Can Ci Pin - - - Chapter 66

Chapter 66 – My First Profession Is War, Second Is Sleeping With Men

This was the first time Lu Bixing witnessed the funeral of wanderers in space. It was a silent memorial.

There were no graves, no eulogies, no corpses, and no ceremonies.

White candles only a few centimeters tall lined up on the ground, each representing the name of the person attached to them. Ms. Plump lit up the candles as everyone else stood before them silently until the flames burned out, signifying the end of life. Like the short-lived candlefire, the memories of every lost life vanished into space.

To the people that lived on this station, they were just like grains of stardust within the wasteland of death. They’d never had a background, a family, nor had any achievements in life worth celebrating. They’d struggled to live for hundreds of years, facing countless hardships over time, only to die quietly when their times came without leaving a trace.

A number of small mechs made their ways in and out as members of the Ninth Squadron changed their shifts. The heat waves from the mech engines and artificial sunlight jumbled up the air circulation inside the mech dock, creating an interesting artificial evening breeze. The flames on the candles extinguished one by one, and the evening breeze gently caught the small notes with names written on them, carrying them into the streets and alleyways of the residential areas until they also disappeared from sight.

And then it was time for dinner.

The team of Ninth Squadron members that had just ended their shifts were just as self-serving as their Captain and mingled into the party as they smelled food from afar.

Ms. Plump poured a glass of home-brewed ale for Lu Bixing; while still rough, it still didn’t taste too bad. Lu Bixing took the glass and walked over to Saturday, giving him a light tap on the shoulder.

Over the last few months, Saturday was thrown into the harsh training of patrolling by Lin Jingheng. The hellish training had taken a physical toll on him; the old roundness in his face sunk in like he’d hit his second puberty. His facial features had sharpened too; he

no longer looked like a child.

“I can’t believe the Prince of Cayley just died like that.” Saturday looked down and stomped hard on the ground to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating and that he was really back home. “It’s like a dream…what do we do now? Are the pirates going to send other people over?”

Lu Bixing answered: “That I can’t say, it will depend on what game the AUS decides to play in the Eighth Galaxy. Or maybe Ares Von was just a pawn in their hands.”

“That’s true,” Saturday held up his glass and cheered with Lu Bixing. “Besides a madman like Ares Von, who else would even want a hand in the Eighth Galaxy? Even pirates know there’s nothing of value here.”

Lu Bixing thought about it for a moment and then asked: “The station’s coordinates are no longer safe, what do you guys plan on doing?”

Saturday’s whole body sunk as he heard the question, arching his back like a spineless old man as he responded enthusiastically: “Tell me, Professor Lu, did you have a high drop-out rate for your school when you were still headmaster back then?”

While the drop-out rate in Starry Sea Academy was indeed unusually high, Lu Bixing never thought it was his problem.

“Your expectations are too high. I can’t believe you’re asking me what I plan on doing…” Saturday’s gaze remained glued on the ground while he muttered. “I really want to just take my brain out, put it to the side and lie on the ground so I don’t have to think about anything. I just escaped a close death and used up all my energy.”

Lu Bixing was well aware of his limits and didn’t question him any further. The two just sat next to each other wordlessly as they watched the artificial sun set under the station.

As the others downed their sorrows with the rest of ale and beer that had been brought over, the mech dock grew lively with chatter. Complaints and gossip flooded the dock as drunk residents gathered up like a vulgar choir.

“Foucault just said earlier that we’ll still call ourselves the ‘Eighth Galaxy Self-Defense Force’ from now on, so we don’t even need to change the name of the executive building.” Saturday suddenly spoke up with this strange background music without really thinking, which quickly turned into a ramble. “I remember when I first started the Self-Defense Squad, it felt like I chose my own fate. I was full of myself and filled with blind confidence from the pep talks you gave me…and now I finally know that you were just being nice and giving us lies of kindness. I’m actually not in control of fate, it’s fate that pushed me and dragged me to this point without me knowing. When I sat down here, I felt like I suddenly lost all my memories and couldn’t remember how I got on a mech to the frontline, how I raised my cannons up at someone. And for a second, I thought the person sitting next to me was Holiday…”

Lu Bixing didn’t notice the sudden choke up and change in his tone when he said the name “Holiday”, and turned over to look at Saturday a few seconds later.

“I thought…” Saturday tried to relax his expression but couldn’t, scrunching up his eyebrows and nose in pain. A painful whimper came out of his throat as half a kebab stick remained in his mouth. A trail of blood also rolled down his face from his nose. Saturday subconsciously wiped it with his hands, only to leave more bloody marks on his face.

Nobody else heard this mournful whimper while they all released all their stress and emotions out like there was no tomorrow.

Lu Bixing stood up quietly, and made his way towards the mech control room past the crowd.

Lin Jingheng didn’t leave the control room. Perhaps annoyed by the noises, he pulled down all the noise-cancelling window layers and turned off the lights. The only light in the room was the 360 hologram screen that replayed the entire battle with Ares Von around the control room. He held a digital pen at the tip of his fingers like a professional strategic board game player.

From the day the three-month contract ended, Lin Jingheng had been awake for almost 48 hours. Perhaps he was really at his limit from overloading mental and physical energies – the moment the elevator door opened, Lu Bixing saw the commander almost fall asleep as a cigarette fell out of his hand.

Lin Jingheng shot up in surprise and clicked his tongue in annoyance. There was nobody else around here so he didn’t even bother picking up the cigarette with his hands; he tried to pullit back with his foot, but accidentally kicked it up towards the other person’s direction instead.

Lu Bixing announced: “Nice shot! That was a three-pointer!”

Lu Bixing’s voice somehow hit a fight or flight button in Lin Jingheng, making the latter sit up instantly and switch to a proper composure within seconds. Lin’s posture was straight and proper like a textbook image, it was hard to imagine he had been half-falling asleep only moments ago. Lu Bixing felt like he’d just stepped on the commander’s tail 20 meters away, and subconsciously lightened his footsteps as he carefully made his way over. He took out a freshly cooked shish kebab stick and held it in front of Lin Jingheng, who left an empty packaging of condensed nutrition packs on the side.

Lu Bixing: “You know, I used to eat condensed nutrition packs too. But now I feel like this thing can be a candidate of humanity’s top 10 worst inventions.”

The size of a standard nutrition pack is about as big as the palm of a hand and only a little more firm than konjac. It melts in the mouth as one consumes it and doesn’t really fill the stomach, almost no different than drinking water. But the nutrients get directly absorbed without needing to digest solid food, making it a very convenient replacement. Despite not being filling, nutrition packs have special ingredients that suppress hunger within the consumer for a while; so even if it doesn’t feel filling, the craving for food would drop drastically.

By eliminating digestion time, risk of hurting the digestive system and cravings, these nutrition packs were almost inhumanly healthy.

The inhumanly healthy Commander Lin didn’t even blink at the fresh meat before him and gestured for Lu Bixing to take it back.

“I heard the cafeteria in the Silver Fortress only serves nutrition packs.”

“What’s wrong with nutrition packs?” Lin Jingheng shifted his attention back onto his notes and answered nonchalantly, “The quality of the nutrition packs on the Silver Fortress were much higher than what you’d normally get in local markets; they’re almost as expensive as hiring a kitchen full of chefs from five-star restaurants. Besides, the individual packs are customized to fit the needs of every soldier, it saves us a lot of time.”

Lu Bixing questioned: “Wasting time is helpful to improving the quality of life, what’s the point of being so conservative all the time?”

Lin Jingheng rolled his eyes at him and responded, “I don’t want to think with my stomach when I still have functioning brain cells.”

Lu Bixing was used to his sour responses by now and didn’t mind it. He picked up the shish kebab and bit off a piece of mushroom from in between the meat as he spoke: “When I was still a kid on Planet Cayley, there was a piece of land next to my house that my old man bought out to build a multi-level farm. It was originally supposed to be a garden, but he didn’t like the idea and decided to grow some crops instead. Have you seen a farm before?”

Wolto was known as having the universe’s most beautiful gardens and natural landscapes, every tree planted was a work of art on its own, so they did grow fruits or vegetables. The Wolto-born Commander Lin judged the Monoeyed Hawk’s farming interests and sneered in response as he quietly thought to himself: Maybe this old man actually is a mutant farm cat.

“There’s a sensor beside each plant in the farm that has colored indicators. When the lights turn red, that would mean the fruit or vegetable is at the prime time for harvest. You can see where the red lights are by scanning it with your personal device; going inside the farm was always like a game of treasure hunting, and when you picked your harvest you could give it to the robots to prepare it for you to eat…My favorite was the grill inside the mushroom farm.”

Lin Jingheng’s eyes remained on his notes quietly as Lu Bixing spoke, but surprisingly he showed no sign of annoyance on his face with the extra noise beside him.

Lu Bixing then continued: “When all the fighting and war is over, I’ll build another school. I’ll even save some space in the back to build an indoor farm, and I’ll make sure to design it like a maze inside.”

Lin Jingheng circled the word “ammunition” on his notes as Lu Bixing shared his grand dream, and thought: “You sure have a childish interest.”

“Too bad I wasn’t particularly healthy as a child and had some dietary restrictions, so my old man wouldn’t let me go inside the farm. I annoyed him enough to the point where he finally agreed to take me in and grill some mushrooms for me when it snowed. Cayley wasn’t like Beijing and didn’t have a winter that lasted three years; in fact, the area we lived in only had two seasons: dry desert weather and rain. When it was dry, it barely rained, and when it was rainy it was still too hot to snow, so you can imagine how rare it was for our place to snow. In the 20 years I lived there, it only snowed three times. So to me, snow was like a big surprise to me…does Wolto snow?”

Lin Jingheng: “……Yes.”

The snow on Wolto was all artificially controlled. During daylight savings, the Black Orchid Academy would rain once a week. In the winter, snowfall was controlled every twenty days, which always led to half-day off school and extra homework. In Lin Jingheng’s memories, snow was very much associated with the library for this reason. His heart sank slightly at Lu Bixing’s words; Monoeyed Hawk wasn’t a model parent, and fell into the category of being easily persuasive. To make someone like him keep such a strict eye on Lu Bixing meant that ‘not a healthy child’ was perhaps an understatement.

“Oh, right,” Lu Bixing suddenly remembered something and continued, “I know you guys at the Black Orchid Academy are always on the clock and accurate down to the second, that’s boring…Hey, this thing is pretty good.”

He bit off a beef ball from the kebab stick, but as he did, the juice inside the beef poured out inside his mouth, almost burning him to tears. The smell of food slowly engulfed the main control room; the virtual fleet of the Cayley pirates on the screen also looked as if they were stumped by this strange smell. Lin Jingheng felt his eyelids twitch and finally put down his notes in defeat as he realized he could no longer concentrate. He then asked: “Your health was bad?”

“When I was a kid, a kid!” Lu Bixing answered hastily as he desperately attempted to breathe in some cold air to ease off the burn, almost making him sound like an annoying direct marketing agent. “I’m completely fine now! I go to sleep and wake up at regular times and work out regularly, I can live in zero-gravity in space for a year without any problems. You can trust me on this, don’t worry.”

Lin Jingheng wanted to nod in response, but caught something off about the explanation: “Why should I be worried?”

Lu Bixing gave him an awkward smile with half a meatball still in his mouth: “Nothing.”

Lin Jingheng could also feel his vein about to snap again until Lu Bixing quickly covered up: “You asked first! Hey hey, why are you frowning again? I’m not leaving…I just came here, why do you want me to leave already? Commander, I’ve noticed this for a while but why are you so easily embarrassed? Here, have some meatballs.”

Lin Jingheng: “…”

“Especially around me,” Lu Bixing remarked joyfully. “I’ve noticed this. You don’t have this problem around anyone else – why am I the special one?”

Lin Jingheng was still hung up and sympathetic at the shocking background about how this boy could only eat mushrooms during snowy days and couldn’t scold him too harshly. Yet he didn’t know how to respond to Lu Bixing’s playful lines, so he angrily grabbed a meatball and shoved it in his mouth to forcefully swallow his frustration.

Unlike Monoeyed Hawk, the maturity and dependability from Lin Jingheng was something he was born with. Having been the head of the Silver Fortress for so long, there was a strong air of authoritativeness that surrounded him, making him easily the most adult-like person around Lu Bixing. The silent approval and tolerance especially pulled out the inner child inside Lu Bixing– the more Lin ignored him, the more he wanted to annoy and bother Lin.

The bothersome child made Lin Jingheng eat an extra meal in the control room. Exhaustion from overwork also made Lin Jingheng admit defeat and secretly send an S.O.S to Monoeyed Hawk, who busted in the control room to physically drag his son away. After finally getting a moment to rest, Lin Jingheng took the Ninth Squadron out the next day to clean up the remaining pirates of the Cayley fleet before the sun even rises, leaving Turan to watch the station by herself.

But even the wisest of men could still make mistakes, and the one big mistake Lin Jingheng made was to leave the number one gossip queen of the Silver Ten with Lu Bixing.

Turan very quickly filled herself in on the relationship between Lu Bixing and her boss and proceeded to suffer from two whole days of PTSD before she finally digested all the information. After getting over her initial disbelief, she voluntarily jumped into the mess and initiated a conversation with Lu Bixing: “I can’t believe this brickhead didn’t kill you yet, that must mean he’s got something for you. There’s no other explanation. Watch, I bet the long-time abstinence just screwed with his head too much so now he doesn’t even know what he wants either. My first profession is war, second is sleeping with men. Here, let me teach you some useful tricks to get the man of your dreams.”