Blame the Villain – Chapter 31
by Little PandaThe Villainous Scientist (11)
Starting From Scratch: Little Marshal x Mad, Dark, Sickly Scientist
Jiang Qianyu drifted in a turbulent sea of heat and cold.
Lately, she had overused the catalyzing drug to force her body’s potential, making her secondary gender characteristics appear like those of an Alpha. However, this formula was not yet fully stable, and its use had taken a toll on her own body. Coupled with her turbulent emotions over past events and the rainstorm she had been caught in, all the hidden ailments in her body flared up at once, causing her to break out in a sudden, high fever.
When Song Xuyi found her, Jiang Qianyu was in the middle of refining the Alpha-to-Omega conversion drug. Through her observations of Song Xuyi during the preceding period, Jiang Qianyu had eliminated several unstable elements from the formula, ensuring that any Alpha converted in the future would completely transform into an Omega.
Much like Song Xuyi, once Jiang Qianyu focused on something she loved, she became entirely absorbed. Immersed in her experimental research, she completely forgot her body’s abnormal state and the passage of time in the outside world, her mind consumed only by the desire to refine the medicine as quickly as possible.
She had once heard Zhou Sui, the Omega who had saved her, mention in passing that several underground Omega organizations now existed within the Empire. The Emperor viewed these groups as a grave threat, and providing them with her conversion drug would undoubtedly be like giving wings to tigers…
If she had not followed Song Xuyi to Blue Star, Jiang Qianyu would have originally planned to join those organizations.
Yet Jiang Qianyu had never expected Song Xuyi to come looking for her. The moment their eyes met, an endless panic had surged within her heart: Now that Xuyi knows I can research drugs, what will she think of me? Will she suspect that I was the one who turned her into an Omega? Will she ever speak to me again…?
The hatred that had sustained her research vanished entirely in that single instant. Anxious to explain, she took a step, only for waves of dizziness to rush over her. In her desperation, she acted quickly to knock over the drug, before slipping into complete unconsciousness—
Dreams cascaded over one another in a chaotic tangle, carrying Jiang Qianyu back through her turbulent, displaced past.
Jiang Qianyu was a daughter of the Jiang family. For generations, the Jiang family had dedicated themselves to pharmaceutical research, standing as authorities in the field who had produced countless geniuses. Jiang Qianyu was a genius among geniuses.
Perhaps heaven grew jealous of such brilliant talent, for Jiang Qianyu had been born with a strange condition. Every year, she had to hibernate for a month, and despite exhausting every resource, her family could never cure her of this mysterious illness.
At the time of her birth, her father was campaigning to become the Marshal of the Empire. To prevent political rivals from using her illness to attack the clan, the Jiang family hid her existence from the outside world. Later on, even as her father’s position gradually stabilized, Jiang Qianyu demonstrated an extraordinary talent for research. Because their family history held several tragic precedents of brilliant Omegas whose talents withered away after being forced into marriage, the family resolved to keep her hidden before her presentation. Once Jiang Qianyu presented as an Omega at sixteen, the Jiang family resolved to hide her existence for her entire life, both to preserve this genius among geniuses and to ensure she could conduct her research freely in the future…
These decisions were only made after consulting Jiang Qianyu herself.
Jiang Qianyu herself did not feel wronged by these arrangements, but the Jiang family harbored feelings of guilt because of it. Thus, they showered her with double the affection and indulgence. Even her great-grandfather, the most severe patriarch of the family, was willing to lay down his walking cane and let Jiang Qianyu ride him like a horse… Objectively speaking, this sheltered upbringing had left her socially inept and blunt.
The Jiang family had desperately wanted to cure her strange illness, but none of them could have imagined that she would eventually cure it herself.
As a genius among geniuses, Jiang Qianyu had formulated her first pharmaceutical agent at the age of eight, and had developed multiple formulas before she even turned sixteen. Just as she formulated the medicine to resolve her own sleeping sickness, the reigning Emperor secretly assigned the Jiang family a task: to research a drug capable of enhancing an Alpha’s combat strength.
Driven by his devotion to the nation, the elder Jiang Marshal believed such a drug could better defend their country and help humanity triumph in the war against the Zerg. Thus, he persuaded the family patriarch to accept the task.
To completely cure her sleeping sickness, Jiang Qianyu needed to take her medicine and hibernate inside a stasis chamber for three months. However, the Emperor strictly commanded the Jiang family to complete the drug within a year. Since Jiang Qianyu was the backbone of the research team, she had no choice but to temporarily shelve her plans to cure her own illness and prioritize developing the Emperor’s drug.
Toward the end of the year, a major battle erupted between the Zerg and the Imperial Star. Two days before the outbreak of the war, Jiang Qianyu finally succeeded in rushing the development of the drug. Though it still possessed a few flaws, it could be deployed for emergency use.
The Jiang family handed the formula over to the Emperor. Believing that the Alpha enhancing drug had taken a solid shape, Jiang Qianyu wished to cure her sleeping sickness as a seventeenth birthday present to herself. Once the formula was delivered, she lay down in her hibernation pod.
Jiang Qianyu had never expected that her seventeenth birthday present, besides completely curing her sleeping sickness, would also include the news that her entire family had been wiped out, leaving her as the sole survivor.
Jiang Qianyu woke up in the home of an old servant.
Wiping away tears, the old servant told her that the Jiang Marshal had fallen in battle two days prior, and even before that, the entire Jiang family had been massacred by the Zerg…
The Zerg detected human presence through vital signatures. Because Jiang Qianyu had been undergoing treatment inside the stasis chamber, her life signs had dropped to almost zero. Shielded under layers of protection in the deepest, most secure underground laboratory of the Jiang estate, she had miraculously escaped death by a stroke of luck and was secretly delivered to the old servant’s home by the Jiang Marshal.
“Live on. Carry the hopes of the Jiang family and live on!” Those were the final words her father had left for her.
Jiang Qianyu did not know how she had survived that period.
She had even contemplated death, but choosing to live was sometimes far more difficult than dying, especially since the old servant reminded her over and over again—her father had died to protect her and to keep her existence hidden.
There was something highly suspicious about the massacre of the Jiang family. The Zerg had bypassed the standard interstellar shipping lanes and taken a minor route to reach the Jiang family’s planet—a minor route that served as the Empire’s backup escape passage, known to fewer than fifty people in the universe.
Yet with the Jiang family gone, the Marshal had lost his greatest backing. He could not possibly defeat the mastermind behind the betrayal. Rather than living with a target on his back, constantly watched as a thorn in that person’s side—which might eventually lead them to discover Jiang Qianyu’s existence—the Jiang Marshal chose to take the initiative. He sacrificed his own life to secure the title of a fallen hero, thereby deflecting their attention…
During the month after she woke up, Jiang Qianyu watched the satellite recordings of her family being slaughtered by the Zerg over and over again. Monstrous hatred grew wildly in her heart…
Yet her face grew calmer and calmer.
A month later, the old servant handed her a fake identification ID, and Jiang Qianyu assumed a false name to infiltrate the Emperor’s private research institute.
Later, Jiang Qianyu realized her father must have guessed who was responsible for the destruction of their family, which was why he had so despairingly chosen to perish with the Zerg. At the time, however, she had not shared her father’s suspicions. Listening to the old servant’s advice, she concealed her brilliance and worked quietly in the research institute for three years.
Despite concealing her brilliance, some people were simply born to be the center of attention. Jiang Qianyu was reassigned to the core laboratory, becoming the assistant to the chief pharmacist of the time. That Alpha chief pharmacist was already as old as her father had been. Engrossed in her research, Jiang Qianyu had never noticed the covetous gaze he directed at her, growing more intense by the day.
Soon after entering the laboratory, Jiang Qianyu realized the Emperor was no benevolent sovereign. To consolidate his reign, he secretly abducted numerous Alphas, Betas, and Omegas for experimentation. Most recently, he had ordered the laboratory to research an Alpha strength-loss drug that would strip Alphas of their strength and cause a seemingly natural death within five years.
The Emperor’s ambitions played perfectly into her hands. She possessed a crystal-clear mind: the person who had destroyed her family had to be someone of immense power and high rank, and those at the center of power were invariably Alphas.
The tasks assigned by the laboratory presented no real challenge to her. While fulfilling her official duties, she used her work as a cover to misappropriate laboratory resources, successfully developing the early stages of an Alpha-to-Omega conversion drug and a catalyzing drug to push her physical capabilities closer to those of an Alpha…
This continued until she turned twenty.
To secure more resources to refine her own drugs, Jiang Qianyu helped the chief pharmacist complete the Alpha strength-loss drug. Overjoyed by the news, the Emperor paid a private visit to the laboratory a few days afterward.
Having obtained the resources she desired, Jiang Qianyu worked day and night, finally completing the preliminary development of her two drugs.
Eager to test the efficacy of her creations, she stepped out of her research room with the drugs in hand, failing to notice the unusual silence in the surrounding corridors.
The laboratory had been cleared out. Tucked away around a corner, Jiang Qianyu overheard a conversation between the Emperor and the chief pharmacist.
“After all this time, you have finally pleased me once!”
“But you must not rest on your laurels. Three years have passed, yet you still have not figured out how to resolve the flaws in the Alpha enhancing drug left behind by the Jiang family…”
The chief pharmacist’s voice sounded deeply apprehensive. “Your Majesty, the Jiang family’s talent was truly too exceptional. To tell you the truth, if any member of the Jiang family were still alive, any one of them would be far superior to me…”
“To think the Jiang family was that formidable…” The Emperor let out a low sigh, a trace of regret in his voice. “Had I known this would be the case, I would not have had their entire clan exterminated back then. I should have kept a few alive…”
…
So… it was the Emperor who had destroyed the Jiang family!
Abruptly confronted with the truth of her family’s annihilation, Jiang Qianyu felt as if a bolt of lightning had struck her, leaving her mind utterly blank.
Then, the Emperor ahead suddenly let out a soft chuckle. “The little Omega mouse in the corner—have you heard enough?”
The Emperor released a powerful wave of Alpha pheromone pressure. It forced an instinctual terror upon Jiang Qianyu, crushing her to her knees, virtually unable to move…
She bit her lower lip raw, feeling the humiliation of being an Omega for the very first time. Despair filled her heart…
Am I to die here just like this, never able to fight back in this lifetime?
At this moment, Jiang Qianyu utterly loathed the pheromones that suppressed her!
If I survive this… aside from seeking vengeance on this dog of an Emperor, one day, I will make every single one of these damned Alphas suffer the exact same agony I feel today!
…
At first, the Emperor’s gaze brimmed with murderous intent. However, the chief pharmacist fell to his knees to plead for her. “Your Majesty, this Omega possesses extraordinary talent. My success in developing this medicine is inseparable from her assistance… And besides, she is just an Omega after all…”
The murderous intent in the Emperor’s eyes receded. He immediately caught the heavily suggestive subtext of the chief pharmacist’s words. After casting a glance at Jiang Qianyu, he waved his hand dismissively. “You have performed a great service by developing this medicine. Consider this Omega your reward. Mark her as soon as possible; she cannot escape this research institute anyway. In the future, the two of you should bear more highly gifted children. When the time comes, you will be the new Jiang family…”
The chief pharmacist kowtowed repeatedly. The Emperor laughed heartily and withdrew his pheromone pressure, walking out of the room in high spirits, even sealing the laboratory doors behind him.
Jiang Qianyu had already retreated to the corner, shrinking back.
Wearing a faux-benevolent smile, the chief pharmacist released his own pheromones. Like a cat toying with a cornered mouse, he closed in on the curled-up Jiang Qianyu.
“My little darling, you ought to be deeply grateful to me. I was the one who saved you—”
But before he could finish his sentence, Jiang Qianyu rose and gripped his throat, stripping him of any capacity to resist…
How is this possible?
The chief pharmacist’s eyes widened in horror as he stared into her icy gaze: Why is this Omega unaffected by my pheromones? Why has she suddenly erupted with such terrifying strength…?
Yet he would never have the chance to obtain an answer—Jiang Qianyu snapped his windpipe.
…
The moment the Emperor had withdrawn his pheromone pressure, Jiang Qianyu, huddled in the corner, had secretly injected herself with the newly developed Alpha enhancing drug.
Eliminating the Alpha chief pharmacist who coveted her was merely the beginning.
The research institute was heavily guarded. With the Emperor still just outside, it would not be long before the chief pharmacist’s death was discovered. She had to escape immediately…
Escaping through the main exits was impossible.
Jiang Qianyu conceived of a desperate, near-suicidal plan.
The laboratory had been constructed right alongside the deepest ocean of the Imperial Star. The corpses of those who died during experiments were always discarded into the ocean depths through a waste disposal chute…
Because certain rare pharmaceutical ingredients required freezing to preserve them, the laboratory was equipped with ready-made freezing sealed capsules, roughly the size of a coffin.
Harnessing her temporary Alpha strength, Jiang Qianyu dragged a freezing sealed capsule to the opening of the disposal chute. She then climbed inside the coffin-like pod and swallowed every single dose of the medicine she had previously refined to cure her sleeping sickness.
One pill was meant to induce a three-month hibernation, and Jiang Qianyu had no idea how many she had swallowed in her haste. Nor did she know if she would ever wake again, or if this freezing sealed capsule would hold out long enough for her to be rescued…
But this was her only path to escape.
After setting the capsule’s parameters, Jiang Qianyu sealed the hatch. With a hard kick, she sent the freezing sealed capsule sliding down the long chute, plunging into the depths of the ocean…
She had anticipated spending years in the deep sea, and had even prepared herself for a watery grave. Yet she had never expected to remain down there for fifteen years.
Over those fifteen years, Jiang Qianyu slept in the deep ocean. Occasionally, she would regain a fleeting moment of consciousness. The absolute chill of the stasis pod seeped deep into her bones, while boundless loneliness and regret eroded her resolve. Only the eternal, unchanging sound of the waves above reminded her that she was still alive…
The hatred in her heart fermented day by day.
She hated the Emperor, and she hated herself. While the Emperor was the primary source of evil, her own creation—the Alpha enhancing drug—had inadvertently accelerated the ruin of the Jiang family…
Finally, after fifteen years, when she was on the verge of giving up during the endless wait, a rare hurricane churned the ocean, sweeping her rusted freezing sealed capsule from the seabed and casting it onto the shore…
Caught in a feverish stupor, Jiang Qianyu felt as if she had returned to the deep sea once more. Surrounded by nothing but the repetitive churning of the waves, her body grew heavier, and boundless loneliness and regret dragged her down, inch by inch, into the abyss…
Suddenly, a touch of warmth appeared in her palm, as if someone were straining to hold onto her…
And in the deep sea, a song suddenly echoed.
The singing was quite awful, not a single note on key, yet Jiang Qianyu drew vital energy and strength from the sound…
The song brimmed with vibrant hope, much like the dazzling sunlight she had witnessed upon opening her eyes on the shore after fifteen years of darkness.
Song Xuyi remained unaware of Jiang Qianyu’s dreams.
At first, Song Xuyi had found herself in an awkward position. The unconscious Jiang Qianyu refused to let anyone else come near. Had the thermometer not shown her forehead temperature peaking at forty degrees, Song Xuyi would have almost suspected she was faking her illness.
Jiang Qianyu’s wet clothes had to be changed, but the others were terrified that she would settle scores with them once she woke up. Consequently, Song Xuyi had no choice but to close her eyes and, with a crimson face, change Jiang Qianyu’s clothes herself. Due to the high fever, the sweet scent of honey peach wafting from her body grew increasingly potent… Song Xuyi had to exert every ounce of willpower to restrain her primal instincts.
By the time she finally finished changing her, Song Xuyi was drenched in sweat…
Afterward, she began tending to the gravely ill scientist.
She had expected Jiang Qianyu to wake up quickly, but by the evening of the second day, the girl remained unconscious.
Seeing the usually arrogant girl reduced to such sudden frailty—curled into a tight ball, her brow deeply furrowed, and her lower lip bit raw even in her sleep—Song Xuyi felt a twinge of heartache.
The school doctor had already examined her. After administering an injection, Jiang Qianyu’s high fever had subsided. As for why she remained unconscious, Song Xuyi suspected it might have something to do with her past experiences.
She tried her best to coax Jiang Qianyu into releasing her tightly bitten lower lip, but the unconscious girl seemed deaf to any sound. Not daring to use force, Song Xuyi could only use a cotton swab dipped in water to continuously moisten Jiang Qianyu’s dry lips.
From time to time, Jiang Qianyu would murmur in her sleep. Although Song Xuyi could not make out the words, she could discern that the girl was deeply distressed. Not knowing how else to comfort her, she could only hold Jiang Qianyu’s hand tightly, trying to offer her strength…
By the second evening, the school’s punishment for Jiang Qianyu had also been handed down.
To Song Xuyi’s surprise, the academy’s disciplinary action against Jiang Qianyu was incredibly light: the entire matter would be put to rest once Jiang Qianyu copied the school rules ten times.
The reason for this outcome was that the instructor, upon returning to his own laboratory, had worked tirelessly for an entire day and night without sleep, ultimately proving that combining Puluo granules with Heihua granules indeed produced a lethal poison! Yet, the instructor could find no record of this interaction in any existing literature.
Utterly astonished, the instructor reported his discovery to the academy leadership overnight.
Over the past two days, the academy leaders had already heard Jiang Qianyu’s name several times. Sent to the disciplinary office for accidentally harming an Omega, skipping classes… the academy leadership had long since grown annoyed with this student. Especially now with the arrival of the new freshmen, they had desperately needed to make an example of someone to warn the others. When the instructor called, the academy leadership was right on the verge of issuing a major demerit to Jiang Qianyu. They had never expected this student to possess such exceptional talent in pharmaceutics.
What on earth was this student’s background?
The academy leaders called the principal to inquire, but even the principal was temporarily in the dark. One thing, however, was set in stone: Jiang Qianyu was highly likely to become the rising star of the School of Medicine.
The medical technology of Blue Star was simply too backward! It was not just the academy; the entire military suffered from a severe lack of brilliant talent. Moreover, when looked at closely, Jiang Qianyu’s offenses were not actually major infractions. It was even rumored that when she was found that night, she had been in the middle of pharmaceutical research rather than doing anything malicious…
Thus, after careful consideration, the academy leadership ultimately issued a purely symbolic punishment to sweep the matter under the rug.
Song Xuyi did not know the underlying reason for the academy’s leniency. She simply let out a sigh of relief upon receiving the decision. Figuring that Jiang Qianyu would not wake up anytime soon, and feeling thoroughly exhausted after two days of constant caregiving, Song Xuyi decided to go wash up first.
While showering, Song Xuyi hummed a tune to wash away her fatigue. The soundproofing in their shared dormitory was poor, and she had no idea that the comatose Jiang Qianyu would actually hear her singing…
By the time Song Xuyi finished her shower and stepped out, Jiang Qianyu’s tightly bitten lips and furrowed brow had finally relaxed…
Song Xuyi let out a sigh of relief, her heart finally at ease. At that moment, drowsiness washed over her. She let out a yawn and, unable to resist, rested her head against the edge of Jiang Qianyu’s bed to take a brief nap.
Song Xuyi was a heavy sleeper, and after the physical toll of the past two days, she did not wake when her alarm rang once. However, the sound completely woke Jiang Qianyu from her slumber.
Jiang Qianyu turned off the alarm almost instantly. With a complex gaze, she looked down at Song Xuyi, who was fast asleep by her bedside. She carefully lifted Song Xuyi and carried her to the adjacent bed, then pressed her lips together and lay back down on her own bed…
Her body felt sluggish and weak in the aftermath of the high fever. Though her mind was incredibly tired, she felt a profound emptiness in her heart and beside her. No matter how she tried, she could not fall back asleep.
Those tragic scenes began to play in her mind once more, and she instinctively curled her body into a tight ball…
Yet it was of no use. The cold seemed to seep into her very bones. She felt like a vengeful spirit walking the mortal realm after falling into the abyss, unable to find even a fleeting moment of peace—the moment she closed her eyes, the bleeding eyes of the Jiang family members loomed before her.
The room was dead silent, save for the soft, shallow sound of Song Xuyi’s breathing from the adjacent bed.
Tossing and turning, Jiang Qianyu recalled the warm hand from her dream that had pulled her out of the abyss. In the midst of that absolute chill, that hand had offered unprecedented strength and hope—just like the person who was Song Xuyi…
Yet… Jiang Qianyu pressed her lips together, suddenly feeling a sting in her nose. Xuyi saw me researching drugs. By now, she must have figured out that I was the one who turned her into an Omega, right?
Once she wakes up tomorrow morning, she will definitely despise me… Why is it that I can never keep the people I want to protect most? It was like this with the Jiang family, and now it is the same with Xuyi…
An unprecedented sorrow flooded her chest. She bit her lower lip and abruptly sat up in the darkness…
“I’m sorry,” she whispered into the dark. “I don’t deserve to be your friend.”
The night was as cold as water. Jiang Qianyu quietly slid out of her bed. Devoutly, almost submissively, she crawled to the edge of Song Xuyi’s mattress, slipping under the covers and quietly wrapping her arms around her.
If endless night was bound to follow the sunlight, then let her absorb this final trace of warmth to survive the cold, cruel years that lay ahead of her.
Nuzzling her face against the crook of Song Xuyi’s neck, she closed her eyes in a mixture of agony and contentment.
Song Xuyi fell into a dream.
In her dream, a freezing dark cloud suddenly appeared on her bed. Though soft and pillowy, the cloud felt as heavy as a thousand pounds, pressing down weightily upon her…
Instinctively, Song Xuyi tried to push the cloud away. But then, a warm, tender dampness brushed against her neck, as if the cloud had dissolved into rain—or perhaps, the cloud’s tears.
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