Chapter 21
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Lu Fenghan had slept alongside others before. On the front lines, when the fighting was intense and he had to keep a close watch at the starmap for days and nights without rest, the floor of the command ship was his bed. Dozens of people took turns sleeping, and no one cared who was lying next to them. It was good enough to be able to close their eyes.
He had also been this close to someone before.
Back when he hadn’t become the frontline commander yet, there was a mission where he and Erich were ambushed by rebels. They were forced to land on a desolate planet, and their escape pod exploded upon impact, turning into debris.
Erich was severely injured at the time, his bleeding wouldn’t stop, and his body temperature was dropping rapidly. There were no treatment pods or medical robots, not even a single pill or bandage. The planet was uninhabited, with extreme temperature fluctuations between day and night. By midnight, the temperature had dropped below freezing point. Lu Fenghan could only try to use his own body temperature as a heat source to prevent his brother from dying before help arrived.
But, these circumstances seemed somewhat different from now.
The continuous noise of the fortress operation was disturbing once noticed. But at this moment, it was nothing compared to the gentle breathing that reached his ears.
Lu Fenghan thought that it might be because Qi Yan always had a cold expression on his face, rarely smiled, and didn’t talk much. He often gave people the impression that he was aloof and difficult to approach.
It was very different from the way he was now, nestled tightly in his arms.
Or perhaps it was because the person in his arms was too thin, too soft, too fragile, that Lu Fenghan dared not move. Even his breathing became lighter, for fear of waking him up.
How was he supposed to sleep?
Lu Fenghan tilted his head slightly, his gaze falling on Qi Yan’s sleeping face. His eyes traced over Qi Yan’s straight, delicate eyelashes and narrow nose, silently asking in his mind: “Qi Yan, do you know how clingy you become when you’re asleep? Hmm?”
Of course, no one answered him.
The little clingy spirit slept soundly, completely unaware of his own clinginess.
In the darkness, Lu Fenghan stared at the metal panel above, trying to adjust to the sensation of having someone squeezed against him. Amidst the familiar noises, he slowly closed his eyes.
After a while, he lifted the arm resting at his side and loosely draped it over Qi Yan’s waist.
When Qi Yan woke up, the narrow single bed contained only him.
He never slept well, but this time he slept comfortably, without even dreaming.
“What time is it?” His voice was still hoarse.
“Still early, eight-thirty,” Lu Fenghan replied, unable to suppress a smile at the sight of Qi Yan rubbing his bleary eyes. “Don’t linger in bed. Didn’t your team leader say we have to assemble at nine?”
Qi Yan slowly sat up, the soft fabric molding to his body contours. He rinsed his mouth with the mouthwash provided by Fontaine-1, then took the water Lu Fenghan handed him and swallowed the medicine.
Knowing he wouldn’t feel better after taking the medicine, Lu Fenghan asked him from the side, “Rest a bit more before going to the assembly?”
Qi Yan responded with a simple “Hmm,” without any objection.
Leaning against the metal wall, Lu Fenghan hesitated for a moment. “Do you know that when you sleep at night—”
Forget it. Lu Fenghan inexplicably didn’t want to bring up this matter, it was like… a secret, a secret known only to him.
So, under Qi Yan’s puzzled gaze, he changed his words, “In the future, don’t sleep in the same bed with anyone other than me.”
Qi Yan was very resistant to physical contact with others, and naturally didn’t like sharing a bed, except for Lu Fenghan.
Still, he asked, “Why?”
Lu Fenghan lied with his eyes open. “You tend to be restless and make noise in your sleep. Only I can handle it.”
Qi Yan knew he hadn’t dreamt last night, and he usually slept quite peacefully, often keeping the sheets or blankets neatly in place.
He didn’t understand why Lu Fenghan said that, but he wouldn’t have shared a bed with anyone else anyway, so he nodded in agreement. “Okay.”
Lu Fenghan’s hidden emotion found satisfaction in this.
During the assembly, Mondrian and the others didn’t seem to be in good spirits. Ye Pei seemed a bit unsteady even while standing, muttering softly, “I should have brought my noise-canceling earplugs. It didn’t bother me during the day, but when it’s time to sleep, that engine humming is too loud. I probably only slept for three or four hours last night, and I kept having dreams that I was captured by space pirates.”
Qi Yan suddenly realized that although Lu Fenghan had prepared noise-canceling earplugs for him, he hadn’t used them at all last night, yet he still slept well.
Shortly after, Professor Fu arrived with a staff member. “Alright, students, make sure you have everything, we’re heading back to the surface.”
Ye Pei asked, “Professor, will we have the chance to come back in the future?”
Professor Fu joked, “Weren’t you nearly scared to tears by the attack yesterday? You’re not afraid anymore and still want to come back?”
Ye Pei wrinkled her nose. “The attack was a sudden event and doesn’t affect my longing and affection for Fontaine-1!”
The group boarded a small starship, and the hatch of the Fontaine-1’s catch chamber slowly opened, revealing the boundless space before them.
The entire starship glided out, like a fish returning to the ocean.
Ye Pei, leaning against the bulkhead as she watched Fontaine-1 gradually recede, couldn’t help but sigh. “When we were inside the fortress, it felt like the internal space was huge and could accommodate many people, but now, Fontaine-1 looks so small.”
“So, don’t you think it’s great?” Professor Fu also looked out of the viewport. “The starship we’re on now, Fontaine-1, and even Leto, are just a drop in the ocean compared to the scale of the universe. But we have successfully escaped the limitations of Earth, entered space, expanded the Alliance’s territory to its maximum, and even obtained nine administrative regions, bringing countless planets under human jurisdiction.”
“Humanity is insignificant, but humanity never allows itself to remain insignificant.”
Mondrian, quietly gazing out of the window, added, “That’s why I chose to pursue scientific research. My father once said that the human race needs people who face the earth and people who gaze up at the stars.”
“Yes, your father was right.” Professor Fu nodded. After a brief moment of distraction, his expression became complex, as if he had thought of something. He sighed softly. “But now, ‘gazing up at the stars’ has instilled fear in many people.”
Ye Pei asked in a hushed tone, “Because of the Great Technological Catastrophe?”
“You’ve all learned in history textbooks, the beginning of the Third Great Technological Advancement was due to humanity gaining control over a new matter—spatial source. After the discovery of spatial source, we easily obtained various technological advancements, even ones we dared not imagine.”
Mondrian: “But those technological advancements lacked theoretical support.”
“That’s right,” Professor Fu agreed. “You see, it’s like turning on a light, but we don’t understand why it lights up. For humanity, spatial source is like this.
“However, at that time, when we were just entering space, like a leafy boat entering the sea, there was always a risk of drowning. Spatial source was like driftwood that appeared within our reach. Therefore, we ignored its instability, ignored the various unsolved mysteries about it, and directly put it into application. In the end—”
Everyone understood the extremely devastating “Great Technological Catastrophe.”
The collapse of spatial source into a metastable state, the diffusion of force fields caused massive destruction: countless planets exploded, three-quarters of humanity died, the nine major administrative regions shrank to four, the territories once conquered by humanity plunged back into eternal darkness. Except for the Central Region, the other three regions could only retain their core areas, and the marginal areas were forced to be abandoned and gradually became desolate.
Amidst the widespread devastation, the Alliance officially launched the “Technological Renaissance Project.”
After losing the spatial source, the Alliance seemed to regress overnight to the Earth era, with hardly one in ten of the achievements of the Third Great Technological Advancement remaining. Many laboratories and researchers perished, data were lost, and in many fields, there were even instances of complete disconnection.
“After the Great Technological Catastrophe, the rebels established their stronghold at the border of the Southern Cross Region, openly opposing the Alliance and the Human Interstellar Convention, attempting to replace ‘human rights’ with ‘divine rights’.
“At that time, it was still in the year 145 of the Star calendar, and the Alliance was in disarray, too preoccupied to pay attention to the rebels.
“But the fact proved that the Alliance had overlooked the stimulus brought to the entire human race by the Great Technological Catastrophe. How significant was the stimulus? The rapid growth of the rebels, which still remains undefeated to this day, is one of the proofs.”
Professor Fu recalled the wreckage of the fighter jet floating in space from yesterday’s sudden attack. “As long as there is one person who distrusts humanity, distrusts technology, distrusts the future, then the rebels will never disappear.”
Lu Fenghan thought that Professor Fu should be aware that yesterday’s attack was not the work of random space pirates but of the rebels.
Professor Fu looked at the students earnestly. “You all are exceptionally outstanding students of Turan Academy, and in the future, you will become exceptionally outstanding scientists. Your lives are still long, but no matter what happens, never give up your trust in the community and hope for the future.”
Ye Pei and Mondrian felt the weight in Professor Fu’s words and nodded in agreement.
Qi Yan looked out the window. In his memory, his mother had also told him, “You possess talents that are beyond ordinary reach, but these talents will also bring you pain. You will often feel lonely because of others’ incomprehension, and you will feel fearful because of realizing the insignificance of individuals. But, Yanyan, even when it’s dark, remember to look up at the stars.”
He thought, he had done it. He had never spoken of giving up.
By the time they arrived at Turan, afternoon classes had already finished, so they went straight back to the laboratory.
The headline “Fontaine-1 Under Attack by Space Pirates” splashed across the front page of yesterday’s Leto Daily. Their return unsurprisingly drew a crowd eager for details.
Ye Pei had to recount the whole incident from start to finish to satisfy everyone’s curiosity.
Qi Yan took his seat, pulled out his light storage device, and connected it, preparing to catch up on the progress from the past two days.
As he typed, he remembered what Lu Fenghan had said before going to bed last night. The reason why the rebels attacked suddenly was because the source architecture of the starship’s central control system was in the fortress at the time, with Leto as the destination.
He speculated that delivering the source architecture was probably for debugging a new type of information processing model developed in cooperation with the military and Turan. The military might have plans to adapt this system for civilian starships and land use.
Realizing his thoughts were wandering, Qi Yan gathered his focus on the task at hand, aiming to finish earlier and go home.
He was feeling a bit hungry.
Laurent’s workstation was diagonally across from Qi Yan’s.
When Qi Yan and the others weren’t in the lab these past two days, anyone encountering problems would come to seek his advice. Though he was a bit irritated, he didn’t refuse.
But now, as soon as Qi Yan returned, the people who had previously been praising Laurent with phrases like “Laurent, how did you come up with this method?” and “You’re so amazing!” had suddenly shifted their attention to Qi Yan.
And he felt like an invisible person, ignored by everyone.
No, he should say, wasn’t he a complete invisible person now?
Professor Fu didn’t take him to the space fortress. The spot that was originally his, everyone just naturally assumed it was Qi Yan’s. Every teacher praised Qi Yan for the PVC93 model and the R9-03 Accelerator…
Everyone was talking about Qi Yan, Qi Yan, Qi Yan—
Why did this person even exist in the world?
At that moment, his personal terminal received a message.
“Have you considered it? The price is negotiable.”
Laurent had intended to delete this message immediately, but paused before doing so.
He glanced at Qi Yan, then at the message on his personal terminal.
Half a minute later, he replied: “Raise the price by another forty percent.”
The reply came back extremely fast: “Done.”
Excitement surged in Laurent’s eyes, quickly concealed again. “Tell me the time and place of the transaction.”
Qi Yan helped solve a few problems for the others in the group, then continued with the tasks assigned to him. After saving the final analysis results and setting aside the light storage device, Qi Yan stood up and went to find Lu Fenghan. “Let’s go back home. I’m hungry.”
Walking out, Qi Yan brushed past Laurent, took a few steps, and felt something was strange.
In the lab, everyone else configured their personal terminals on their left hands for convenience. Only Qi Yan, who was ambidextrous, wore his on his right hand.
But just now, he happened to notice that Laurent had somehow moved his personal terminal to his right wrist.
Lu Fenghan, who was standing nearby, asked, “What do you want to eat tonight? Should I cook?”
Without hesitation, Qi Yan declined, “No, I’ll have Set A.”
So, he’d rather have the bland Set A meal than eat the food I make?
This realization made Lu Fenghan, who excelled at anything he tried, couldn’t help but wonder, did the penetrating injury to his waist last time not affect his abilities in that area, but rather affect his cooking skills?
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Thanks for the update