Dead on Mars - Chapter 238 - Sol Three Hundred and Thirty-Nine, If I Must Die in the Starry Night

Year 2056, in a city in the Yuan Jiang Su Jin area. On top of a ruined, shattered six story residential apartment sits a teenager wearing a combat vest, militaristic trousers, and alloyed battle boots. On his back is a hexagonal shield and equipped is a blood-shadow battle knife. He sits there silently on the edge of the roof. At this time, the sparkling sky was shining and there was a refreshing breath within the air that blew towards him. However, there was only silence within the ruined, deserted city, with an occasional howl that makes your heart skip a beat.

The Baron’s daughter, Alessandra Barrett, has worn a mask from a young age due to an injury. Many say if you were to see the face behind the mask, you would be cursed and die soon afterward. She is seen as a ghost, avoided by all who visit the baron’s home until she becomes the Duke’s wife.

No one could understand why the Duke would pick such a wife. Did he wish to die?

What would become of the girl who once hid in the shadows but now had the spotlight on her as the Duke’s masked wife?

What would everyone say if they were to learn the truth that she was in a contracted marriage with the Duke?

Xu He had been his sister’s control group since he was a child. His elder sister was fair, juicy and good at giving birth. She was the heart of the Xu family, a flower in the village, and the talented people who wanted to marry her lined up from the village to the back of the mountain.

The little brother was only good at cooking, and he was busy from the stove to the field all day long, and no one paid attention to his disheveled face. People in the village talked after dinner, how the same parents had two very different children. With his sister as a comparison, it must be more difficult for He ge’er to marry. 

However, there were many young men looking for Xu He, but these people who got close to him were all to find out about his sister. Xu He had been used to it for many years, but recently, even Zhang Fangyuan, who was not doing business in the village, wanted to get something from him.

After inquiring, he tried to hide, but he was stuck on the way home, but the man said: “He ge’er, your cooking is delicious, and it will be even better if you are my fulang.”

- Description from Novelupdates

A pill, a tiny capsule encased in a biologically harmless water-soluble shell; A shell whose very existence is a result of a century of research and technological advancement. A manmade synthesis of Chemicals and product of complex processes.

And in the end, a means to an end.

A way to deliver a concoction of other Chemicals for an agenda; Vitamins for nutrition, medication for treatment, or… perhaps more.

We trust that what we eat won’t do us harm, and trust that those who are responsible for its creation had the best of intentions. But in the end, it is difficult or perhaps impossible to truly tell what lies within a pill.

That is until one day I entered a research institution as a test subject. All I did was swallow a pill I was told to be a health supplement.