Cat and Rose - Cat & Rose - Chapter 68 - The Sun is Dazzling, So Are You (3)

Chapter 68 – The Sun is Dazzling, So Are You (3)

Lifting her skirt, Vivian ran to Tang Ning’s side and carefully asked him, “Are you okay?”

Tang Ning was not okay.

When did a genius boy like him ever encounter this kind of provocation?

He shut his eyes, then opened them again and said flatly, “I’ll keep searching.”

Lin Si nodded and said to him, “Go to bed early.”

Tang Ning did not respond. It seemed that he was prepared for another all-nighter. They did not know how many nights he had stayed up already.

Lin Si had no way to deal with him either.

When given a little coaxing, his own little cat would sleep obediently no matter what happened, but Tang Ning would not. Once he made up his mind, nobody could cure him.

While he was contemplating, Vivian suddenly made a “hmph” sound.

“Tang Ning will have a blackout tonight!” she said crisply.

In the next instant, the entire room blackened. Vivian did exactly what she said she would do.

Tang Ning: “…”

He commanded, “Supply the electricity.”

Vivian refused to obey; she was a very independent artificial intelligence.

“Sleep,” said Lin Si. “I’ll still be here.”

Tang Ning made a reluctant noise of affirmation.

Vivian noisily made faces at him.47

***

After returning to the room, Lin Si called the Marshal’s communicator.

The Marshal eyebrows locked tightly together when he learned of a series of events that happened on the Expeditioner.

—This was certainly a troublesome matter. It was almost as if they were being haunted.

“Finding the murderer is one thing,” he finally said. “At the same time, it is also necessary for us to maintain our overall stability and make plans. Even if we can’t find out the truth, we must reach the purple planet safely.”

“I think so too,” Lin Si said. “I can offer you some help.”

“What kind of help?”

“After the vaccine for the purple virus is made, I can declare to the public that its quantity is limited and cannot be mass-produced, which will give you a reason to freeze a large number of spaceship personnel.”

The Marshal’s holographic projection stared at him for a while, then said, “Alright.”

At this moment, Ling Yi passed by behind Lin Si, holding a box.

The Marshal said, “How long do you still need him for?”

“You also need him?”

“I need a trusted person to be my assistant,” said the Marshal.

Lin Si smiled instead. “Then I will thank you for your care in advance for Mr Ling.”

Whenever Lin Si spoke with the Marshal, they always sneered coldly and ridiculed each other as if they were on the verge of fighting. When was he ever polite?

The Marshal was getting goosebumps all over. He thought about it again—this was not a thank you at all, but a demand for him to look after Mr Ling well after moving him out. As expected, his words were nothing pleasant.

He waved his hand in acknowledgement.

When Ling Yi heard the two mention him, he peered over.

He was currently wearing white plush pyjamas with two pink cat paw prints on it. His thick and beautiful black hair casually draped down, and with a confused and lost gaze, he looked beautiful yet lazy, almost like a creature from another world.

“Lin Si, what the hell’s up with you?” The Marshal’s tone became rude.

Lin Si raised an eyebrow. “?”

“Are you raising a daughter?” the Marshal interrogated. “How could you dress a boy like that?”

Ling Yi blinked: “…?”

What did the plush pyjamas do wrong?

“Are you from the twentieth century?” Lin Si’s voice was calm. “I think it’s foolish to hold a critical attitude towards things you can’t appreciate. Plush pyjamas can reduce anxiety and are beneficial to children’s mental health. I recommend you try it yourself.”

Of course, the Marshal refused to try.

But…a fluffy Ling Yi seemed a little cute?

A crack appeared in the aesthetic perception the Marshal developed over decades of his life; one with roughness and strength as its core standard.

“The vaccine development is coming to an end. He can leave the laboratory now.” Lin Si raised the main topic again.

“Report to me tomorrow,” said the Marshal.

Ling Yi said obediently, “Yes, Mr Marshal.”

He was certainly a little cute.

The crack in the Marshal’s aesthetic perception widened.

“One more thing…” Lin Si suddenly said, “it’s a personal question of mine.”

“Speak.”

“Since you want Ling Yi to come over, you obviously don’t trust the people around you,” said Lin Si. “Before this, you also showed a similar tendency, as well as distrust towards the entirety of Area 3. Do you think the mastermind belongs to Area 3?”

He paused, then continued. “With all due respect, all matters at present have nothing to do with Area 3, so why are you suspecting your subordinates? Is it because of some incident I don’t know about?”

“You’ve always been smart,” the Marshal said icily, “but I have nothing to comment on this matter.”

Lin Si returned the Marshal’s words with a thoughtful look.

The call was cut.

“Does the Marshal want to freeze the majority of the people?” Ling Yi did not ruminate over the issue with the pyjamas, but understood the core content of the call.

“Yeah,” Lin Si explained, “as long as I come forward and tell the Voyagers that the purple virus vaccine can’t be mass-produced for the time being, the Marshal can order to freeze most of the people on the spacecraft, leaving only the few personnel in charge of navigation and maintenance…..and those with absolute trust.”

This method is simple and crude, but very effective. As long as the person was frozen, no matter what kind of conspiracy it was, it could not be carried out.

However, in this way, that person could also risk exposure and make a dangerous all-in bet, carrying out a desperate attempt like a cornered dog leaping over the wall—this was the issue the Marshal needed to consider, as he could not stay completely unprepared.48

Lin Si’s emotions gradually calmed down, “You’re going to the Voyager tomorrow. Do you need to pack up?”

Ling Yi pouted, “Mm-hm.”

He needed to return to Area 3, not only for the Marshal’s request, but also as part of his future plans—however, leaving Lin Si for a while made him very unhappy.

Lin Si walked over, “Do you want me to help?”

“There’s actually nothing much to pack.” Ling Yi folded a few clothes and asked Lin S. “Will the vaccine research be finished soon?”

“It’s nearing its final stages,” Lin Si said. “Originally, it would’ve taken at least a few years, but it’s gone very smoothly after we obtained the antibodies in your body.”

Ling Yi smiled, “Then come back to the Voyager soon.”

“Mm-hm.”

The vaccine progressed smoothly was, in fact, not entirely because of Ling Yi’s special characteristics that inspired them, but also because of the systematic experience left over from dealing with the Berlin virus in the past. The combination of correct direction and the correct methods allowed the experiments to progress almost without detours—as for why the research methods of the purple virus and the Berlin virus were so similar, no one could tell. It could only be attributed to a small, miraculous correspondence in the nature of the two.

Ling Yi went back and forth between the two rooms. After packing up his things, he held a box and sat down beside Lin Si. “For you.”

Lin Si held the box in front of him, ready to open it.

Ling Yi ran away.

Before closing the door, he did not forget to say, “Good night!”

This made Lin Si rather curious.

His fingers rested on the lid of the black box, ready to open it, but paused.

A miraculous, intuitive feeling seemed to emerge out of nowhere, causing his fingers to heat up slightly.

He opened the communication interface on his bracelet and sent a message to Ling Yi. “Let’s have a chat?”

Ling Yi: “No.”

And then he blocked Lin Si.

Lin Si, who was blocked, felt a little suffocated.

He opened the box. Inside the box was Ling Yi’s diary, and there was a slightly smaller white box, which was exactly the one Ling Yi fiddled with in the surveillance footage.

When he opened the lid, the shimmering shapes inside ebbed and flowed. Pulses of light passed through them, prompting their surfaces to reflect a radiant yet soft light.

They were stones. Precious metals, diamonds, white egg stones, and exotic little minerals, each of their appearances were shaped through a variety of experiences, but they were all very beautiful without exception. Evidently, these things could not be done through simple collection, but needed to be carefully selected on many, many planets, then finally placed into a treasured collection.

Lin Si took out a white egg-shaped stone. It was commonly referred to as an “egg-white stone” in Chinese, but this beautiful stone had another romantic name—“opal”. The translucent blue and white texture revealed faint, speckled stars of gold; when it turned, the lights gleamed and flowed, as if one could see the vast galaxy within it. 49

—They were the most beautiful cores of the barren planets scattered among the vast sea of stars.

His family’s little kitten walked through these planets, fetched them out, buried them in the spaceship, and waited for a day when the ship returned so he could take them home.

Lin Si put away this very precious gift and took out the diary.

Ling Yi’s brushstrokes were familiar to him; they were very earnest, gentle and lively.

At the beginning, it only recorded the trivial matters of his daily life, such as what he did today. Sometimes, there would only be a few sentences a day, and sometimes only a few strokes would be written in several days. It could be seen that life of the Expeditioner is a little dry and monotonous.

When he landed on a planet, the contents of the diary would increase.

This star is very cold, and it snows here. At night, when the wind stops, I can hear the sound of snowflakes falling on the ground. I want to take Lin Si to see the snow.

…

I couldn’t fall asleep today. I saw that the Colonel was also awake, stargazing outside. The Colonel said that he suddenly remembered his girlfriend on Earth, who he almost forgot about already. He said that she was no longer in this world, turned into a star in the sky that watched over him, but we’ve landed on many planets and there was still no sign of her. When he remembered this, he suddenly couldn’t sleep. The Colonel asked me why I couldn’t sleep as well. I don’t really know myself, but it’s probably because…I suddenly remembered that it’s been three years since I left Lin Si.

This was the time of the third year.

In the distant future, there would be a fourth year, a fifth year, and an eighth year.

Lin Si read very slowly, without missing a single word, as if he wanted to experience every little bit of the missing eight years he lost.

He saw Ling Yi’s entire journey—when he was bored, when his life was hanging by a thread, when he missed himself.

The fourth year was a turning point. The virus broke out, and he stayed on the ship alone.

The endless pain and loneliness should have struck deeply into his heart and soul, but he did not write it down.

At first, it seemed like he did not write much in the diary—there were only a few careful, restrained words that explained the situation on the spaceship. Later, when he had nothing to do, he began to read books and excerpted some unique lines, most of which were inseparable from longing or love.

A person’s heartstrings could not be struck for no reason. The things he read were also often related to matters of the heart.

It was impossible for Lin Si to stay completely unaware.

He turned to the end, to the most painful period of time for Ling Yi, when he was under the erosion of the virus.

The pages were densely packed, covered entirely with a person’s name, as if he only needed to think of its syllables to sail across all suffering, traverse the vast sea of stars, and see the first ray of morning light in the horizon after the pitch black night.

Lin Si.

Lin Si.

Lin Si.

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