Can Ci Pin - - - Chapter 97

Chapter 97 of the main story before reading.

**This is a book-version only extra that I translated directly from the physical book itself; please do not ask me for a digital or online version of the original text.

This year, young love perished into ashes.

(1)

October 1st, NSC 118. Lu Xin took his group of lackeys and walked obnoxiously into the conference hall for the first new student welcoming assembly of the year. The conference hall was filled with chatter; Lu Xin made his way towards the back of the hall as the front row seats had already been claimed, and felt someone poke him gently the moment he sat down. “Look,” a fellow student whispered beside him.

Lu Xin turned his head towards the direction of the student’s gaze to see a quiet young boy wearing a first year uniform standing in the back corner of the hall. The young boy’s hair was neatly combed to expose a delicate but handsome face that was looking down at something with all his attention. A few students stopped by to greet him, but the young student still didn’t lift an eye. Despite only seeing the new student for the first time, Lu Xin immediately knew who the boy was: “That new kid Lin Wei?”

A lackey nudged Lu Xin and whispered the latest gossip into his ears: “Yeah, he caused a whole scene of spectators just from reporting in earlier.”

“As expected.” Lu Xin fixed his uniform and buttoned up his shirt, “He is Chief Commander Lin’s descendant afterall.”

“I heard he’s pretty low-key despite being a celebrity. The entire new class of the 118th term idolizes him and hasn’t caused any trouble for a whole month since term started. Those old men in the executive seats have been running to Chief Woolf’s office everyday to thank him for bringing in such a lucky mascot to the school and called little Young Master Lin a blessing.” The little lackey said as he noticed Lu Xin lift a hint of a smile on his face, “but I heard he’s just a nerd gamer with an internet addiction”

“Think you’re funny, huh?” Lu Xin nudged him back with his elbow and warned him like a respectable senior, “What do you have against a first-year? You potty-mouth, talking behind someone’s back.”

Just then, Lin Wei looked up and gave a glance towards Lu Xin’s direction, nodding politely as he met the latter’s gaze. Lin Wei’s eyes were on the light side, close to a light brown color that captured a hint of elegance as light reflected in his pupils. Lu Xin felt awkward for talking behind someone’s back and greeted the first-year back with a glance, then quickly turned to shoot a disapproving stare at his fellow lackey.

Lin Wei pulled back his gaze towards his personal device and quickly entered a line: “I’ll wait for your evidence.”

The legendary refined mascot of the school, young master Lin was really a nerd gamer. While he sat and pretended to pay attention to the student assembly, he was picking fights with people on a gaming forum on his personal device.

Chief Commander Woolf was an orphan that had grown up in the City of Angels, and only had a bunch of fellow comrades around him from the war prior to the Union’s establishment. Most of his old comrades had already passed, and even as he took on the position of the Chief Military Commander of the seven galaxies, he remained unmarried. In terms of family, he really only had this adopted son Lin Wei, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that he poured all his heart into raising this child to the point where he ended up raising a spoiled little master.

Young Master Lin’s ‘polite and courteous’ outside appearance and demeanor were all fake. He was very skilled at painting the facade, but in reality he was quite OCD, lazy, and judgemental. His first impression of anyone was always negative. Only when he was forced to interact with someone for long periods of time and slowly discovered the other to be slightly tolerable would he graciously increase his affection points by a bit. Up until now, nobody aside from his foster father Woolf had received above 10 points from him–the perfect score being 100.

Aside from being pretentious, Young Master Lin’s other skill was playing games online.

With Lin Wei’s background, it wouldn’t be hard for him to gather up his own fanclub in real life if he wanted to, but perhaps he had a mutation in his genes growing up as he actively avoided and refused anything that he could easily get his hands on. He paid no attention to anyone or anything and would rather spend his time making a name for himself in online communities.

At that time, the most popular online game among the Union’s youth was a highly-realistic dive-in virtual reality game called “The Age of Exploration” that advertised itself as a historical MMO where players could explore existing territories, open up new maps, build their own communities, nations and more. The PvE system also had extremely realistic simulations of large-scale natural disasters and pirate invasions, allowing players to build different communities and forces amongst each other and engage in warfare or diplomacy.

As an aloof child in real life that wouldn’t even bother speaking to anyone he deemed unworthy, Lin Wei was quite a troublemaker in the game. His most honored feat was when he created an alternate account to spy on enemy forces, then made his way up to become the central commander of the enemy forces. He masterfully played a game of high-level espionage and effortlessly destroyed the enemy from within, taking full control of an entire galaxy–of course, nobody knew about that to this day. That shady alternate account was still active, in which he still used it to connect with his old ‘comrades’ in order to buy first-hand information in order to prepare for another round of sabotage.

Every how-to gameplay post he made with his main account Alexander the Great would become the top trending post in the forums. It started off with support from his friends and fans, then antis and people that had been a victim of his antics would join in to the point where everything would turn into a heated warzone. Lin Wei himself would usually drop the post and leave, letting people in the comments fight amongst themselves without meddling. One reason was because he was busy with school and didn’t have much time, the second one being he had no interest in fighting with people on what’s right or wrong; he simply enjoyed watching other people fight with reddened necks over his posts. However, he had no choice but to enter the warzone today. A player by the name of “Dark Matter” made a post claiming that they had evidence proving that “Alexander the Great” and “Solo Grass Rider” were the same person– “Solo Grass Rider” was Lin Wei’s alternate spy account he used against his enemies.

Lin Wei attended the school assembly with his thoughts elsewhere and even gave a short speech as the representative of the first years during the ceremony. Because his mind wasn’t on the assembly, his words seemed even more distant and mysterious than usual. Once the assembly ended, he quickly waved off all the students that attempted to approach him to talk and made his way back to his dorm to continue the war on the forum.

This ‘Dark Matter’ person was probably an adult with too much time on their hands and responded with a long essay to Lin Wei’s request– this person ended up writing a complicated technical analysis that perfectly summed up the detailed playstyle of both Alexander the Great and Solo Grass Rider. The analysis included the login times of both accounts, most-used mission routes, and plenty of other smaller details that Lin Wei himself hadn’t even noticed, packing them all into an essay comparable to a scientific research paper. It was as if this ‘Dark Matter’ person was looking at him through a magnifying glass, eyeing his every move and poking at all his weak spots while they were at it. Lin Wei had sowed the seeds for his own failure. Even the voices of his blind supporters and fans ended up looking like childish complaints under the powerful analysis, and within a short time both of his accounts were filled with private messages.

The whole incident stirred up quite a storm within the game that lasted for half a month. With clear evidence on hand, hundreds of bounty requests were placed on Solo Grass Rider. Even though it was an alternate account, it had taken Lin Wei a little more than a year to raise, so the young master was rightfully upset and frustrated. Lin Wei’s free time had already been cut short after enrolling into the school, so he used this opportunity to give up even his main account in the game. Instead, he spent a hefty amount of money to hire people to find this ‘Dark Matter’ person, then opened up a new alternate account on the same server under the name of ‘Universal Gravitation’ to get his revenge.

Dark Matter’s game avatar was a muscular hunk tank that looked almost visually disgusting, Lin Wei decided that the person behind this account was probably similarly ugly in real life.

He didn’t spend a lot of time raising his new account and played it very casually. He had no money when he needed it, no base to rest in, and didn’t even play his character very well. His main online personality on this account was a merciless shit-talker that was a professional at catching people’s alternate accounts with almost 100% accuracy. Due to this, he was often being chased around by people he caught, but he didn’t care and didn’t even bother disguising himself as if his joy in-game was to play hide-and-seek.

Lin Wei carefully studied the method Dark Matter used to expose other people’s alternate accounts in the dark for a while, and then skillfully hid all the details of his habits and gameplay that would expose his identity on his new account. He prepared himself for another awful game of ‘playing with your feelings before I betray you last minute’, then found a time where Dark Matter was being chased down by others and accidentally showed up according to his own script.

Gamers tended to have a completely different online personality; Lin Wei might be aloof and cold in real life, but he could be very sociable and talkative when online. With the excuse of saving his life, Lin Wei attempted to get close to Dark Matter over a short period of time. He discovered that this Dark Matter was probably living a terrible life offline and didn’t have much of a presence; any casual small talk with the hunk would end up being taken seriously, and the person seemed very keen on being looked up to as a mentor by anyone.

Lin Wei played along and pretended he was just a clueless player that only knew how to throw money at the game, constantly bothering Dark Matter with every little thing. In order to make this character he was playing more believable, he even tossed a heavy sum of money in-game to purchase an AI fleet from a military base then hired a bunch of professional players to play along his side in order to hide his strength in case he needed to go into battle and accidentally revealed himself–it’s not like he was tight on money anyway.

After investing considerable time and effort, Lin Wei found himself walking closer to Dark Matter.

He discovered that Dark Matter followed a strict schedule like him; neither of them had a lot of free time on-hand and would usually log into the game every two or three days without much to do aside from doing daily missions and float around in a space shuttle to chat. Earning a person’s trust was like leveling in a game, and little master Lin Wei had all the patience in the world for it.

This Dark Matter person wasn’t only obsessed with mentoring other people, he were also a big show-off that could bring any small talk conversation to the level of a scholarly discussion on the programming of the game; he bluffed as if they could build an entire virtual reality MMORPG from scratch if you just gave him the tools.

Even though Lin Wei was still in the guise of a foolish newbie, he couldn’t help but poke fun at this person sometimes: “Why do you still get chased around if you’re so strong?”

Dark Matter didn’t catch that they were being taunted and gave a proper answer: “People would gather up and mug me at first, PVP and wait for me to drop loot when I die, so I couldn’t really save up for anything. Afterwards I just decided to let them kill me when I realized they would change their minds. Since you can’t stop them, you may as well change your attitude to avoid a painful loss; how much damage you receive from losing a PVP battle depends on how much you care about your items and investment in the game.”

Despite not looking anywhere near aesthetically pleasing in-game, there was an unexplainable worldly aura that this person gave off when Dark Matter shrugged his shoulders and spoke in this manner. Lin Wei studied the hunk avatar as a strange thought popped in his head: this person looks quite vulgar, but maybe he’s not as disgusting as I thought.

Lin Wei asked: “If you don’t plan on actually playing the game, why don’t you just uninstall it?”

“Just think of it as killing time if you want.” Dark Matter paused a little before adding, “all my schoolmates around me are playing too, so it’s no big deal. If I don’t play along, it’d seem like I’m a loner…and I’m already enough of a loner.”

“Then why did you decide to expose everyone’s alternate accounts and pick fights with the world?”

Dark Matter answered without any second thought: “I’m bored.”

Lin Wei: “…….”

Even though he voluntarily got close to this person with a goal in mind, Lin Wei still had to admit this person was quite frustrating to deal with sometimes; no wonder he had no friends. The rich little master’s patience was close to exhausted today and decided to log off for the day for another round of zero-gravity training.

“Maybe…maybe it’s also because I’m not a fan of alternate accounts.” Dark Matter spoke up again. He always seemed to be stuck in his own little world and never paid much attention to others when he started talking, and didn’t even notice that Universal Gravitation was already planning on logging off. “This game allows players to create multiple accounts and gives a lot of opportunity to remain anonymous in forums and in-game interactions. To increase players’ playtimes, the game also encourages PVP which now ended up becoming spy games among the masses. Except this is the Age of Exploration that condensed this golden time period into a virtual reality – even the in-game technologies available closely reflect the actual historical era. The Age of Exploration in space was one of the few shining gems in human history; everyone worked together and broke through the limits of carbon lifeforms and created countless miracles. Every individual was a hero who had their own stories to tell, no matter how average you think you are. That was a time where humanity sailed with the stars in the sky and lit up the dark corners of the universe, not a dumpster.”

Lin Wei felt his heart beat a little faster and turned his head towards the speaker.

“If there was a beautiful jewel from the past before you, the juniors don’t need to follow its lead and carve a similar one; just don’t insult the past, right?” Dark Matter got up and said with an almost expressionless face, “entertainment with no standards will also create a society with no standards–I’m logging off, you can do whatever you want.”

That day, Lin Wei didn’t go do his regular zero-gravity training after logging off and instead spent the whole day reading up on the whole history of the Age of Exploration in the library.

Lin Wei had a list of plans he was going to use against Dark Matter when everything first started, but by the time he felt he was ready to carry it out and deal the final blow to his enemy, he kept finding excuses to push back his plan. Until he eventually got too lazy to play along and pretend to be the little fool following a veteran player around, slowly exposing his spoiled attitude and troublesome personality.

However, this didn’t have much effect on the two’s relationship; Lin Wei discovered that this Dark Matter person had such a big ego that he could care less about other people’s feelings. There were a handful of times Lin Wei gave him attitude and didn’t even receive a blink of an eye as a response.

As they spent more time in the game together, the topics of their discussion also began to drift away from the game into real life during deep conversations. For example, Dark Matter learned that this spoiled brat that spent money like breathing was a student of the Black Orchid Academy, and Lin Wei also learned that this strange ‘fatty’ was an orphan adopted by the Gordon family currently studying in a boarding school funded by the family. The family also required the students to volunteer in the Eden Committee during their school breaks.

“The White Tower has strict security, we could only work on insignificant tasks around it and couldn’t even go near the central lab.” Dark Matter said, “we have to go through a handful of security checkpoints when we walk in; we’re not allowed to bring any personal items in and not allowed to bring anything out. There are armed security robots everywhere, they even have designated restroom breaks. If you stay in there for too long, the robots will break in.”

He seemed to be completely used to it already and spoke nonchalantly as if it was someone else’s story, but a fit of anger rose within Lin Wei as he listened: “That’s what they call ‘free labor’ in ancient times, they don’t even pay you so isn’t even a fair tradeoff between you guys, not even the law can protect you, who allowed them to do such a thing?”

Dark Matter answered with a shrug: “I was raised by the Gordon family, my living and educational expenses are the prepayment they gave me for my labor.”

“There are proper government agencies everywhere in the Union that have funding to provide living spaces and expenses for orphans, and the law clearly says that you can be protected until you reach the age of 20 even if you don’t get adopted. If you work hard, you can do whatever you want in the future. That old…” Lin Wei caught himself before he instinctively called the old Gordon “old bastard” as he would in front of Chief Woolf. He bit his tongue and forcefully swallowed the line before he continued, “…old man, he’s just trying to use charity as an excuse to raise for the future of his business.”

The infamously cold-hearted individual with a laughably low EQ looked down at him in a shockingly kind and warm manner: “I was born in the Fifth Galaxy. Have you ever been to the Fifth Galaxy?”

Lin Wei: “…….”

Dark Matter said: “Everyone receives the same basic education in Eden using the same materials. They always say they select students ‘based off individual potential and qualities’ and those who ‘will benefit the most from our courses’, but is the difference between one person and another really that great?”

Lin Wei always thought that the differences between each person are as dramatic as heaven and earth; some people were born geniuses, others were born as fools. Some people were meant to hold power while others lived like ants. For example, the honorary students of the number one military academy in the Union were destined to stand at the top of the world, and an engineer from the Seventh Galaxy could never compare; it was almost like comparing apples to oranges except they were never measured by the same standards. Of course, Lin Wei wouldn’t say something like this out loud nor yell in his heart; this was more like an instinct engraved into his subconscious.

They’d all sworn in the academy to fight for all citizens until their deaths. The citizens were all those engineers, technicians, transports, nameless faces of all genders and ages throughout the seven galaxies. They were like tools in a game; protecting and fighting for them were necessary missions to accomplish for these soldiers to earn their honors and badges.

Dark Matter continued, “I was raised in an orphanage when I was little. There were about four or five kids about the same age as me at the time, we all learned the same things and lived under the same roof everyday, nobody thought they were more special than others. There was a girl that was smarter than me; she spoke very sophisticatedly for a girl her age and always reacted faster than me in class, but she was ten months younger than me, so she didn’t meet the age requirement when the Gordon family came over to select their orphans. I’m going into the White Tower next year as a trainee, and if I do well I can stay there for the rest of my career. They said that the White Tower was filled with the smartest people in the world, and maybe they’re right, so I guess I can put a ‘smartest lad’ sticker on my forehead for now. Anyway, do you know what happened to that little girl that was smarter than me?”

“What happened?”

“She applied to the number two university of the Second Galaxy two years ago for their STEM program but was rejected; the reason for rejection was that she ‘had some flaws with logical analysis.’”

Lin Wei couldn’t help but ask: “Did she hit her head or something?”

Dark Matter laughed and said: “You know, because of Eden, everyone’s basic knowledge is around the same level so it’s hard to tell the difference based on a test. You guys in intergalactic military schools can at least look at mental strength and physical fitness, other normal higher education institutions can only rely on recommendations. For kids in Wolto, before the child confirms their career objectives, their families would arrange different connections for them with big names in various industries, and when time comes to decide, they can ask their connections to write letters of recommendation for them. But for the Fifth Galaxy, unless you have connections with the central government or the head commander of the central militia, there is no way you can make it into the number two university of the galaxy.”

Lin Wei: “But you can write one for her, I’m sure a recommendation letter from the White Tower…”

“I’m going in next year, and the training period will last three years–a trainee doesn’t count as an internal employee, so my letter will do nothing. Even if everything goes smoothly and I become an official researcher in four years, she will already be 23 years old.” Dark Matter explained patiently to the naive little child, “After 20 years old, the government won’t be able to provide for us. She needs to complete most of her higher education by then and find an institute that will hire her upon graduation, there’s no way she will wait that long. When she got rejected by the University, she went to a technical school near her hometown instead. She should be graduating soon and can possibly be an interstellar terminal engineer; not bad, right? I chose the Gordon family and work like a slave for them, but at least I found my ticket into the world of the elites here on Wolto. Don’t even mention doing free labor for the White Tower, if you gave anyone the opportunity to even take a trip to Wolto it would be way beyond what they could ask for. Not everyone has the luck to be born on the tip of the pyramid, so you should be thankful, little master.”

Lin Wei felt his brain shut down for a slight instant at that “young master”. For a split second, he felt a strange sense of guilt; suddenly, he wanted to be kind to Dark Matter and make him happy. Those childish pranks and ideas from before were all thrown away a long time ago.

His intention to win Dark Matter’s affection not only failed, he ended up letting the other win his own affection points to the max without even realizing it himself.

(2)

When Lin Wei entered his third year in the academy, he followed the school’s tradition to join the fourth year students in a joint summer military exercise camp. At that time, the Eighth Galaxy was still under the brutal rule of the first Prince of Cayley, and the training site was selected to be at the border of the Seventh Galaxy. The third and fourth year students had to prepare a month ahead of time for the upcoming camp, and because he wouldn’t have time to log onto the game until the camp was over, Lin Wei decided to give Dark Matter a heads up before he left.

The preparation boot camp was like living hell to the students; they would fall asleep the minute they returned to their dorms from exhaustion and were dragged out the next morning for more physical training while their muscles still ached. It wasn’t until the day before takeoff that Lin Wei found half a day of break and preparation time for him to log back onto the Age of Exploration, only to discover that his private messages were flooded–for the past week, Dark Matter had been sending an average of 30 messages a day asking if he had logged on. Neither of them were the clingy type and logged on whenever they felt like it, so Lin Wei was shocked to see Dark Matter like this and immediately responded.

Perhaps Dark Matter had set a reminder to notify them whenever Lin Wei logged on, he responded within seconds.

Lin Wei asked in confusion: “Aren’t you supposed to be working at the White Tower right now?”

“I called in sick,” Dark Matter responded promptly. “Thank god you logged on today. Didn’t you say you guys were going to a military camp? Is there a student in your year by the name of McAdams?”

The McAdams were one of the seven directors of the Eden Committee, the eldest son was also in the Black Orchid Academy a year above Lin Wei.

“There is, what happened?”

Dark Matter quickly pulled up an interstellar coordinate and time stamp; Lin Wei’s eyes widened as it was their camp’s exact location and schedule. More specifically, the coordinates were exactly the base of his team’s camp.

Lin Wei asked calmly: “Where did you get this from?”

“One of my schoolmates works on maintenance of the public cleaning robots, and because she had an emergency last week she asked me to take over her shift. I’d never done this before so I only remembered that I needed to sign off the maintenance checklist on my way back, so I ran back after I got off work to check off the list, and that’s when I heard the McAdams talking in the restroom by chance.” Dark Matter said, “they were talking about creating an ‘accident’ for the team camping out on this coordinate so the students won’t come back alive–do you know where your team is? Are you near this campsite?”

The team captain of Lin Wei’s group was Lu Xin, a popular fourth year student that was infamous for causing trouble around campus. However, Chief Woolf had grown fond of him and had requested to instruct him personally; from internal sources, Lin Wei already knew that the honorary graduate of his class was going to be given to Lu Xin. This meant that he would automatically be given a title and position in the military upon graduation, paving his future career path to become the next Chief Commander of the Union. As for that foolish son of the McAdams, he was once caught in a fight with Lu Xin on campus that ended up getting brought up to the principal. However, Chief Woolf didn’t buy into the McAdams family’s underhanded attempt to save their son from trouble and waved it off as if it were no more than a small fight on campus. Now, it seemed as if this young child still wouldn’t let go of his vendetta and was now looking to get his revenge.

“I’m pretty far away.” Lin Wei said lightly, “don’t worry, the Black Orchid Academy isn’t somewhere the committee can easily get their hands in.”

Dark Matter was stunned for a moment; his instincts told them that Lin Wei was hiding something beneath that smile, and suddenly he wasn’t the spoiled brat that he knew from before.

“We’re leaving tomorrow. We have a curfew, so I’ll log off now.” Lin Wei looked at the other deeply. It was quite strange indeed; perhaps aesthetics only affected initial impressions, so when people got attached to a certain thing or person, whatever the person or thing looked like originally could suddenly become attractive. “When I come back…”

Lin Wei paused a little.

Dark Matter questioned: “Huh?”

Lin Wei wanted to ask “can we meet in real life”, but quickly remembered that the other was someone who would be going to the White Tower soon, and he wasn’t sure whether they would stay there after the training period. He knew that despite having a peaceful appearance on the outside, the relationships between the Military Council and Eden Committee was still quite complicated beneath the surface. If they could still interact freely online, it was best to not take their friendship to real life.

Just be patient , Lin Wei convinced himself, we can talk about this later .

“….let’s play together again.” Lin Wei finished his line, “you’ll have to take care of this base when I’m not around.”

A terrible incident occurred during that year’s military camp. The students’ drill times and camp coordinates were leaked, and space pirates from the Eighth Galaxy invaded the base camp on the clock. Thankfully, Lin Wei was able to receive a hint from the help of a friend and contact the border patrol of the Seventh Galaxy in time for rescue to come. However, these groups of young students from Wolto still walked the fine line of life and death under gunfire and faced a bloody wakeup call.

The good news that came out of this horrific incident was that the 117th and 118th graduating classes of the Black Orchid Academy raised an unprecedented class of military elites. Aside from the famed youngest Top Commander of the Silver Fortress Lu Xin, the two classes collectively raised two Lieutenant Generals and sixteen Lieutenants. The Eighth Galaxy was retrieved by the hands of this generation, and the lawless space pirates were pushed out of Union territory by force; they were the last shining stars in the history of the Interstellar Union.

Lin Wei injected a little too much relaxants on the battlefield and spent two days inside the medical capsule upon returning. When he finally crawled out the capsule two days later, the first thing he wanted to do wasn’t to find out the gossip about who the Chief was dealing with from the McAdams family, but to log into his game to see Dark Matter. He also suffered too much physical pain and didn’t want the other to worry too much about him after seeing the news; he only remembered that it was still working hours for Dark Matter when he finally logged in.

Dark Matter had left him a message in the game: The Eden Committee is planning their annual Fall Banquet so there’s a lot of extra work lately. On top of that, some genius had the idea of deciding this year’s theme would be “Humanism” and only allow real people to serve the party, so even the trainees had to help out and left them with no time to log on.

The Committee hosted a Fall Banquet every year in the White Tower to show off their research and invited countless celebrities and politicians in a desperate attempt to outshine the Parliament. Even though Chief Woolf found the ceremony pointless, he had no choice but to attend since they were still in a ‘good relationship’ with the Committee, and would normally bring Lin Wei along as well.

Crowded places were placed number one on Lin Wei’s ‘most hated things’ list, with the Eden Committee being second. The Fall Banquet was therefore the most dreaded time of the year as it combined both of the above; yet for some reason, he was strangely excited this time and even began growing anxious the day before the Banquet.

He carefully checked his suit three times before they left, making Wang Ailun restless for a while. Chief Woolf thought the young boy was giving attitude again by procrastinating, and as he was about to give a few scolding and lecture on proper etiquette as an adult on stage, he quickly swallowed those words that lingered at the tip of his tongue. He reached his hand out and gave a gentle pat on the boy’s head and noticed he’d even put on a bit of wax to keep his hairstyle.

Chief Commander Hubert Woolf had a great concern. He wanted Lin Wei to grow up to be a natural leader without facing any challenges to take over his position, and even if he didn’t grow up to be the ideal leader, Chief Woolf would never have the heart to force the young man to do something he didn’t want in order to ‘be successful’ on the outside. Now, it seemed like the Chief Commander’s dream was about to be crushed. This child still had one year before he graduated from the Black Orchid Academy, but there was still no sign of him even making an attempt to fix his aloof and stubborn attitude. He only grew more conceited and didn’t seem anywhere near ready to step into adulthood.

Lin Wei couldn’t remember who he met or spoke to during the banquet that day, his instinctive response to everyone as he walked down the ballroom was to give everyone a smile. His gaze was fixed on the servers around him, especially the male servers–he carefully studied everyone that passed by him to guess who Dark Matter was.

It’s probably not that big one over there , he thought, only twinks like those hunky images in game. His sense of fashion might be a little questionable too and doesn’t know how to dress himself; probably a thin and small boy, the quiet-looking type with an unfitting hairstyle.

Lin Wei had attended the White Tower’s banquet multiple times already and knew how to navigate within the building. He used the excuse of getting wine on his sleeves to walk into the restroom. He took off his jacket and tossed it towards the cleaning robot on the side, found the digital checklist and flipped to the week before their military camp.

Dark Matter said they never did the work of maintaining cleaning robots and only came in that day to take over a friend’s shift, so…

Lin Wei froze and stared at the “Laura Gordon” name on the signature column for five seconds. He quickly flipped through the months before and after to make sure that the other signatures were signed by the regular technician, and only this name on this particular day was different.

But…why does this look like a girl’s name?

He tapped on the signature and opened up the employee ID of the signer. The girl in the photo ID brushed her hair back to a clean ponytail and wore the staff uniform. Her misty grey eyes looked as if they were staring at him directly through the photo.

Lin Wei’s personal device rang and pulled his mind back. He saw that the Chief was asking him where he was, they were ready to leave.

He hastily pulled his jacket back and draped it messily over his shoulders as he walked towards the door. He turned his head back once again before walking out the door; the digital checklist on the wall was still opened, and the girl with grey eyes watched him, as if taunting him from the photo.

Young master Lin’s face was flustered.

(3)

When Dark Matter–Laura Gordon, logged back into the game, she noticed that her friend Universal Gravitation started acting strangely around her. He began to speak to her with extra caution; on top of that, this well-off rich boy that would rather stay at home all day did something extremely stupid. This young man disappeared for three hours immediately after logging on without even saying hi, blew up a whole armed fleet and stole a rare mineral in the game back for her.

Because this mineral was a long-time coolant for mech parts, and she had once expressed interest in it before.

The mineral was raw, and when they finally managed to import it back, they almost screwed up the magnetic field of their space station. The two frantically tried to solve the problem, and after they were finally finished they found each other covered in dirt and started laughing.

Lin Wei’s mind turned quickly as he pulled out a piece of coal and handed it over to Dark Matter, letting her sign off the gift with the coal as a pen. He watched and confirmed that the writing was the exact same as the “Laura Gordon” signature he’d seen on the digital checklist.

He secretly collected information on Laura Gordon, which didn’t prove to be hard; it was exactly as she said, before she went to the White Tower she was doing free labor in Lin Wei’s eyes, but to others it was a dream opportunity of a lifetime. Even if she had been personally selected by the Gordon family, the others in the White Tower were also outstanding students at the top of their class. He knew that she had already completed her education in biotechnology before the age of 20, published numerous academic papers, and already earned herself a bit of fame within the White Tower. She was the officially acknowledged adopted daughter of the Gordon family, and her teacher was the director of the White Tower, Doctor Steven Hardin himself. Her resume was already so impressive that even honor students from the elite ranks of Wolto would feel inferior against it.

Though she was indeed lacking in fashion sense and aesthetics. In all the photos Lin Wei managed to collect, she was always wearing her research uniform with her hair tied up with no signs of makeup on her face. Yet even then, she didn’t look plain and average at all.

Lin Wei was conflicted; on one hand, he liked the shining light he saw on the girl, and had even developed feelings for her before he knew what she was a beautiful young girl, but on the other…

Her light was on the White Tower.

Laura also made a discovery about this little pal she’d made in the game. It was as if this little boy suddenly grew up overnight and became visibly more mature. All the bad attitudes and spoiled tendencies of the young man disappeared. Perhaps it was close to getting graduation, so even the most elegant and needy little sprout could hear the winds of the outside world and grow into a strong tree.

“I might not be able to log onto the game anymore,” Dark Matter said one day. “Before entering the White Tower and becoming a full time researcher, we are stripped temporarily of our personal privacy. All our communications will be monitored, and we’re required to turn in all our personal accounts.”

Lin Wei knew about this rule and wasn’t surprised, but when time finally came, he was still quite unwilling to accept it in his heart. He forced a smile onto his face despite the conflicted feelings and asked: “Then….how can I find you in the future?”

“Wait until I’m done with my testing period.” Laura said, “and then we can still meet in game, how does that sound?”

Lin Wei looked at her deeply as if his gaze passed through that vulgar avatar into the grey eyes of that girl behind the account.

Laura didn’t have much friends both online and offline, so she cared very deeply for the few close relationships she maintained. At the crossroad of separation, she asked sincerely: “Do you want to exchange photos?”

Lin Wei panicked a little in his mind, but answered as casually as he could: “S-sure…let’s do that, I won’t think you’re ugly.”

Laura promptly sent her photo without hesitation. Lin Wei stared at the familiar figure and mustered up all his courage to make the most believable act of surprise–except remembering it now, it sure was a little too dramatic. He jumped back and placed his hand over his chest: “You never said you were a girl! Don’t tell me you’re also heterosexual! Were you also trying to hit on me when I wasn’t aware?”

“Get out,” Laura reached her arm out, “where’s yours?”

Lin Wei looked down on his personal device to search for a closeup photo of himself, yet the moment he was about to hand it over, he hesitated. Within a split second, he quickly pulled up five random photos of his classmates from school and merged it into a random photo: “Don’t be jealous of my beauty.”

The Black Orchid Academy was a military school so naturally all students’ information was protected by the military, it would be impossible to check if the photo was real or not.

However, if it was as she said where all her personal accounts would have to be turned in, everything she did while logged onto this account could be seen. He didn’t want to be found out by the committee.

I’ll explain to her in the future , he thought. Good thing she has a big heart.

What he didn’t know was that he would never find the chance to explain for the rest of his life.

NSC 124, Lin Wei rose up to Senior Colonel and was assigned to an expedition mission with a fleet of interstellar mechs in a deserted part of the Union. He stayed at a place without internet, months of sailing away from a portal that was connected to Wolto’s central government for five years and completely missed out on Laura’s very few free times of her life.

When Lin Wei finally returned to Wolto, he was almost immediately dragged by his senior and good friend Lu Xin on another secret mission to invade the Eighth Galaxy. These fearless young men threw themselves in the battle to retrieve the Eighth Galaxy with a dream in their hearts; Lu Xin took a fleet with him to the frontlines in the Eighth Galaxy while Lin Wei shouldered the burden of dealing with the Military Council and allocating frontline supplies all by himself. During these times of high stress, he had virtually no time to go online.

NSC 128, Laura Gordon received her PhD and officially graduated from Doctor Hardin’s mentoring, taking over an independent project within the White Tower. She signed a top-secret contract that locked her up in a heavily protected period of research seclusion within the lab.

Within these years, the two never had the chance to sit down and talk, as if the world was determined to keep them apart. They could only leave messages to each other in-game like ancient people sending hand-written letters to each other with a dove.

Yet even then, there were still small joys to be found in snail mail. Whether it was the busy and stressed Lin Wei or Laura, who was beginning to develop some ideas about Eden and falling into doubt, they could still find the strength to go on when they read each other’s messages in the game. At first, they both thought they were just mutually supporting each other through the toughest times in their youth. Yet looking back later, these strange times of not being able to make their times align was perhaps hinting that their distance between each other would only grow larger in the future—

NSC 136, Lu Xin passed through the Eighth Galaxy, rallied the residents to revolt and sieged the old Cayley fleet’s homebase. The central government of the Union was forced to bow down to the head of the new generation’s political faction, and Lin Wei won a complete victory within the Parliament. By the end of the year, he finally received the order to increase the defense in the Eighth Galaxy and personally led a fleet over to support the Eighth Galaxy Union Navy. This was their era. The night before departure, Lin Wei couldn’t sleep and logged back onto the Age of Exploration to write a long confession letter under an adrenaline rush.

Wolto was at the turn of an era, love could only be nurtured in the small cracks of politics. The most common form of modern love was political marriages, and the moment news of Laura Gordon entering a core project team of the White Tower, many calculating eyes turned to her. For a genius young woman of the White Tower like her that had the Eden Committee as her backbone, she was a rare gem in the games of politics. Of course, the Gordon family also didn’t let go of this opportunity to use her as a bargaining chip to expand their family’s influence. A few families with potential grooms in the household purposely created some false rumors surrounding Laura Gordon to test the waters, and to their surprise the Gordon family not only didn’t mind, they even actively encouraged the spread of these gossip. As for Laura herself, she just started her seclusion period and was completely unaware of the spreading rumors outside of her lab.

NSC 137, the newly appointed young general Lin Wei was still in a daze from the shock of winning the war in the Eighth Galaxy, and upon returning to Wolto was immediately flooded with all this celebrity gossip.

He was born and raised in Wolto, so he knew the rules of these political games and should’ve remained calm. Yet how could human emotions be defined into what ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t be’?

Especially when logged back onto the game to see that his confession letter had been read without a response.

Right, he thought. How could the next top star of the White Tower even spare a glance for a nameless military school graduate?

The arrogant child of the elite class rarely tasted the feeling of jealousy, so when he did get a taste of it, it was naturally more painful and unforgettable for him.

He could feel his jealousy driving him crazy.

After retrieving the Eighth Galaxy, these young soldiers following Lu Xin were all famed generals within Wolto. The Gordon family’s attempt to gauge interest in marriage even went through the military and was delivered up to Chief Woolf. The old Chief laughed at the news; Lin Wei hadn’t even fixed his picky eating habit after all these years, how could they possibly ask him to accept an arranged marriage with someone he’d never even met? As the old Chief was planning on tossing these papers into the paper shredder once the old Gordon left, he heard his precious stubborn son walk out from the study and said slowly: “Sure, why not.”

The young general that locked his true feelings tighter as he aged casually fixed his tie under the shocked gaze of the old Chief. He picked up Laura Gordon’s photo before the old Gordon’s face and gave a quick look at it: “It’s only a matter of time before I have to choose a bride anyway, at least she looks pretty decent.”

By the end of NSC 137, General Lin and Doctor Gordon were officially engaged. Neither of them attended the engagement ceremony.

Lin Wei spitefully accepted the Committee’s marriage proposal at the moment without thinking and almost immediately regretted it afterwards. Yet the marriage wasn’t a joke so it was already too late to turn back; Lin Wei struggled with himself for two months over his foolish decision before he finally mustered up the courage to go online and confess the truth to Laura.

But she never logged back in the game anymore.

He waited three years, then another three years, sent a total of 1038 messages but still didn’t receive any response. That tiny grey letter on the side that indicated “Message Read” never showed up again.

Engagement was only a superficial act on Wolto, it didn’t mean the couple would get married soon. Because youth was too long and politics was ever-changing, engagements could be nullified the next day. Both of them were still too young; Lin Wei couldn’t face reality and Laura was uninterested, so this engagement didn’t need to be fulfilled soon…

Until NSC 186, Doctor Hardin was arrested for anti-human crimes.

Lin Wei couldn’t hold in his concern at the news and decided to meet up with Laura in the White Tower. This was the first time the two met face to face after years of online friendship. Yet Lin Wei could feel his soul leave his body as he looked into her cold grey eyes; his limbs froze as his thoughts floated above his head. By the time he pulled his senses back, he found himself saying the most regretful line of his life: “The Council and Committee’s relationship is complicated. The Committee is going to be careful about the wife of a Lieutenant General unless you become a pet of the Committee. No matter how high up you get in the White Tower, it’s still a position given to you by the Committee, they can take it back at any time. Your best option right now is to marry me immediately and express your loyalty to the Gordon family. If your teacher still cared about you, he would choose to completely remove you from the White Tower after this; but even if he dragged you down with him, I can still protect you with my position, so think about it.”

That year, Lin Wei took the hand of the person that had lived in his dreams for years. Yet under her cold and business-like attitude, he no longer had the courage to bring back up the stories of the past and chose to distance himself from her. He couldn’t even bring himself to log back onto the game to check if the messages were read, now afraid that their cherished memories together as Dark Matter and Universal Gravitation would shatter at the truth.

That year, Laura Gordon took over from Doctor Hardin to become the new director of the White Tower. She calmly accepted the cruel path that fate gave her and turned to walk on a deadly path of no return.

That year, young love perished into ashes.

November 1st, NSC 226, a fearsome set of twins that would shake the world of the future were born into the Lin family. On the same day, Laura Gordon died in the sea of stars…right before the eyes of Lieutenant General Lin Wei.

All of her personal belongings went through countless security inspections; most of them ended up being destroyed by the Committee, leaving only a few insignificant items. Among them was a photo of a young man that didn’t exist named Universal Gravitation, buried deep in the ashes of history along with the closed servers of the Age of Exploration. Nobody knew that she had printed out and kept this altered photo with her for over a century.

Lin Wei opened up the little album that kept the photo to find a familiar handwriting on the back.

My biggest regret was that I never responded to you immediately because I was dumb and foolish, I didn’t know what to say.

Farewell, my dearest…

There was no name following that last line as if the writer was fearful that she would taint the sweet memories of that boy– because the message was written on the day of Lin Wei’s political engagement with the Eden Committee.

Many years ago, he’d returned to his homeland with pride as the winds of a new era brushed gently on the lands of Wolto. He’d foolishly thought their time had come, not knowing that the gears of history had already crept behind him, quietly announcing that this generation was fated to be the last beacon of light for the Union.

Many years ago, he’d thought “there will be more chances later”, “I can wait a little longer”, “we have a whole lifetime to forgive each other”. He didn’t know that the peak of his life would end at the time that the large muscular man in the game carefully wrote the words “Dark Matter” on his arm with charcoal.

His naive dreams were as fleeting as the stroke of a letter.

He was Alexander the Great, he was Solo Grass Rider; he had 108 masks, he was…forever a coward that hid behind the disguise of someone else.

The Little Story About Heights

In regards to the problem of Lin Jingheng staying a short little boy for his age, Commander Lu Xin had always struggled to find a solution. He was afraid that the young boy would be bullied in school once he entered higher education (he wouldn’t) or perhaps his new son would develop an inferiority complex over his height (that’s simply overthinking).

Lu Xin drew a little height chart by the front door and gave a mischievous smile: “Look, this little bean sprout on the side is you, and Dad’s the tall tree right next to it. Even though you’ll never be as big and powerful as Daddy, you can still aim to grow tall like this tree.”

Little Lin Jingheng thought: “tsk!”

He would then glare angrily at those two height lines every day after.

One day, Lu Xin strolled back home without changing his shoes, humming a tune along the way. He lovingly harassed his little angry Jingheng as usual, only to see that his precious son didn’t get mad and instead stared at the top of Lu Xin’s head in deep thought—Lu Xin was a few centimeters taller than the height line he had drawn for himself. An old man over the age of 100 still growing taller, had he taken some illegal drugs?

Lu Xin then realized that he went off to pay his silly and tall Vice Admiral and had purposefully worn boots with sole inserts to seem taller and more authoritative as the superior; he almost completely exposed his secret right in front of a child!

The Top Commander was instantly covered in cold sweat. Then, embarrassed like an ancient earth school girl, he swiftly strolled away while subconsciously pressing his knees down.

Decades later, Lin Jingheng grew up and managed to grow two whole centimeters taller than that arrogant Lu Xin.

If Commander Lu was still alive, perhaps he’d need to prepare slippers with soles for indoor use.

Unfortunately, that little boy could no longer laugh into his face about his height anymore.