Can Ci Pin - - - Chapter 127

Chapter 127 – Who Deleted It?

The night sky was clear.

There wasn’t a large gravitational field around the dwarf planet, and because it was located in a deserted place with no other celestial bodies around, it was impossible to see large stars in the sky with the naked eye. When the artificial energy tower, carrying the small sunlight for the planet, turned to the other side of the orbit, the sky would look as if it was filled with diamond dust. On clear days, the glitter in the sky would look almost within reach.

The temperature on the planet was always a comfortable 24 degrees Celsius, the night breeze always gentle. Words from the outside could never be received on the planet as it remained in eternal silence.

This was a galactic prison.

Ancients built their most dangerous prisons on isolated islands surrounded by the ocean in order to prevent jailbreaks. In the galactic era, people built their prisons inside the furthest planets and space stations from any terminals, blocking off all signals with their heavy protection.

To escape a prison on an island, a prisoner simply needed a strong body and luck. If the prisoner could jump into the ocean, they might have a small chance of making a successful escape; but how would people escape the shackles of gravity and fly into space from a galactic prison?

Lin Jingheng thought this was an easy problem and simply needed to beat up the ‘prison guards.’

Beating people up had been his job for decades; since the day he could finally pull his body out of the ecopod and walk by holding himself up on the railings, he had been planning his escape. The opium biochip was powerful enough to let people significantly increase their physical strength, control digital products, and even create hallucinations for other people. The latter two were technological issues that Doctor Hardin could solve–as for physical strength, it wasn’t particularly a problem for Lin Jingheng. His plan was to kill the guards and make his escape, not win in an arm wrestling tournament.

But very soon after, he realized his plan wouldn’t work out because Lin Jingshu would never leave any loopholes in her plans.

The small planet was completely self-sufficient with a very complete artificial ecosystem that could last thousands of years. The entire planet used low-efficiency energy, so even if the almighty Commander Lin could build an entire mech with his brainwaves, there was no way a mech could fly out of the atmosphere from this planet.

In addition, these ‘prison guards’ also had no way to connect to the outside world; in certain ways these guards might even have it worse than the prisoner since they still had to work everyday and maintain the prison.

Lin Jingheng didn’t believe it at first because this scenario was illogical and immoral. It would be impossible to throw a group of people into an enclosed space and expect them to live in peace and harmony like ants. They would be like ancient toxic creatures stuck inside a pot, doing anything they could to achieve their goals, including harming one another. There were at least ten months or more for Lin Jingheng to rehabilitate after waking up from his ecopod and struggle to return to his top physical condition, why wouldn’t any of these prison guards take advantage of him during this time and take his life?

The strange reality was that these guards were truly like obedient ants that worked day and night at their jobs. Even the medical team that was assigned to him took great care of the patient–much greater care than that broken hospital in the Eighth Galaxy that would kick their patients out of their medical capsules.

It wasn’t until then that Lin Jingheng realized how truly terrifying this galactic prison was.

Aside from himself and Doctor Hardin, everyone else on the planet was injected with biochips. The chips seemed to have made invasive changes to the brains of these people like a virus rewriting programs on a computer: they all looked like normal people with different personalities in the day, they communicated, had varying levels of intelligence and even unique senses of humor…but the concept of ‘leaving this place’ seemed to have been completely erased from their minds.

Everytime this topic was brought up, the conversation would turn into a one-sided lecture as if these people with biochips couldn’t understand this concept of leaving.

When Lin Jingshu left, she not only destroyed all physical means and equipment to leave the planet, she also completely brainwashed the residents on it.

The only two people left on this planet that still stargazed were Doctor Hardin and Lin Jingheng himself.

Lin Jingheng walked up to the rooftop, the night breeze blew out the corner of his shirt.

It had been fourteen Woltorian years since he’d woken up. This was his 2001st failed attempt at breaking through the layers of the blockage as his signal sank into the depths of the void.

However, he remained relatively calm at the result–anyone that had experienced over 2000 consecutive failures would have numbed their senses. Lin Jingheng narrowed his eyes as he lit himself a cigarette and drowned himself in clouds of white smoke. The tobacco used was home-grown on this planet, hand-picked by the security guards, and rolled into paper after drying. It wasn’t anything fancy and was a little too strong for his taste, but still did its job. Lin Jingheng stared at the rough edges of the roll paper and felt as he was digressing into ancient earthlings.

“Can’t imagine that, right?” Someone behind him spoke up suddenly, “Our Earthly ancestors lived on a planet not much bigger than the one we’re on right now, stuck on that planet for generations due to the force of gravity. Countless people would look up every night and watch the galaxy above their heads, but like the biochip-humans on here, nobody thought Earth itself was a prison. They would create stories and tell fortune with the stars but never once would they think of escaping the atmosphere.”

Lin Jingheng turned his head slightly to see Doctor Hardin roll his wheelchair over. The old man had aged even more, the wrinkles on him jumbled up into indistinguishable flesh that made him look as if he could be on his last breath at any given moment.

“So, what really is freedom?” the old doctor continued, “if you raise a small bug inside a house a few square meters large, its life would end before it could even make a round inside the house. Its short life was spent on the road; would you say it was free? What about you? You have a whole planet to yourself; you can order the people below you to grow tobacco and they would clear out the wheat field for you. Even then you still feel that you’re trapped; who is more tragic, you or the bug?”

Lin Jingheng fell silent for a few moments before he answered gently: “Had I not seen the Sun, I could have borne the shade.”

“But Light a newer Wilderness, My Wilderness has made [2] …I took one Draught of Life, I’ll tell you what I paid, precisely one existence, the market price, they said.” Doctor Hardin finished the last lines in a low tone. “It’s an ancient poem your grandfather loved.”

Lin Jingheng let out a soundless sigh as he thought: Well shit, here we go again .

Doctor Hardin was too old. Even though his brain was still functional most of the time, he still had his moments where he would bring up stories from the past. On top of rambling on and on, he would always somehow relate Lin Jingheng’s grandfather into the story; after listening to the same story hundreds of times, Lin Jingheng grew tired of even pretending to listen.

He sat on the ground and flung the ashes of his cigarette down against the roof. As he continued studying how to break through the signal blockade, Doctor Hardin’s ramblings turned into background music for his work.

“In the last era, the eight galaxies were like an endless warring era. Some people took over a planet and claimed the surrounding planets under their rule as they fought day and night in a chaotic and harsh war. The civilians were like us, trapped on land for their entire lives with no way to obtain freedom. We huddled up on a small space station in the beginning…which became the City of Angels later. Big Bro Lin was one of the core members of the group, Woolf and I were the younger ones that followed him like little lackeys.”

“I remember our big bro said that he wanted everyone in the world to be born with honor, to be able to search for their limits, and live their lives to the fullest extent. He wanted everyone to live the way they want, to be able to express themselves freely, and travel throughout the universe without restraints.”

The founders of the Pledge of Freedom wanted to break the cages surrounding them and realize the dream of universal human rights and freedom. However, this dream was too fleeting and unrealistic that the Eden Committee’s actions seemed more practical in comparison. They brainwashed everyone into little bugs inside a house, feeding people the lies of human rights and freedom as everyone lived foolishly in peace.

Lin Jingheng wasn’t someone easily moved and didn’t give much reaction after hearing the core ideology of the Pledge of Freedom. He thought: normally, there are only two or three ways to set up signal blockages on galactic prisons. We’ve already attempted all possible methods of breaking the network with no luck, and we were running out of ideas…was it possible that the blockage system upgraded while he was stuck in the Eighth Galaxy?

Even having a single supercomputer to analyze data would help, but they were living the lives of the ancients here. Everything they did was like tossing a ball blindly into the void, hoping luck would be on their side with every attempt. Perhaps they were infinitely close to breaking through over the last decade, but because they had no way to check their work, nobody could tell how close any of their attempts were. Maybe they were a hair strand away from solving the puzzle, but ignorance blinded them and even led them astray.

Lin Jingheng grew restless at this thought, concerned that he might have dug his own grave unknowingly.

Did that mean he was going to have to wait for an accidental visitor to find this small planet?

Doctor Hardin’s ramblings didn’t stop: “…Lin Ge’er was like our elder brother, he took care of many orphans from the war including Woolf and myself. Did you know? There were rumors in the past that Woolf’s attachment to him was too strong that it exceeded normal friendship.”

Lin Jingheng was putting out the cigarette on the ground with a frown when he heard this and lost his train of thought: “…..”

What the fuck?

“I’ve heard that Woolf got drunk once and continuously called our big brother’s name.” A slight, mischievous smile lifted on Doctor Hardin’s face. “But it was all rumors, nobody has proof. Woolf was a mature young man who knew his boundaries. The Lin couple had a very good relationship, and ever since that rumor came out, Woolf and our big brother have been consciously avoiding each other. The Lin couple never lived to see the founding of the Union, and your father was born years later through a breeding tank with the couple’s DNA. Woolf received the legal guardian rights the moment your father was born and raised the boy like his own son. He remained single for his whole life, mentored Lu Xin and raised Lin Wei. When Lu Xin retrieved the Eighth Galaxy and was promoted to top Commander, Woolf was barely 200 years old and was already planning to retire his position in favor of the future generation. I met him once at the time and told him that he was too optimistic; the Union was already derailing from its initial path and the Military Council will eventually become a caged tiger. I told him he would regret it, but he didn’t believe me…until the lies of Eden were exposed and the Union broke down in chaos. The two people whom he once hoped would carry the future of the Union died and the poison of Eden had already seeped inside the bones of the eight galaxies, so he needed foreign power to break the status quo.”

Lin Jingheng: “Is that the reason why he worked with pirates and let them into the Union to massacre the people?”

“You cannot have new hope until you completely destroy the old structure. We’ve already walked into a dead end; we must wipe everything out and redo everything.” Doctor Hardin said, “Woolf didn’t have much time left to grind through political battles and push for reform, so he could only make a huge gamble all at once. Jingheng, I’m only telling you this because I want to ask you: what would you do when you find out that the world outside has completely changed after you escape? Will you break through everything for revenge?”

Lin Jingheng automatically filtered out everything he didn’t want to hear and picked up the keywords: “What do you mean? Do you have new ideas on how to break the blockade?”

“Fourteen years ago, this planet orbited near the brightest star in the area. The energy waves from the solar storm woke you from your sleep in the mental network.” Doctor Hardin said, “This means that the blockade and signal interception on this planet is not strong enough to block out solar storms. If I’m calculating correctly, we have one month until the planet rotates back to the same area as fourteen years ago; that’s the time when the blockage is the most unstable; perhaps we’ll have a chance then.”

Milky Way City Military Base Command Post, planet Qiming. Turan was surprised to receive a message from Lu Bixing.

Lu Bixing rarely contacted her directly; normally he would send out documents for official business or call up a meeting when there was something he needed to discuss.

The Eighth Galaxy had settled the internal warfare over the last few years and began investing in military resources as the galaxy prepared to mobilize all its citizens. The military and government worked seamlessly as a single body, but Turan and Lu Bixing’s private relationship grew more distant as time went by. The anesthetics incident in the elevator also damaged their friendship over the years; nothing could return back to how it was before. When they two saw each other occasionally, they would only greet each other with “Prime Minister” and “General Turan” courteously as they walked past each other without a second word.

Turan immediately connected to his personal device: “What happened, Prime Minister?”

“Mint and her team started a specialized research study on the wormhole area; the Expedition Team is preparing for another trip to test their research results. I need you to send an armed patrol team for them.” Lu Bixing said, “We don’t know the situation outside, and weonly managed to bring back a broken mech last time. If they end up sailing a bit further off this time, they might run into other armed fleets, so we need to ensure their safety.”

Turan accepted the request without hesitation but had some questions in her mind–Lu Bixing could’ve just signed an order and sent it to the command post, he didn’t need to speak to her directly about it: “Sure, Prime Minister. Do you have any other orders?”

Lu Bixing hesitated for a moment: “There’s one more thing I want to ask you. From the time Lin got ‘assassinated’ in the Heart of the Rose back then to the time the war broke out, was he still in contact with you guys? Was coming to the Eighth Galaxy part of his original plan?”

“Uh…to be fair, we weren’t always in contact. We were still in the Silver Fortress at the time, so any signals we sent out would be intercepted. We needed to escape from the Silver Fortress, meet up at the designated location, and reestablish the long distance connection there. It was indeed part of the plan for him to go to the Eighth Galaxy because it wasn’t under the control of Eden.” Turan suddenly remembered something and added, “But he acted much sooner than I expected, that sure is Zhanlu for you…what’s up?”

Lu Bixing lifted his eyebrows slightly–when he’d fished up Lin Jingheng, Zhanlu’s energy had already been depleted and was in standby mode. It was unclear how long Lin Jingheng’s ecopod had floated outside Beijing-β, and thanks to Lu Bixing’s butterfingers the man had stayed an extra three months inside the pod…and that’s still considered ‘acting fast’?

Lu Bixing suspected that Lin Jingheng hadn’t floated over his original route and had instead passed through the wormhole area in the Heart of the Rose.

Turan said: “The details of the plan should be recorded on Zhanlu’s database; I’ve been on standby the whole time with the Ninth Squadron so he should know more than me.”

Lu Bixing nodded at her absentmindedly and cut off the connection. Zhanlu didn’t have any records of this particular event in his database; nothing about Lin Jingheng’s ecopod was recorded on him. Zhanlu’s own explanation was that he had been on standby mode due to lack of batteries.

But…was the standby mode really that effective?

It felt like this silly AI had gotten its files deleted by someone.

Lu Bixing first realized this problem when he was concerned if anyone else knew about the wormhole area in the Heart of the Rose, possibly posing a security threat to the Eighth Galaxy. That was why he searched Zhanlu’s database for records of the past only to see that there were traces of records in Zhanlu that had been purposely deleted.

The traces of deleted files were scattered throughout the database, a few of them seeming to have something to do with Monoeyed Hawk as well.

Lu Bixing recalled that the most obvious trace of data removal was the time Lin Jingheng had been fished back up after the commander single-handedly overthrew Primeal Alien’s entire pirate fleet. Lin Jingheng seemed to have gotten into a quarrel with Monoeyed Hawk very soon after he returned to the space station–Lu Bixing had been watching through the security camera at the time and even purposely turned the camera to grab the two men’s attention.

But there were no records.

Who had deleted it? Why?

Lin Jingheng and Monoeyed Hawk were always bickering openly with each other over the most trivial matters — what did they have to hide?

Lu Bixing strolled over to the cemetery and stood before Monoeyed Hawk’s grave: “Are you two keeping a secret from me?”

Monoeyed Hawk remained silent.

By the end of August, NSC 290, year 12 of the Eighth Galaxy Independent Era, the Galactic Expedition Team passed through the wormhole area for the second time and re-entered the no man’s land Heart of the Rose.

A small planet at the edge of the Sixth Galaxy once again rotated to its nearest position to its brightest star.

That same year, the President of the Glory Troops that had been fighting against the Union for over a decade was assassinated by his subordinate. The pirate organization finally surrendered to the Union.

Countless strings of history finally intersected at a single point–

[2] From Had I Not Seen the Sun and I took one Draught of Life by Emily Dickinson.