Cat and Rose - Cat & Rose - Chapter 65 - Fermi Paradox (4)

Chapter 65 – Fermi Paradox (4)

Passing by Ling Yi’s room on the way back, Lin Si thought about how he recently developed some effective methods to kill the virus, suggesting that Ling Yi organise his belongings on the Expeditioner and send them to be disinfected.

Ling Yi did not have many belongings; all he could take away were small things. Lin Si watched him sneakily stuff things into a black cardboard box and raised his eyebrows at him.

There was an empty perfume bottle on the table, which was precisely the same one Ling Yi took from his room eight years ago.

Lin Si fiddled with it. “Did you use it up?”

Ling Yi blinked. “I did.”

Lin Si said, “Want more?”

“I don’t have any use for it.”

Lin Si put it down and surveyed the bedroom. It was a standard room, nothing special. There were few decorations, it could be seen at a glance that the owner of the room lived a simple and routine lifestyle.

His gaze swept across the silver-white walls and ceiling, stopping at an inconspicuous corner.

There were a few dark-coloured traces there. He walked over, leaned down slightly, and overlapped his fingers with the traces.

—They were scratches. The kind with blood on it.

“Ah…I put that there. Forgot to wash it off.” Ling Yi saw what he was doing and pursed his lips, slightly embarrassed.

Ling Yi stared at those marks and did not move away his gaze for a very long time.

“It’s actually nothing much.” Ling Yi walked over with a small spray can and sprayed at the bloodstains.

The bloodstains disintegrated within seconds, disappearing without a trace, and the walls were clean as new.

—This was only a single spot that was missed. In other places, perhaps there were many more, where the extreme pain had muddled his consciousness, or maybe he just wanted to use the wall to support himself… and when he regained consciousness, he would use a can of cleaning spray to eradicate the traces of struggle.

“It’s all in the past.” Ling Yi smiled lightly.

The pain and despair on his body also vanished without a trace like the bloodstains that dissipated into the air. No matter what kind of bloody cruelty he experienced, when dawn arrived, everything in him was still as white and flawless, as if he had never traversed through darkness.

This was the true source of Ling Yi’s attractiveness. Not his pretty face or bright temperament, but a vitality like the sunlight that dappled through the flowering trees of springtime. Not only was it flourishing with strength, it also lived on endlessly.

“Let’s go,” said Lin Si.

Dinnertime was spent with Zheng Shu, Tang Ning, and Adelaide. At a banquet where old friends reunited, one would always reminisce about the past.

“The last time we all got together, we were still in Berlin,” Adelaide mentioned.

“The years passed so quickly in a blink of an eye,” said Zheng Shu calmly.

“But our friendship is still the same as yesterday.” Adelaide shrugged. “Apart from Lin Si, who sneakily hid himself from eight years of ageing and is no longer someone our age.”

Lin Si raised his eyebrows. “Then should I call you ‘senior’ now?”

“Anyway, freezing and defrosting causes the ages on the spaceship to be disordered all this time,” Zheng Shu smiled. “One of my juniors back on Earth was defrosted 40 years earlier than me. When I just woke up, he came to hand over his job before going back to sleep again himself, and at that time he already had a head full of white hair.”

Adelaide sighed. “I really want to just go to sleep at this age, then wake up after the new world is fully established.”

“By that time, when you tell people ‘I am Adelaide the psychiatrist’, nobody in this world will remember you anymore,” Zheng Shu leisurely bantered with him.

“Eh, whatever.” Adelaide did not take it too seriously. “It’ll certainly be a little lonely though.”

Lin Si took out the nutritional supplements for Ling Yi, saying, “Then I hope to sleep for over a thousand years, and see how far technology has developed by then.”

“Perhaps even the species will have changed.” Tang Ning made a prediction.

“It’s likely that Lin Si’s ‘limitless’ will have accelerated the evolution process,” said Zheng Shu.

“Then, if someone asks, how should Lin Si introduce himself? ‘I am your creator’?” said Adelaide.

Lin Si replied expressionlessly, “I am your dad.”

Adelaide leaned on Tang Ning and laughed until he was out of breath.

“You’re still the best, Dr Lin,” he said. “How are you still so unwilling to speak the language of humans?”

Lin Si handed the opened nutrient fluid to Ling Yi. After listening to Adelaide’s words, the corner of his lips curved slightly in a smile.

“This person is evil,” Adelaide said to the two younger ones after he finished laughing. “You definitely don’t know. On the surface, he looks like a gentleman, and the girls who like him can form a line from the laboratory building to the school gates, but he’s actually the worst. Zheng Shu and I had been thrown around a lot by him.”

Lin Si did not refute. He only smiled.

His smile was extremely faint and light. When his brows raised slightly and his eyes relaxed, those handsome features expressed a sharp beauty, yet was accompanied with a bit of languid haughtiness, which at a glance, made one unable not look directly at him for a while.

“It’s exactly that expression—” Adelaide gave his chair’s armrest a slap, then acted all cold and mighty. “Ah, you foolish mortals.”

Ling Yi was engrossed in watching Lin Si laugh, slightly enchanted.

From that faint and light smile, he could almost envision that Lin Si with no dark haze over him, no duties weighing on him, in his student days, living with his two best friends, had a teacher and a group of junior brothers and sisters, and even a casual smile would evoke such bewitching radiance—there must have been many who were in love with him.

Adelaide said that the girls who liked Lin Si could line up from the laboratory building up to the school gate. It was certainly not an exaggeration.

He squinted his eyes and felt a little proud.

Lin Si steadily replied to Adelaide’s accusations, “When have I ever said you all were foolish mortals. I’ve always treated people fairly and equally.”

“Oh, of course we’re equal—you’re all single-cell organisms.”

“Don’t look down on yourself,” said Lin Si flatly. “At the very least, you’d be a multicellular algae.”

“Algae?” Adelaide was in disbelief. “Am I really unqualified to be an animal?”

Lin Si responded to him with a look that said—“you plant”.

The half-hour of noise and rowdiness passed by, then everyone went back to their accommodations.

“Su Ting has something to give you,” Ling Yi said in order to kidnap Lin Si back to his room.

*

The author has something to say:

Making my daily concoction. The plot will move along again next chapter, so I’m fussing over the story threads and set-ups before I stir up trouble again.

The original planned word count was 250 000, now I’m up to 210 000. All hints and foreshadowing have been buried properly. Next up, little Shisi will begin her performance =w=

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