The Emperor’s Runaway Lover

Five years later, 2389 AD.

Earth, New Sahara Desert.

The golden yellow sand dunes, textured like scales, rose and fell under the vast, deep blue sky. An immense setting sun, blood red, hung above the horizon like the devil’s eye, silently overlooking the desert.

The boy gritted his teeth, pushing himself to move.

He raised one foot mechanically, stepping into the hot and soft yellow sands; then he pulled his other foot out of the sand… repeating the cycle, stubbornly walking forward step by step, numb to his surroundings.

Because of extreme thirst and exhaustion, the landscape in front of his eyes got progressively blurry. He blinked hard, and tiny salt crystals from his dried sweat blew into his eyes, making them sting.

There was only yellow sand as far as he could see.

The boy had long since forgotten how long he’d spent walking. He couldn’t even judge whether he was near the end of the desert or smack dab in the middle of it. He didn’t know what he was advancing towards, whether he was at a desperate dead end, or if he could still find an oasis of hope.

Despite all this, the boy didn’t regret ending up in this situation.

He was perfectly aware that the spacecraft that carried the batch of failed experiments would not end up in some beautiful ecoregion of the empire, and instead flew towards a certain spatial incineration plant.

In that huge incineration plant, they will all be quietly burnt to ashes just like those other experimental objects that disappeared in the past, leaving no trace behind.

It hadn’t taken much effort for the boy to break free from his restraints, and, after years of rigorous training at the laboratory, it had been almost easy to overpower the pilot and change the course of the spacecraft.

He didn’t want to go to the space incineration plant, nor return to the Imperial Ecoregion.

The boy decided that he was going to the savage exile planet, Earth.

After the spacecraft entered the atmosphere, the pilot had refused to land. In the fierce battle between the two, this small spaceship ended up plunging like a kite into the largest, most recent desert on Earth, the New Sahara Desert.

Except for the boy, a mutated genetic monster, none of the crew had survived.

The boy stopped and breathed in heavily. The dry, hot air burned his trachea and lungs like a flame. His throat felt as dry as sandpaper, and every cell in his body was howling in despair, begging for at least one drop of water.

The boy paused for less than a minute, then continued to move forward slowly. His two legs felt made of lead, and as soft as overcooked noodles. Every small step required the use of all of his strength and willpower.

He kept moving forward for another seven or eight meters, then his knees finally went weak, and he fell down.

The boy lay dazed on the hot sand. Dry sand got in his nose and his mouth, but he didn’t even have the strength to cough.

The sand quickly covered the back of his hand. The desert looked like a quiet and dead oil painting, but the flow of sand never stopped.

The boy turned his head strenuously, panting. He knew very well that the sand would soon entomb him, yet he still didn’t have the strength to get up.

Am I going to die.

He thought blankly.

His mood didn’t change much. He wasn’t even scared. After all, if he were to make a summary of his short 14 years of life, he wouldn’t be able to say life is a beautiful thing.

Anyways, it might not be too bad to be able to die alone, instead of by getting stuffed into an incinerator with other failed experiments.

Gradually, the scenery in front of the boy got blurry.

He felt drowsy, unable to stop his eyelids from drooping.

In his narrow and foggy field of vision, the distant sky and the vast desert got distorted and twisted. The angle of the horizon changed in a bizarre and confusing way.

After who knows how long, in the space between the sky and the earth, on the horizon where the dark blue and golden border meet, a person appeared.

A man.

The boy squinted his eyes and watched, without a thought in his mind, as the man approached. The severe dehydration had made him unable to think, and he didn’t understand what was going on anymore.

The man’s pace was fast and steady.

He walked up to the boy and stopped there.

The boy was lying on the ground and could only see a pair of short boots on his feet. It was a pair of old and sturdy camel-colored work boots, with a rough leather texture and covered in a layer of dust.

Although he couldn’t spot the man’s face, the boy knew that the other person was looking down at him.

“Water” He moved his lips, barely capable of spitting out a broken word.

Immediately he felt a sharp pain. A thick scab had already formed on his lips. Now, when he opened his mouth, the scabs cracked open and turned into horrible bloody cracks.

A low sigh came from above, “What a pitiful kid.”

That was the first thing the man said to him.

The boy’s mind was already hazy so he didn’t understand those words. However, in his stupor, he felt that this low, mute voice sounded extremely sweet.

Like an afternoon in the middle of spring, like a gentle breeze carrying the notes of a cello along its path.

Without hesitating, the man untied the leather canteen that hung from his waist, knelt down, reached out to hold up the boy’s head, and put the spout to his lips.

The water from the canteen was cool and sweet, simply delicious.

The boy drank greedily, so eager that he wasn’t quick enough to swallow it all, and some of the water ran down his cheeks and neck.

“Hey, don’t worry.” The man’s voice sounded a little helpless, “No one’s gonna take it from you.”

When he couldn’t drink any more, the boy breathed heavily and looked up at the man. His vision was a bit blurred, and he had to blink his eyes energetically before the scene in front of him started to clear up.

The first thing he saw was a pair of eyes.

At such a close distance, the boy could almost see the other’s irises, pitch black with a faint dark green shade, like a deep lake under a bright starry sky.

The man was undoubtedly handsome. The narrow eyes with the corners slanted upwards1 made him look aggressive, but his lips were a beautiful pale pink.

At that moment, the afterglow of the blood-colored sunset was shining from behind the man, the back light softening his look a bit.

Seeing the boy stare at him blankly, the man raised an eyebrow teasingly, “Well, I see you’re full at last. I thought you’d be able to drink an entire river.”

The boy stared at him without speaking.

Although he received no response, the man didn’t mind. He shrugged indifferently and stood up.

Hanging the leather canteen back on his waist, he stretched out his hand to the boy. “Can you stand up?”

It was a slender and strong hand, each nail trimmed round and clean. The palms and fingers were slightly callused. It seemed that he often did manual work, or was used to using certain weapons like firearms, crossbows, or daggers.

The boy looked at the hand, but did not put his own on it. He gritted his teeth, supported himself on the sand that surrounded him, and climbed up slowly and with effort.

“You kid… so young, yet you already are so guarded and distrusting of people. That’s a good habit.” The man chuckled for some reason, “You should keep it that way.”

The boy stared at the other intensely, and slowly opened his mouth. Being dehydrated for such a long time had made his voice hoarse. “Are you going to bring me back to the laboratory?”

“What laboratory” the man was taken aback.

Soon, he seemed to understand something. With a completely different expression, he looked at the boy thoughtfully.

“Laboratory.” He rubbed his thumb against the nicely shaped lower lip, as if he were estimating how much the prey in front of him might be worth. “Since I’ve caught you, how much money do you think that laboratory would be willing to pay to get you back? To be honest, lately I’ve been pretty tight on money. And in this world, being a hero doesn’t pay.”

The boy’s body tensed up instantly.

Of course.

He stared at the other, stepping backwards very slowly, then turned around and ran.

“Hey, it’s just a joke.” The man stood at his backs, spreading his arms helplessly. “Why are you running so fast?”

The boy ignored him completely, running and stumbling for about ten meters, when suddenly he felt a pressure on his neck and his body got lifted. The man held him up like an eagle picking up a prey from the nape of the neck.

“Little guy, you can’t go on like this. Don’t you realize where you are? This is New Sahara. There is not a single water source for thousands of miles around. Do you want to become a mummy? Right, do you even know what a mummy is? It’s actually-”

The boy didn’t pay any attention to the other’s nonsense. He gasped heavily, wheezing, and opened his dark eyes, staring at the other both ferocious and helpless.

He seemed like a little wolf pup who despite being badly injured still wanted to bluff.

Kind of stubborn. The man felt himself soften up inexplicably. “You little devil.”

Before he had finished speaking, the boy stretched out two fingers, lightning fast, ruthlessly aiming for his eyes.

Snap, the trick was to be vicious and fast. However, the man’s reaction is even more swift. He suddenly leaned back, right at the moment when the boy’s sharp nails brushed his cheeks. They slipped along his neck, making two lines of bright blood drops flourish as they dragged past.

In a flash, the man slammed his hand and threw him to the ground.

Bam! Sand and dust rose in the air.

The hit had landed mercilessly. The boy lay down on the sand in a daze, completely stunned.

His mind was blank, his pupils dilated and his ears buzzing. He felt each and every one of the two hundred and six bones in his body were falling apart, and he was unable get up for a while.

“Oof.” The man touched the two scratches on his neck and hissed in pain. When he looked down at his hands they were dripping with blood.

He couldn’t help but to frown, and his tone now sounded somewhat angry, “You brat, can’t you really tell friend from foe?”

Before he finished his sentence, the man’s face changed abruptly, and he pulled out an old-fashioned revolver from his waistband.

Seeing the other party drew his gun in anger, the boy’s heart suddenly sank. In a panic, he grabbed a large handful of sand and threw it at the man.

“Fuck!” The man cursed, his left arm raised to block the sand, but the right one, holding the gun, did not falter, instead pulling the trigger repeatedly.

Faster than you can say “fast”, with a pa pa pa pa the six bullets in the chamber hit the sand with a cloud of dust.

The boy had already rolled over and rushed to hide behind a dry poplar tree. He picked up a sharp-edged stone that lay on its roots. Feeling some doubt in his heart, he hurried to glance back.

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The man didn’t take the chance to chase him. Instead, he stared intently at the sand in front of him and took a few steps backwards extremely slowly.

The six shots just now had left six small, inconspicuous holes in the dune. They quickly disappeared under a flow of moving.

Time went by. Five seconds. Ten seconds. Fifteen seconds. Twenty seconds. Slowly, six rivulets of dark red blood began to ooze from the sand, exactly where each shot had landed.

There was something under the sand.

The boy was lying behind the dead poplar tree, staring at the six strange bloodstains. An animal instinct made his throat go dry.

The previously peaceful sand squirmed violently.

With the movement, a brown monster the size of a tanker truck suddenly arose from the sand.

The upper body of this monster, at least seven or eight meters long, stood upright. It was composed of thousands of ring-shaped segments. The huge head was nothing but a big, voracious mouth,2 and its mouthparts were densely packed with dozens of ferocious fangs.

It slowly lowered its head, producing a strange hissing sound from its mouth. A nauseating stench came, like steam, from its face.

“I called it! So this is why my eyelids were twitching when I got up today.3 This is gonna be a month to remember. Now I’m meeting this nasty thing again.” The man looked at the giant monster in front of him and couldn’t help sighing. “Is it too late to run now?”

A giant mutant sandworm.

The mutant sandworm is one of the most terrifying monsters to be found in the New Sahara Desert.

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More than two centuries ago, most of the Earth’s species went extinct after the solar system catastrophe.

However, some few species adapted to the extremely harsh new environment on Earth through genetic mutations. Among them, there was a rare earthworm from tropical Southeast Asia, now the new Sahara giant mutant sandworm.

This hermaphrodite giant sandworm, whose fully grown body can reach more than 20 meters, is an absolute predator at the apex of the food chain. Sand, desert poplar trees, poisonous scorpions, giant rats, desert hyenas and even humans: they were all in its cookbook.

The boy looked up at the terrifying behemoth in a daze, involuntarily holding his breath. It was then that he finally understood the man’s purpose when he drew his gun.

The man took a deep breath and threw the empty black revolver to the ground. He stared at the sandworm’s hair-raising, ferocious mouthparts, and slowly pulled out a scimitar from his back. “Baby, time to work.”

Said baby was, indeed, the scimitar. It had a strange shape. The blade was narrow and curved, shaped like a crescent moon, and thin as a paper. A faint blue glow like a cold forest emanated from it, giving anyone who saw it the chills.

“Little brat, you lie down there.” Holding the scimitar tight with his hand, he spoke solemnly without sparing the other even a look. “And don’t fucking get yourself killed.”

Guns! Mutant worms! What else could I ask for? (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*✲ﾟ*｡⋆

I learned too much about worm anatomy while translating this. Also shoutout to Wintery for helping me check my sleep deprived typos.

Footnotes

I believe it’s describing the classic 丹凤眼 phoenix eye shape.Raw: 血盆大口, from the Poems of Ye Jingneng, originally describing greedy invaders: “Eyes like hanging mirrors, mouths like blood basins, poisonous gas becoming clouds.”There’s a Chinese superstition that your eyelids twitching means you got bad luck coming. Or good luck. It’s complicated.