason they’re classified as a low-level civilization.
“Low intelligence, inferior genes, unstable mental states, and a tendency to lose control…”
“They’ve watched too many holographic dramas and dreamed of clawing their way into high society. Tsk.”
The most popular holographic dramas in the Federation were currently stories of love and hatred born from matches between people of different social classes.
In every era, selling dreams was the most beautiful—and most profitable—business.
The holographic images projected onto the screens, the games, the lines of dialogue—they were all merely tools for offering people the sweetest fantasies imaginable.
By contrast, genetic matching was the cruelest truth.
People could disguise themselves, but genes could not be deceived. They were ruthlessly divided into ranks, from the highest to the lowest.
The truly powerful aristocrats belonged to a more advanced genetic matching database. Its purpose was to prevent superior bloodlines from becoming mixed; they were matched exclusively among themselves.
Take the mayor’s son, for example. His betrothed was his childhood sweetheart, a friend he had grown up with. Their engagement had been arranged from the moment they were born, so there was never any chance of an accident.
Driven by the desire to watch the spectacle, everyone waited for Bu Hui’s matching result, eager to have something to discuss at that evening’s banquet.
The guard, who had remained motionless until then, suddenly turned around. Through his silver-and-crimson helmet, he issued a cold warning at them: “Silence! Do not interfere with official business!”
Only then did the others awkwardly shut their mouths.
Bu Hui ignored their idle gossip and sat down at the window, cooperating as the work-model robot inside scanned her pupils. Its blue eyes glowed as it processed the results.
“Identity confirmation in progress…”
“Name: Bu Hui
Place of household registration: Blue Star, Milky Way Galaxy
Sex: Female
Age: 18
Current residence: Starlight City, Stan Star
Please confirm—”
To ensure that the process was open and fair, all matching results were completely transparent and would even be posted on the official website for public inquiry. As a result, all kinds of related entertainment industries had sprung up.
Some people camped out to watch the livestreams. There were audiences, and there were bets.
If a rare match involved people whose social statuses were wildly mismatched, an ordinary pauper might become an overnight celebrity. Their story would then be purchased and quickly adapted into a holographic romance film.
Of course, after the new regulations introduced two years ago, such situations had been completely eliminated.
Surrounded by overwhelming negative public opinion, even ordinary people no longer wanted to be matched with members of lower civilizations. Over the past few years, complaints requesting the cancellation of matching results had increased steadily, prompting the higher-ranking officials to reconsider the matter.
Those who had not yet left the matching center were all waiting for a show.
Some had even begun whispering bets about what kind of inferior species she would be matched with.
Bu Hui remained perfectly calm. She had already prepared herself for the worst possible outcome. After she confirmed her information, a holographic screen roughly the size of two people began flashing with rows upon rows of dense data, so fast and chaotic that they were almost impossible to make out.
“Another commoner about to suffer…”
“Brother, she’s not that bad-looking. Pretty women are a scarce resource.”
“One night with her in Garbage City would be enough. Who would dare take her home? The prettier they are, the dirtier they are. Who knows what she’s been through?”
The man who had been snapped at fell silent as well.
For a moment, mocking jokes and contemptuous insults rose and fell one after another. Their voices were kept low, droning on through the hall like buzzing flies.
[Match successful]
[Matching result made public]
The screen above the hall suddenly lit up. As the work-model robot announced the result in its gentle voice, everyone looked up gleefully.
Unexpectedly, the photo field was completely blank.
…
Name: Xin Chi
Current residence: Shenyu Star (the Sixth Star)
All other information was blank.
Beep!
Beep!
Beep!
“Warning! Warning!”
The information on the screen suddenly twisted before disappearing altogether. Red warning symbols flashed as alarms blared throughout the hall.
“An SSS-level criminal’s information has appeared!”
“…”
The warning symbols continued to flash. The noisy office hall fell into deathly silence in an instant. One pair of frightened or rigid eyes after another stared at the screen, as though an invisible hand had closed around their throats.
Everyone stood dumbfounded and silent, unspeakable fear rising across their faces.
Oh, God!
They hadn’t seen it wrong, had they?
It was actually that person!
No matter how little Bu Hui concerned herself with the outside world, she could still sense that something was terribly wrong with the atmosphere.
The Sixth Star?!
Wasn’t that a prison?
Shenyu Star was also known as the Sixth Star—the Wasteland Star.
There was scarcely a trace of human habitation there. The environment was brutal—nothing but endless desert-like red earth and ruins. No spacecraft could ever land on that planet without special authorization.
Why, then, was it so famous?
Because Domain Star housed the largest and most brutal death-row prison in the Federal Star Systems.
Only criminals whose offenses were exceptionally heinous and who posed an extreme danger were imprisoned alone on this planet, lest they escape.
Across the entire planet, there were only prison guards, inmates, and elite soldiers stationed there around the clock to keep watch.
A vast electronic surveillance net covered the place, along with countless monitoring satellites. Not even a fly could hope to escape. It was, without question, the ultimate nightmare for criminals.
Bu Hui’s eyelid twitched.
Wait. The name Xin Chi sounded familiar...
Then she remembered the news story that had exploded across the entire interstellar network a month ago:
[Good news! Xin Chi, the infamous pirate chief who had roamed the star systems, commanded countless informants, and earned a notorious reputation, has finally been captured. He is now imprisoned in the most brutal underground prison on the Sixth Star, sentenced to twenty thousand years. His fate remains unknown.]
Bu Hui’s mind went numb.
Notorious? A pirate chief? A twenty-thousand-year sentence? Wait, that meant...
The service robot smiled faintly and delivered what this silicon-based life-form apparently considered a dry joke of a blessing.
“Congratulations.
You’re about to become a widow.”
Bu Hui: “...”
It took a long while for the citizens in the matchmaking office to find their voices again. Some screamed; others stared in disbelief.
The livestream viewer count for the Huimin City Matchmaking Office—previously nearly deserted—was now skyrocketing exponentially by the second. More reporters were rushing over at top speed, livestreaming as they came.
Cameras quietly lit up around them, snapping photos and recording video in a frenzy. The crowd surged forward, surrounding Bu Hui so completely that she could barely move.
—Fate seemed to have played a cruel joke on her.
An unremarkable outsider from another planet, she had been diligently working for three years. And now, at this very moment—10:30 in the morning, Capital Time, May 1st, Federal Year 223—
she was about to shock the entire world as the galaxy's first widow and dominate every headline.
Bu Hui: “...Damn it!”
