Can Ci Pin - - - Chapter 71

Chapter 71 – People of The Eighth Galaxy’s Union Government

Yet it wasn’t time for bickering.

In terms of technological advancement, the Rainbow Virus had already been defeated. If this had been during a time of peace, the virus wouldn’t be much of a threat even in the slums like the Eighth Galaxy; however, society had already fallen to the point where people were using nutrient syringes as commodities in a basic economic system. If a wide-range virus epidemic happened, it would be impossible for just the Ninth Squadron to control the spread of the disease.

On top of that, the skeleton man was already causing panic among civilians on this busy city street. The scared merchants and shop owners all ran for their lives away from the individual, and the fear and cries of these people had already spread further than the actual virus. Various carts and robots all slammed into each other and blocked the narrow alleyways, making it almost impossible to get through.

Lin Jingheng pushed Lu Bixing towards the corner of the wall as he stepped up a slanted wall on the side and jumped up. He grabbed onto the balcony of the second floor and swiftly pulled himself up; the person peeking out from the window saw Commander Lin jump in and freaked out, then ran away in fear.

The old and rusted balcony already had small cracks and was in no shape to hold the weight of an adult man. A single step from Lin Jingheng already widened the cracks on the balcony; the tight dress shirt he wore didn’t impede his movements as he jumped towards a broken flagpole a few steps away from the balcony. The broken balcony he’d stepped on immediately collapsed the moment he jumped away, and the unfortunate souls that saw the heavy concrete fall to the ground had a dazed moment, thinking that the world was falling apart before yelling out the top of their lungs: “Earthquake!”

The wobbly flagpole also bent down under the force of the falling concrete. At the same time, Lin Jingheng utlized his unique sense of balance as a galactic soldier to climb up the leaning flagpole. As he reached near the top, the flagpole finally gave in and broke off at the bottom, falling towards the street. Like an extremely large pole vault, it launched Lin Jingheng out above the crowded streets and sent him towards the 6th floor inside a small building. Lin Jingheng quickly stabilized his landing with an arm on the ground and sped right towards the staircase to chase down the skeleton man towards the top of the building.

When the chaotic stampede of the crowd rushed in, Lu Bixing swiftly picked up a young boy who hadn’t had time to run and raised him above his head. Children and the elderly were the most likely victims during these times of unorganized crowd rushing; if someone were to fall in a narrow alleyway like this, a dangerous domino effect would be inevitable. Even two-legged humans that couldn’t run as fast were not any more safe than a stampede of horses when they were rushing in a crowd.

“Shh–” Lu Bixing smiled at the scared little boy as he placed him on high ground. He then pulled out his personal device that was connected to the internal network of the Milky Way City and hacked directly into the announcement system of the shopping district. Then, he turned a voice recording application into a microphone as he pulled out a small gun from his pocket, turned it into blasting mode and turned off the noise-cancellation function. He reached up towards the sky and fired three rounds into the air while he announced into the microphone: “Stay where you are and don’t move! We have the vaccine for the Rainbow Virus!”

The crowd was stunned by the sudden loud noise and quieted down for a few moments.

Lu Bixing took a deep breath as his voice came out of the speakers surrounding the shopping district: “Good evening everyone, the Silver Ten’s Ninth Squadron of the Silver Fortress from the Interstellar Union just retrieved the Eighth Galaxy and took over the headquarters of the AUS 300 kilometers away. We will very soon be restoring order within the Eighth Galaxy, so please do not panic. The vaccine for the Rainbow Virus is a standard medication in military stores; if you feel ill, please seek medical attention and treatment immediately from the base and make sure to self-quarantine.”

His words were stern and clear but not forceful, which slowly calmed the panicking crowd.

“This is a narrow alleyway that can easily become a ground for accidents. I will emphasize again, please do not panic and evacuate in an orderly manner.” Lu Bixing said, “The Rainbow Virus is no longer a terminal illness today. Please believe us when we say that the Union will never give up on any of its citizens…Excuse me, please let me pass through.”

The people of the Eighth Galaxy had always been immune to the pep talks of the Union until they saw Lu Bixing walk straight through the crowd and quickly towards the opposite direction to the skeleton man, clearly not giving any second thought for the Rainbow Virus.

This carefree attitude was more convincing than words.

“What ‘citizen’ bullshit;, I’ve never heard of that. I’m a man, not a citizen.”

“What did he just say? That base got taken over by what? Did we get a new government again?”

“This son of a bitch government changes faster than clothing.”

“Who are you? What do you even do in the Union, are you reliable?”

Lu Bixing smiled at the wave of insults without responding or getting upset–if the crowd had the energy to point and complain at him, that meant they’d at least regained some senses and wouldn’t trample over children.

The judging crowd made way for Lu Bixing to pass only for Lu Bixing to see Lin Jingheng waving at him not too far ahead, but the target skeleton man had already disappeared.

Lu Bixing was stumped: “What happened, an energy field?”

Lin Jingheng contacted the Ninth Squadron at the base and said something as he nodded towards Lu Bixing–the skeleton man had seen Lin Jingheng chase after him earlier and panicked, then opened up an energy field to escape.

Terrestrial energy fields functioned similarly to space warping, but the fundamentals were quite different. Energy field transfers could be compared to a torture to anyone that’d experienced it before; even the most fit and physically capable would feel their skin peeking off, let alone the skeleton man that was already carrying a half-dead body of flesh.

“Is he crazy?” Lu Bixing held up his hand and quickly gathered up the remaining radiation from the energy field. “If he walked through in that state he’d be completely destroyed before he reaches his destination–what time was the transfer?”

Lin Jingheng: “Standard time, 13 hours 52 minutes and 28 seconds.”

“Okay, wait a second.” Lu Bixing rolled up his sleeves and quickly simulated an energy decay model on his personal device. It was as if time had stopped in his hands; he followed through the model and traced a vague line towards the skeleton man, and promptly recreated the energy field that he’d created. It also gave a detailed description of the energy field–a terrestrial energy field would usually have a coordinate parameter of between 11 to 36 – 17 parameters popped up from Lu Bixing’s personal device.

“I found the destination.” Lu Bixing sent the coordinates to Lin Jingheng, “I’ll send it to Captain Turan as well.”

Back when Lin Jingheng snuck out of the Black Orchid Academy to send Zhanlu over to help Lu Xin escape, the method he’d used was through the energy field. Energy fields were hard to track and posed a safety concern in the Union, so a lot of places had installed anti-field signals to prevent its usage. And yet, he’s never seen such bold and flamboyant use of energy fields.

“It’s nothing really,” Lu Bixing shrugged. “This trick only works within three minutes after the energy field opens. Once it’s past the three minute mark, the decaying radiation would be almost completely gone and the climate around the area would change. At that point there wouldn’t be any point to tracking them since the deviation of the positioning system would be over 50 kilometers.”

Lin Jingheng remote-controlled the armed mobile over to the closest crossroad and entered in the coordinates Lu Bixing gave him: “Did you register a patent for this technology yet?”

“No,” Lu Bixing answered. “This was something I made when I was young to be able to run away from home.”

“Good, I’m buying this. I’ll pay the rate of a Class A military technology patent fee to use it.”

“Wow,” Lu Bixing followed him into the armed mobile. “Hey Commander, can I take this as you taking responsibility for me?”

The armed mobile accelerated violently as Lu Bixing finished his sentence as if it had also been shocked by the comment. The two fell back onto their seats as the mobile zoomed out.

Lin Jingheng had been left speechless too many times already and remained silent for a while. Then, although unclear whether it was from anger or defeat, he actually smiled.

He then pulled out an energy field mediation syringe from a small compartment on the ceiling of the mobile and poked it right into Lu Bixing.

Lu Bixing was just finishing up his excitable lines when he was on the receiving end of a needle and yelped: “Mister Lin, if you were to be in medical school with these skills you’d be held back for another eight years!”

“There are no medical schools in the First Galaxy, there’s only medical research.” Lin Jingheng answered, “Sit tight, I’m opening up the energy field.”

The surroundings began to twist and warp into a mess of a massive energy blackhole. The equipment on the armed mobile started making strange sounds while Lu Bixing felt all the organs in his body get turned inside-out. Thankfully, the mediation syringe began to take effect and blocked off all the uncomfortable feelings as Lu Bixing felt like his entire body turned into rubber.

A few seconds later, the armed mobile passed through the energy field and landed on the destination coordinates. The overheating alert rang immediately as it landed and displayed a completely empty battery sign.

Lin Jingheng had already experienced jumping around in an incomplete energy field and wasn’t affected by the discomfort of warping. He only staggered a little the moment he got off the mobile and quickly regained his balance before Lu Bixing could lend him a hand.

From the maps, the operational base was southwest of Milky Way City, and the place they had just arrived was a little further north of the city.

This seemed to be an abandoned old factory. There was an artificial river stream filled with trash right before them, with the door to the factory wide open. To the side, there was a clock tower of about six or seven meters tall filled with crows atop the clock.

The clock on the tower was still ticking dutifully, but it did not follow the standard time that Lin Jingheng used, instead using an independant calendar on Qiming. Due to the different orbits of planets, each planet actually had their own system of calculating time; the ‘standard time’ was really only used by arrogant interstellar travelers.

Lu Bixing himself enjoyed messing around with strange technologies himself and would always assume others had their own secret tricks up their sleeves. Despite complaining about the skeleton man being crazy, Lu Bixing still thought with optimism that perhaps he had been able to pass through an energy field by himself because he had some unknown technology–for example, a better mediation system…until he found the corpse of said person under the clock tower.

Numerous crows surrounded the dead flesh on the ground as if eyeing their next meal, but their animal instinct held them back from actually coming down to take a bite.

Lin Jingheng put on his gloves and ripped the jacket off the corpse. The skeleton man’s spine was already broken into multiple pieces as his entire body twisted in a strange position. His left arm was already rotten, the impact of landing having snapped the joints of the arm while his lower arm had completely detached and landed a few meters away from the main body–which he only managed to find with the help of the crows.

“Why?” Lu Bixing asked in confusion. “Is it because…because he didn’t get to hear what I said and ran off into the energy field?”

Lin Jingheng didn’t respond.

When Lu Bixing had been making the announcement, they’d both actually heard it. The skeleton man had opened the energy field right after the speech.

The strong proclamation had been simply too much wishful thinking all in one line that glorified both the Union and its citizens, which incidentally made everyone uncomfortable.

According to the charter of the Union, the Union would never leave any citizen behind.

Yet the residents of the Eighth Galaxy did not count as citizens.

Just like how the Union categorized every foreign force as ‘pirates’, the Eighth Galaxy was the desert border between the ‘civilized world’ and ‘pirates’ realm’. While not everyone in the Eighth Galaxy were pirates, they were still barbarians with very close ties to the pirates–to the Union, they were like primitive cannibalistic tribes that they would not accept as their own kind.

In the center of the Union, everyone knew that the government in the Eighth Galaxy only existed in a symbolic sense; their main job was to show their faces and count in for the numbers. Even the anti-missile system on the capital planet Cayley had been installed a hundred years ago when Lu Xin just recovered the Eighth Galaxy. Then almost 140 years later, the poor system still had never received an upgrade.

Because of the Eighth Galaxy’s half-sovereign status, it was difficult for the central government to collect taxes and fees. The financial aid from the Union was also even more fickle, forcing the government to constantly be in a state of having no funds to pay their employees. Lin Jingheng found an employee ID on the corpse that said “Secretary General of the Eighth Galaxy’s Central Government”, which was almost like a fake ID that could be purchased at any local toy store.

Lin Jingheng took off his gloves, pulled out a disinfecting gun inside the armed mobile’s first aid kit, and cleaned up the poisonous corpse: “He risked his life jumping into an energy field at his state, that means he might have comrades. I’ll go check inside, you wait here.”

Lu Bixing didn’t listen and followed him in.

The talkative Lu Bixing suddenly quieted down for a while as he stepped on the dry ground, and then suddenly asked: “Lin, if a large fleet of pirate were to invade while you were still in the Silver Fortress, would you sacrifice the Eighth Galaxy under extreme circumstances?”

“If I were still in the Silver Fortress, those pirates would never enter the Union.” Lin Jingheng paused, and then answered straightforwardly, “As for the Eighth Galaxy, it is still the Union’s territory. But if necessary, we won’t stubbornly stay. A strategic evacuation is quite understandable.”

“So if you must, you would give up this deserted land in the Eighth Galaxy, right? It’s not just you — the Union would also make the same decision because the entire society’s ideology agrees.”

Lin Jingheng silently agreed.

“Because we’re just wild creatures in the wilderness with unknown political stances. People from the Union are citizens of the Union, and pirates are just pirates. We’re just soulless and unintelligent creatures; talking to us about the Union Charter and the Pledge of Freedom would just be talking to a rock.” Lu Bixing nodded as he took a deep breath. He looked far beyond the seemingly endless horizon and night sky…Lin Jingheng wasn’t a smooth talking politician and wouldn’t bother putting on a dramatic show. He was also so used to being an asshole that he didn’t even want to bother pretending to maintain a politically correct set of morals; as long as he accepted you as one of his own men, he’d usually just focus on the objective reality and say whatever was necessary.

Lu Bixing: “So…if the Rainbow Virus really does break out on Qiming, the Ninth Squadron will immediately retreat without wasting its medical resources…no it’s fine, you don’t need to say it, I understand this is just how it is.”

Just like extreme animal rights activists, no one would fight for animals to have equal rights as humans–cats don’t have the right of portrait, dogs don’t have the rights of privacy, and lab rats don’t have the freedom of speech. It was natural that the most elite fleet of the Union would not stick around because of a plague.

“The Ninth Squadron has the least members of all Squadrons in the Silver Ten, they’re the vanguard. They aren’t trained to contain a mass epidemic, nor do they have the public coordination skill and resources to carry it out,” Lin Jingheng said calmly, “If it really does turn into an epidemic outbreak, retreating will be the only option.”

And that’s why it better not happen, he thought. He then connected to the armed mobile with his personal device and opened up the virus monitor on the shield.

But strangely, while the virus monitor had no dramatic reaction, the armed alert flashed.

Lin Jingheng grabbed Lu Bixing’s shoulder suddenly and pulled him to the side; just then, a laser gun shot through the place Lu Bixing had just been standing on, cutting through Lin Jingheng’s sleeves. He pulled out his own gun and shot back, a loud cry of pain came out from behind the old factory’s window. Lu Bixing and Lin Jingheng exchanged a quick glance at each other and both ran towards inside the factory along the side in opposite directions.

Lu Bixing kicked down the broken door to see a person dripping blood run towards the corner of the factory, revealing a piece of rotten skin on his neck that clearly indicated he was infected with the Rainbow Virus.

“Hey wait, we’re not pirates from the AUS,” Lu Bixing called out, “We don’t intend to harm you!”

The individual didn’t listen.

Lu Bixing: “You’re from the Union Government of the Eighth Galaxy, right?”

The person stopped his footsteps and turned his head around in alarm, pointing a gun towards Lu Bixing with his shivering hands.