Can Ci Pin - - - Chapter 134

Chapter 134 – It’s Too Late

The current advancements in technology already removed the aftereffects of muscle aches and twitches from using relaxants; only the tips of Lu Bixing’s fingers trembled slightly as he grabbed onto the commander. The medical capsule had already secured the safety belt onto him by this point. The length of the belt was 1.5 meters total, which happened to be the distance from the wall to the front door of his office.

The belt reached its limit as Lu Bixing’s fingers touched Lin Jingheng’s collar; his trembling hands ripped through the weak fabric of the shirt and physically tore open a small hole in it. He forced his brain that was dozing off to stay awake as his attention locked onto that shirt, as the veins on his hands popped in desperation to pull that person back.

How can I let you disappear before my eyes again?

Another hand covered in blisters grabbed tightly onto his wrist.

Lu Bixing could feel the small cuts on those hands that gave it a rough texture on the skin.

His eyebrows twitched unnaturally for an instant as he felt a long torch that carried the flames of a bright star pound against his frozen soul. The burning sensation pierced from his chest all the way through his spine; the pain felt almost too real.

Too real that it could rip his heart apart.

The whirlpool of the wormhole swallowed up the entire heavy mech and the space around them began to distort. That door to the Prime Minister’s office twisted into a strange organic shape; Lin Jingheng said something, but the world felt like it was forced into slow-motion and sounds centimeters away couldn’t even pass into Lu Bixing’s ears.

Lu Bixing pulled him in closer as Lin Jingheng fell gently into his embrace while floating in mid-air. The force was so light it almost felt like two wisps of feathers gently brushing against each other in this distorted place while they were falling to the ground. But Lu Bixing felt as if the steel armor in his chest had finally cracked open after years of unshakable protection; the single crack quickly spread through the rest of his body like an expanding web, exposing the unsightly flesh within.

As the wormhole wrapped around the mech body, the spacetime distortion created a strange optical illusion where the walls and body of the mech disappeared. This tiny office instantly expanded infinitely outward into a space representing the universe, while everyone else in the mech floated helplessly in this surreal space.

Numerous convex and concave surfaces appeared around them as the past, present, and future passed through them on the crossroad of fate.

The mirror-like surfaces reflected the scenes of an explosion, moments of mechs vanishing into stardust, bloodied suns rising up from horizons on planets…even scenes of galactic missiles flashing as they touched the ground. The invisible devil was the Rainbow Virus, sweeping through the deserted lands of the Eighth Galaxy and reaping the seeds of life as corpses of people dropped to the ground like fallen leaves. Ghostly white bones peeked out from the dirt in this portrait of hell. This wormhole was like the sewage that contained all the horrible scenes of the Eighth Galaxy that constantly flowed against the current of time until it vanished into the void.

Soon after, the passage of high-energy mechs began to take effect on the wormhole as the terminal grew unstable.

The body of the mech that had disappeared earlier reappeared as noises began to ring out, which seemed to be the automatic alarm on the mech.

Lin Jingheng held his breath; he wasn’t sure if this was normal during wormhole travel, but his instincts detected danger. He quickly grabbed onto the space suit that Lu Bixing hadn’t finished putting on properly, in an attempt to shove the young man back, then shifted his gaze to the oxygen mask that had rolled to the ceiling and reached an arm out to retrieve it.

Yet Lu Bixing refused to let him go and wrapped his arm tightly around the commander’s waist as the two men were pulled to the wall by the safety belt. The mech body also leaned in that direction as Lin Jingheng’s back glued to the wall behind him: “Put the oxygen mask on first!”

Lu Bixing didn’t hear him and slowly lifted a hand to place it against Lin Jingheng’s chest. Time was once again lagging in this distorted space as if it had stopped temporarily; Lu Bixing’s vision blurred as he thought: This must be an illusion from spacetime distortion, right?

Otherwise, why couldn’t he feel that man’s heartbeat?

After what felt like a lifetime’s worth of wait, a slow beat finally came from that person’s chest.

Lu Bixing suddenly realized something. Whether it was burning hysteria or fervent joy, the number 6 relaxant was powerful enough to suppress everything, because all of these superficial emotions were simply no match for the thrill and impact of this belated sound of that heartbeat–

It shattered the starry heavens built upon millenniums of time, and shattered the individual soul named Lu Bixing.

A single action inside a wormhole extended infinitely like the delayed heartbeat; less than a meter’s distance required all of his energy to reach across. Lin Jingheng watched the man before him struggle forward like a choppy old film, the closeup shots clearly capturing the heart-wrenching pain on the individual’s face.

They couldn’t communicate, couldn’t hear each other’s voices; yet after years of separation, over 5000 lonely days and nights were condensed into this tiny hint of a pained expression. Lin Jingheng had no choice but to embrace and accept it all. This calamitous pain swallowed him whole and took his breath away for a short instant.

After what felt like 10,000 years, this long journey of a few centimeters finally closed in to zero. Lin Jingheng could taste the dry and cold lips of the other man, followed immediately by a delayed sharp pain when Lu Bixing bit his lip. As if Lu Bixing wanted to consume him whole, a thick taste of blood filled his senses. The heavy mech shook violently while the unstable energy sources within the wormhole clashed into each other, creating countless bright lights in the distance. The mech almost felt as if it was going to be swallowed up by the wormhole.

But who cared?

If he were to die in this distortion of spacetime, then his life would end with this kiss of a lifetime’s reunion.

My life couldn’t have ended in a more perfect circle , he thought.

Unfortunately, fate won’t always grant such a tragically beautiful ending. The next moment, time suddenly flew by and quickly returned to normal. The gravity system on the mech also returned to normal as the two men fell to the ground along the wall. Lin Jingheng instinctively reached an arm around Lu Bixing to protect him from the impact.

For a split second, it almost felt like they were still together that evening at home, this man in his arms throwing him onto the sofa in the same position.

But sixteen years had passed.

The returning trip of the Eighth Galaxy Forces might have been filled with danger, but thankfully they were all simply on a roller coaster ride without any actual damage. The fleet finally escaped the whirlpool of spacetime distortion; the soldiers on the first floor knew that Lin Jingheng had run up the stairs without any protection gear and they couldn’t stop him in time. Now that they’d escaped the danger zone, these soldiers frantically untied themselves from their safety belts and ran up to the second floor.

The door to the office was still half opened; a soldier stopped before the door and saw through the opening the greatest Prime Minister of the Eighth Galaxy’s history half-clinging onto Lin Jingheng. His hands grabbed frightfully onto the commander’s shirt as his stiffened body leaned forward, his face covered in silent tears. It almost seemed as if there was real blood flowing from his reddened eyes.

The soldier was stumped for a moment and stood dumbly before he carefully closed the office door and fled the scene quietly.

This whole trip for Lu Bixing was only long enough to exchange a quick kiss, but for the people waiting back in the Eighth Galaxy, one and a half months had passed before they returned.

Turan didn’t even know how she managed to hold out for this long.

She was only able to make out from the choppy messages from the wormhole the situation outside, but due to the incomplete messages she wasn’t able to piece together the whole picture. She waited anxiously as she suppressed her urge to release her frustration that was intense enough to make her feel like she could single-handedly fistfight all the wild animals within the entire Eighth Galaxy. Luckily, she managed to suppress the urge to jump right into the wormhole.

“General Turan, we’ve detected high-energy reactions from the wormhole area!”

Turan jumped as words shot out of her mouth like bullets: “This is the Eighth Galaxy Galactic Force Temporary Chief Commander Elizabeth Turan, did Prime Minister Lu return?”

The newly established connection was still unstable and no response came from the other end.

Turan took in a deep breath and asked again: “Please confirm that the Prime Minister’s escort fleet has returned safely…”

Before she could finish, a voice suddenly came out from the other end of the channel.

“What? Elizabeth Turan?” Thomas questioned suspiciously, “Turan doesn’t talk like this, no way…this…actually sounds like a real person! This can’t be that piece of shit I know, did we run into someone with the same name?”

Turan felt her whole world shatter when she heard this voice.

Thomas cleared his throat and said: “Hello, I’m the Captain of the Silver Third Squadron Thomas Young; not that ‘Thomas Young,’ my contribution to humanity is my unparalleled sense of humor and mech modification, not that double-slit experiment. It’s my pleasure to step foot on this miraculous land called the Eighth Galaxy.”

Turan’s cold expression suddenly broke down as redness filled her whole face. She pressed on the communication board, quickly pulled off her hat and yelled into the channel with with one whole breath of air: “Fuck you back to your brother’s cradle, Thomas Young!”

Thomas was stumped for a moment: “What? Fuck, fuck my brother…? Oh, sure I guess, it’s not like he’s worth anything anyway, you can take him.”

Poisson: “Hey folks, am I a corpse floating in space or something?”

“Us Fourth Squadron here only have three people and two mechs left, the Eighth Squadron only has one man left, and you fellas over at the Ninth Squadron have already expanded across a whole galaxy? Sorry man, we’re rightfully upset right now.”

“Long time no see, Elizabeth.”

“It’s been a long time for sure! Didn’t we agree that the Ninth and Tenth Squadrons were the head vanguards and the tail assassins, the twin shady thugs of the Silver Ten? Who allowed you all to get so well-fed behind our backs?”

“Look at that, they’ve even rolled out a whole superdimensional heavy mech fleet to greet our poor asses, how dare they!”

Poisson: “Rich bitch capitalist.”

Thomas: “Stupid rich landlord’s daughter.”

These poor siblings of different mothers were finally united by their shabbiness against a common enemy and called her out together: “Screw you!”

A breath of air caught in Turan’s throat as her usual insults and threats couldn’t even make it out of her mouth. She grew more frantic as words jumbled up inside her until she could only muster up a simple “fucking assholes” out of her mouth before she continued asking: “All you fuckers are back…what about Commander?”

Soon after, she heard someone gently respond with a slight hint of kindness in his tone say: “I’m here too.”

The Eighth Galaxy was indeed a cruel miracle.

Doctor Hardin was rolled out of the medical capsule and seated back into his wheelchair. He looked up the moment he got out through the screen on the mech.

They sailed for about ten hours after leaving the wormhole area and finally reached the outermost transfer portals outside the Eighth Galaxy.

It was the point of intersection for multiple galactic terminals where traces of war could still be seen, but otherwise was a very orderly area. When the heavy mech fleet passed by, the public terminal that intersected with the military terminal was closed off for half an hour for the fleet to pass. As the fleet passed by, a few merchant ships waiting in the public terminals flashed out signs that said “can we get a photo?” that could be clearly seen on the screens inside the heavy mechs.

Soon after, countless space stations appeared near the terminals as the fleet sailed through. They would sometimes pass by natural planets around the way as the scene resembled the First Galaxy’s military bases before the war.

“After the Eighth Galaxy isolated itself from the outside world, we went through a few years of internal warfare,” Rickhead explained to Doctor Hardin along the way. “Of course, even though it’s peaceful now, we still kept some of the practices from during wartime.”

A line of text flashed across the walls as he explained: “A greeting from the Planet Beijing-β Research Lab to our Prime Minister.”

“Ah, we’ve passed Beijing-β, it looks like they’re at the aphelion. It used to be a very nice place, it’s just that winter was a bit long; I used to live there,” Rickhead said. “When the war started, the Cayley pirates joined in the mess and blew this place up. We still haven’t been able to rebuild the natural ecosystem of this place so we could only use it as a research experiment base.”

Doctor Hardin asked: “A military experiment base?”

“Yeah,” Rickhead said, “though the search is mostly in the direction of anti-missile systems. One of my classmates works here; the job is pretty stable, but the research project does cost an arm and leg. They’re almost always asking for more funding from Minister Lu, so my classmate’s always on his blacklist at the end of every fiscal year…but we can’t help it, the Eighth Galaxy can’t stay isolated forever. We can rebuild the transfer portals, and perhaps we can once again reconnect to the outside world in a few more decades, but we won’t know what the Union will be like by then, so we need to keep ourselves safe. The Prime Minister worked too hard to help all of us back on our feet like this; nobody’s willing to go back to how it was before, how can we let our hard work be destroyed again?”

Doctor Hardin asked: “Is the Prime Minister really…Commander Lu Xin’s son?”

Rickhead rubbed his nose as a childish hint of naiveness appeared on his face at the mention of the Prime Minister, similar to the kind of clueless expression he had when he was still a kid: “It’s probably just a joke? Hahaha, what’s he going to do instead, fight them? Our Minister Lu is great at ad libs.”

Doctor Hardin: “……”

“Commander Lu Xin’s statue is in the Central Plaza of Milky Way City. His statue and Pledge of Freedom are the pillars of the Eighth Galaxy; Minister Lu is the one that followed his path and pulled us out of the mud,” Rickhead said. “Sometimes Minister Lu would sit in front of Lu Xin’s statue. Maybe because they both share the same last name — people that didn’t know any better have been spreading rumors about it for a while…but to me, he was my teacher in the past, and our Prime Minister right now, so it doesn’t matter who he really is.”

The captain of the Silver First Squadron was a reliable man; he offered to take the handle of the doctor’s wheelchair and asked: “When are we going to meet with the Prime Minister?”

“Oh, hold on, let me ask.” Rickhead poked his personal device a bit and asked his superiors.

Soon after, he received a “rest and reorganize” order–the Prime Minister himself was completely knocked out.

Unlike Lin Jingheng who had been desperate to return, Lu Bixing never knew that the commander was still alive. His rollercoaster ride of emotions suffered through the suppression of the relaxant in the middle and messed with his blood pressure, therefore Zhanlu suggested giving a shot of sedatives to let him rest for a day and cool down that overheated head of his.

Lu Bixing: “Go away, I don’t…”

Before he could object, the robotic hand swiftly attacked from behind while the sedatives consumed his unstable mental state. Lu Bixing almost passed out immediately as he buried his head right into Lin Jingheng’s lap.

Lin Jingheng; “……”

The commander frantically caught Lu Bixing and placed him inside a medical capsule. Yet even though the young Prime Minister was completely knocked out, his hands that grabbed onto Lin Jingheng were like handcuffs that showed no signs of letting the commander go.

Lin Jingheng let out a soundless sigh, wiped off the blood from the corner of his lips and sat beside the medical capsule. Then he commented to Zhanlu quietly on the side: “You weren’t this impudent when you followed me.”

“Indeed, sir. My independent permissions and access are much higher than when I followed you,” Zhanlu answered. “As a digital butler, I must be given more permissions than being a mech core. Headmaster Lu has given me special permission to act on my own will when he is in a state of mental instability.”

Lin Jingheng lifted an eyebrow: “So you’re bullying him for being kind?”

Zhanlu didn’t catch the slight displeasure from his ex-master’s tone and answered cheerfully: “That’s not it, sir, my system was repaired by Headmaster Lu himself. He can block off my permissions and functions at any time; he was the one that chose me as his supervisor for the times when he believes he isn’t in his right mind. This is quite a long story–we still have a few hours before we arrive at the Milky Way City Base, would you like to listen?”

Lin Jingheng nodded: “Go on.”

Lu Bixing’s eyebrowed pressed together even after being knocked out, as if he was going through a life-changing dream.

If he still had any bit of consciousness left, he would have remembered to clear up Zhanlu’s memory beforehand to censor out certain bits of the story, but it was already too late.

Lu Xin’s statue in Milky Way City looked up at the sky; the fleet of heavy mechs were like heavy rain clouds that sailed past his head and landed onto the Milky Way City Base far away. The statue had stood in the same place for over a decade, the residents of the capital planet Qiming had already grown used to seeing him — only tourists from other planets were still taking photos in amazement.

A young soldier yawned in boredom while the media robots waiting near the Milky Way City Base jumped like a colony of bees and swarmed to the entrance, anxiously waiting to report on the groundbreaking trip through the active wormhole.

Lu Xin’s statue faced the sky out toward the faraway future with a permanent smile on his face.