Can Ci Pin - - - Chapter 120

Chapter 120 – The Long Winter of the Eighth Galaxy

Lu Bixing felt like he’d had a wild dream. It wasn’t a linear dream, but he recalled that he seemed to return to his childhood, where he couldn’t walk around freely and felt as if his limbs were tied down by invisible ropes.

He was well aware that he wasn’t someone extremely obsessive or radical; the nature of fluidity and adaptability flowed in his veins. No matter what he faced, he could always somehow find the good in every situation and wouldn’t dwell too much on the details; it was exceedingly rare that he would have this kind of restraining dream.

Yet something in the dark seemed to keep warning him throughout the dream that he needed to wake up, he needed to wake up…

Lu Bixing struggled and suddenly felt something behind him drop. He was finally free; Lu Bixing turned to see that the thing that held him down earlier was a giant tombstone that crashed onto the ground into ashes. The young man stared in slight shock, not understanding what it meant, but before he could stop and think about it, his instincts in the dream made him run towards the light.

A strong light flashed before his eyes and his foot finally landed on the ground.

The medical capsule already healed up his injured finger and cleaned up all the anesthetics inside his body. He was supposed to be in his best physical state right now, but for some reason Lu Bixing only felt his heart drum rapidly in his chest. The pounding of his heart was quite uncomfortable, like something was stuck in his chest as his heart raced to escape.

“Professor Lu…Professor Lu is awake!”

Lu Bixing turned his head up abruptly and noticed that he was inside the command post of the Milky Way City Military Base.

“Professor Lu.” Turan’s face appeared on the screen before him. She was still inside a mech, her face carrying a color of graveness.

Lu Bixing’s memories returned as he looked at her; that’s right, Turan was the one that drugged him down.

His eyes twitched in anger; he was still human after all, even if he was much more collected than the average person, he could still be upset.

Yet he wasn’t used to throwing around curses, so he resorted to looking coldly at Turan, waiting patiently for her to explain.

Turan didn’t know where to begin and subconsciously avoided the main point as she opened her mouth: “The Prime Minister’s mech ran into a little problem during the evacuation earlier, he was knocked unconscious so he’s in the medical capsule right now. When the capsule performed its full body scan on him, it discovered that there was a tumor in his head…”

Lu Bixing frowned slightly: “Is it bad?”

“Not too bad,” Turan’s voice was soft and reserved. Suddenly she didn’t seem like a powerful Military General and instead like a young nurse on her first day of work. “It can be dealt with in a small procedure, but because the Prime Minister is old and has a history of health issues, he may be resting up for a while. So we’re hoping you can take over his position as a temporary Prime Minister…”

Lu Bixing’s heart skipped a beat when he heard Turan subconsciously change her tone and interrupted her: “How long was I out? The Prime Minister is back, but where’s Lin?”

Turan was speechless.

Lu Bixing stared into her eyes for a short moment before he stood up. At the same time, Turan’s mech also sent out an alarm inside the screen: “Abnormal energy warning, abnormal energy warning—”

“Captain, they’re panicking now that their exit is blocked! They might want to forcefully break through our defense!”

“Break through my ass!” Turan’s expression changed like a flip of a page and finally showed a bit of spirit. “If these pirates don’t die you all are paying with your lives!”

“Captain, a pirate vanguard team is sailing towards us one-fourth of a sailing day away.”

This sudden change of events saved Turan as she didn’t know how to face Lu Bixing, and immediately threw herself back onto the battlefield: “Got it, warm up your cannons. Team Four—Foucault, bring your team to portal number 573…”

Lu Bixing got up and pushed the guard following beside him away as he pulled up all the recent command history recorded in the command post with his permission access.

He quickly scanned through the complicated frontline records—large fleets of refugees from the Seventh Galaxy entered the Eighth Galaxy, Lin Jingheng ordered to explode the transfer portals…an unused protected underground terminal’s coordinates were leaked out, AUS pirates entered the Eighth Galaxy…

The AUS fleet arrived too quickly and too suddenly, there were only Weasel and Monoeyed Hawk’s teams waiting by the terminal by the time the pirates entered. A total of 28 small mechs and two mid-sized mechs that patrolled the area held the enemy fleet back for twenty minutes until backup arrived, and virtually all ships by the terminals had lost contact with the command post…

To cut off the road for the pirates outside, Saturday brought his patrol team totaling fourteen mechs right into the pirate fleet and manually blew up the last underground terminal with his own mech…

Lu Bixing’s reading speed was absurdly fast, but at this moment, none of the words pieced together made sense to him even if he could read them.

He stared at each word individually and began dissecting each phrase to formulate the meaning of the lines…

Monoeyed Hawk…lost contact.

Who lost contact? What does ‘lost contact’ mean? Did the signals get intercepted again? That’s bad news on the battlefield, we need to fix that immediately.

Saturday…blew up the underground terminal…

Blew up…

Blew up…

So, where is Lin Jingheng? Why didn’t they say where Lin Jingheng was?

“Professor Lu!” The guard beside him held onto the young scientist.

Lu Bixing was like an AI that suddenly short-circuited and couldn’t struggle out of the guard’s grip, so he subconsciously gave the guard a courteous smile.

The guard trembled in fear at this smile: “You…do you need a sedative?”

Lu Bixing’s mind raced as he thought, What can I do? I need to do something.

“I don’t need a sedative,” his voice was almost a whisper, as if he was simply mumbling to himself and answering a question, “Prime Minister…didn’t the Prime Minister ask me to temporarily…what he did want me to do again?”

On the other side of the screen, Turan couldn’t bring herself to look at him and ordered her subordinates: “Open fire!”

The entire Eighth Galaxy’s outrage manifested into gunfire and shot mercilessly onto the fleet of pirates under her command. The pirates turned immediately to retreat, only to be blocked by Foucault’s fleet near the terminal as they got sandwiched in between cannons and missiles.

Didn’t they say the Eighth Galaxy’s elite troops are virtually gone?

Didn’t they say the rest of the fleet was merely newly-enlisted weaklings?

The AUS pirates that accidentally stepped into the Eighth Galaxy would have never guessed why these peasants and useless souls that couldn’t even read before enlistment would be able to follow orders without hesitation like veteran soldiers.

They would have never guessed that these people could be like desperate soldiers risking their lives on the frontline with nowhere to return.

“Professor Lu, you…”

“Connect me to the Engineering Department.” Lu Bixing finally grabbed onto something in the sea of thoughts. He was like a child afraid of ghosts, walking alone at night with only a flashlight in hand as he fixed his gaze on the road ahead and nothing else. “Engineering Department, it’s me. Please confirm for me if all refugee starships have landed; if not, contact all surrounding space stations and have all starships prepare to land immediately on the same station. For the next twenty hours, we will be banning all aircraft and spacecraft within the galaxy; all department engineers, please use our Defense Forces’ internal channel passcode as a basis for inspection; shoot down all unknown aerospace objects. The Eighth Galaxy is now an enclosed area, we can’t allow even a single pirate ship in our skies.”

“Connect to the Social Security Management Department.” Lu Bixing quickly gestured toward the guard after giving his instructions and connected to the department team. “It’s me, I need an estimated number of refugees from the Seventh Galaxy.”

The management team responded: “Our quick estimate gave us at least eight billion people.”

“Okay.” Lu Bixing nodded. “Try and give me a plan for collecting personal data and processing immigration as soon as possible; I’ll need everyone to get to work immediately after we remove the aerospace ban. Also, I’ll need at least three more backup plans including refugee settlement for future references and meetings.”

The guard beside him showed concern and asked: “Professor Lu, are you sure you don’t need to res…”

“The Prime Minister asked me to take over, I can’t let him down.” Lu Bixing answered calmly and carefully as if he was holding onto it like it was his treasure, his life…and his last straw of hope. “Are the department managers of the Finance and Planning departments injured? If not, please have them come visit me right now. Closing up the Eighth Galaxy means that we have to become self-sufficient from now on; our economy is still fragile, and now we have an extra eight billion refugees to take care of…”

Suddenly, it was as if his mind finally began to process normally. The young man could feel the weight of the entire Eighth Galaxy pressing on his shoulders; he had too many things to plan and solve, there was no time to rest. Lu Bixing took in a deep breath and stood up. “Don’t follow me. Sorry, please give me something to clear my mind; a cup of tea, coffee, relaxant…anything is fine.”

The sudden change of events in the Eighth Galaxy created an urgent chain reaction that didn’t even allow Lu Bixing a moment to sit down and take a sip of water. He ran around the various departments in the government that were completely dumbfounded by the war, draggingthe souls of people back and putting them to work. Following him was like nothing had ever happened and everyone was focused on the problem before them.

Twenty hours later…

Saturday chose the right time to blow up the portal and managed to keep most of the pirate fleet outside the galaxy. The Engineering Department and the angered Eighth Galaxy forces teamed up as they cleaned up the rest of the pirates within the galaxy within the designated time frame.

“Professor Lu.” A soldier on the telecom called him.

Lu Bixing turned his head slightly, the headphones connecting to the neighboring meeting room still on his other ear: “What is it?”

“Captain Turan responded saying that all pirates have been…”

Lu Bixing answered before the soldier could finish and said: “Got it, clean up the battlefield. Don’t let the remnants affect the safety of the terminals inside the galaxy. Send all prisoners to the First Prison and send over a list of casualties as soon as possible.”

Lu Bixing’s heart sank as he said the last line.

He turned his head up as he suddenly realized something and stared blankly at the soldier, who looked back at him in a complicated expression.

Send a list of casualties…he felt like there was a monster hidden behind this line.

Did I forget something? he thought.

“Professor Lu, Captain Turan wants to speak to you.”

Lu Bixing took a step back subconsciously, something inside him telling him he didn’t want to speak with Turan right now. Yet before he could reject, Turan’s face appeared on the screen inside the command post.

The Captain took her hat off; her hair was pressed down from wearing the hat for too long, which was why she hated having short hair. In the past, Commander Lin didn’t like how she would waste her time on something silly like that and criticized her looks after forcing her to cut her hair…which probably would not happen again.

Even if she grew her hair out to her ankles in the future, nobody would insult her anymore.

Turan’s eyes were bloodshot, her lips chapped. After twenty hours, she finally faced Lu Bixing once again across the screen; she stood as Lu Bixing sat, the long silence between them haunting the room.

Turan pressed her hat on her arm to the side and said: “Professor Lu, we received confirmed reports that the first two patrol teams that were attacked by the pirates, along with the team that flew into backup and blew up the portal are completely annihilated. We’ve collected the remnants on the battlefield.”

Lu Bixing’s eye twitched slightly.

Turan: “Professor Lu, I’m sorry, I…”

“Oh.” Lu Bixing forced himself to nod slightly; his neck was stiff like an old robot. “Got it, you mean Saturday, Weasel, and…”

Who was it again? He’d seen the name earlier but couldn’t remember anymore.

“Also…Monoeyed Hawk.”

Lu Bixing trembled as his eyes widened.

Turan finally managed to say this name to him and decided to drop the bomb: “One more thing I wasn’t able to tell you. When Commander Lin was retreating, we lost connection with him mid-way. Then when the pirates entered the Eighth Galaxy, we received the news that the Zhanlu in your house crashed.”

Everyone inside the command post held their breaths as they waited to see Lu Bixing’s reaction. They all mentally prepared themselves to drag him into a medical capsule if the young man broke down.

They waited five whole minutes, but Lu Bixing didn’t give any reactions. He stayed still and calmly spoke to his headphones toward the meeting next door: “Sorry, please wait for me.”

Everything that had happened within the last 48 hours was destructive. Each event was deadly enough to completely shatter a person’s soul and psych individually; yet they all managed to happen at the same time. It was like laying on a bed made of sharp needles that stabbed onto every part of his body, ironically creating a strange numbing effect.

…As long as he doesn’t move, doesn’t think about it, he wouldn’t break this strange balance.

Turan suspected that he didn’t even understand what she’d said and decided to be direct even if it meant crushing the young man: “Professor Lu, the underground terminal’s coordinates were exposed. We suspect that Commander Lin and his fleet ran into an AUS ambush during their retreat…”

Lu Bixing suddenly cut her off: “Wait, what did you just say? Zhanlu crashed?”

Turan opened her mouth.

Lu Bixing got up from his seat as if he were sleepwalking: “How can he crash at a time like this? I have a lot of work for him left, I need to go check on him.”

He turned around and left after this.

Turan shot a glance at the soldier on the side: “What are you doing, where’s the medical capsule?”

The soldier ran towards the medical capsule while the others in the room pondered if they wanted to knock the temporary Prime Minister out again, only to see Lu Bixing suddenly losing balance by the door. The young man instinctively grabbed onto the doorframe but still didn’t manage to keep his balance, finally letting himself fall to the ground as his knee knocked on the hard flooring.

“Professor Lu!”

“It’s nothing, my leg suddenly fell asleep…” Lu Bixing mumbled to himself, “how strange.”

He grabbed onto the doorframe and tried to pull himself up only to fall back down again. It was as if he suddenly lost all strength in his body and his limbs were numb like a puppet, unable to control his own flesh.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the people that helped him up, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me…”

Turan couldn’t help but cut off the connection.

From that day on, the Eighth Galaxy entered a long winter.

The hope of relying on outside sources for supplies was gone. The refugees needed to be relocated while the residents of the Eighth Galaxy grew more anxious by the day.

As the economy of the galaxy grew more complicated and harder to stabilize, existing social conflicts also grew more heated as time went on. The hatred towards refugees peaked in some areas as small-scale armed conflict sparked in other areas.

The Defense Forces ran tirelessly throughout the galaxy to extinguish the fire, and the supply of nutrient syringes reached closer and closer to rock bottom.

The former smugglers of the Eighth Galaxy quickly picked up on the danger ahead. The newly introduced fiat money issued by the government once again faced rejection from the public, the market once again digressed back into commodity trading.

Soon after, groups of ‘smart people’ created fake nutrient syringes and flooded the market, once again causing a destructive blow to the weak economy as the real stock reached its end.

The Eighth Galaxy was a rare group of people that had experienced famine under the rule of the Cayley pirates in modern times. People knew that nutrient syringes were the trust of the government, so an unstable supply of trust on this isolated land meant instability and fear in society.

For the next coming days, Lu Bixing was busy running around taking care of all existing issues. He needed to check in at the command post on the clock and maintain a sharp mind, stable emotional state, and rationality. He needed to carry the burden the old Prime Minister left for him in these times of trouble; against his style of appeasing to both sides, he began to build an iron fist and even ordered martial law a few times.

After work, he would go home by himself, close the door and cut off all communication from everyone aside from work emergencies.

In front of the “Home of Commander Lin and Engineer 001”, the two dancing robots grew rusty and dirty into a pile of junk. The gardening robot got wet from a rainy day one time and experienced a malfunction, making it run around the same area all day without a care for the rest of the garden. One side of the garden turned into a wasteland of dirt while the other side began to grow weeds, making the house look almost like a haunted mansion. Lu Bixing didn’t bother to fix the robots nor the long grass, stepping on them as if he didn’t notice anything wrong.

Turan was afraid that he would die alone in that house and secretly ordered a few guards to patrol around the house, making sure the young man was still alive.

One month later, Prime Minister Edward was finally released from the hospital. Lu Bixing was on a business trip on another planet, so Turan came in his place to escort the old man.

Chills ran down her back the moment she stepped in the hospital—a few doctors walked out of the Prime Minister’s room.

Ever since the medical revolution that completely automated all health checkups and medical procedures, there was only one scenario where human doctors were needed; it was only if machines and technology could no longer handle the situation.

“Captain.” Prime Minister Edward already changed back to his casual clothes and cleaned himself up as he got ready to leave. “You must be busy lately, I noticed that you lost some weight.”

“I didn’t lose weight; my body fat just dropped a little.” Turan said, “I added extra training for myself lately.”

The old Prime Minister looked at her in surprise.

Turan gave him a complicated smile: “I’m a pretty lazy person, I’ve always thought of schedule training as work in the past. I never understood the commander; I thought, if I was the boss, nobody could tell me what to do nor control my training schedule, so I’ll always stay in the command post and give out my orders as I sit at my desk. It must be nice to watch other people train and sweat buckets.”

“What about now?”

“Now my biggest joy is to go to the training grounds every day. Your head empties when you’re doing physical training.” Turan answered and then asked, “Prime Minister, I saw a few doctors walk out earlier, are you alright?”

“Have a seat.” The Prime Minister nodded towards her and returned her question with another question, “How’s Bixing doing?”

“Not very well.” Turan sighed and pulled out a piece of paper from her pocket. “Look.”

The Prime Minister took the paper and recognized Lu Bixing’s handwriting on it: “The nutrition bars inside your fridge have expired, I’ve cleaned it up for you. P.S. please don’t take so much if you can’t finish them, wasting food is shameful.”

The note was dated yesterday.

“He left this inside Monoeyed Hawk’s house; he goes over and cleans up every day without asking where his father is.” Turan said, “I asked that kid White what he does in his free time, and White said that he just spends time trying to repair Zhanlu’s system at home. He sleeps inside a medical capsule and uses drugs to control what time he sleeps and wakes up to maintain his best physical state. He still hasn’t asked about Commander Lin’s whereabouts yet, nor if his father left any dying message. It’s been over two weeks since we told him about the underground terminal being exposed–the system also indicated he’s read the reports, but he refuses to even speak of it. He wouldn’t even ask how it happened nor mention what he wanted to do about Saturday’s situation. It’s almost like he even forgot about how I drugged him that day. I’m scared to even talk to him unless I have something I absolutely need his opinion on.”

Prime Minister Edward said: “Tell him to find time to visit me when he comes back, I may not have enough time left.”

Turan was stunned: “No…it was just a tumor, didn’t the procedure already…”

Prime Minister Edward answered calmly: “They detected a pop reaction in my DNA chain, the tumor was just an early sign.”

There was nothing medical technology couldn’t cure during a time like this: even if someone broke their spine, a medical capsule could completely cure someone. As long as the person didn’t die immediately from brain damage, it was almost as if medical capsules could save anyone from any situation. However, humans will still age and die.

Death is like light, love, and the vast universe: it’s eternal and equal. Every time people think they’re about to overcome the trials of death, they will quickly realize that there will still be more obstacles in the marathon of life ahead of them.

And beyond a mountain was almost always another mountain.

Sometimes it came in the form of a “pop reaction.”

Nobody knew when this reaction would show up. It would always start off with some small issues until the exosome reaction consumed the DNA chain in inevitable destruction. Replacing organs, injecting stem cells, patching DNA strands…nothing could stop the deterioration, as if the patient’s body was cursed by a supernatural being.

Turan looked at him in shock: “But…that’s impossible, you haven’t reached the age of DNA deterioration.”

Aside from his physical appearance, the Prime Minister was only 240 years old, which was right in between middle and old age. If it was during times of peace, he probably still wouldn’t have retired and would have a long life to look forward to.

However, his life was one that had direction but no hope. It was a life that was tormented continuously by his beliefs and morals; it was a roller coaster ride that almost lost to the Rainbow Virus. Its torturous path almost made it seem inevitable that he would age faster than the average man.

The old Prime Minister smiled weakly at her without a word.

Turan lowered her voice and said: “Did you all plan this together to drop the burden? You can’t do this, Prime Minister, he can’t shoulder everything on his own, you’re all being too hard on him.”

The Prime Minister felt the corner of his eyes warm up: “Then let’s all do our best, Captain—no, General Turan. I’ll do my best to live a bit longer, to send you guys off a little later, but you all need to be prepared.”

Three days later, Prime Minister Edward announced his recovery and returned back to work. The first thing Lu Bixing did when he came back was to request a long vacation from the Prime Minister.

“I’ve already arranged for my absence; you can also call me up anytime if there is an emergency since I’ll only be at home, I won’t go anywhere so I can arrive within minutes.” Lu Bixing explained to him, “My request is mostly because I want some time to fix up Zhanlu’s system. You should know that Zhanlu’s database has lots of valuable information, it contains details of the Union’s top technologies. We’re in desperate need of them right now. With Zhanlu, once we rebuild the transfer portals in the future, we can also have him connect to his main body in the First Galaxy and immediately contact Commander Lin and the Silver Ten; this is also to secure our galaxy’s defense.”

The Prime Minister opened his mouth, unsure how to respond.

Lu Bixing pulled up his request form from his personal device and pushed it to the Prime Minister’s device for the old man to sign. He then said, “I’d always flexed in front of Lin without thinking back then, saying how I could rebuild Zhanlu’s mech and even the entire Eden system if he gave me a lab…I was such a fool. Now that I’ve finally touched on the core system, I realize how far behind we are over here; the top line of the Union’s technologies is leagues beyond us…okay, now that you’re back, I can get back to work.”

“Bixing,” The Prime Minister called out to him and struggled to get the words out of his throat: “Some…some things can’t be changed by human power. We don’t have a choice, so we have to learn how to accept them.”

Lu Bixing filtered out the words he didn’t want to hear as if he was deaf, then walked out with no intention of stopping.