What kind of place is Garbage Planet?
Looking down from the porthole of an interstellar ship, all one can see is a gray planet.
The sky here is always leaden gray, with massive dark clouds hanging like blocks of lead in midair. Sometimes, when the weather is good, sunlight breaks through the gray clouds, and only then can a faint trace of blue be seen amidst the heavy gray.
Due to heavy industrial pollution, the rain on Garbage Planet is always acidic. Every building here bears corrosion pits of various sizes, and the streets are forever uneven and pitted.
There is no vegetation or blue ocean to be seen. Most plants cannot survive in the acid rain, and the seas and lakes have turned into murky, polluted water from the excessive dumping of waste. Occasionally, deformed fish can be retrieved from these oceans, which smell like open sewers.
When Jiang Yue landed, she caught a faint stench mixed with the chemical odor in the air.
After two months of space travel, the interstellar ship had finally arrived at Garbage Planet.
Wearing electronic shackles and a gray prison uniform, she walked with the other inmates onto the prisoner transport train.
In Liyue, trains were a mode of transport long obsolete. Everywhere one looked, there were private airships and maglev subways; the transportation network was denser than a spiderweb.
Even on Earth, Jiang Yue had rarely taken a train. She mostly traveled by plane, buying first-class tickets, wearing noise-canceling headphones, and enjoying music, arriving at her destination without much jostling or noise.
It had been hard for her to imagine that one day she would suddenly become a notorious criminal.
In the interrogation room, it was the first time she had attacked someone with such ruthless force. Yet the power she wielded completely exceeded her control, resulting in an irreparable disaster.
A coward remains a coward, even when granted power; having strength means nothing if one does not know how to wield it.
“Is it because I was once a girl who loved flowers more than swords, who understood fashion but not firearms, that even after acquiring the shell of an Alpha, I still cannot survive in the world of Alphas?”
Jiang Yue despised herself.
Someone as worthless as her didn’t deserve to live.
Anyone else controlling this body would have done far better than she ever could.
She truly didn’t deserve it.
It seemed that ever since she became a female Alpha in the interstellar era, the course of her fate had broken loose, like a wild horse slipping its reins and galloping out of control.
She had gone from being a little princess in a lofty tower to a wild beast running naked through the forest, and now she had become a criminal exiled to Garbage Planet.
From the initial shock, pain, despair, and self-loathing to the current calmness of a heart at rest, Jiang Yue could no longer imagine what could possibly be more thrilling or dangerous in her life.
Perhaps ending up in a prison on Garbage Planet was the peak of her perilous journey through this strange new world, there was simply no way anything could be more intense than this.
As the train moved forward, Jiang Yue stared through her foggy gray eyes and lowered her head slightly to look outside. Everything was gray here; even the trees were filtered in a layer of dust, and vibrant colors were all but invisible.
She glanced at the electronic clock on the train: it was 7:28 in the morning.
The prison guards assigned to them began distributing breakfast to the inmates in this carriage.
A small, hard piece of bread, a bottle of water, and a vial of nutrient liquid tasting strongly of cheap saccharine.
Of course, this amount of food could not satisfy Jiang Yue. At first, she would lie awake, starving, often curling up in a ball as her burning stomach ached. But now, she could endure the hunger with a calm expression, as if it were nothing.
People change, either through the spontaneous growth of inner strength or through passive adaptation to external circumstances.
At 12:30 p.m., the early warning system began distributing lunch to the inmates in the carriage. The only difference from breakfast was that the bread had become two slices, sandwiched around a piece of strangely flavored cured meat.
Dinner was the same as lunch, only with an added black energy bar. It was sticky and greasy in the mouth, like biting into a chunk of cold lard.
The prisoners’ taste buds had already been hardened aboard the interstellar ship. Jiang Yue suspected that even if the guards handed them a lump of excrement, everyone here would still eat it with relish.
At 8:52 p.m., the train arrived at Garbage Planet’s first prison.
Before entering the pitch-black cells, the guards approached with electric clippers, and all the inmates had their hair shaved close to the scalp.
Jiang Yue’s silky gray hair slipped off her shoulders. One guard carefully gathered her long hair and clicked his tongue in admiration. “Truly rare hair. I’ve shaved so many heads, but I’ve never seen hair this special, it’s like satin.”
Another guard laughed from the side. “Lucky for you. With this color and length, it could fetch a pretty high price.”
Because Jiang Yue’s hair was so rare, it took a little longer to shave her head than the others.
Once the haircuts were done, the prisoners lined up in long rows. Their electronic shackles were removed, and everyone stripped naked for disinfection.
Jiang Yue had already gone numb.
Expressionless, she took off her clothes. A guard standing nearby glanced at her crotch, raised his eyebrows, and whistled, “Whoa, that’s a big one!”
One by one, the prisoners entered the disinfection area, and the white, acrid disinfectant spray engulfed Jiang Yue.
Thus began her life in prison.
Unlike the cells she had seen in The Shawshank Redemption1it’s a reference to the famous 1994 film (and the Stephen King novella it’s based on) about life in a harsh prison and a man enduring long-term imprisonment while maintaining hope and ingenuity., these cells held eight inmates in bunk beds.
Jiang Yue walked into Cell 666 in her prison uniform. The moment the tempered glass door swung open, a strong stench of feet hit her, and she sneezed violently.
A gray, dingy cell came into view. The walls were concrete, the beds were bunk-style, and the blue paint on them was chipped and peeling.
Seven Alphas sat up on the bunks and stared at her, all with shaved heads.
Unlike Xiang Sui’s neatly trimmed style, the prison left the inmates with only a thin layer of hair, no styling whatsoever.
The moment they saw Jiang Yue, a sinister glint appeared in each of their eyes.
Jiang Yue realized that all the prisoners in this cell were young, strong Alphas. This was really bad, Alphas were violent by nature, and cramming eight of them into such a tiny cell was a recipe for disaster.
Jiang Yue was assigned to Bed 7. On the top bunk was a fierce, black-skinned Alpha.
The stench of feet came from him. Sleeping on the bunk below him, Jiang Yue could hardly imagine how she would survive the days ahead.
Just like in The Shawshank Redemption, the first night in prison was filled with crying, carrying a persistent, nagging sense of unease.
But no guards came to manage the cell, and no one patrolled with batons. Some of the inmates found the crying annoying, and after a few pitiful screams, the sobbing gradually ceased.
Jiang Yue did not cry. The stench of feet from the top bunk kept her awake, and she had no idea how many years it had been since the black-skinned Alpha had washed his feet.
Beyond the smell of feet, she also caught a faint scent of minerals and wood mixed together. It wasn’t just in her cell, the entire prison area reeked of it.
The bedding carried a musty odor. Jiang Yue shivered, lifting her pillowcase to cover her nose.
Under the blanket, two eyeballs emerged from her wrists. Jiang Yue held them in her hands, gently massaging the tendrils that extended from them.
The two eyeballs loved to sleep in the palm of her hand. When asleep, the silver swirling pupils that normally spun constantly would come to a rest. Sometimes, when Jiang Yue let go, they would wrap their white tendrils around her wrist.
Although they were dangerous, at moments like this, they had become a kind of emotional support for her.
She massaged the eyeballs for a while, realizing that the pillowcase was completely useless against the stench of feet, worse than any biological weapon. She lowered the pillow, pulled the blanket over her nose, twisted her face, and closed her eyes.
In the middle of the night, half-asleep, half-awake, Jiang Yue suddenly felt a hand slip into her blanket.
She opened her eyes, grabbed the intruder’s wrist with her other hand, and yanked hard.
A dark figure lunged onto her, pinning her down to the bed. Groaning, he said, “Oh, got some spirit, huh? I’ve had my eye on you for a long time, smooth-skinned little brat. Let me and my brothers have a little fun, you’ll be living the good life here, trust me.”
“Is that so?” Jiang Yue sneered coldly.
She grabbed the wrist and twisted it violently. A loud crack rang out, followed by a piercing scream, and then the Alphas shouted in anger: “Got some spirit, huh? Let’s see how you handle seven of us alone.”
In the darkness, another one lunged onto her bunk. Jiang Yue raised her foot and kicked hard, grabbed his collar, and smashed his head against the bed railing. Another agonized scream erupted, and her hands came away slick with blood.
The cell lights were switched on. One Alpha lunged to grab her leg and drag her down. Jiang Yue seized the upper bunk railing for leverage, leapt up, and landed a flying kick to his jaw.
Crack! The man’s jaw dislocated. In horror, he dragged his unhinged jaw, and gleaming saliva mixed with fresh blood trickled down the corners of his mouth.
In the dim light, Jiang Yue’s gray eyes transformed into slitted, serpentine pupils, bereft of human emotion, filled only with the cruelty and ruthlessness of a predatory beast.
Only a very few alphas possessed such beast-like pupils; they were the alphas among alphas.
They were bloodthirsty, aggressive, dangerous, violent, cold, morally bankrupt, and twisted in human nature.
Jiang Yue grabbed the black-skinned alpha’s head and slammed it repeatedly against the metal bed railing.
Thud… thud… thud…
Prisoners who hadn’t been shaved had thin, slick hair that was hard to grip, making it difficult to leverage their heads.
She had used so much force that her nails dug into his scalp. Blood ran down her fingertips, staining the sleeves of her gray prison uniform red.
The black-skinned Alpha grabbed his head and screamed hoarsely, “Spare me! I won’t dare again! I really won’t dare again!”
The skin on his forehead had split, his flesh mangled, and blood streamed down his face.
Jiang Yue released his head and shook the blood from her fingers, droplets splattering and spreading across the blanket.
She blinked, then suddenly kicked him in the chest. She moved so fast that the others in the cell only saw the black-skinned Alpha fly like a punching bag. With a loud thud, he slammed against the tempered glass door of the cell. The force of the impact rebounded him onto the floor, and he rolled across it, half-dead and barely conscious.
Cough… cough… cough. The black-skinned Alpha gasped for air after being kicked in the chest, struggling to breathe with his mouth wide open.
Blood stained Jiang Yue’s socks as she stepped forward, leaving a trail of crimson footprints on the gray, cement floor as she approached the Alpha writhing in pain on the ground.
Terrified, he shrank back, curling against the plastic-reinforced door. Jiang Yue stood over him, looking down.
Her gray, slitted pupils were cold and unfeeling; no anger, no contempt, no panic. With a calm expression, the female Alpha raised her foot and kicked the arm he was clutching over his chest.
A sickening crunch of bone echoed through the cell.
Both of the black-skinned Alpha’s arms were completely broken.
The female Alpha’s expression remained calm, as if she had merely crushed an inconvenient twig.
In the deathly silence, Jiang Yue walked toward the bunk. She stepped over the pool of blood on the floor, shook out the blanket on the bed to smooth it, and carefully flattened the wrinkles on the pillowcase.
She lifted the blanket, preparing to sleep, and everyone in Cell 666 quietly exhaled in relief.
The female Alpha pinched the corner of the blanket between two fingers and suddenly turned her head. The black-skinned Alpha and the others in the cell flinched violently.
Had she not finished yet?
Surely there was a limit to using one as an example to scare the rest?
Everyone’s hearts leapt into their throats.
The black-skinned Alpha by the door had already collapsed like a dead dog, and the heart rates of those who’d attacked Jiang Yue spiked.
The inmates on the top bunks pulled their blankets up and slowly lay back down; at a moment like this no one wanted to draw attention, they wished they could hide inside a turtle shell.
In the suffocating silence, Jiang Yue spoke.
“By the way, wash your feet properly. If I smell anyone’s foot stench again tomorrow, I will crush every one of your toe bones to powder.”
Jiang Yue no longer looked at her fellow inmates’ varied expressions. She pulled back the blanket and lay down, covering her face with it.
“Turn off the lights,” Jiang Yue said.
The silence in Cell 666 was terrifying. No sooner had she spoken than someone switched off the lights, plunging the cell back into darkness and stillness.
The prisoners quietly climbed into their bunks, careful not to make a sound.
Late at night, Jiang Yue lay under the blanket, tears streaming down her face. She gritted her teeth, pressing down on her trembling arms to stop herself from crying out loud.
Days like this were truly terrifying.
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Sam Williams On TYMIMA Chapter 152