Can Ci Pin - - - Chapter 50

Chapter 50 – Lin Jingheng is Absolutely Terrified of Him

“Who gave you permission to come out here?” Despite making an effort to keep his voice calm, Lin’s outrage was more than obvious from his tone. “Why are you wasting your time locating me instead of training your circus back at the base?”

This question hit the bull’s eye, leaving Lu Bixing completely speechless.

“Do you not know what the ‘wasteland of death’ is? And how dangerous it is to make an emergency transfer in that place? You saw all the remains of dead mechs and didn’t even think about how there could be pirates ahead of you? And yet you decide to fly out here with this piece of…” Lin slammed his hand onto the wall of the mech furiously. The poor mech vibrated in shock from the sudden attack and responded weakly with a hiccup.

Lin Jingheng then remembered that this foolhardy man in front of him also had a history of injecting dangerous biochips into his own body, and grew even more agitated to the point he could almost feel his veins pop.

“How reckless can you be!?”

“…” Lu Bixing went silent.

He didn’t even get the chance to speak and the man before him had already stolen his lines. Unable to respond, Lu Bixing could only nod and listen to this scolding.

The urge to give Lu Bixing a beating was strong, but the young scientist was already far past the age of being treated as a child. Lin Jingheng reluctantly swallowed up his anger.

In less than a month, Commander Lin had already forced himself to resist the urge to punch Lu Bixing twice. After a bitter taste of internal backlash from repressed frustration, Lin turned to Lu Bixing and announced coldly, “Step aside, let me take charge of the mental network.”

Finally catching an opportunity to speak, Lu Bixing shot him a gentle smile and said, “Let’s see you try.”

A handful of robotic arms reached out from the medical chamber just as Lu Bixing spoke and firmly grabbed onto Lin Jingheng’s limbs. Staying in the void of outer space for long periods of time can often take a toll on a person’s psychological stability, making restraining equipment a standard amenity in all mechs. The built-in restraining system in a mech was strong enough to hold down the force of multiple adult gorillas and was all under the pilot’s control.

Lin Jingheng was the speechless one this time: “…”

He’s getting more rebellious!

“Mhmm.” Lu Bixing casually strolled over as he commanded the restraining system to pull this troublesome patient back into his medical capsule. He leaned in beside Lin Jingheng’s ear, and snobbishly said, “I’ve heard the damage caused by involuntary disconnection from the metal network is pretty intense. Neurological shock is considered a lighter consequence, but sometimes a pilot can die from brain damage if the resistance is too strong. You know I’ve never really personally experienced it, is this true? Hey commander, would you like to demonstrate for me?”

Lin Jingheng snapped, “Lu. Bi. Xing…!”

“Hm?” Completely unfazed, Lu Bixing ordered a cup of water from the medical bots and sat himself down next to Lin Jingheng. He gulped down the water as if he were preparing for another long lecture in school and began: “You know, commander, I’ve noticed that you’re an extremely unreasonable person. That’s not good. People always say you shouldn’t waste your time talking to a brick wall, but I disagree. That sounds like some outdated feudalism bias. Look, this poor mech doesn’t have much fuel left and we have a few more days on the clock before we can return to the base at this rate, so why don’t we spend some quality time and talk things out?”

Lin Jingheng had never felt this furious in his life.

“Let me go, you really think I’ll just sit around quietly and let you do whatever you want?!”

Although Headmaster Lu’s personal understanding regarding this issue of the commander having a crush on himself deviated slightly from the truth, it was surprisingly not too far off. Lu Bixing remained completely undaunted by this threat; in fact, he even found himself holding his hand out and welcoming this bluff: “Oh no I’m so scared, what are you going to do? Come at me!”

Lin Jingheng: “……”

Cute little baby chick my ass, mister all-talk and good-for-nothing ex-commander of the IU; you really can’t trust anything Lu Xin says. Are you seeing what kind of disaster you left behind, Commander Lu?

Lu Bixing sat up and prepared himself for another long speech: “So we can start by discussing the phenomenon of stubbornness, then to the nature of this specific trait of yours…”

“Leave!” Lin Jingheng hissed in opposition.

“That I can’t do, I’ll leave after I finish talking.” Fortunately, Lu Bixing had developed incredible patience from dealing with problematic students daily in the past and started pulling out receipts at the agitated commander. “Let me ask you, Lin. Beijing was still within our internal network range when you first detected those space pirates, so why didn’t you send a message back to the base?”

Of course, Lin Jingheng wasn’t going to answer like a good student, so he gave this uninvited lecturer a small snort instead.

Lu Bixing continued, “That’s because you don’t trust us. Not me, not anyone at the base. You think it’s pointless to tell us because we’re powerless against those pirates and are weak enough to scare ourselves to death. That’s why you decided to go in and handle everything on your own, right? But have you thought of why you were willing to risk your life on your own to protect these hopeless low-lives?”

“Venturing off to beat up a space pirate count as risking my life? I just can’t stand that dude, so I took him out while I was at it. Don’t bring this up in the future; it’s almost embarrassing.” Lin Jingheng sneered back. He then paused and took a deep breath before pulling up the most self-restraint in his life to say: “If you let go of my restraints, I can pretend none of this happened.”

Lu Bixing cooly responded: “Thanks handsome, but you’re better off laying down and reflecting on yourself and your actions.”

Lin Jingheng: “………”

“So you ‘just happened’ to catch a high fever while being severely dehydrated, and ‘just happened’ to accidentally turn yourself into a floating corpse in outer space.” Lu Bixing said. “Oh right, and you just happened to turn yourself into a skeleton with a muscle tissue solvent, did you also plan on casually sending yourself to the afterlife in your flawless strategy? Look at this impressive list of personal achievements in such a short span of time, and you have the guts to snap at me by telling me exactly what I was going to say to you? We say that a guilty conscience needs no accuser, but Mister Lin Jingheng, you’ve completed redefined this phrase and ascended to another plane. You’re a living miracle in that sense, you know that?”

Lin Jingheng closed his eyes and turned selectively deaf. He started distracting himself by picturing different ways he could beat up this little shit in his mind to ease his anger. Yet Lin’s silent protest wasn’t exactly working. Unfortunately for him, Lu Bixing was a professional at talking to walls. He’s dealt with so many uncooperative kids in the past that he knew exactly how to deal with Lin Jingheng; Lu Bixing almost had this skill mastered to a form of art, he could somehow find ways to talk for hours without getting irritable regardless of whether or not he received a response from the other party.

In the end, he managed to physically talk Lin Jingheng back to sleep.

Finally, Lu Bixing finished talking and carefully released the medical restraints. He leaned over and thoroughly checked Lin’s wrists and ankles, then relaxed a little when he saw that Lin didn’t attempt to forcefully break the restraints. Lin Jingheng wasn’t someone that would waste energy on pointless things.

Lu Bixing rested his forehead in his hands and took a deep breath.

This is so agitating. He thought.

So much that even I was running on adrenaline.

But thank goodness this man was unbelievably absurd in completely weird ways, otherwise, Lu Bixing wouldn’t know how to face him.

Ever since he was born, Lu Bixing had spent most of his time fighting against fate and the world. When other people were just learning the sweet taste of first love, he was struggling to learn how to walk. While others were living happily in the lucid dream that is the mortal world, he was yearning to leave the atmosphere from the bottom of his heart.

Time was invaluable to Lu Bixing, so he was always running, never stopping to look at the world around him. Lin Jingheng was the first person in his 30-year life that tingled his otherwise uninterested heart, and the only person he truly became close with.

Lu Bixing turned his gaze back down to Lin Jingheng, and cooled his head when he recalled the numerous wounds and scars under that thin shirt. A new feeling of countless unexplainable emotions resurfaced as he looked into the other man’s face, and Lu Bixing thought to himself: How am I supposed to face you?

After a few seconds that felt like an eternity, Lu Bixing’s repressed curiosity overtook his conscience. As if trying to touch a deadly flytrap, Lu Bixing slowly reached down to hold Lin’s hand.

This hand was cold but also stiff. Even though it was relaxed, Lu Bixing could still feel the rigid bones of each joint. There were still some wounds and scars in the palm of his hand and some rough calluses near the tips of his fingers, yet despite these, Lin’s hand was unmarried and kept clean.

Lu Bixing lightly held onto Lin’s hand for a little while before closing his eyes to savor the feeling. He could clearly feel at the moment their hands touched that a mysterious force of energy was making his blood boil, making him feel the heat all the way up to his chest. Lu Bixing suddenly jolted back to his senses and grabbed another cup of water to calm himself back down.

He stood up and took a few strolls around the capsule until he managed to mentally stabilize himself. Lu Bixing then pulled up the ship’s log from his personal device and started recording this newfound ‘mysterious experience’ in his journal as if he were writing a scientific report. At the end of the report, he added in a few subjective lines about his own thoughts regarding this experience:

“Physically I was just sitting there, but psychologically I felt as if my consciousness left my body and danced around the mech multiple times already. The heat in my chest kept stimulating my endocrine system, and it’s like I breathed in too much laughing gas; even breathing makes me want to smile.”

“Are human relationships always so tricky and full of afterthoughts? Unfortunately, social etiquette among grown adults requires people to maintain a comfortable distance with each other unless they are in a mutually special relationship, making this difficult to test. Randomly picking up and caressing another person’s hand sounds like something a pervert would do, but I can’t find any controlled group experiments to draw references from.”

“What else can you feel when you’re in love?”

Yet this ‘love’ of his has a notoriously bad temper. When Lin Jingheng woke up the next day, a cold war began.

Lin Jingheng’s physical condition was top-notch; within 48 hours, whether it was the rainbow virus or the tissue dissolvents, everything had completely metabolized out of his system. Two days of deep sleep also completely wore off the after-effects of processing overload; Lin Jingheng was almost ready to beat up two more Primal Aliens.

Lu Bixing had no more excuses to keep Lin inside the medical chamber, but fortunately still had many tricks up his sleeves to deal with this erratic commander.

For the record, a pilot’s authority in a mech is unyielding; especially inside a small mech.

The minute Lin stepped out of the medical chamber, the entire mech was already filled with announcements personally recorded by Headmaster Lu himself on Interstellar Transportation Safety.

When Lin sat down he would find a tiny speaker slowly creeping up behind his chair; when he was standing by the wall, another speaker would drop down from the ceiling; anywhere he went, Headmaster Lu’s voice would follow him around like a pestering fly.

When the commander finally reached his limit and pulled up a pair of noise-canceling headphones from his personal device, he found himself completely defeated when a certain familiar voice greeted him gleefully from his own headphones: “Good morning, Lin! Sorry but I hijacked all electronics within this mech except Zhanlu, and that includes your personal device too. All hail the greatness of science! Now, let me play the newest edition of the Interstellar Transportation Safety Guide in audiobook format, Section 1…”

Lin Jingheng: “…………”

These pranks are getting way too creative!

Lu Bixing was scared of getting hit and hid in the small cafeteria on the second floor while constantly monitoring Lin through the mental network in secret.

At the same moment, the automated navigation system indicated that they were now entering the terminal back to the base and had successfully reconnected to the internal network. Lu Bixing didn’t have time to relax as he saw a flood of messages pop up the moment their connection was back; Monoeye Hawk, knocked out a day before, had woken up to see that his son ran out. Thinking that the little rascal went out and eloped with a certain someone, he swelled into a pufferfish and wrote a 10,000-word complaint filled with artistic curses.

Lu Bixing frantically closed his inbox to realize he somehow lost track of Lin within the short time he was distracted. He quickly scanned through the engine room, bedroom, medical chamber…and even shot a glance inside the restroom, but didn’t see Lin anywhere. He freaked out at the thought of Lin jumping out the mech to escape his pestering and jumped out from his hiding spot to look for his commander.

The moment he opened the door, Lu Bixing felt a hard grip on his shoulder. A strong force locked his arms behind him before he could turn around and pushed his entire body against the door.

Lu Bixing immediately raised a white flag: “Okay I give up, I give up! Human civilization is at its peak in the New Sidereal Century my friend, you can’t just rely on violence as a solution to every-…uh…”

“You better shut up.” Lin Jingheng commanded.

Lu Bixing closed his mouth and turned his head back to give Lin a bright smile.

“One more word from you,” Lin Jingheng pressed him down harder and leaned closer in by Lu Bixing’s ear. “And I will make sure they become your last words.”

“I’ll say it even if it becomes my last words.” Lu Bixing’s expression suddenly dropped. He looked sincerely into Lin Jingheng’s eyes. “Lin, I’ve been worried about you ever since I got the news that Planet Egret had been destroyed. I was so worried that I couldn’t sit still and had to find you the moment the high-energy particle waves passed. When I saw the leftovers of the transport portal and the countless shattered spaceship, I had the mech scan for remnants of Beijing and its communication portal. Do you have any idea how I felt at that time?”

The sudden change in tone managed to catch Lin Jingheng off-guard.

Lu Bixing continued softly: “I’ve never experienced that kind of nightmare. Have you ever thought that you could make the people that care about you worry?”

Lin Jingheng loosened his grip at these words.

“Maybe it’s because I’ve been connected to the network the past two days, but I haven’t been able to sleep well lately. I had a dream last night that the capture net ripped, and I wasn’t able to bring you back. I knew that Zhanlu could only last a few more seconds, but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t catch up to you.” Lu Bixing turned around and carefully adjusted his clothing. He held his hand out as if he were about to spill his whole heart out.

Lin Jingheng subconsciously took a step back.

“I’m not saying these things to scold you, I just wanted you to know how I felt. My heart hurts.”

A split second of shock appeared on Lin’s face but was quickly wiped away as Lin intentionally covered it up. He turned around and left without a word, walking faster than if he were running away from a massacre.

Lu Bixing kept his stance and watched Lin JIngheng leave with the same kind of shock, thinking to himself: “And he just retreated like this? I haven’t even gotten to the most important lines yet.”

Self-proclaimed scientist Mr. Lu is quick to write up a second report: “I just realized he’s a very passive person and never looks at his true feelings. Of course, that means he’s also much worse at expressing them. Despite that, he’s surprisingly easy to get along, and once you know his weakness, you can determine which of his threats are fake.”

According to his observations and logical deductions, Mr. Lu is convinced that he is the sole weakness of Commander Lin. Suddenly Lin JIngeheng’s threats just sounded like scolds to a child, and Lu Bixing grew more fearless now that he had a solid plan to deal with this man. And experimental results did prove that Lin Jingheng indeed would not actually do anything to harm him. Lu Bixing secretly calculated that the most violent confrontation he experienced from Lin was less than 100 Newtons in force; to an average adult man, it was clearly nothing more than some friendly hitting.

At the end, Lin JIngheng grew almost fearful of him.

With Zhanlu completely useless in hibernation mode and inside a mech piloted by Lu Bixing, there was no room left for Lin Jingeheng to be alone. Lu Bixing was literally everywhere he went, and for the first time ever Lin Jingheng desperately wanted to return to that garbage base. When he heard that the network could finally see the base from their location, Lin Jingheng at long last let out a sigh of relief.

“Look!” Lu Bixing suddenly jumped out from the back and grabbed onto Lin’s shoulders to drag him to the window.

Lin was in the middle of rehabilitation training. Even though the solvents had completely left his body, the effects of artificially dissolving muscle tissue still required him to rebuild his strength manually. He had just finished a session and was drenched in sweat. Lin Jingheng already disliked physical contact, and instinctively stepped away as Lu Bixing invaded his personal space.

Lu Bixing glued himself to Lin Jingheng and lowered his head down to sniff at Lin’s neck. “You’re fine, there’s not much sweat and it doesn’t smell. By the way, why did you turn down the temperature in the training room again? Isn’t it cold?”

Lin Jingheng could feel his skin start to get goosebumps and he shoved Lu Bixing away. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Don’t you know it’s not good to work out in a cold room? “Lu Bixing looked at him innocently. “Oh well, I’m not here to scold you today. Here, take a look outside!”

At a distance that was visible to the human eye, a line of mechs was circling around the base. They all continuously accelerated and decelerated in an orderly fashion, forming a small phalanx in space.

Lu Bixing giddily turned on communication and Saturday’s face popped up immediately on the screen.

“Oh, you’re ba-” Saturday was at first filled with excitement before shifting to a more serious expression when he saw Lin Jingheng standing not too far behind Lu Bixing. “We’re in the middle of training right now. All the pilots that joined in the building of the stellar protection system have officially enlisted in the Self-Defense Squad. We’ve been getting more and more enlistments every day since then, we’re almost out of mechs for everyone so we’re taking turns to train!”

Lin Jingheng raised an eyebrow.

“We can protect our home!” Saturday exclaimed.