Can Ci Pin - - - Chapter 123

Chapter 123 – Maintain the Status Quo

The total land mass on the dwarf planet was probably nowhere near the size of an average space station and looked almost deserted, aside from a tall research building amidst the smaller buildings. Its appearance was quite bland, almost like a private observatory of an old astronomer-though it was fully equipped with a lab, private residence, furnishings, and other necessities.

The researchers on shift that night were planning on catching up on sleep during their shift, until one of the researchers woke himself up by hitting his head on the table. He rubbed his half-asleep eyes as he turned his head toward the screen in front of the ecopod, freezing up for a few seconds before forcefully opening up his eyelids to stare at the screen. He then yelped from his seat and ran outside in shock: “Oh my god…doctor, doctor!”

Within moments, the entire lab was awake. All researchers that had been fast asleep earlier shot up like they had just downed a bottle of energy drink as another group of people ran into the lab. Some took over the equipment around the lab and frantically made notes, while the other group of doctors were having a heated discussion on the side as chatter filled the whole room.

The security guards by the door were woken up by the commotion and quickly made their way towards the lab. A doctor inside the lab saw the guards and called out: “Unrelated persons stay out, especially all the ‘generation two’ folks and above. You guys don’t have a signal blocker, you’ll disrupt the mental network of the ecopod!”

The lead security guard nodded in understanding, then gestured for the team of guards to split into two teams to guard the entrance of the lab.

The uniforms on these men were quite similar to the Union soldiers, but were instead in a strange sky-blue color that made them look less like a proper military uniform. Even the emblem on their shoulders was the “Sword of Freedom” from the Union troops, except upon closer look they were flipped from the original image, sending some eerie vibes…

This was the most feared and mad armed forces of the eight galaxies: the Freedom Corps.

The leader of this team of the Freedom Corps guard watched the researchers and doctors work inside the lab through the glass window. At that moment, a wheelchair slowly rolled over from the other side of the hallway; the old man who sat on the wheelchair was the first director of the White Tower, Doctor Hardin.

The guard leader quickly walked up to hold his wheelchair and greeted the old man respectfully: “Doctor.”

This strange old man who returned from the dead had aged even more since two years ago. The wrinkles on his face were like deep cuts from time as he reached his head out towards the lab like an old turtle peeking out of its shell. Doctor Hardin ordered the automated wheelchair up, placed his hand on the intercom on the wall and asked: “There’s suddenly a reaction, what’s going on?”

“We were quite unfortunate this time, Doctor. We ran into a gust of stellar wind as the planet reached its closest point to the star and faced a large natural signal disruption. Because the alarm malfunctioned at the time and the equipment was doing self-repair, the shield activated 0.01 seconds later than normal. I’m guessing that it was this that activated the automated protection function of the ecopod and triggered a reaction from the mental network. We can’t determine whether this was a voluntary reaction from the patient or a reaction caused by the disruption on the mental network; it’s also hard to say whether this is good news, please remain calm.”

A soldier from the guarding team let out a small sigh: “He’s really still alive? That’s impossible. That’s…too powerful.”

When the ecopod was retrieved, the person inside was literally on their last breath. Their rib cage was shattered, spine damaged, and internal organs severely injured. However, luckily the injuries were all physical and could be cured with modern medical technology.

The most fatal damage was the brain.

In the beginning, both the medical capsule and human doctor in charge gave the same diagnosis–due to the backlash of the mental network, the person inside the ecopod was already braindead.

Soon after, this same doctor and medical capsule that spoke the truth were ‘destroyed’ by the cold-hearted leader of the Freedom Corps. Since then, nobody dared to speak the truth and could only pretend to do regular checkups around the ‘corpse’ day and night to check for signs of life with the lingering fear of death over their heads.

To their surprise, this thorough checkup did allow them to discover a strange phenomenon.

This was something nobody in the research team had ever seen before–there were traces of broken mental network pieces left on the broken ecopod. Even if the network was completely destroyed, the human-mech port was still connected.

A dead man or someone who had lost consciousness could not possibly be connected to the mental network. If the human-mech port was connected, that meant this person was still alive; and perhaps, still maintained consciousness.

However, that mental network was completely dead and showed no signs of a living person, so nobody could determine whether the person truly was dead or alive.

The team fixed the person’s body, maintained the health and function of this body through external means; if everything went smoothly, they could maintain this ‘sleeping beauty’ status until centuries later when the inevitable breakdown of the DNA happened.

But how would they wake this dead brain?

The top doctors and researchers came up with a treatment plan after a long discussion; they determined that they could stimulate the connected mental network in an attempt to get a brainwave reaction. Of course, the risks to this treatment plan were significantly greater as there were no precedents. The person inside the pod was like Schrodinger’s cat stuck between life and death; nobody could say whether this small stimulus meant to disrupt the current balance could wake the brain or cut off the connection with the mental network.

Yet to everyone’s surprise, their master Lin Jingshu who had a history of doing medical experiments on humans without hesitation rejected this treatment plan. She only asked them to maintain the function of the physical body so that she could come visit every once in a while as she stayed in the lab by herself for five minutes, cutting off the rest of the world.

She left a team of the most elite medical researchers for him, but left the team doing all the basic jobs of babysitting and cleaning the pod as if she didn’t want him to wake up. It was as if she only needed to see and pretend that he was still alive in her heart.

“It’s like when King Arthur pulled the sword, it must be fate.” Hardin let out a deep sigh as he sank back in his wheelchair. He looked up at the leader of the security guards and asked, “And you are…”

“Nice to meet you, Doctor. I’m a ‘generation four’ who used to be in charge of marketing the biochip in the Seventh Galaxy. Back then–before that great battle broke out in the Seventh Galaxy, I received an urgent command to head towards the Eighth Galaxy to deliver a batch of military supplies to Commander Lin. After I completed my delivery, I received another order from our master to put a pause on my old marketing work to go undercover between the Seventh and Eighth galaxies. I was told to be on standby and report Commander Lin’s actions to our master in real-time.”

The old Doctor gave a small “oh” of understanding–after two years of expansion, the Freedom Corps developed a clear hierarchy within the organization. Everyone’s social status and identity were determined by the level of the biochip on their napes. Starting from the lower tier called “generation one”, the highest ranking chips today were currently “generation five”. The higher tier biochips could order lower-tier chip holders at will, and the lower-tier chips could not disobey any orders from their higher-ups. The system was so powerful that sometimes a higher-tier chip could make a lower-tier commit suicide with a single order, forcing everyone to remain loyal to their superiors and climb up the social ladder.

A “generation four” was a very unique level that was clearly more important to this soldier than his name or job title.

Generation fours in the Freedom Corps were generally people who had presence and a say in the organization and not a simple security guard on a small planet. Therefore, he must have done a great deed in order to be able to climb up to this position.

Doctor Hardin nodded: “You were the one that saved him.”

“Uh….no, Doctor,” the soldier was a bit hesitant but still said the truth under the influence of the biochip. He lowered his head and said, “it was indeed because of him that I have been able to move up to a generation four these last two years, but I can’t say that I was the one that saved him.”

“I patrolled around the battlefield to keep an eye on Commander Lin as I was ordered to, but the frontlines were too out of control and dangerous so we couldn’t even go near it. I thought they were going to retreat to the Eighth Galaxy that was about to close off permanently while I hesitated to follow up, and that was when everything turned around…I was scared to death because I thought I didn’t complete the mission. If anything were to happen to Commander Lin under my eyes, I’d be executed once I return…so after the AUS fleet retreated, I finally sailed over and followed the energy waves to search for him…”

Doctor Hardin responded: “I’ve heard that the AUS blew up the combined fleets along with the portal the moment they passed through.”

“Yes, and according to our findings after, Commander Lin’s commanding ship was leading the fleet at the time; in other words, he had already passed through the portal the moment the explosion occurred. Compared to the others that perished inside the portal, his habit of leading the way ironically gave him a chance of survival. His mech was also equipped with a super-core ‘Zhanlu’, which had a transformable base that allowed it to turn into an emergency ecopod at the last minute, saving Commander Lin from blowing up into ashes.”

Doctor Hardin said: “But no matter how powerful a mech core is, they are still man-made products that can’t possibly withstand the energy level caused by a transfer portal explosion.”

“Right, so when this powerful mech core got destroyed, the person inside would be completely exposed under deadly cosmic rays and die.” The soldier said, “But can you imagine? He was still conscious under these conditions and didn’t wait for his inevitable death. I’ve explained earlier that he was closest to the AUS fleet during the explosion, and in the instant right before the powerful mech core disappeared, he extended the mental network of the super-mech core to its extreme and hacked into a small mech of the frontline AUS fleet.”

Doctor Hardin’s eyes looked past the glass window at the ecopod and mumbled: “……that’s impossible.”

There wasn’t a proper mech dock on a heavy mech like military bases on land, so mid-sized and small mechs could only park onto it like an aircraft carrier. In certain times, a single heavy mech could even form its own small fleet of mechs.

However, in consideration for practicality and safety, heavy mechs were designed to overtake the mental networks of the mechs parked on its body. In other words, unless someone hacked into the mental network of the heavy mech and released the small mech, these unmanned mechs would not have been able to move and risk being hacked into.

In addition, there was usually at least one back-up pilot inside a heavy mech. Even if Lin Jingheng had a fully-functioning Zhanlu that could wipe out an entire fleet of mechs, the most he could do would perhaps be to destabilize the human-mech port on the heavy mech for a short while. It would be almost impossible for him to hack into a heavy mech for a long-period of time all by himself.

It was a miracle for him to even connect to the mental network of the mech core at that state.

“Even if his survival instincts are insanely high, how could the AUS not notice that their heavy mech’s mental network was hacked?” Doctor Hardin asked, “The ecopod is very small, compared to a large mech that still wouldn’t be easily noticed in a space full of floating space waste, but wouldn’t he expose his location by hacking into the enemy’s network? You don’t need a missile to blow up a broken ecopod; a gust of wind from the engine would be enough to take his life.”

“We later repaired the recording system inside the pod,” the soldier explained, “we found out that he didn’t choose a target at random. When the portal exploded and the whole fleet was caught in the fire, countless armories blew up at the same time and caused an extremely high level of energy disruption. The AUS had top-notch technology that could detect energy waves, but it was still not powerful enough to accurately detect the sources of the particle emission in this situation. So when their side wing was caught in the explosion, the heavy mechs around the area were damaged to varying degrees; the heavy mech that was hacked happened to remove the launching dock on its body. He almost instantly hacked into a small mech parked on the removed body and remotely controlled the mech to open up a shield near his ecopod. However, the AUS quickly took notice of the removed part and fired a missile at it, otherwise he would’ve almost taken control of the mech completely. Soon after, Zhanlu’s mental network broke down and once again forcefully cut off the network connection. You should know that being forcefully cut off from the mental network in this state would mean a high risk of dying from brain damage, and he had to go through this twice.”

The soldier let out a sigh: “By the time we found him, the temporary shield was virtually broken from the particle waves. This man is way too scary; if the AUS was late by even a few seconds or if his mech core had lasted a few seconds longer, he might’ve successfully saved himself. It was a shame…”

It was a shame that luck wasn’t on his side.

As long as he existed in this world, whether he was actually alive or not, Lin Jingshu would order this elite medical team to carefully preserve his body. They carefully repaired the ecopod and even rebuilt an external mental network to patch up the broken network that remained, making it seem as if the man inside was only asleep and could be woken up at any time.

But everyone knew that there was no way the man inside could still be alive.

“Doctor, this was a reaction caused by the solar storm, right?” the soldier asked.

The old doctor didn’t answer. At the same time, the ground shook–perhaps a mech had just landed on this planet.

Soon after, Lin Jingshu waved off her guarding team and ran towards the lab in high heels. She hadn’t had time to put on any makeup and looked a little more disheveled than usual, her lips reddened as she rushed down the hallway.

Everyone around the lab held in their breaths, even the generation four soldier earlier stood still as if he didn’t exist.

A few strands of hair glued onto Lin Jingshu’s chin like seaweed. Her heavy breathing from her run could still be heard as she stared at the old doctor expressionlessly for a moment without a word. For a second, Doctor Hardin saw a little girl in her eyes; a young girl not even over the age of ten who chased desperately after her sibling being taken away. She was a little girl that would still trip and cry from pain.

Yet that short moment was broken up when the sound of footsteps followed; those garbage security guards finally caught up.

Lin Jingshu’s gaze calmed down while she slowly fixed her long hair and tucked it behind her ears. She adjusted her heels and walked over to the lab, nodded at the generation four soldier and asked the doctor on the wheelchair: “Why are you here as well?”

The old doctor responded: “You two are both Laura’s children, so you’re both the same in my eyes. I just wanted to see him.”

“Thank you,” Lin Jingshu smiled lightly at him and then lifted her head back up. “How come I heard that this was caused by a malfunction in the alarm system?”

The generation four soldier quickly responded: “Yes, my lady, the alarm malfunctioned and we coincidentally ran into a solar storm…”

“Coincidentally.” Lin Jingshu interrupted, “It can’t possibly be. I don’t believe in coincidence in this world.”

Chills ran down the guard’s spine as he stood in silence.

Lin Jingshu: “Investigate thoroughly, or else…”

A doctor walked out from the lab before she could finish; Lin Jingshu’s eyes widened slightly as she noticed the excited expression on his face.

“My lady, we have reasonable suspicion that this wasn’t an abnormal energy wave on the mental network caused by the solar storm and was actually a reaction from the patient after stimulus.”

Lin Jingshu’s eyebrows jumped a little.

“In other words, the chances of the patient waking up has greatly increased. Regarding the next steps in the treatment plan, we wish to consult you for advice.”

Lin Jingshu answered without hesitation: “No, I need you all to maintain the status quo.”

Doctor Hardin looked up in shock: “Jingshu!”

Lin Jingshu’s lips curled downwards slightly as she pressed on Doctor Hardin’s shoulder and explained reasonably: “Doctor, there’s a risk to everything. I only have one brother; there’s no way I can expose him to this kind of risk. What’s wrong with staying inside the pod like this? He has people taking care of him, and we can even take turns visiting him in our free time.”

“You only have one brother, so you don’t want to expose him to these risks…” Doctor Hardin said in a low tone, “Jingshu, who was the one that indirectly exposed the truth that the forbidden fruit was in Lin Jingheng’s hands? Who was the one that blocked the Silver Ten on the way out of the Union? Who…”

“Doctor,” Lin Jingshu interrupted him coldly, “I gave him mechs and arms. I mixed up the hot pot of the war for him so he could go anywhere within the eight galaxies. He was the one that went mad and voluntarily locked himself up in the Eighth Galaxy!”