translator: loop
123 days, 12 hours, 7 minutes and 21 seconds;
20 seconds;
19 seconds;
18 seconds;
…
The countdown looked alarming, but was really just a reminder to tell Chu Si how long he had to live ‘for now’.
If proper maintenance was done before the end of the countdown, the number would be pushed back to its initial value and the countdown would start again.
If the countdown was not reset 24 hours after it cleared, then the ‘for now’ would be removed forever, and the moment it cleared would be the real end of Chu Si’s life.
This device had existed in Chu Si’s body for many years.
The annual two-week vacation at the black cedar forest villa was to do maintenance on this device to ensure that Chu Si could still exist in the world in good spirits for six months afterwards.
When the device was first embedded, Chu Si also protested to the doctor, asking: “Can this thing be made a little more humane? For example, the creepy countdown could be removed. When the ‘door’ is opened there’s a ticking sound, what do you think it looks like I am?”
The doctor was named Shao Dun, and belonged to the highest level of the White Eagle Military Hospital. He was an authoritative expert in the field of intelligent mechanical treatment, but also an old man who was always fighting with patients.
The old Doctor Shao had always implemented the policy of ‘three no’s’ towards patients like Executive Chu who relied on their good looks to talk nonsense all day long—
No showing off, no giving face, no talking back, and reject everything.
At that time, the left half of Executive Chu’s body had a severe rejection reaction to intelligent machinery, with bleeding, allergies, and a high fever alternating. The gauze on both his eyes had just been removed. He was not out of danger yet, but he still picked and poked at the treatment machinery.
With a coffin face, the old Doctor Shao ordered the little nurse next to him to give Chu Si an injection. While staring at the various data on the device, he said: “For someone like you, a bastard who doesn’t care about day and night when he’s busy, and doesn’t care about his life when he’s crazy, you should use a countdown timer to stimulate you, lest you forget to maintain the machine before it clears. Not to mention killing you, it’s also a waste of equipment.”
“You have to take good care of this machine. There are only 20 sets of the entire planet, and once the interface has a memory of your DNA, it can no longer be used for others,” old Shao lectured, while using the tip of his gloved finger to poke the connection of Chu Si’s wound to the intelligent machinery.
He poked Chu Si completely out of his temper. Chu Si could only resign himself to his fate.
The tick-tick countdown was usually not audible at all. But Chu Si could feel it from time to time, attached to his bones, the calculation of his lifespan. The calculation continued for nearly ten years, and just an hour before the planet exploded, he was in the villa doing a new round of maintenance.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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As long as the countdown didn’t turn into single digits, Executive Chu Si, who was naturally strong-willed, would remain calm.
Chu Si entered the shower, the heat instantly fogging up the glass door.
Amidst the sound of rushing water, the embedded transmitter above his head suddenly rustled twice, and Chu Si immediately paused the hand that was stretched out to take a towel.
The transmitter was connected to the alarm and communication system of the entire prison, and was often used for emergency notifications. The people in the Security Building had to deal with countless emergencies every year, so they were extremely sensitive to this kind of thing.
Chu Si was stunned for less than a second, then slapped off the shower switch, brushed his wet, short hair back, haphazardly wiped his body, then put on his clothes and left the shower.
Just when he was buttoning his shirt with one hand, ready to unlock the door, the person on the transmitter suddenly coughed, cleared his throat, and said in a drawling tone: “Executive, there’s no hot water in my room.”
Chu Si: “…”
He slammed the brakes. The finger he reached out to the electronic lock halted halfway, and he pressed the call button on the wall, saying, “Sa’e Yang, is there something wrong with your head?”
The transmitter rustled twice and replied, “Yeah, I guess.”
Chu Si: “…You live right next fucking door, do you need to be taught something as simple as knocking?”
Sa’e: “Eight out of nine times I knock on the door you won’t directly let me in, so I first communicated.”
Chu Si opened his mouth and still wanted to curse, but heard the transmitter rustle and the voice of the mop came out: “What are you two doing? Scared the hell out of me…”
Chu Si: “…”
He was so angry at the psycho named Yang he forgot the transmitter was a public broadcast.
Chu Si rolled his eyes, looked down at the wet shirt on his body, and walked to the edge of the bed. He sat down expressionlessly, pressed 3 on the communicator embedded in the bedside, and directly connected to the next-door Sa’e in room No. 3.
“Are you unable to use the internal single-line communications?” Chu Si asked saltily.
This time Sa’e’s voice finally didn’t come out of the transmitter. “I can use it, but I guessed you were in the shower, and the range of the single-line communication doesn’t extend to the shower.”
Okay, you have a point.
Chu Si’s face remained unchanged and he hung up without mercy.
Two seconds later, the bedside communicator dinged again and automatically connected: “Executive, it’s not polite to hang up before I’ve finished talking.”
Chu Si said frankly, “I’ve never been impolite.”
Sa’e let out a laugh. “So, can I borrow your shower?”
Chu Si wiped the water from his hair twice and replied, “I have to remind you that I previously searched for food in room 3. I tried the faucet when I checked the drinking water and there was no shortage of hot water at all. I’m going to get some sleep, and I wish you a nightmare.”
After that, he turned off the communication completely and turned on the nighttime do-not-disturb mode, then dragged the communication code of room 3 onto the blacklist.
Anyone who knew a little about Sa’e Yang knew that he was a very extreme and eccentric person. To be precise, most people in this world were simply air in his eyes, he was not interested, so naturally he would not even see them.
There were only two kinds of people who could interest him.
The first kind of person was someone more dangerous and uncontrollable than he was. The more dangerous, the more interesting he would find them. But such people rarely existed.
The second kind of person had something he needed, and he wanted it, so he paid attention to you.
Chu Su believed he was not the first type, so he could only be the second type.
As for Sa’e’s goal, he could make a random guess: nothing more than hoping to remove the black gold controller through him.
To be honest, now that even the planet had ceased to exist, removing the controller was not completely impossible.
But relying on the authority of Chu Si alone, it really couldn’t be done.
It was just that even if he told Sa’e, and he had told him before, would the psycho even believe him?
No.
It was only because the great Executive Chu talked too much nonsense, and his impression in this area was really too bad. Even if he occasionally opened his heart and said two sincere truths, no one would believe him.
Chu Si wiped his hair half dry, then laid down on the single-person bed.
The fifty years in the cyro-capsule were spent in physiological suspension and not normal rest, so Chu Si, who had experienced a bunch of strange events, was extraordinarily sleepy and fell asleep the moment he closed his eyes.
He dreamed of the winter of 5702 again.
That winter was really too cold, and the state of Liannan had a full month of snow, not to mention the famous snowy Miya mountain range.
The huge wreckage of the aircraft fell between the steepest cliffs of the Miya Mountains.
Literally, ‘between’.
Its crippled left landing wing perched on the east cliff, its charred right landing wing perched on the west cliff, and its middle main body hung precariously in the air. Chu Si’s situation in the dream was the same as reality back then, and had not changed at all.
The left half of his body was still inside the exit door, but the whole exit door was completely disfigured, completely deformed. Almost half of his body was crushed to pieces, so much so that he couldn’t even feel the pain anymore.
And the right half of his body was dangling dangerously out of the aircraft, hand holding onto a three-year-old child, the child’s feet above a ten-thousand-foot abyss. As soon as he let go, the child wouldn’t even have time to cry before disappearing.
In fact, for him, a three-year-old child was not heavy.
But in those extremely cold mountains, amidst the howling winter wind, if you held a child with one hand without support, the hand would lose its strength after an hour.
And Chu Si had been holding on for thirteen hours.
Even he could only rely on what little willpower he had left to support him.
Fortunately, most of the experimental team was ejected with the safety capsule during the emergency aircraft landing. Only the child who tripped over a nerve wire and slid out of the cabin door, and Chu Si, who rescued them, missed the best time to escape, and were caught in the exploding hatch of the aircraft, crashing into the Miya Mountains.
They hung there for thirteen hours.
Even in his dreams, Chu Si could clearly feel that kind of cold that made people lose their consciousness and willpower.
There was also the unbearable pain in his eyes caused by the blinding blast when the weapons bay of the aircraft was blown up.
He eventually lost consciousness in that ordeal, and when he woke up again, he was already lying in the special care unit of the White Eagle Military Hospital. Dr. Shao, with his trademark coffin face, said to him, “What a close shave. 70% of the left side of your body is highly damaged, you’ll have to use intelligent machinery… “
Old Shao’s second half of the sentence in the dream was vague, interrupted by an alarm, the sound approaching from far away, clearer and clearer, but also harsher and harsher…
Two seconds later, Chu Si suddenly reacted, the alarm was not from the dream!
In the No. 2 prison guard room, Chu Si violently rolled up from the bed.
The ear-splitting alarm from the overhead transmitter still didn’t stop. He fished up the communicator on the bedside table and threw it into his pocket, striding out the door. “SkyEye? What’s going on—”
Ah, what happened to the 3 year old child!? Does this child hold any significance?
Your husband is bored, so now you can hear alarm
Thank you for your translation 🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍
Someone in the raws comments guessed the child was Sa’e Yang 💀
Whoever it was, hopefully they didn’t just die like that. Poor Chu Si