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Ji Hanxing, Specialist 125 at the Endangered Species Conservation Center on Blue Star in the year 2531.
His ability is animal affinity. His dream is to climb the rankings, take private commissions, and save up enough contribution points to retire and lie flat.
That is, until he takes a private commission and enters an era when Barbary lions are still alive.
At this point in time, he meets a pope named Minyue Liusi.
Using his ability, Specialist 125 disguises himself as Aster, the Beast God descended to the mortal world. As the smoke of war fills the air and an era draws to a close, the young pope removes his most precious monocle and gives it to him, hoping only that the god will stay for the sake of his followers.
[Change to Instance 2: There will be no Mexican grizzly bears.] In the Middle Ages, humans cut down vast forests to make farmland. With nowhere left to forage, Mexican grizzly bears began raiding fields for crops. When Specialist 125 pries a cub from the belly of a kneeling mother bear, killed by a farmer's son, and sets it free, he is punished by being put in shackles.
After that, every time he enters a new time and place, he brings back a fragment carrying unfamiliar emotional data.
Every fragment tells him the same thing:
This is no coincidence!
Eventually, he climbs the rankings all the way into the top hundred and is transferred to the legendary Specialist 001 squad.
Team leader Gao Ying, an AI by origin, is an iceberg who has stayed cold for ten thousand years.
Deputy leader Bai Sechen, an aristocrat among the evolved humans, wears a smiling face, but looks at him like prey waiting to be slaughtered.
Teammate Jiang Ge, the ultimate overachiever among ordinary people, probes his secrets every few days.
Teammate Yaoling has the ability to see the future. Every time they meet, she takes a detour, muttering, "You can't see me, you can't see me."
Not a single person on the whole team is normal.
And their missions are always the same: enter time nodes where species went extinct and preserve a spark of life for them.
Ji Hanxing manages to pick up a strange emotional fragment every time.
As the fragments pile up, the squad's atmosphere grows increasingly bizarre.
Bai Sechen begins quietly tripping him up.
During one mission, Jiang Ge "accidentally" cuts off his communications.
At last, Yaoling speaks her first words: "You... better not collect them all."
Ji Hanxing looks at the fragment in his palm and falls into thought.
Then he looks up at team leader Gao Ying, who has stayed out of it all along.
You, Specialist 001, have been watching the show from the sidelines this whole time. So whose side are you really on?
[System alert: Emotional module loading in full...
Warning: Subject x7 is in a superposed state.
Specialist 125, please prepare yourself.]
Reader's guide:
1. A seemingly laid-back but secretly ambitious bottom x a split-into-pieces top (both fragments and the original are involved, with no love triangle). Read with caution if this isn't your thing.
2. This is not a pure romance. The plot takes up a large share, the romance is slow-burn, and there are transition chapters between missions.
3. A world where AI, evolved humans, and ordinary people coexist. Each squad member has their own position.
4. The setting is entirely fictional, neither Earth nor the present day. Please don't scrutinize it for accuracy. The author has created a mountain of original lore, and everything serves the plot.
5. Blurb archived on 2026.2.6 (version 2.0, 26.2.24).
Theme: All things have a spirit, and love is the only variable.
