Can Ci Pin - - - Chapter 147

Chapter 147 – Please Don’t Tell Him

Zhanlu returned home with Lin Jingheng.

The Eighth Galaxy was actually filled with ass-kissers. In the past, nobody dared to touch this sensitive part of the Prime Minister, but ever since Commander Lin returned, ‘repairing the Union’s number 1 mech’ naturally became a task with higher priority on the list for these suck-ups. The job focused on how to retain Zhanlu’s original functions while cutting down on production costs and quickly became a carnival for the top engineers of the department.

Today was the functional testing for specimen number 4; the body was still built to Zhanlu’s human image of a soldier with short blonde hair that followed behind Lin Jingheng. Aside from an unstable mental network on ‘Number 4,’ everything from the appearance down to the details of his actions were almost identical to the past.

The two decided to return home a little earlier today because on the Wolto Calendar, today was Lu Xin’s death anniversary. Lin Jingheng excused himself a few hours early and rounded his way to the central plaza to sit beneath the stone statue for about ten minutes.

As the main city of the Eighth Galaxy, Milky Way City had already grown used to public figures and politicians walking around daily. In addition, Lin Jingheng was infamously hard to talk to, so nobody even bothered to speak to him as he sat quietly. The streets were busy and crowded as usual, filled with pedestrians and cars running back and forth. Lin Jingheng realized that nobody here knew what today was.

On one hand, the government of the Eighth Galaxy never openly advertised it. On the other hand, the Woltorian and Independent calendars were so vastly different from each other that ever since the Eighth Galaxy cut off connections with the Union, the Woltorian calendar had been made completely obsolete by the Eighth Galaxy. After a decade, none of the residents here could properly calculate Woltorian time anymore. Perhaps some of the old veteran soldiers who had followed Lu Xin would remember, but these people were all spread out within the galaxy as core members of the defense forces or other government agencies and would not have been able to make it to Milky Way City for a memorial service.

Lin Jingheng still found it difficult to get used to the Independent calendar. When he first returned, he still needed his personal device to remind him of the time; dates and years were even more complicated for him. When people mentioned an exact date using the Independent calendar, he could still mentally calculate it into Woltorian time in his mind, but ‘last year’ or ‘X number of years ago’ were his biggest fears that would disrupt his train of thought.

……If anyone dared to ask for his age, the Grand Marshal would likely respond with a gunshot to their head.

It wasn’t hard to promote a new calendar system to local residents because people who lived on natural planets were already using two two sets of time–the official calendar and the calendar based on their resident planet’s orbit and rotation.

The former was simply a reference like a common language; people still used the latter to schedule their daily lives like the colloquial language they spoke to each other with.

Only people that stayed in space for extended periods of time would need to follow the official calendars.

Lin Jingheng’s personal device always kept two calendars available, and even until today, his first reaction was always Woltorian time.

Choosing which calendar to use was like choosing which foot to put on your shoe first, it was a personal preference that didn’t affect the qualities of life. However, whatever else was hidden behind this seemingly mundane task was much more complicated than having two calendars on hand.

Lin Jingheng never told Lu Bixing about the Woltorian calendar; at first it was because he didn’t want the latter to think too much of it, but he eventually grew to fear that it would become a burden to Lu Bixing’s job as the Prime Minister.

The Eighth Galaxy and Union were separated by a natural barrier, and Lin Jingheng thought that both sides would remain in a balanced situation for the foreseeable future where everyone lived without conflict.

He didn’t expect things to change so quickly, so quickly that he didn’t have time to let Lu Bixing grow used to staying by his side again nor have the time to annihilate the demon that lingered in that person’s nightmares.

Suddenly, all the issues he had been purposely avoiding to face piled together before his own eyes.

What kind of relationship would the Eighth Galaxy and the Union have from now on?

How should he and the Silver Ten face the Union?

What did those eight billion refugees in the Eighth Galaxy think of the Union?

How did the locals of the Eighth Galaxy see the Union?

If a conflict of interests occured one day, who should be the one to mediate?

Would the Union and Eighth Galaxy exchange fire one day…holding up their swords to protect their own people and beliefs and fight until their deaths?

What would happen to the people like them who still secretly used the Woltorian calendar?

Lin Jingheng lit up a cigarette and stared blankly into the sky for a while. By the time he collected his thoughts, the end of the cigarette had already been burnt off.

Thanks to the Prime Minister’s silent approval, the multimedia screen right across from the central plaza was still playing Lu Xin’s documentary films that were almost laughable to anyone that knew the real story. Lin Jingheng looked up at Lu Xin’s large stone statue and almost felt as if the man himself was standing there like the Eighth Galaxy Star, bathed in the chorus of the people and the halos of the heavens where only very few could step close to him.

What terrified him the most was the fact that Lu Bixing had never once mentioned Lu Xin. Even when the name was brought up in conversation, the young Prime Minister would skillfully change the topic. It seemed as if Lu Bixing had some personal reasons for not wanting to accept Lu Xin as his father; his attitude towards his biological father was as cold as how he treated the Union. Perhaps the time he mentioned it in the Heart of the Rose was simply to step down from the stage.

Lin Jingheng tossed the butt of the cigarette into the cleaning robot on the side and made his way back home. With a strange sense of loneliness, he fell silent the whole way home.

“Sir,” Zhanlu reminded him as they were steps away from the front door, “Doctor Hardin is here.”

Lin Jingheng already knew and gave a soft response without turning his head.

Zhanlu added: “Headmaster Lu and Doctor Hardin are chatting in the guest room right now, but the guest room temporarily blocked me off.”

Despite being the digital butler of the house, Zhanlu was too high-functioning and involved in people’s lives so he would sometimes be blocked off in certain areas of the house from time to time…especially during nighttime.

But to block off Zhanlu in the middle of the day from the guest room?

Was Prime Minister Lu planning on serving guests the tea himself?

Besides, they only ever greeted friends and personal guests at home, nobody would be discussing top secret military strategies. Why would anyone need to block off Zhanlu?

If the guest today wasn’t old man Hardin, Lin Jingheng would almost suspect that something else was going on behind his back.

Lin Jingheng’s hand hesitated for a moment at the door as he ordered Zhanlu: “Don’t tell him I’m home.”

Soon after, the almighty mister Grand Marshal of the Eighth Galaxy walked around his house for a while before finding a shaded side of the building to climb up towards the window. He grabbed onto the railings of the window and effortlessly climbed up to the second floor balcony as if he was walking on flat land on the vertical walls.

Who knew that he was such an experienced trespasser!

Zhanlu: “Very elegant, sir.”

Lin Jingheng: “Shut up, open the door for me.”

The human-formed Zhanlu pressed his hand gently on the wall and quickly disappeared as he merged his whole body with the wall of the house. Very soon after, the lock from inside the balcony clicked and opened up automatically, letting Lin Jingheng in the house quietly. Popcorn was sunbathing on the side as it was suddenly greeted by them, then almost scared itself away as it wiggled on the floor to escape. A robotic arm reached out from the floor and grabbed the poor snake, trapping it on the ground.

To save space, the stairs in the house were designed with sharp turns behind walls that could hide a person.

Right beneath that area on the staircase was the guest room.

It wasn’t hard to block off an AI; as long as permission was given, a simple command from his owner would guarantee that Zhanlu would not listen in. However, being physically at the site of the conversation across a staircase and a door would only require a volume amplifier on a personal device to listen into the conversation inside.

The moment Lin Jingheng sat down, he heard Doctor Hardin’s “…..Someone had suggested the use of biochips on him, but Jingshu forcefully shot the idea down.”

Lin Jingheng: “……”

If Lu Bixing wanted to find out about things for himself, Doctor Hardin certainly wasn’t someone that could keep secrets. What he didn’t expect was that this ‘Hardin brand answering machine’ would spill the beans so easily.

Even though he already had some suspicions, Lu Bixing’s mind still blanked out after hearing that “irreversible damage” line.

Doctor Hardin saw the change of expression on his face and thought that the young man didn’t know how to comment on Lin Jingshu’s character, so added: “I don’t think she was thinking the same thing as you are right now, Prime Minister. She wasn’t hesitant to use the chip on Jingheng because of the dangers it may pose, she simply couldn’t decide which generation chip she should use on him. She didn’t know how to face him and would rather have Jingheng remain vegetative and sleep forever. Jingshu was…I believe she acknowledged that she no longer understands her twin brother, so she was scared. The relationship between the twins was always a bit more complicated than normal siblings; not to mention they were the only family they had for each other. Sometimes I think she took Jingheng as another personality of herself; he can die or become a soulless display, but he can’t deny her nor their past.”

Lu Bixing felt his ear buzz as Doctor Hardin spoke these words, as if they were words echoing from a faraway land.

When they occasionally talked about the Freedom Corps, Lin Jingheng never purposely hid anything important as they were now the Union’s number one terrorist group and a potential threat to the Eighth Galaxy. But his words were always emotionless and cold, objective and reserved; the most he ever talked about was the opium chip’s hierarchy and the organization’s method of expansion.

The Silver Ten that knew the full story collectively kept their mouths shut to the point where most people’s impression was simply that ‘the dictator of the Freedom Corps was an old acquaintance of the Marshal.’

Lin Jingheng never liked talking about his past, but he would mention it when asked. Lu Bixing vaguely remembered that Lin had once talked about his sister, saying she was quiet and well-mannered, not very expressive of her feelings, liked to secretly give presents to her brother and would be too embarrassed to admit it.

Since when…did he start purposely avoiding those topics?

Lu Bixing struggled to pull his voice from his throat: “Zhanlu….uh, all of the data on Lin inside Zhanlu were events after he had been adopted.”

“Right,” Doctor Hardin sighed, “I’ve heard that you all managed to catch Laura Gordon’s message she left for the AUS and sort of understood her relationship with her husband. Little…Lin Wei never knew how to face his two children. I don’t know if you can understand since you don’t have this experience, but the couple was in a political marriage and lived separately most of the time. Their kids were bred in labs by collecting the couple’s DNA like seeds fallen off a tree…most breeding centers require parents to visit the center periodically to develop relationships with the children through various activities, and parents that don’t fulfill the requirements will risk losing custody of their child. However, with those two…one of them was a Military Council General, another was the director of the White Tower, so the breeding center couldn’t force them to comply. One would send his soldiers to check up, the other would send their research colleagues; it was almost as if they purposely avoided each other.”

Lu Bixing felt his heart get pinched by tweezers that pulled a bit off of the surface; then as if that wasn’t enough, the tweezers pulled harder on the piece of his heart–

“Thankfully, Wolto had a trend of twins in the breeding center that time so at least the two of them still had each other growing up. If it was only one of them, I couldn’t imagine how they would grow up to be.” Doctor Hardin let out another sigh, “Laura was my best student, but I still think that wasn’t right or fair for the children.”

The chameleon slowly stepped down the staircase and crawled beside Lin Jingheng.

Lin Jingheng gave it a cold eye to hint for it to go away, but the silly creature didn’t know how to read the room and instead grabbed onto the Marshal’s leg, changing the color of its skin to match the trousers. Lin Jingheng grabbed onto its neck and pulled it aside; the poor chameleon laid down pouting on the staircase and silently changed its color to the wooden flooring .

“……This is Lin Wei.” Doctor Hardin finally managed to pull up a photo from his personal device with his old eyes. Lu Bixing lowered his gaze to look at the photo: Lin Wei was young in it, and in contrast to his cold son, he looked much more amiable and gentle. His expression was calm, with an air of serenity in his eyes; he almost didn’t look like Lin Jingheng at first glance, only the rare smile on the commander’s face holding any resemblance to his father. “The Committee and Military Council secretly came to an agreement to hide the White Tower director Laura Gordon’s betrayal of the Union. The condition was that General Lin Wei had to personally dispatch his troops and chase the traitors down…he once forcefully disconnected from the mental network during a battle and suffered serious injuries. Since then, he blocked off Eden, abusing drugs and other antidepressants; perhaps he did die an early heroic death.”

Lu Bixing asked gently: “Aren’t political marriages all said to not bear any real feelings?”

“The political marriage itself was proposed by the Committee, but Lin Wei was the one that specifically asked for Laura back then. Laura…Laura was too deeply influenced by me and was quite radical in some aspects. Perhaps she thought that marrying him was one of the negotiations by the Committee and didn’t even realize that Lin Wei’s feelings for her were genuine and deep. Now that I think about it, Lin Wei’s death certainly changed many things.

“Cold and distant protection was still protection. After the twins were forcefully separated after their father’s death, one held a sharp blade without direction, the other held the hand of the devil. The old Chief Woolf lost his last hope and heir right before retirement and broke off connections with the Committee henceforth. Lu Xin was later dragged in due to the forbidden fruit, but refused to play it safe and back down even with failed precedents before, thus forcing the Union to collapse from the inside-out…they were chained together one by one with fate, finally creating a wave large enough to consume the entire eight galaxies.”

The two both sat wordlessly for a while before Lu Bixing broke the silence: “So…she locked you two up on a planet like a galactic prison…Doctor, are you saying that she planned on killing her own brother since the beginning?”

Doctor Hardin opened his mouth and finally remembered that Lin Jingheng had asked him to keep it secret, then forcefully changed the topic: “Commander Lin won’t let me talk about this, Uh…since he’s back in the Eighth Galaxy now, perhaps you should ask him yourself.”

Lu Bixing’s face had grown pale during the conversation. He smiled faintly and then patiently changed the topic: “Alright, then let’s not talk about this—I’ve read the books from ancient times. These ancient Earthlings are quite interesting; these people that lived on the same planet could differentiate each other’s ethnical group and background based on appearance and the language they spoke. It was easy to determine who was an ally and who was an enemy back then. Protecting your allies and fighting against the common enemy was considered justice, so matter-of-factly that it was like this concept was engraved in human genes…to be honest, I’m quite jealous of that. Doctor, you’ve lived for three centuries already and have been chasing for an answer all your life, are you willing to share and tell me if you’ve found the answer? Where should I take the Eighth Galaxy to? The number of viewers peaked at 7.6 billion people on the day we experimented in the wormhole; where should I take these 7.6 billion people from here on out?”

The Union today was built on the ruins of humanity’s biggest lie; the Freedom Corps were built on massive burial mounds filled with corpses.

But what about the Eighth Galaxy?

What should it be built on?

An unreachable lone stone statue and an even more unreachable Pledge of Freedom?

Doctor Hardin didn’t respond.

“Don’t tell me to unify the Interstellar Union, I don’t have that kind of empathy nor the power to do so. I’m already having trouble managing this Eighth Galaxy…besides, we’ve seen what happened to the unification of the Union. Even if I was lucky enough to accomplish it, how could I guarantee that we won’t go down the same path in the future?” Lu Bixing said, “Also the communication we set up with the First Galaxy’s border patrol through the Heart of the Rose. To be quite honest, I’ve been constantly thinking about having someone destroy this port in secret over the last few days. I’m even thinking about finding ways to blow up the wormhole area like we blew up transfer portals.”

Doctor Hardin let out a deep sigh.

Lu Bixing lowered his voice and added: “……please keep these words a secret for me, don’t tell Jingheng.”

Lin Jingheng, who already heard everything on the staircase, quietly clenched his fist.