Ye Cheng opened her eyes in a daze and stared at a dim wash of blue light ahead, hazily wondering if someone had dumped her body.
She remembered going out that morning to buy a few things. On the way back, something slammed into her from behind with crushing force. In the stunned gazes of a family of three walking toward her, she had gone flying.
Looking around, Ye Cheng found herself in what felt like a sealed space with nothing but that blurred patch of blue in front of her. Maybe the hit-and-run driver told the witnesses he was taking her to a hospital, then shoved her, critically injured, into the trunk to dump her somewhere out in the sticks?
While her brain spun off on ridiculous tangents, her hand moved on its own. She reached toward the blue glow.
It felt like easing her hand into a basin of warm water, gentle ripples slipping over each finger. Her fingertips should have touched the light by now, but the blue didn't change in the slightest. Curious, Ye Cheng gritted through the pain, pushed herself up, and slid her whole right hand into the glow.
The world flashed bright.
A sky strewn with stars spilled across a pitch-black dome. Each one looked close enough to pluck, and yet they winked slyly and hid in the endless far-off. A ribbon of starlight unfurled from beneath her feet into the distance, silent and magnificent, like the mighty river in her memory that ran a thousand miles eastward across mountains and plains.
For a heartbeat, the sight was so breathtaking Ye Cheng forgot to breathe.
It took her a while to come back to herself. She remembered—she'd been hit by a car. There was no way that car had knocked her into outer space. And this was space. Nowhere around her did she see a water-blue planet like Earth. The nearest world was sheathed in a layer of golden radiance, unlike any planet in the solar system.
She'd read transmigration-after-death stories and watched those shows, sure. But having it happen to her left her totally at sea. Using the light where she was, she shakily drew back her hand and lifted it to her eyes.
Sure enough—this wasn't the original hardware.
As a kid, Ye Cheng had lived alone for long stretches. Once she'd knocked over a kettle of boiling water; even as an adult, the right wrist had still borne a white scar. The hand in front of her now was pale and tender, the wrist's lines neat, the skin fine and smooth without a blemish—visibly rounder than her own had been.
She blinked, and a throb of pain stabbed through her temple. When she lifted a hand to press the spot and pulled it away, there was blood on her fingers. Not just her head—now that she was fully awake, the ache everywhere sharpened, like she'd rolled down a hillside, scraping and banging every part of her, and finally cracked into something hard.
"What… happened?" she murmured, lost.
A faint mechanical hum sounded, and the environment around her began to change. Points of light flickered into being around the Ye Cheng suspended in space; points stretched into lines, lines unfolded into planes; in a matter of seconds, a massive humanoid outline enclosed her gaping figure. Opaque material shut out the outer view, leaving only an extra-wide blue screen in front of her.
A cold mechanical voice intoned, "Disengaging Concealment… Gods-class Unit-02 'Shennong.' Reading pilot data… Contract not established. Entering 'Basic Mode.'"
"Shen… nong?"
"Power reserves near depletion. Cabin oxygen will cease in approximately twenty-six minutes."
Oxygen. The word shocked her cold.
What kind of world this was, whose body she was in—she could take time to sort that out. Without oxygen, she wouldn't have time at all.
She'd never piloted a mech, but she'd seen enough to fake it. "Find me somewhere nearby where I can survive. Immediate forced landing!"
Symbols she couldn't read flickered across the screen. A small window popped larger—showing the nearest golden planet.
"Nearest viable landing world… Golden Star XI. Territory of the First Human Empire. Dangerous."
Then why tell me that? Ye Cheng silently coughed blood and said, "Next one!"
"Second-nearest viable landing world… Yilan Star. Territory of the New Human United Nations (NHUN). Safe. Warning reiterated: power reserves near depletion."
She was getting anxious. "Any backup power? How do I recharge?"
"Scanning for backup… depleted. Elemental-energy conversion is available. Please supply."
Elemental what now?
Knowing she'd be out of oxygen soon, Ye Cheng felt panic crawl up her spine. The pain all over tried to strip her will away.
She forced herself to focus. "Any other way to replenish?"
"Pilot must inject elemental energy to recharge this unit."
What is that supposed to be?
As her nerves frayed, a faint silver-gold mist began to gather, drifting toward the space before her. It quickly condensed into a bead the size of a fingernail, colors flowing within.
Under Ye Cheng's stunned gaze, the two-toned bead floated gently toward the screen.
The instant it touched, the screen flared blindingly. Light raced outward through the mech; rows of controls in the cockpit lit up with strange glyphs. The monotone voice rose a notch: "Primary power fully charged. Backup reserves charged. All Basic Mode functions online."
Ye Cheng stared. That tiny, inexplicable bead had refilled the entire mech's power and backups?
She was still reeling when a hemispherical node on the console flared a hard red. Even she knew that was bad. "What is it?"
"Four First Empire warships approaching. Default: hostile."
Hostile? Ye Cheng didn't waste a breath. "Get to Yilan. Now!"
"Warning: sixteen mass-production Ice-Crystal Type-III mechs have launched from the warships. They are engaging."
Before she could react, the entire mech jolted in rapid succession. Only the safety harness kept her from being flung; even so, she felt like her bones shook loose, her chest tight. When the shaking eased, bitterness surged in her throat and she actually spat blood.
In her whole life, she'd never done that before. The odd thing was, once she had, the pressure in her chest eased a little. She knew she couldn't hesitate. "Accelerate and break away! Can we return fire? Hold them off!"
"Physical munitions depleted. Elemental energy reserves sufficient. Enemy numbers significant. Initiate 'Jingzhe' Strike?"
Another hard shudder. Ye Cheng had no clue what 'Jingzhe' was, but she was rattled and on the verge of blacking out. "Do it—do it! Stop them!"
She couldn't see it from the cockpit. The huge dark-green mech, fleeing in disarray under a hail of fire, suddenly pivoted. It lifted both arms, deft fingers curling into fists that retracted into the forearms. The forward ends of both arms opened, revealing half a cannon mouth on each side.
The mech brought its hands together. The two halves met, and a radiance welled up at the seam that no science could explain. The halves fused with a perfect click, not a line out of place, as if they had always been a single barrel.
Behind it, sixteen identical humanoid mechs charged like wolves.
A faint glow rose over the dark-green frame, then surged toward the cannon. In the space of a dozen heartbeats, a blinding lance erupted—
It was the last thing the sixteen enemy pilots and everyone aboard the four warships ever saw.
In the blink of an eye, every mech and warship hunting Ye Cheng vanished, as if they had never been.
Ye Cheng coughed up a fleck of blood and stared at the empty starfield, dazed. "Where… did they go?"
"All hostiles within radar range eliminated. Defensive systems were not engaged. Structural damage at 0.19%. Initiating self-repair. Approaching Yilan Star's atmosphere. Engaging radar masking. Engaging optical cloaking. Engaging Elemental-Environment Fusion."
The mech impassively executed her earlier orders. Inside, Ye Cheng sat wide-eyed, failing to digest what she'd just heard.
All hostiles… eliminated?
She didn't have time to think. The red alarm lit again.
An opaque, towering light screen unfolded where the dark-green mech had first drifted. A pure-white humanoid mech leapt out, locked onto the dark-green unit, and arrowed after it. It raced up in an instant, seized the dark-green mech's arms in an iron grip—and before Ye Cheng had time to be shocked, a foreign, overwhelming energy surged in. She didn't even manage a token struggle. She blacked out, cleanly.
A moment later, a man without a spacesuit popped the white mech's cockpit and drifted out. A thin halo of white light sheathed him. The hem of his long robe rippled as if in wind that didn't exist in space.
By some means, he opened the dark-green mech's cockpit from the outside. Seeing Ye Cheng unconscious inside, he clamped a hand around her throat and pinned her hard against the seat. Staring at her face, he slowly pulled his mouth into a cold, mocking smile. "A pack of lowborn mongrels… and you think getting your hands on a Gods-class mech lets you challenge the First Empire?"
The white light around him tightened. A line split open at his fingertip as if cut by a blade. He lifted that hand and pressed it to Ye Cheng's brow. Blood beaded and traced under his control, etching a sigil on her skin. Even in a faint, Ye Cheng writhed and broke out in a cold sweat, but she couldn't wake.
"String-pulling rat—don't forget to help the First find your nest. Don't disappoint me."
With that, the man tapped the cockpit control, drifted back to his own seat before the hatch closed, and piloted the pure-white mech away. The dark-green mech returned, without comment, to carrying out the prior command and flew on toward Yilan Star.
——