Cat and Rose - Cat & Rose - Chapter 78 - The Past Should Be Buried (3)

Chapter 78 – The Past Should Be Buried (3)

In the subspace.

The speed of the Voyager slowed to a stop, but Area 6 was thrown towards the wormhole at an even faster speed.

Ling Yi looked at the master control panel.

The past reappeared; everything resembled the scene of the black hole incident ten years ago. At that time, he and Lin Si were together, but now, Lin Si was going alone towards an imminent destruction.

He would have to bid farewell to the happiness, laughter and warmth of his limited life up to now.

With tears running all over his face, fingers trembling, he placed his finger over the trigger, the barrel of the gun against his temple.

The cold touch of the muzzle made him recall that silver pistol, hidden in a secret compartment in the wall in Lin Si’s laboratory.

How much did he know regarding the truth of the Voyager’s betrayal of Earth? Lin Si was very keen, to the point where Ling Yi had no doubt that from the start, Lin Si had already known thoroughly of all the cruelty and darkness hidden within the Voyager.

He remembered that year when he was fifteen, that gathering that celebrated the success of the third generation of nuclear fusion, which marked the beginning of an era of infinite energy.

Between the laughter and alcohol,74 his gaze passed through the crowd and saw Lin Si sipping liquor alone in that dark corner.

The people were submerged in joy, while he alone was in the abyss.

The reason why he kept that pistol, was it because at a certain point in time, he wanted to pull the trigger at his temple, end his life, and depart from this world?

The moment he was about to press the trigger, he was pulled into a trance again.

Lin Si granted me a good life.

My life was not entirely chosen by myself.

Either way, a person’s lifetime…was not very long.

He opened his eyes, and looked at this world anew.

The master control panel showed the scene of Area 6 falling towards the wormhole at an unstoppable speed.

A sudden clap of thunder roared in his heart. His entire being seemed to overlap with Lin Si in the black hole accident that year.

On the eve of the ship’s imminent destruction, Lin Si commanded Lucia to rush to the ring singularity at nine times warp speed,75 opening the white hole and grasping the one chance of survival.

“Vivian.” His voice trembled slightly. “Antimatter bomb. Maximum Eq. Target wormhole.”

The countdown reached two seconds.

The core weapon at the head of the spaceship began to charge. The fusion energy furnace burned wildly, a blue light gradually glowed brighter, and the giant, silver antimatter bomb rushed towards the wormhole like a comet streaking across the sky.

At the last second of the countdown, it flew past Area 6.

Almost in the next instant, it arrived at the wormhole. The program activated; the Chimera metal automatically broke down into countless atoms, and the maximum equivalent of antimatter exploded!

All sounds were annihilated.

People near the windows looked away from the screen projection and saw the five-dimensional world outside, flowing with light and bursting with colour.

At that moment, they made noises, but found that they could not hear their own voice, nor the shouts of others. All of a sudden, the world had gone silent, as if it had entered eternity, only returning to normal after an instant.

There were only five seconds left until the activation of “Delete”.

Vivian gripped her sword tightly.

Lucia’s figure appeared at the doorway.

She walked towards Ling Yi.

Her blonde hair changed colour, the white armour peeled off, and the sword fell to the ground.

She had a pair of gentle azure blue eyes and beautiful, shoulder-length black hair. She wore a simple, white trench coat and held a book whose title he could not read clearly. Time could not leave its traces on her; it could only add to her timeless charisma that was gentle and profound.

She stood in front of Ling Yi like this, reaching out to caress his cheek, as if she had never left him.

Like a sharp sword, that image pierced the thick layer of membrane in Ling Yi’s memory.

The memories flooded out.

Back then, she played on the swing with him in the courtyard, played the piano in the sunset of an autumn day, identified the plants in the grass, and identified the constellations in the night sky.

“Every person is a star in the sky,” she said softly back then.

“Then we must be very close to them,” he said, looking at the starry sky.

Ye Selin smiled and hugged him tight. “Yeah.”

The memories returned.

“Ye Selin…” muttered Ling Yi.

The expression on his face was indecipherable between tears and laughter.

“Why…”

Ye Selin only gazed at him tenderly.

Five, four, three, two, one.

“Delete” activated.

Vivian leaped into the air, her red dress fluttering, the edges of her sword cold, and pierced Ye Selin’s chest from behind.

“Delete” activated.

Complete removal.

Her image cracked and fell apart, disintegrating into hundreds of millions of blue binary codes, and finally dissipated into the air in front of Ling Yi.

Then it was Vivian—her small, delicate body gone with the wind.

Ling Yi stretched out his hand. The code fragments of zeros and ones danced around his fingertips briefly, then vanished.

Why did things happen this way?

—But the truth was as such. In this world of absurdities where even elation was sorrowful, the truth and lies were muddled, righteousness and evil were never clear, betrayal and loyalty coincided with each other.

***

Area 6, in the laboratory.

In the infinite stillness, the instant Su Ting laid her eyes upon Ye Selin’s image, tears escaped from her eyes

The truth was so heavy and unbearable. The Voyagers who they viewed as their faith were renegades, the people who claimed to protect the last hope of human civilization had killed the last hope for Earth with their own two hands, and the person she loved most was the ghost that roamed the spaceship for the past years. Anyone who encountered such a situation would break down completely and weep until they lost their voices.

Lin Si looked at her as well.

“I thought it was Ling Jing.” His voice trembled.

“You still have many things you don’t know,” said Ye Selin.

She continued. “I calculated many possibilities, but I never expected you would still make such a choice after you found out.”

“The Voyager should live.” Lin Si lowered his eyes. “I’m not as kind as you think.”

Ye Selin looked at her favourite student in the past, and said softly, “You are indeed a doctor.”

A calm, qualified doctor—even if the person lying on the operating table was his enemy, he would not plunge his scalpel into their stomach.

Lin Si did not reply.

Ye Selin turned to leave. “I should go now. Thank you for taking care of my Ling Yi.”

“My.”

Ye Selin laughed softly. “Yours.”

Her figure dispersed into the air of the laboratory.

In a daze, Lin Si stretched out his hand in that direction. A ray of light passed through his fingers, as if he was still in that warm, old library back in his student days. There, he encountered Ye Selin, like a drifting boat that encountered a harbour, or a lonely migrating whale pulled in by the geomagnetic field and could never leave those gentle blue eyes again.

Su Ting’s cries pulled him back to reality.

They, her students, placed the most sincere feelings of admiration they felt in their lives onto Ye Selin. Now that their church had collapsed and their faith had fallen apart, how could they face this?

“It’s all over,” he told Su Ting.

“But what should we do?” Su Ting stared at the ceiling in a daze. “Keep working for the Voyagers?”

The Voyager’s great cause, which everyone—scientists or soldiers—fought so passionately for, turned out to be a total betrayal.

Nobody could answer her question.

The goddess of fate flipped the black and white magic cube in her hands, so that all good and evil were entangled.

Lin Si looked out into the distance outside the window

After a turbulence, the dizzying five-dimensional world returned to the vast spread of absolute darkness. The wormhole and antimatter collided with each other in the distance, and in a flash, completely collapsed and disappeared. They were able to recover their lives at the brink of death.

Mr Lambert sighed. He manually controlled the spaceship, made a connection request to the Voyager, and steadily flew close.

Ling Yi was at the connection port, looking at Lin Si. There were still tear tracks on his face.

Lin Si also looked at him.

They were only apart for a few hours, but it seemed like a lifetime.

No, it was even longer than a lifetime. As long as the distance between life and death.

Ling Yi did not dare to move. He was afraid his injured body could not last.

So he watched Lin Si walk towards him just like that.

In those few short steps, the world was in complete silence. The quantum tides ebbed and flowed, time and space rose and fell, and the stars twinkled in the dark subspace. 76

It was true that the broken destiny resembled a cold scientific law devoid of mercy or compassion, but even under the most rigorous laws, unexpected situations would still occur. In the real world, it would often be referred to as a ‘miracle’.

At this moment, Ling Yi was thinking, when he reached an age old enough to reminisce about the past, if someone asked him what was the most amazing thing he had accomplished, it would definitely be what was happening right now.

Not stopping Lucia, nor fighting for the Voyager, but to seize that one-in-a-billion possibility after the antimatter encountered the wormhole to reunite with Lin Si in the real world.

He embraced Lin Si tightly. Even his breaths trembled.

Lin Si held him tight as well, kissing his forehead gently. “Everything’s alright now.”

Ling Yi sobbed as he made a noise of acknowledgement.

After that, his wounds were discovered. There were many, of all shapes and sizes.

He was dragged away, painfully and happily accepting Lin Si’s cleanup and treatment

The alert was completely lifted, and the defence and weapons systems retracted, restoring to their original state.

The people were able to move freely again, but the video played by Lucia earlier had plunged the atmosphere into complete depression. The joy of escaping death was not seen at all.

Tang Ning had indeed kept a backup of Vivian, and it was also a real-time backup. Vivian returned to the spaceship and began to help the Voyager with restoring order.

Zheng Shu had committed suicide. A bullet had pierced through his skull.

He left behind a chip. When it was read, the content inside was something akin to a diary.

2543.6.12

Ling Jing is in isolation. Her mental state is abnormal. She keeps saying that she killed her compatriots, and that the Voyagers are full of sin.

2543.6.13

The virus broke out among the members of Los Angeles base two and spread to the spaceship. Ling Jing was infected. She’s very ill and I don’t know what to do. It seemed that she was already infected yesterday, and combining the things she constantly said before, I suspect there were people on Earth who wanted to prevent the Voyager from taking off, and her secret army had received orders to kill them. She’s always been a very kind person, so I’m afraid she couldn’t bear to do such a thing.

Lin Si was brought on the spaceship. I heard that the research on antibodies is nearly complete, so there’s still hope for Ling Jing. The marshal ordered everyone to be quarantined, but I secretly obtained an extra freezing capacity in Area 9 for her. After she’s frozen and Lin Si develops the antibody, she will be saved.

2543.6.14

Ling Jing went missing. I can’t find her. I should’ve cut her network.

She must’ve learned the news from somewhere—that Ye Selin was also infected with the virus and led the other infected people off the ship.

—The further they read, the more shocking the content was. The truth of Ye Selin’s appearance on the spaceship gradually floated to the surface.

The past resurfaced.

What was shown in the video was not the full story. There was at least a gap of two days in between the time Los Angeles base two dropped nuclear bombs on the government forces and the time when the Voyager took off for real.

During this gap, the Berlin virus broke out on the spaceship, primarily originating from the soldiers of base two who had contact with the outside.

Lin Si and the Wilkins laboratory were forcefully brought on the spaceship. In order to slow down the spread of the virus, Ye Selin called on all infected people to leave the spaceship of their own initiative, to strive for a greater chance of survival for those who were alive.

Ling Ning chose to accompany his wife to leave the ship, but he made a request, which was to transfer his ship ticket to his fifteen-year-old son.

The Marshal had a deep friendship with him and agreed to this request.

And the moment they stepped off the spaceship, they saw the view around the Voyager——

The land full of ruins was completely razed to the ground, the rubble transformed into flatland. Scattered across the ground were corpses in various military uniforms, as well as the remains of armoured cars and warplanes.

The exposed skin in the air brought about a burning sensation. It was nuclear radiation.

What on earth happened outside?

It was at this moment when Ling Jing, who was missing, ran out of the ship cabin.

“Ye Selin!” She called out.

Ye Selin widened her eyes in surprise.

When she reached them, Ling Jing said, “We’ve all been quarantined, but Shu-ge obtained a quota for freezing…Ye Selin, go back! When Lin Si develops the antibody and defrosts you, everything will be okay.”

She was Ye Selin’s eldest daughter who held an incomparably deep affection for Ye Selin.

The chance to live, she intended to leave for Ye Selin.

Ye Selin shook her head.

“Why are you on the spaceship?” Her tone was extremely soft, but it was stern.

Ling Jing froze.

The team she was in was the secret military force of the Voyager. They had no tickets; even boarding the ship was a secret. Zheng Shu had only just found out she was also on the ship, but Ye Selin had no knowledge of it at all. The purpose of this team was to guard against any potential situations—such as the large-scale siege two days ago.

Ye Selin looked at her.

She looked at the haggardness in her eyes multiplied by the mental torture she endured, and at the deep wound on her wrists, evidently caused by self-mutilation.

Ye Selin was stunned. With shock and sorrow in her eyes, she shook her head, looked at Ling Jing, and took a step back.

Ling Jing muttered, “It’s not like that. Ye Selin, listen to me…”

Ye Selin looked at the devastations and wounds of the land surrounding her, her voice trembling, “No…”

Her azure eyes were filled with despair; her chest heaved sharply with rage.

Seeing Ye Selin’s expression, Ling Jing knew that she understood everything—with how clever and wise she was, seeing this, how could she not understand!

Her own daughter mysteriously appeared on the spaceship because she originally belonged to a top secret army. The land outside the ship was covered with the corpses of soldiers from various countries, demonstrating that the Voyagers activated thermonuclear weapons on them!

And these armies surrounded the Voyager—because the Voyager itself was not a bright and righteous existence!

The programme concealed itself from everyone with unknown means, undiscovered by the governments of various countries until the end. It plundered the resources of Earth to build itself, issued invitations to all elite scientists, and at the same time, asked those who received tickets to maintain secrecy in order to prevent social unrest. So then, the Wilkins lab was so slow in its progress, such that the Earth was about to be consumed by the Berlin virus…because it had also greedily taken the most elite virologists away!

Just how dark and sinful was this existence?

Ye Selin could not speak. She could not accept, and could not forgive.

A bold idea crossed Ling Jing’s mind.

She pursed her lips, clenched her teeth, and in that instant Ye Selin was distracted, she hit her neck with precise force!

Ye Selin fell unconscious.

“Ye Selin…” Ling Jing caught her falling body, then kissed her on the forehead. “You must live on.”

She looked up at her father.

Ling Ning nodded.

They were both people who loved Ye Selin deeply. If there was a way for Ye Selin to live on, any price could be paid.

Ling Ning was the owner of the “Voyager” system.

With his authority as assistance, Ling Jing returned to the spaceship, camouflaged and passed through the rigorous quarantine procedures, then sent Ye Selin to the sleeping cabin that Zheng Shu had prepared for her in Area 9.

At last, she returned to the quarantine zone.

“Promise me…” With a layer of thick glass between them, she said to Zheng Shu, “I’ll put Ye Selin in your care…”

Zheng Shu had no other option but to agree.

—Therefore, the person lying inside the freezing cabin was named ‘Ling Jing’, but she was actually Ye Selin.

The Voyager set sail, and its crew members fell into slumber.

Here, fate made another joke, not too big but not too small.

Ling Jing believed that Ye Selin would live, but she did not.

Even at those low temperatures, the Berlin virus could still eat away at the human body, but this was only discovered a long, long time afterwards.

After a century of voyage, the virus had spread all over Ye Selin’s body. She would never wake up again.

At this time, the Chimera project was launched. They applied for human tissues, and wanted to use the bodies in Area 9 that were confirmed dead.

When Zheng Shu woke up and began his work on the Voyager, everything was already too late.

Lucia’s core processor was fused with Ye Selin’s brain tissues.

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