Can Ci Pin - - - Chapter 89

Chapter 89 – Getting Used to Eating With Him Everyday

Lu Bixing grinned: “Minister, what’s the rush? Do you plan on announcing the galaxy’s independence and inviting everyone over for a big dinner?”

Prime Minister Edward also realized that his question was a little strange and sighed. When young people are impatient, they’re simply short-tempered and naive; when the elderly become impatient, it’s because they know that they don’t have much time left.

“Let’s repair the intergalactic communication network in the Eighth Galaxy first and inform the people that we will be rebuilding the government. But remember that it’s not a good time to advertise it too much right now so we don’t need to create a whole campaign. We can then use Qiming, the Milky Way City as a starting point and work our way up. Prime Minister, it doesn’t take one meal to feel a cattle full, why don’t we try and stay optimistic? Qiming is a nice place, the ecosystem on this planet is near-perfect with plenty of natural resources, and over 70% of the land is fit for humans and large mammals to live on. We don’t need to waste massive amounts of energy to maintain a climate and ozone layer, plus there’s enough population here that can join the workforce on top of old factories we can recover. Production can be broken down into two main sources—physical supply and technology, and we’ve already solved 50% of the problem with natural resources here. Also, don’t you think even the name of the planet sounds pretty nice?”

But the Prime Minister couldn’t stay optimistic. He naturally had a large body frame, but because of how underweight he was and how his back hunched over, his figure looked like a fragile twig. He had also just recovered from a big illness and was often hit with worries, so his expression was always quite grim; the wrinkles on his face were growing rapidly like weed on a grassfield, making him look almost like a walking mummy. If he were to walk around in Wolto like this back in the days, his looks would be frowned upon by the city.

The chicken soup of “everything will be better tomorrow” that the young man was cooking was a little too difficult for him to digest. The Prime Minister lowered his head to look at the interstellar map of the Eighth Galaxy and said: “Sometimes I think Commander Lu Xin did a bad thing.”

Lu Bixing was taken aback.

Minister Edward continued: “If we never learned about dignity and just lived like soulless creatures under the rule of the pirates, it may not have been such a terrible thing. Even dogs and pigs have emotions; they run and jump in the breeding farms without any worries and don’t dwell in self-loathing and pain because they know they’re dogs and pigs. They also never hold out unreasonable expectations for their lifestyle, isn’t that great? Why can’t we also just die peacefully without regrets in our ignorance?”

“Prime Minister,” Lu Bixing walked toward him and kneeled down slightly. He turned his gaze up at the old man and said, “Freedom and dignity are human nature, it’s not something that Commander Lu Xin brought over. Wasn’t the reason why you all agreed to follow him back then that he ignited the fire inside your hearts? You understood the deepest pain in your heart so you know the pain of others; rediscovering yourself meant you also saw through insanity, foolishness and evil.”

The Prime Minister almost jumped from his seat. From that young man’s pair of eyes, through the tunnel of time, he saw a reflection of Commander Lu Xin from a century ago.

Just then, a notification popped up on Lu Bixing’s personal device. The young man shot up in excitement and said: “Mister Prime Minister, you can replan the Milky Way City and the planet as necessary and form your own team. I’ll take care of fixing communication, so just let me know what your ideas are and we’ll make it reality, let’s split it up like this! We have too much to do, I’ll have to take a leave first!”

Lu Bixing secretly downloaded Commander Lin’s daily schedule and carefully picked out all his breaks and empty hours. Lin Jingheng had very little break time because physical training was equivalent to rest to this man. His breakfast time was only 20 minutes after morning training, and 30 minutes each for lunch and dinner; aside from these, he didn’t really have ‘breaktime’ on the schedule, but saved quite a few blocks of time for emergency situations.

So, Lu Bixing also changed his own schedule to match the commander’s so that he could go bother Lin during his break and meal times. During open hours, he would sneak out to try his luck.

Monoeyed Hawk’s team returned half a month later, and during these 20 days, the impatient Prime Minister quickly rebuilt a skeleton of the new government. He worked restlessly from day to night with his team to search for old documents and began discussing the future plans of Qiming.

Lu Bixing approved of White and his classmates’ proposal of a “Preliminary Mech” and started a new school term–the Starry Sea Academy that only now existed in concept with four students who had a small school term every 2 months. At the end of each term, students needed to propose a new research topic, and after Lu Bixing selected from said topics, the four students would split up the work and complete it in the next term while Lu Bixing shifted the lecture focus to a topic related to their project. He wasn’t a walking encyclopedia, and ever since he was forced to take on the role of a professor due to lack of teachers, he had run into numerous fields from the students’ proposals that he wasn’t familiar with himself. Oftentimes, he had to self-study ahead of time and digest all the information as fast as he could before he could answer questions the students threw at him.

During this time, Lu Bixing also completed an effective plan to fix the entire Eighth Galaxy’s communication network without any delays, and while complaining that there weren’t enough robots and an engineering team around him to help out, he fully invaded Commander Lin’s life…even though Lin Jingheng really didn’t have much of a life.

Lin Jingheng started getting used to eating with him everyday. Sometimes when Lu Bixing left early, he would run into a Lin Jingheng who had just finished his morning run. This was the only time in the day where the commander’s body emitted a bit of heat, and if Lu Bixing could manage to get a hug full of sweat he could also use the excuse to borrow the commander’s bathroom for a shower. Lu Bixing found immense joy and surprises borrowing anything the commander owns….even though the young scientist himself doesn’t even understand what’s so exciting about these things.

As long as it wasn’t a time like physical recovery that required specific meal plans, Lin Jingheng wasn’t very strict with his regular diet and could eat things outside of nutrient bars if he wanted. He only needed to watch his portions, otherwise Zhanlu would give him a warning.

Lu Bixing discovered that he liked food with strong tastes; hated sweets, hated foods with sticky texture, but wasn’t a picky eater overall. When he ran into something he disliked, he wouldn’t say anything and only swallow it down quickly and take a drink of water to wash down the taste.

Lin Jingheng was once worried that he didn’t have much to talk about over the dinner table, but facts proved him wrong. Mister Lu could talk to himself for hours on his own and always found ways to avoid awkward silences.

As for Lu Bixing himself, perhaps due to his extreme filter called love, he didn’t find Lin Jingheng boring at all. Even though this person would curse while playing video games, bullied cats and had questionable morals at times, the elite education from the Union didn’t get buried under his rebellious and gangster-like nature. Eden gave him a strong foundation, the Black Orchid Academy taught him how to think about problems critically, the Union’s bureaucracy forced him to sign the Third Squadron’s reports and made him quite a sharp critic of various technological problems. Sometimes, Lu Bixing felt like he found a close friend that shared his wisdom.

What’s more was that this “close friend” had a unique sense of humor when he started mocking people. As long as Lu Bixing himself wasn’t the target of these insults, they were quite interesting to listen to from the side.

If Lu Bixing didn’t have other plans after dinner, he would huddle up inside Lin Jingheng’s little breakroom. While Lin Jingheng continued with his extensive psychological training under a complex simulation, Lu Bixing would lay on his bed to prepare lecture materials for his students or work overtime for the Prime Minister, each not bothering one another.

He usually stayed until late at night before he would reluctantly leave. Once, however, Lu Bixing fell asleep in the middle of researching data, and because Lin Jingheng didn’t want to wake him up, he let the young man stay for the night on that clean single bed.

This one night gave birth to countless rumors the next day; half of them from Turan, the other half from Saturday. The two’s wild imaginations were unparallelled to the point where it was hard to tell who came up with what, and the list became long enough to write a book called “The Indecent Encyclopedia of the NSC Era”.

Yet in reality, this sleepover experience wasn’t quite pleasant. Lin Jingheng was very conservative and morally righteous and didn’t even touch a button on Lu Bixing. In addition, because he had no idea how to take care of people and only knew to leave a thin blanket, Lu Bixing slept the whole night with his jacket on and got up the next morning with a sore back from his metal belt and the commander’s hard bed.

At the same time, Lin Jingheng wasn’t someone that could fully relax before others. Even if he made the decision to accept Lu Bixing and even tried to touch the young man, a decision was a decision and a habit is a habit. It was already quite rough for two grown men to share a single bed, so when Lu Bixing turned and fell onto Lin Jingheng, the commander’s heart rate couldn’t go down for the whole night as the warm body pressed on him like a heavy but sweet burden.

The next day, Lu Bixing saw that he didn’t manage to sleep the whole night and felt his heart ache more than his back, then decided he wouldn’t bother Lin at night anymore.

When they first got together, both of them were very careful, especially Lu Bixing, who kept reminding himself to maintain a good impression in front of Lin Jingheng. He wouldn’t even dare to move around when sitting on the commander’s bed; but while it’s easy to speak of change it was hard to carry out. His30-year messy habit couldn’t change overnight. Sometimes he would still throw things to the side subconsciously, but he quickly discovered that Lin Jingheng didn’t really mind. The commander’s OCD tendencies were trained into habit by the military and not his nature, so he was quite easygoing and able to avoid imposing his own standards on others.

Though when it came to aesthetics, the situation was reversed—Mr. Lin had a closet full of dress shirts that looked like they were mass produced to last him through all seasons of the year. He didn’t use mirrors and had absolutely no interest in dressing himself up, yet he still had an amazing talent in mocking others. Lu Bixing also found out that he was especially harsh on people that looked too gaudy whether it was their outfit or demeanor; he simply found them intolerable. Therefore, Turan and Monoeyed Hawk, who was still on business leave, were the two unfortunate souls that always ended up being the target of his scolding.

These 20 days were both long and short to Lu Bixing. When he recalled what he was doing during this time, he would think it was the longest 20 days of his life; the excitable old mummy Prime Minister followed him around with work almost restlessly and he had no idea how he managed to survive that. Yet when he counted the times he glued himself to Lin Jingheng, he felt like time passed too quickly and wanted to grab onto those fleeting times and not let it pass.

“Sir, old Mister Lu and Superintendent Yu sent a message saying they plan on returning today.” Lin Jingheng barely managed to send Turan off and found a break for himself. He wanted to go find Lu Bixing but heard that the Prime Minister dragged the young man to a meeting;before he could have time to feel disappointment, Zhanlu added onto the fire with this announcement.

Lin Jingheng: “You have a dad alert function now?”

Zhanlu answered: “This is a special request from Captain Turan. She said that if you can’t get a hold of the expatriates’ locations in real time, you’ll give attitudes for no reason.”

Lin Jingheng: “Expatriates don’t include Monoeyed Hawk, thank you.”

As they talked, Lu Bixing’s four students walked out of the mech station. Saturday also returned from his patrol and blew a playful whistle toward Mint in the same direction; unfortunately, he didn’t catch Lin Jingheng nearby and became collateral damage to the commander’s anger. The slightly upset Commander Lin then punished him for 3 rounds of squats around the mech station for “harassment of underaged girls”.

Saturday caught Zhanlu imitating his little whistle from earlier very soon after. The expressionless AI blew out a playful tune and scared off the people around him.

Lin Jingheng: “What are you doing?”

“Keeping a backup for you.” Zhanlu answered with a stern face, “When humans mate, they sometimes imitate birds with whistles. But to control breathing and tune seems to require a bit of practicing, and since you are still single it seems this skill may be useful for you. Should I search up oral muscle training for you to help you practice whistling?”

Zhanlu blew a slightly off-tune whistle at him.

Lin Jingheng: “…….”

A friendly reminder: an AI that’s too insensitive may be rebooted.

Then, someone called from afar: “Commander! Commander Lin!”

Lin Jingheng looked up to see a shining bald head running towards him like a moving signal light.

This bald man might have looked average on the outside, but his background was actually quite impressive. He was a researcher that was invited over by Monoeyed Hawk during the mutated Rainbow Virus pandemic and the head of the researching team. He was a skilled man that completed the viral analysis of the mutated Rainbow Virus and mass produced the vaccine–he was a very typical specialist of the Eighth Galaxy that used to sell fake medicine and medical equipment. He once gloated that there wasn’t a medical capsule he couldn’t copy and no specialized medication he couldn’t analyze; he never mentioned his real name but gave himself a nickname called ‘Moonstone’ in allusion to his bright bald head. Unfortunately, nobody acknowledged it and instead called him ‘egghead’ or ‘old egg’.

“That biochip isn’t as simple as it seems,” the old egg howled with a voice comparable to a loudspeaker. “There’s a system built inside it that’s very similar to Eden, an average man can’t reject it once it gets injected inside them. The addictiveness is extremely high, but its effects on vaccuocerebral syndrome is almost close to nothing…”

Lin Jingheng didn’t want to discuss “opium” in public with him and interrupted: “Vaccuocerebral syndrome makes human-mech connection unstable, so it’s normal if they can’t feel the chemical effects of the chip and don’t show signs of addiction.”

“Nonsense, nonsense!” the old egg jumped at the response, “unstable human-mech connection isn’t equivalent to not being able to connect at all, a lot of vaccuocerebrals can still pilot mechs after proper training. If they can pilot mechs, why can’t they control such a small chip? If you don’t believe me you can find a vaccuocerebral to try and I guarantee they’ll experience the same flood of strength it gives normal people. I am one myself so I can volunteer for this human experiment. Commander, I have this feeling that the vaccuocerebral syndrome isn’t limited to unstable human-mech connection; if I can dissect this chip down to its core, we might be able to find a way to completely block off Eden, there must be some sort of connection here!”

Lin Jingheng leaned back in disgust and dodged the old man’s spit as it flew towards him: “How do you think I’m still standing here if there isn’t any way to completely block off Eden?”

The old egg was stumped and mumbled in disbelief: “Commander, you have this kind of technology? A Union-developed…no, no way, the Military Council did it themselves? Commander Lin, where did you get it?”

Lin Jingheng frowned—the “forbidden fruit” is a highly protected top-secret file in Zhanlu that he only noticed after fully obtaining Zhanlu’s ownership. The “forbidden fruit” is an extremely complex file, and what’s unique about it is that aside from the Eden blocker function on the surface, the entire database was heavily locked that not even Lin Jingheng himself or Zhanlu could open it. So naturally, the only person that could have installed this file inside Zhanlu would be Zhanlu’s ex-master, Lu Xin himself. Yet the only thing Lin Jingheng never understood was if Lu Xin could hide himself from Eden completely, why didn’t he use it before?

“Commander,” the old egg stepped forward anxiously, “whoever has this technology might have something to do with the person that made the opium chips!”

Lin Jingheng’s expression immediately grew dark: “Bullshit!”

The old egg placed his hand on his head: “Hey you, what’s with your attitude? You turn your anger like flipping a book. Listen, I have reasoning and evidence to back my theory…”

Suddenly, the personal devices of every armed soldier in the operational base flashed in red alarm. Lin Jingheng lifted his hand and interrupted him as he picked up a call from the command post and asked the operator: “What’s going on?”

“Commander, the post received an SOS signal from Superintendent WIlliam Yu’s mech. They were ambushed by a fleet of unknown mechs on their way back; the enemy has extremely high firepower that’s comparable to at least one fleet of interstellar navy, and the long-distance communication had already been disconnected.”

“Send me the coordinates of the last recorded signal. Turan, stay and watch the base, first to third teams follow me.” Lin Jingheng turned and got ready to leave, then added after a short pause, “Team four follow the itinerary of Monoeyed Hawk’s fleet, be mindful of everyone that he came in contact with along the way.”

Monoeyed Hawk’s fleet didn’t have many people and their mech formation followed the standard of personal guards. Their itinerary was very simple and under the radar. “One interstellar navy fleet” meant that there was a central heavy mech with a fully armed vanguard team and at least a few dozen highly-mobilized medium to small mechs with powerful armour. If this wasn’t an accidental confrontation, judging from Monoeyed Hawk’s carefulness, he wouldn’t have purposely taken the fleet into pirate territory…that means it must be an ambush.”

The route Monoeyed Hawk took was completely random; those old folks might have their own agendas, but because they were used to solo missions they didn’t choose to talk about it with others;even the command post only knew a vague route, who would possibly know their exact locations?

And yet, having a full interstellar navy to greet a few old men seemed to be a little overdramatic.

Zhanlu asked: “Commander, what about Headmaster Lu?”

Lin Jingheng answered without thinking: “Keep it a secret, I’ll deal with it when I get back.”

Zhanlu: “Yes, sir.”

Lin Jingheng quickly made his way to the command post, and within moments, teams one to four filled with members of the Ninth Squadron and self-defense squad reported in.

Lin Jingheng waved at them to get on the mechs; his hand stopped in mid air and then completely stopped its motion.

He let out a small grumble for about two seconds as if he was struggling on something, then finally let out a sigh in defeat and said to Zhanlu: “You…nevermind, contact Lu Bixing.”