Can Ci Pin - - - Chapter 126

Chapter 126 – The Eleventh Rainy Season on Qiming

This was the eleventh rainy season on Qiming since the first year of the new calendar.

The Eighth Galaxy would perhaps never spend the time to control the weather like Wolto would, avoiding getting wet mud on their shoes like the plague. They didn’t have the budget nor did they care to live a lifestyle like the Woltorians. Aside from the farmland bases that sometimes had specific climate requirements, most planets in the galaxy lived with the natural climates of the planet; and like the ancients, sometimes they would forget to check the weather and run in the pouring rain with no umbrella.

Houses were built with a special type of material that could control the humidity inside the building into a more acceptable temperature. However, the coldness from the gloomy clouds and rain outside the window was still almost therapeutic to watch.

Lu Bixing was in his study with a desk filled with messy files and windows he’d opened up from his personal device, covering the black walnut wood color of the desktop.

His gaze never left his files as he reached his arm over and slid his mug aside. A robot arm reached out from the corner of the table and poured a freshly brewed cup of milk tea for him.

“Headmaster Lu, you’ve been sitting for over three hours already,” Zhanlu’s voice came out of the robot arm, “you should get up and exercise for a bit for the sake of your health.”

This robotic arm was visibly smaller than the original arm with very limited transformation functions that couldn’t turn into a human form.

In theory, they had the ability to rebuild Zhanlu’s original mech core with the data they’d retrieved from the AI’s database, but had not touched it due to budget concerns. The estimated budget the Engineering Department gave was too high; rebuilding a single Zhanlu mech would be enough to give Turan a fully-equipped superdimensional galactic fleet.

Besides, an unrivaled weapon of the era was as useless as a kitchen knife without an equally powerful wielder, so the project to restore the mech core was postponed indefinitely.

“It’s not that I don’t want to,” Lu Bixing answered without looking up at the AI, “It’s…say, can you take this little guy off my foot first?”

There was a meter-long albino python under his desk that was scrunched up by his leg lovingly as its scaly head rested on his knee. The python dozed off carelessly as it stuck out its tongue, completely unaware that it was being asked to move.

“Oh, there it is.” The robot arm quickly crawled under the desk and grabbed onto the body of the python. The arm picked up the snake and placed it back in its tank. “Maybe it’s time to give Popcorn a bigger home.”

Lu Bixing’s expression grew visibly more awkward at the name ‘Popcorn’.

Aside from the snake, there was also a chameleon resting at the corner of his desk attempting to change into the color of the table. Its face stared off dumbly thinking it was still living in ancient Earth.

There was also a giant tank on the first floor of the living room that was almost three meters tall filled with a whole family of sea creatures like a mini aquarium. The tank was carefully decorated and upgraded periodically as the fishes swam happily inside as the ripples in the tank reflected the puddles of rainwater outside.

“Please, Zhanlu, if you were a real person you’d definitely win an award for being the galaxy’s strangest roommate. Why can’t we have a pet that isn’t covered with scales?” Lu Bixing moved his leg that had fallen asleep when the snake rested on him and looked around, feeling like he was surrounded by unintelligent vertebrates that reeked of cold air from every inch of their bodies.

Zhanlu answered: “Owning pets is good for the physical and mental health of the body, I encourage you to raise a pet of your liking.”

In other words–I’ll raise what I like, you raise what you like, but you have to be responsible for your own pet.

“I swear I’ll have to reset you one of these days.” Lu Bixing took his mug and waved it in front of the chameleon. “You’re on my coaster, please move aside, my friend.”

The ancient living fossil tilted its head at him as if he couldn’t understand Lu Bixing’s words.

Lu Bixing realized he failed at communicating with the animal and finally picked up the four-legged friend with a finger in slight reluctance. He placed the chameleon onto the ground and saved his ceramic coaster at the corner of his desk.

Seven uneven cuts on the wooden desk stood out beside the coaster with varying levels of deepness. Some were so deep it seemed as if the person wanted to break the table while others were made up of various small cuts like a small tree branch. This combination of deep and shallow cuts on the desk almost seemed like a strange piece of art with no real meaning.

Lu Bixing’s gaze scanned passed those markings and stopped slightly for a second look–

It’s already been ten years, huh , he thought.

It was also a rainy season ten years ago during the funeral of the old Prime Minister.

Lu Bixing hosted the entire funeral and returned alone back to “The Home of Commander Lin and Engineer 001.” He felt as if he was walking on clouds the whole time; his footsteps were light and almost surreal while his mind was in a daze as if he was about to fall from the planet into the dark void of the universe.

He wanted to drink his feelings away, but couldn’t at the time because all supplies in the galaxy were rationed. Even the newly appointed Prime Minister didn’t have non-essential items like alcohol in his own home, making his short but poor life on the Old Fart’s space station seem even more like a fever dream. Lu Bixing searched high and low inside his house only to find an old bottle of beer. He had a delusion the moment he saw that unopened beer bottle: he saw that night many years ago when Lin Jingheng opened up the fridge in his pajamas and pulled out the beer bottle inside. The commander looked at it in distaste for a short moment before throwing it back inside the fridge, then went and took a sip of the tea he had brewed in his cup that had gone cold in frustration.

Lu Bixing had reached his arm out in an attempt to hold onto that delusion, only to see that man vanish at the tip of his fingers. This became the last straw that broke him down like a meteorshower falling into the atmosphere.

He screamed in despair for the medical capsule at home to give him hallucinogens, illegal drugs…anything that could knock him down into a never-ending fever dream. Zhanlu warned him three times until Lu Bixing threw a one-sided fit at the AI. After the third warning, Zhanlu wasn’t able to defy his orders; even if his master wanted to commit suicide on the spot, the AI could only hand him a gun without question.

Yet right before this powerful AI was forced into complying with its master’s orders, it made another conscious decision on its own–

He pulled up an old footage from his database and projected it onto the white wall.

A 14-year-old Lin Jingheng was attending the opening ceremony of the Black Orchid Academy. The ceremonial hall was decorated with heroic histories of the Union since its founding, motivational and inspiring. The young boy sat in the corner with his attention being pulled away every once in a while. But even then he still wanted to act cool, and pretended to look around in boredom whenever he remembered he was still in the middle of a ceremony. He then accidentally noticed the small camera beside him that was recording his every move; his face reddened in embarrassment and anger as he slapped his hand down and turned off the recording.

Lu Bixing stared at that young face dumbly as he forgot about the hallucinogens he was screaming about earlier, forgot where he was at, and forgot the dark days ahead of him.

That night, he rewatched this short clip of less than five minutes hundreds of times by himself. The next morning, he carved down the first marking on his desk and turned on Zhanlu’s automated function he had blocked off since the AI’s repair—

Prime Minister Edward once said that when he was gone, nobody would be able to give Lu Bixing a tug of warning; the young man actually took this message to heart.

At dawn of that sleepless night, he suddenly thought about why someone as arrogant, aloof, and bossy as Lin Jingheng would let Zhanlu bother him for so many years. Why didn’t he think about turning off the AI’s self-protection function? Zhanlu had even worked behind the back of his master with someone else to stop him from doing certain things.

He finally understood at that moment. For someone who walked down the streets in the night alone with a sharp sword, he needed a chain to tie him down, even if it was just a small chain tied to his pinky finger. It would be enough to give him a gentle tug when he stepped onto the path of no return and remind him of who he was.

Lu Bixing promised Prime Minister Edward that he would perish into ashes seven times, and revive seven times from his own ashes.

Since then, every time Lu Bixing faced a situation he could no longer handle, he would make a mark on the corner of his desk. It was like a contract with the deceased and a countdown for himself.

Perhaps that ‘countdown’ aspect gave him a sense that there would be an end to all of this. Everytime he left a mark at the corner of his desk, his soul would be eased from pain.

…Of course, giving Zhanlu too much autonomy had its downside as well–like this house filled with strange aesthetics and cold-blooded animals.

At the end of year 3 of the Independent Era, the long depression of the Eighth Galaxy caused the underground culture of the galaxy to resurge. The heads of those black merchants and illegal forces were all people that had some authority back in the old Independent Navy. In the beginning, due to the ties they had with the navy and their feat in uniting the Eighth Galaxy, Lu Bixing turned a blind eye on them out of courtesy. But very soon after, the expanding black market began to pose a significant threat to the proper economy as hostility between the two grew. The internal struggles among the black merchants also began to heat up; eventually the same people that praised and sang under Lu Xin’s statue triggered an internal warfare within the galaxy.

The war lasted for three whole years. During this time, Lu Bixing dug up all data related to Lin Jingheng from Zhanlu’s database as if he relived those teenage years with the young commander in the recordings. The carvings on the desk also increased to five.

The five markings on the desk were like scapegoats; those hands that held the knife never razed the Pledge of Freedom under Lu Xin’s statue in the end.

Then, in the middle of the 7th year of the Independent Era–

When Mint reached adulthood, she took the spirit of the Starry Sea Academy and decided to give the rest of her life to the vast and unknown world outside the galaxy. She voluntarily joined the Galactic Expedition Team and followed a group of crazy young people to explore the world outside of the galaxy without any transfer portals. Mint grew up and finally understood the teachings of her elders; Lu Bixing didn’t agree to sign the Galactic Expedition Project back then because his heart hardened and cooled down into missiles and mechs. It wasn’t until Mint secretly sent him a copy of the opening ceremony speech from the Starry Sea Academy he gave under the dome that this niche project finally got approval.

The results of the Expedition Team were a few unknown dwarf planets with plenty of natural resources, an accidental new galactic terminal…and the discovery of a natural wormhole area in an unknown territory.

Active wormholes appeared and disappeared like whirlpools inside this area. The trailblazers of the Expedition Team wrote their wills with a fearless heart and went inside the wormhole. They disappeared for ten months, and when everyone thought they once again sacrificed their lives to curiosity, the beat-up team of Expeditioners finally returned miraculously with a new whirlpool. With their return, they also brought back groundbreaking news–the natural wormholes overlapped spacetime, and passing through would lead them into another galaxy. The area was much more dangerous than the Wasteland of Death in the Eighth Galaxy; it would be tough to even make it out alive. However, they discovered remnants of mechs in that new area, which proved that there were human activities near the place!

Lu Bixing ignored the stern rejection of his entire cabinet and insisted on entering that dangerous wormhole area on his own. He left the Eighth Galaxy, followed the trail marks left by the expedition team and discovered that this was the no-man’s land of the First Galaxy–the Heart of the Rose. This was the first time Lu Bixing left the Eighth Galaxy in his life; he didn’t expect it to be in this form and searched around the Heart of the Rose like a madman for months. He even dreamed of passing through the area and sailing into the First Galaxy in hopes of finding even a trace of that person.

His efforts were not in vain, and even though he didn’t manage to find a terminal within the Heart of the Rose, he managed to capture the remnants of a Union mech. After recovering the data of the mech, they discovered that this was a mech that floated over after a heated battle between the Union and the Glory Troops. The data contained all the major events within the last few years with enough information for the Eighth Galaxy to make an educated guess on the current status of the war outside.

Of course, the data also included the start of everything–the annihilation of the Seventh and Eighth Galaxy fleet.

Lu Bixing finally witnessed with his own eyes the recording of what happened that year.

When he returned to the Eighth Galaxy with a broken soul, the first thing he did was order Turan to station patrols around that natural wormhole area as he locked himself up inside the lab in his home. He pulled out the single strand of hair inside that resin ball like a maniac and extracted the DNA out of that strand of hair– he’s gone , he thought, maybe even a copy of that man will be enough to console this broken soul .

Zhanlu’s countless warnings had no effect, so the AI activated its self-protection function and blew up the breeding tank without hesitation. Lu Bixing locked himself up inside that dark lab for three days and finally carved down the sixth mark on his desk, then destroyed the DNA file with his own hands.

Then, the beginning of year 9 of the Independent Era.

Lu Bixing used himself as the lab rat and continuously injected, took out, amended, and once again injected that biochip into his body. He gave up the interaction function between the chip and cut off its disruption effect towards digital products. At the same time, he confirmed the safety of the chip and made sure no external forces could control it. After nine years of self-research, the stability and safety of the chip seemed to reach a satisfying level and had positive reactions in animal experiments. The mice injected with the chips showed a clear increase in bodily function with no signs of concerning side-effects.

Just as he thought he succeeded and was ready to let Zhanlu send out an experiment report to the little circle of engineering friends, the lab mice suddenly died of DNA breakdown in batches as if that chip sucked out the life inside the mice.

Only one group of mice from the controlled group lived a month longer than the others–this controlled group was filled with mice that had been infected with the mutated Rainbow Virus that Lu Bixing had secretly raised from the original virus sample.

It took Lu Bixing nine years to prove that the AUS wasn’t just a group of madmen obsessed with human experiments. This ‘superhuman’ creation needed to go through the Rainbow Virus.

In order to break the shackles of human evolution, they needed to destroy the foundation of natural evolution at its core.

As a unique exception, Lu Bixing could still merge in with society as an ‘oddball’; but what if ‘exceptions’ like him got mass-produced? Would they create a completely new species? What was the future of these man-made species? Would they become like vampires from ancient myths, born out of human origins and then turn against their ancestors? Perhaps thousands of years into the future, one side would annihilate the other; but would that mean mankind had evolved or would humans be extinct?

One side was the success of the research he sought for nine years, the other side was a tempting Pandora’s Box.

This time, Prime Minister Lu didn’t scare his own cabinet or the Engineering Department, nor did he ask Turan to personally break into his house. He went into work normally during the day and returned home at night without letting anyone know that he was standing at the intersection of fate while holding the hand of the devil beside him.

One month later, the soundless storm in his heart became the seventh mark on his desk. The replicated Rainbow Virus and nine years worth of research perished in flames.

The seven marks on his desk shaped the respected and powerful Prime Minister Lu today.

Lu Bixing took his mug and got up from this desk after three hours of work and walked around his study as he listened to Zhanlu report his work schedule: “The Financial Department sent in their latest fiscal year report; the debts have been reducing at a steady speak, I personally think this the economy is looking quite optimistic.”

Lu Bixing nodded: “Hm, that is good news.”

“The Engineering Department is requesting more funds; the new anti-missile development lab on Beijing-β made some significant progress.”

Lu Bixing let out a sigh: “I thought we could finally have a bit more money on hand, and now they want more money…”

Zhanlu: “Miss Mint sent a message. They are preparing to apply for the Expedition Team’s second exploration plan, they have already completed all necessary preparations aside from the paperwork.”

Lu Bixing lifted his head.