Tears pooled in the eyes of everyone in the room.
Su Jin's muscles were coiled tight, his chest burning with self-directed venom.
His execution had been completely inadequate! Too slow! Too weak!
If he had been just a fraction more thorough during the sweep, this catastrophic loophole would never have existed.
Elder Wei was an absolute pillar of this team. Even with his chest caved in, the old man's last act was trying to secure their logistical future...
He refused to just let him die.
As Wei De's agonizing wheezes grew steadily weaker.
Su Jin's eyes suddenly snapped wide open. He lunged for his leather briefcase, frantically tearing through its contents.
In the span of a single heartbeat, he produced a pulsing Fleshy Orb.
He jammed the Fleshy Orb into Wei De's trembling palm, drew his combat knife, and mercilessly punctured the biological core.
The moment the strange, luminescent energy bled into Wei De's skin, the old man's eyes rolled back and he slumped into a deep coma.
Sun Ya panicked, grabbing his arm. "What the hell are you doing?! Pumping him with that mutant bio-matter now?! That parasite is still burrowed inside him! What if it triggers a catastrophic mutation?!"
"What other tactical option do we have? It's a Hail Mary. This is the only play left on the board," Su Jin growled.
Sun Ya's lips trembled. Finally, his eyes dropped to the floor, his voice hollow. "What I mean is... you shouldn't burn high-tier resources on him. Survival odds aside, he's just going to drag down the convoy's operational speed."
"We two old fossils already have one foot in the grave anyway. There's no strategic value in letting us drag you kids down."
"He left an operation manual... but who the hell knows if any of us can actually decipher his technical jargon? We need him alive to teach us!" Su Jin sighed heavily, the icy warlord facade cracking slightly. "I know exactly what you're saying, Sun Ya. But hearts are made of flesh and blood. I can't run this entire apocalypse on pure, unfeeling calculus. If he was a random civilian, I'd leave him to rot. But Elder Wei has been holding the line with me since day one. I am not going to just stand here and watch him die, and I know damn well you won't either."
Sun Ya let out a long, ragged sigh. "The parasite threat is contained for now. You kids clear the room. The ground floor still needs logistical oversight. Send someone back up with Old Wei's notebooks. If he wakes up or his vitals crash, I'll sound the alarm."
....
Time evaporated, and the sky bled into pitch black.
The personnel roster was locked in, and based on the daily performance metrics, firearms had been successfully distributed to a vetted, reliable squad.
The Supplies were fully loaded onto the transports; they were just waiting for daybreak to roll out.
In the storage room right next to Wei De's makeshift ICU, Su Jin had thrown down a simple bedroll. By the flickering light of a candle, he was meticulously studying the engineering notes Wei De had left behind.
The door to the room quietly creaked open a crack.
Fu Qingdai slipped through, softly clicked the door shut, and curled up on the bedroll right beside Su Jin.
Su Jin lowered the notebook, glanced at the girl, and forced a strained smile. "Why aren't you bunking with your parents? What brings you into my office?"
Fu Qingdai gently rested her head against Su Jin's shoulder. She lay there in silence for a long time before whispering, "Will Grandpa Wei pull through?"
"He will," Su Jin replied with absolute, manufactured certainty. "You have to maintain morale. He'll recover, and he'll come back physically stronger than before. Even if complications arise, we have the firepower to handle them for him."
"Mm..." Fu Qingdai wiped a rogue tear from the corner of her eye. "Brother... I'm so sorry about today. I didn't mean to humiliate you."
Su Jin let out a genuine, soft chuckle, reaching out to gently stroke her hair. "You orchestrated a flawless tactical disruption and literally saved my life today. Everything else is just collateral damage. You did absolutely nothing wrong; your execution was brilliant! I mean every word of that."
Fu Qingdai's small nose twitched. "Today... today I killed someone. I knew she was a Disguised Infected, but she looked exactly like a normal little girl. I..."
Her voice cracked, threatening to dissolve into sobs.
Su Jin's gaze darkened. He patted her back twice, his rhythm steady and grounding. "You executed a hostile target. You must actively purge any mercy toward the enemy. Qingdai... your biological value to this camp is off the charts. You can't break down crying every time things get bloody. How are you supposed to carry the banner for these people if you're always weeping?"
Fu Qingdai lifted her head, her glossy, tear-filled eyes locking onto his. She spoke slowly.
"If you weren't here, I wouldn't cry."
Their eyes met. Su Jin's expression turned dead serious. "Then what happens if, one day, I'm permanently gone?"
"Where would you possibly go?" Fu Qingdai stubbornly held his gaze, though her knuckles turned white as she gripped the hem of his shirt. "You told me your spaceship crashed."
"Maybe a rescue fleet drops out of orbit to extract me. Maybe I catch a bullet to the brain. What is your operational protocol when that happens?" Su Jin countered coldly.
Just as Fu Qingdai opened her mouth to argue, Su Jin pressed a firm finger to her lips.
"It's not that I don't care about you... but you have to harden your heart. You have to become a load-bearing pillar for this camp. Leadership means weaponizing mercy when it's useful, and discarding it when it's not. Honestly, managing a survivor colony isn't rocket science. When dealing with the smart ones, you bind them to you with shared profit and aligned interests. But when dealing with the absolute morons? You never, ever tell them the cold truth. You hypnotize them with religious fervor. You twist their perspective until they genuinely believe that dying for your cause is the righteous path." Su Jin delivered the Machiavellian manifesto in a slow, chillingly casual tone.
"The rest is just basic corporate restructuring. Promote the hyper-competent, isolate the treacherous, and fill your inner circle with absolute loyalists. In a camp this size, there will inevitably be people starving. If a starving person is useful, you toss them a scrap of meat and forge them into a fanatic. If they are utterly useless? You deflect the blame back onto them... You convince them that their starvation is a direct result of their own lack of hustle. You turn their anger inward. Let them cannibalize each other in a desperate rat race, fighting for scraps while they continue to generate value for you..."
"Every word I'm telling you right now is critical. Burn it into your cerebral cortex; you're going to need it to survive out here. But that's just the macro-level logistics. There's also..." Su Jin lowered his head, his gaze colliding with Fu Qingdai's once more.
The young girl's eyes shimmered, absolutely captivated. She hadn't flinched an inch.
Glancing further down, Su Jin casually reached over and pushed away the long, slender leg she had somehow draped across his lap.
"And the most critical rule of all... you cannot harbor improper thoughts about me. I am an extraterrestrial. Ours is a forbidden love."
"I don't have improper thoughts!" Fu Qingdai snapped her head down, her face burning red as the hand gripping his shirt began to tremble violently.
The second she looked away, Su Jin white-knuckled his fist to suppress his own stress, before instantly pasting on an arrogant smirk. "I speak from vast experience, though you might not believe it. A top-tier corporate elite like myself—clean, refined, exuding confidence and generosity, with impeccable manners and a gentle tone—naturally makes young girls feel relaxed, safe, and comfortably warm."
"Compare that to the pathetic boys your own age. They dress like peasants, their bank accounts are empty, they're impulsive, completely unreliable, and they constantly piss you off... The gap in quality is staggering."
"I am essentially walking opium. It might make your mind and body feel incredible right now, but for the sake of your future happiness, you have to quit me cold turkey."
"You're completely shameless!" Fu Qingdai violently headbutted him right in the ribs.
After taking the hit, the arrogant smirk slowly melted off Su Jin's face. Staring blankly up at the ceiling, he murmured, "Honestly? I have a ridiculous amount of girlfriends."
Fu Qingdai's head snapped up, her eyes narrowing as she locked onto his face.
"I shit you not. On my home world, Planet Namek, polygamy is the law of the land. I own a high-rise completely stocked with women. The second I walk through the lobby, they line up in coordinated batches just to greet me. If I don't see a batch I like that day, I wave them off and order a fresh rotation. Sometimes I cycle through five batches before I pick one. I only sleep with one at a time, but when the boys come over to hang out? I let them pick a few of my girlfriends from the catalog to keep them company."
All the color completely drained from Fu Qingdai's face. She pursed her lips tight, her eyes boring into Su Jin's as she desperately hunted for the punchline.
"Are you serious... I don't believe you!"
"Of course it's true. Have you forgotten? We Namekians never lie." Dropping the final line, Su Jin completely refused to make eye contact. He immediately shoved her off the bedroll. "Go to sleep. I need to run a medical diagnostic on Elder Wei."
Fu Qingdai sat there frozen like a statue, watching Su Jin flee the room.
After a long, suffocating silence, her delicate eyebrows shot up in pure rage. She balled her hands into fists and violently punched the concrete wall.
"He lied to me!"
Namekians never lie... there wasn't a single goddamn truthful word in his entire mouth!