Chapter 13: Interstellar Age

“But to me, 《Starforge》 is everything. I have to use every means possible just to survive.

“It’s only because I glimpsed the ‘future’ and arrogantly thought myself a master player that I won’t make the same mistake again!”

“Perfect Acting, activate! Pain suppression, on!”

Yun Ruoxi slowly closed her eyes. When she opened them again, a flash of relief and release flickered in her ruby-like pupils.

Her subjective consciousness seemed to detach and shift into a third-person perspective. Her mind became unnervingly calm as she analyzed the current situation.

This was quite suitable material for a “beautiful, strong, and tragic” character.

If later episodes featured flashbacks related to her, or if she succeeded in her role and filmed an extra related to the War Camp, this experience would surely earn her sympathy and bring a flood of popularity.

So she absolutely had to perform well here!

The thought flashed through her mind instantly.

Tears quickly welled up in Yun Ruoxi’s eyes, falling like a string of broken pearls:

“Sister… I know I was wrong, it hurts so much… please, I beg you, let me go…”

“Knowing you’re wrong is enough.”

The two-faced woman snorted coldly, waved her right hand, and the electric current from the collar immediately stopped. The indicator light switched from yellow to green.

“Next!”

Clack, clack…

Yun Ruoxi still curled up where she was, hugging herself tightly, silently crying like an abandoned fawn.

One girl after another passed by her.

Occasionally, someone cast a pitying glance, but more often they deliberately looked away.

They dared not look, afraid of punishment.

From beginning to end, Yun Ruoxi didn’t utter another word. She only wept silently, expressing helplessness and fragility to the fullest extent.

After the third round of inspection ended, all the cadets were led to their lodgings and given half an hour to shower and change into their cadet uniforms.

It was only then that they realized Instructor Behemoth had not exaggerated — the serial numbers truly determined their treatment.

Cadets with numbers above one thousand, divided by gender, were forcibly crammed into two dormitories.

Two dormitories housed a thousand people.

One could imagine what the conditions inside were like.

Gray-black iron bunk beds stacked heavily like small mountains, the guardrails of the top bunks almost touching the ceiling.

Sleeping in such a dorm was like being in a sandwich, squeezed tightly between the people above and below.

Sitting on the bed was impossible; one could only curl up sideways to sleep, with almost no personal space.

At the back of their minds.

Fortunately, the War Camp hadn’t been entirely ruthless. Although the bathroom at the back of the room was a communal bathhouse, there were a few small cubicles.

The moment Yun Ruoxi saw the scene, she hallucinated the popular Korean drama from her past life called Squid Game.

The two were eerily alike.

“Yo, isn’t this a sandwich factory?” a cheerful optimist even joked at this moment.

But those who had lived comfortably since childhood were near tears.

Even the Imperial Prison would be hundreds of times more comfortable than this!

Yun Ruoxi was unsurprised by the harsh living conditions.

She picked up the cadet uniform prepared on the bed and quickly headed toward the bathroom at the back.

The limited number of shower cubicles meant if she didn’t go now, she would soon have to face everyone else head-on.

Since being born in this world as a female, Yun Ruoxi had lived ten full years as a girl.

In the early years, she indeed had many complaints about her gender transition.

But over time, the extremely privileged life, the loving family elders, the highly developed technology and civilization… all these blessings gradually made her forget her past life.

The gap between her two lifetimes was unimaginably vast.

She gradually accepted her new life and began seriously learning how to be a “real girl.”

Among these, it was impossible not to mention the Yelan family.

As one of the Empire’s Ten Great Emerging Families, their acceptance into the traditional aristocratic circles came with very strict rules.

Even if Yun Ruoxi was reluctant, she had been receiving noble etiquette education since the age of six.

Though these rituals had evolved over the Empire’s ten thousand years and were no longer as cumbersome as those of Earth’s feudal aristocrats, they still instilled a certain elegance in her bones, helping her adapt to skirts, learn proper manners, and truly become a young lady of the starry age.

Of course, putting it another way, even without this upbringing, recklessly exposing oneself in front of others, even among females, would be unbearable for her inherently conservative nature.

Yun Ruoxi entered the side cubicle of the bathroom and locked the door.

She stared silently at the glass mirror on the cubicle door, looking at the blue dress she had worn for more than a month.

This dress was valuable, made of luxurious materials. Converted to cosmic currency, it could easily buy a medium-sized transport ship.

But this was only her birthday party gown.

Once worn, it would never be worn again and would be locked away in her wardrobe as large as a castle.

At first, Yun Ruoxi was shocked by this extravagant practice.

But she soon accepted it.

In the starry age, productivity was extremely advanced, and material resources were almost unlimited.

Under these conditions, the financial power of the Yelan family, one of the Empire’s Ten Great Families, was unimaginably vast.

For example, one of her distant cousins, simply for his love of savanna landscapes, bought an entire rocky planet to terraform.

First, he used the Starforge Colossus to flatten the original ecosystem, removing a thousand meters of rock layers as hard as obsidian.

Then, he seeded the planet with grasses and animals purchased at great cost from the origin Earth for ecological reconstruction.

It took a full ten years to transform the rocky planet into a massive African Savanna.

Incidentally, the so-called “high price” was truly astronomical.

Origin Earth, as humanity’s mother planet, though no longer the Empire’s administrative capital, still held supreme status.

Everything related to it was incredibly expensive.

Even a cockroach from there could sell for dozens of cosmic credits.

Even Yun Ruoxi’s extravagantly wealthy cousin had pained over buying the grass and animal species.

To this day, that African Savanna planet still exists and is a famous scenic spot in the Empire.

“I wonder if news of that day reached my cousin. Even if it did, he probably doesn’t care. He might even be delighted, since he can finally seize the Yelan family’s main lineage fortune.”

Yun Ruoxi smiled coldly.

Relationships in the starry age tended toward two extremes:

Indifference or enthusiasm.

Some would travel ten thousand light-years for a promise, while others became extremely selfish.

Her cousin was the latter — greedy and lecherous, never missing a chance to loot.

The rough outline for Season One in Yun Ruoxi’s hands didn’t reveal the true cause behind the overlord’s downfall of the Yelan main lineage.

She strongly suspected the involvement of those distant relatives.

The wealth of the Head of the Yelan Family was just too enormous.

Even if they consumed one ten-thousandth of it, that alone would be enough for them to recreate a new millennial aristocracy.