Can Ci Pin - - - Chapter 121

Chapter 121 – Born From Faith, and Die From Faith

Zhanlu’s system was extremely complicated; even the backup at home didn’t manage to capture most of his function as a mech core, which was wildly beyond Lu Bixing’s basic understanding of AIs. This wasn’t too surprising—even back on planet Beijing when Zhanlu walked around with Lin Jingheng on the streets, nobody aside from Lu Bixing could tell he wasn’t human.

Rumors had it that a single gram of the transformable material on Zhanlu cost six million First Galaxy currency, and nobody aside from the Union’s central government could afford this price. What kind of high-end technology was required to even build that expensive ‘shell’ of his?

Lu Bixing had once imagined it in his head, only to discover he’d still underestimated the scale of this super-AI.

Zhanlu was like an unsolvable puzzle. Lu Bixing checked all the references and materials he could get his hands on, but the more he researched, the more he began to think it was an impossible task. He felt like he’d stepped into an endless swamp that made it difficult for him to walk in. For three whole months, he made no progress on the project.

This wasn’t the first time Lu Bixing faced failure: he was also once a naïve scientist who’d planned on building a mech suitable for vaccuocerebrals. After countless trials and failures, that experiment also ended fruitlessly. Yet that was only one of many dreams he had as a young man, like a child on ancient earth who admired the stars in the sky. Even if it only brought pain, the pain burned in a beautiful fire.

But this time, he didn’t know what else he could do if he couldn’t fix Zhanlu.

On day 100 of Lu Bixing locking himself at home, the bright sun in the morning woke him up from the sofa. He pulled himself up, but the smart sofa couldn’t understand his intention and wrapped its master back up again like a giant blanket. Lu Bixing let out a sigh as he pushed away the soft fabric under his chin and sat up as he stared at the corner of the sofa with a big yawn.

Suddenly, his blurry vision cleared as he noticed a single strand of hair that had fallen into the cracks on the sofa under his finger.

Lu Bixing shot up abruptly, the sofa also hardening up its material in response. Soon after, he leaned down slowly as if he was praying, carefully picking up the hair with his finger and pulling it out of the crack.

The hair wasn’t long; it was a normal strand of straight hair that was in a very unique dark brown color that looked almost pure black under dim light.

It was left by the other owner of this house.

Lu Bixing held that single strand of hair in his palm and stared at it for three whole hours until the home-use medical capsule sent him a warning. That was when he finally woke up from his long daydream, picked up the strand of hair with a tweezer and sealed it onto a microscopic glass slide. Then, as if he wasn’t satisfied with his work, he pulled up a 3D printer and created a spherical resin cast that wrapped around the single strand of hair. It looked almost like a clear crystal ball from afar, and Lu Bixing placed it in his pocket.

He then got up and brushed his teeth as he went through the notes he took on his personal device last night.

After a night, he felt like all the notes he’d taken a day earlier were senseless babbling and deleted all the notes on his device without hesitation, then splashed a handful of cold water on his face.

This was the 100 th time he’d deleted his own notes.

Lu Bixing looked up the mirror subconsciously and suddenly couldn’t recognize the person behind the mirror—small stubble was growing on his chin, his clothes were thrown on messily, there was wet stain on his chest, and the clothes he hadn’t changed for days were all wrinkled. His cheeks sunk in slightly, and his hair that he hadn’t cut was almost grown out to his shoulders. Those natural curls grew even more messy with length as drops of water still rested on them.

Lu Bixing was someone that naturally cared about his appearance, and after seeing his awful state, was speechless for a few seconds. But he couldn’t even muster up the energy to clean himself up so he hit the wall a few times to turn the mirror away.

That was when someone knocked on his door.

The digital butler had crashed, so the furniture at home were only left with the default AIs as it robotically announced the visitor behind the door: “Visitor: Mint. Identity has been set to: Your student. Do you wish to answer the door?”

Lu Bixing let out a sigh: “No.”

He didn’t want to see her, but it wasn’t because he had anything against the little girl. It was simply that after 100 days of seclusion from the outside world, he’d grown to be repulsed by the idea of social interaction.

The door was finally quiet, but it was only a quick moment until his personal device began to make sounds. The light on his personal device warned: “Legal Guardian obligation.”

Right, Mint still had fourteen months before she turned twenty; even though she was already working alongside adults and could be completely independent under these special circumstances, she was still a minor under the law. According to the Union’s minor protection law, a minor’s legal guardian can’t cut off connections and communications with their dependent for no reason.

Lu Bixing’s arms tightened around the sink as he lowered his head, then gave a small mocking laugh: “…The Union’s minor protection law.”

He opened his personal device, went into the main system and deleted all related laws of the Union; his personal device finally went silent.

Lu Bixing closed his eyes and stood for half a minute, then finally decided to open the door for the young girl.

Mint wasn’t the only one waiting outside the door, all four of his students stood there. Mint opened her mouth to call out “Professor Lu”, but her voice already cracked as she started crying in front of the man.

Lu Bixing’s gaze passed through the students and landed on the little garden in the front yard. He saw the gardening robots and the dancing robots all fixed up, oiled, and the garden cleaned. All the crazy weed grass in the front was cleaned up; no wonder he woke up this morning to the sunlight passing through the window. The yard was filled with fresh flowers, almost a little too crowded as various kinds colored his garden.

“Don’t cry.” Lu Bixing tried three times but couldn’t get himself to put back on a smile. He felt a little bad and could only invite the students inside his house. “Did you all clean up the garden? Thanks.”

“Professor,” White said, “we’re here to help you, is that ok? We’ll help you fix Zhanlu’s system.”

Lu Bixing thought, How could you guys fix anything with your little brains? All you guys can do is fix up some smaller robots and serve some tea, what else can you all even do?

But before he could kindly reject the offer, Rickhead finished what he wanted to say with red eyes: “I can’t do anything…Professor Lu, let me serve you some coffee.”

Lu Bixing: “……”

These four young children were the only survivors of planet Beijing. They’d wandered the galaxy with him and worked hard to become grown-ups faster. When they gathered up like this around him helplessly, they were like four little stray animals; Lu Bixing didn’t know whether to cry or laugh, he didn’t have any words for them.

He wasn’t like Lin Jingheng, who could get up everyday before sunrise to train even if the world was ending, but he had another type of moral: even if he lost everything, he was still a teacher and a guardian. He would rather put himself down than to break the hearts of his students, so he could only agree to their request. “Okay, I’ll have you handle the coffee from now on.”

What he didn’t realize was this soft nod single-handedly ripped open a small crack in his caged-up life. The four students would come visit him every day at a designated time on the clock. Lu Bixing wasn’t comfortable presenting himself like an unclean gremlin in front of his students, so he finally took the time to clean himself up to be more presentable.

These little brats turned into model students overnight to the point Lu Bixing almost couldn’t recognize them. They would come and go quietly as they ordered the little robots at home to clean up the house, then sometimes bring in a few decorations to liven up the house. The students couldn’t read the difficult texts and references so they ended up dedicating their time to doing things like brewing tea and coffee; they also agreed to not bother their teacher when they didn’t understand something, and discussed amongst themselves in a little room next door. In the evening, they would then carefully report their studies and findings to Lu Bixing before they left for the day.

Of course, four little students couldn’t even compare to a proper engineer. Most of what they brought up not only didn’t help his research, it was often filled with loopholes that made Lu Bixing have to free up half an hour everyday to fix their mistakes…though on the good side, this ended up forcing him to speak up and interact with the students.

Very soon after, the people from the engineering department also started visiting the residence along with the students.

It started off with one or two people at first, and Lu Bixing couldn’t really find an excuse to shoo them away. More and more people came in until one day, when Lu Bixing noticed that all the coffee in his house was gone, he also realized the core engineers from the department had all paid him a visit.

Lu Bixing stood behind the small bar by the staircase as he stared at the empty coffee bag in confusion. He opened up the robotic coffee machine that followed him around and then looked down at the engineers in his living room that had come for another meal.

There weren’t a lot of tables and chairs in his house, so they let the older engineers take the chairs while the others sat on the floor or stood on the side with their digitals pens while surrounding that crashed digital butler of this house.

“Hey,” Lu Bixing knocked on the metal handle of the staircase. The chatter downstairs quieted down as everyone turned up to look at him. “Say, if I remember correctly, I requested for a long vacation, not changing the engineering department’s workstation to my house, right? We’re low in supplies here, even the top engineer’s house doesn’t have enough food. My six-months worth of coffee is all gone thanks to you all, maybe it’s time to end the party.”

“Don’t worry Professor Lu, we got the Prime Minister’s permission to bring a few extra bags of coffee for you.” An old engineer stood up and responded, “The Prime Minister said that if we can’t recover Zhanlu’s database, we’ll be playing centuries worth of catch-up in technology here, you can’t just leave us out like this.”

Lu Bixing scratched his head speechlessly; this was only an excuse he had given the Prime Minister to approve of his vacation. Most of the records on Zhanlu’s database were on technologies from the Union; Lu Bixing had taken a look at it before–even though it was top-end data, a lot of what was recorded was more for show than having any practical value. Besides, could the Eighth Galaxy compare to the production of the Union before the war? What the Union could accomplish wasn’t equivalent to what the Eighth Galaxy could accomplish. If they couldn’t bring these technologies to reality, everything was just talk and theories. In terms of practical value, perhaps even Hope’s farm model was more useful than Zhanlu’s data—otherwise, Lin Jingheng would’ve already shared the information with them.

Lu Bixing kindly responded: “No matter how high-end a technology is, it will have to depend on whether we have the production ability to actually make it work. The Eighth Galaxy’s main goal right now is to rebuild our production lines and social order; the Prime Minister may have confused things. Zhanlu…Zhanlu should be considered a long-term project. You all should go back and do whatever you need to do, don’t follow me and waste your time here…”

“Professor Lu,” another young engineer interrupted him and skipped the small talk, “you don’t need to explain. We all know that was actually just an excuse for you to ask for a vacation because you think Zhanlu’s database is your personal issue, and you’re unwilling to let other people worry about your own problems. But no matter what other people say, I came out of rural Alpenglow and grew from an artificial ecosystem repairman to an engineer in the Engineering Department because I followed you on my own will; you have also chosen me.”

“We don’t have time during work hours, we can come after work.”

“Professor Lu, you’re the one that told us that the entire department is a team.”

“Professor Lu, isn’t our department’s motto ‘always challenge the seemingly impossible’?”

“The seemingly impossible is right here, that’s why we came.”

Lu Bixing was still holding the empty coffee bag. He opened his mouth and then closed it again as he looked at the people before him; he felt words stick in his throat and couldn’t even make a sound.

“We’re all here.”

The Eighth Galaxy might have been a rural land, but even a place like this could raise up unconventional engineers and scientists like Lu Bixing. They were all buried under the sand over the years on these deserted planets, until they were suddenly dug up by someone and forcefully dragged into this world of unrest without warning.

Finally, these people were starting to shine the way they were meant to be.

People you never forgot would never leave you behind.

“The Home of Commander Lin and Engineer 001” wasn’t particularly large, the modest design was built to the size for around three to four residents. Occasional dinners with a few friends wasn’t an issue, but inviting the whole Engineering Department over made the place a bit more cramped than usual.

The basement of the house had been taken over by these people; these unconventional Eighth Galaxy engineers took over the training room like a bunch of wild monkeys everyday as they worked. Three people shared a treadmill, and the zero-gravity simulator room was turned into a mini meeting room where four to five people argued over their studies inside like a bunch of uncultured hooligans. Unique Eighth Galaxy slang and curses filled the room as one poor engineer was forced out of the meeting room. The angered engineer turned on the zero-gravity system as revenge as he watched his vulgar colleagues inside get thrown around like in an ancient washing machine until they all got knocked out and were shoved inside a medical capsule.

Lu Bixing, who rushed over after hearing this incident, didn’t know what to say and could only put up a “house rules” by the front door. The first line was a large emphasized text that said “no physical contact” while the owner of the house quickly moved all the training equipment temporarily to the attic.

The attic was a room lit by natural sunlight. In order to protect specialty equipment, Lu Bixing covered up the glass roof and window while the small robots finished their jobs, then went back into their standby position by the wall.

Lu Bixing now turned towards the dimly lit attic and took a good look at the room. Everything in here belonged to Lin and stood quietly under the shade as if that person was staring at him kindly and patiently from the side.

Lu Bixing’s heart thumped at the moment when the locked doors of those forbidden memories quietly opened up a little. Suddenly, he couldn’t control the urge to think about Lin Jingheng, to think about those people he hadn’t seen, those people he’d purposely turned away from. Regardless how much he rationally told himself that he shouldn’t think, shouldn’t reminisce about them because he still had so much work to do, even though the entire engineering team was still waiting for him downstairs and he couldn’t afford to lose control…he still gave in to his desires.

Like a drug addict that entered an episode, he walked around the attic a few times anxiously as he tried to close the door inside his heart. He even pulled out a cigarette subconsciously and breathed in a large cloud of smoke, only to cough it all out with no signs of calming down. He then put out the fire of the cigarette on his own arm until the pain and smell of burnt flesh pulled his senses back.

He was like a man drowning as he gasped for air in a desperate attempt to regain control of himself through self-inflicted pain.

When he finally felt his heart rate return to normal, he ran out of the attic and locked it up as if he were running for his life. He slid inside a small room, quickly patching up his wound and pulling down his sleeve as if nothing happened, then threw himself back into the sea of data processing.

The core of the Eighth Galaxy’s research technology and department was established under these turbulent conditions.

In a blink of an eye, the most eventful and climatic Woltorian year had passed. From the Prime Minister down to the residents, everyone cut down their needs to survive. Over a dozen armed conflicts sparked within the galaxy during these times. The Prime Minister silently approved of Lu Bixing’s policy to reenact the death penalty during the young man’s time as the temporary Minister, then publicly executed the group of smugglers involved in the production of fake nutrient syringes.

The old Prime Minister’s attitude drastically changed as he embraced a more iron-fist rule of the galaxy. He pushed for the amendment of the constitution and even forcefully introduced a set of new government policies as if he was racing with time to pave the way for the future.

Qiming had completed its orbit around the Eight Galaxy’s sun as the planet once again returned to the same place fourteen months ago when the explosions of the transfer portal happened. Prime Minister Edward officially announced this day to be the Day of Independence of the Eighth Galaxy; from then on, the Eighth Galaxy abolished the NSC system and established a new calendar system based on the orbit of Qiming. Starting the year off with the Day of Independence, a full year was now 424 days in the new calendar

Meanwhile, Lu Bixing and his unconventional team of engineers finally made significant progress on their project.

424 days later, the backup system of Zhanlu inside Lu Bixing’s house finally rebooted successfully.

That familiar voice once again rang up inside the house from the living room down to the basement: “Hello, I am Artificial Intelligence Zhanlu. My apologies, but due to system malfunction, I am unable to provide service right now. I will now enter self-repair mode, which will take approximately 800 hours to complete. Please be patient and secure sufficient energy sources—”

The crowd of engineers in the basement cheered. Some people whistled a song, others laughed as they hit the wall; some people hadn’t slept for three days and decided to take a nap on the spot. Lu Bixing clenched his chest—inside the little pocket on his dress shirt near his heart, he could almost feel that tiny resin ball burn up in fire as the heat pierced through his skin, boiling his blood as it pumped through his frozen heart.

Where was Lin right now?

Did he leave any messages for him before all the portals in the Eighth Galaxy perished…even if it was just a pointless reminder?

Lu Bixing felt his soul leave his body as he thought about the possibilities, the desire to drop down to the core of the planet grew strong as he finally grasped onto a ray of hope.

While the rebooted Zhanlu quietly ran through its self-repairing process, Lu Bixing placed an 800-hour countdown by his front door for the engineers to be able to see everyday before they went to work.

The young man slept for three days straight until he felt his entire body numbed by sleep. He got up and cleaned the stubble growing back out, cut his hair that had once again grown out past his shoulders with his home robot, changed to some clean clothes and a jacket, then made his way to the command post to find the Prime Minister and Turan to report his progress.

Right before he left, he called out Turan: “General Turan, where’s my father at?”

Turan looked into his eyes to see how over 400 days of seclusion had slowly but surely cleared out the nightmarish mist of despair and bloodthirst from the young man’s eyes, showing hints of the light that had once filled those pupils. It was as if he’d returned to who he was in the past, but also become a completely different person. She personally led Lu Bixing to a public cemetery near the military base and said: “We found the remnants of his mech.”

Lu Bixing’s gaze fell down as he looked at the sculpture on the tombstone, only to see the line carved on the side: “Don’t worry, kid, I picked you up from the garbage anyway.”

Turan left like a gust of wind; whether he wanted to cry to stay strong, she didn’t want to look.

It was as if he finally woke up from a long and tormenting nightmare…

As if.

The burden on the Prime Minister’s shoulders lightened significantly when Lu Bixing returned to the command post. Zhanlu’s repair process was going smoothly, it was like everything was moving towards the right direction.

After 867 hours, a little longer than expected, Zhanlu finally completed his self-repair.

The entire Engineering Department, Turan, even the Prime Minister who barely got out of the medical capsule, came to “the Home of Commander Lin and Engineer 001” as they waited patiently for a miracle.

“Hello, Headmaster Lu,” Zhanlu’s voice rang out inside the crowded house. “Even though I have no physical body, I am very happy to see you again. It seems you have grown a bit paler and thinner than before.”

Lu Bixing’s eyes reddened as he listened speechlessly to that familiar voice.

Turan asked the question everyone wanted to know: “Zhanlu, what happened to Commander Lin? Is your main body with him?”

Zhanlu fell silent for three seconds: “Captain, we ran into a pirate ambush during our retreat back to the terminal. They exploded the transfer portal and the entire Seventh and Eighth Galaxy fleets were annihilated. Commander’s commanding ship blew up…”

Turan fell to the ground.

“My main body perished in the explosion.”

They climbed through mountains, walked through hell, slowly but surely crawled out of the abyss as they looked towards the other side of the mountain, the end of the road…

Only to find that nothing was left in the end.

Hope had once said: “Mankind was born from faith.”

Lu Bixing had followed him up on a whim at the time: “Mankind will also die from faith.”

It was a prophecy by word.