pr: roki
The bedroom’s ambiguous atmosphere instantly disappeared, like a bucket of ice water poured over one’s head, and the growing mood subsided.
Chu Si didn’t wait for Sa’e Yang to answer. He opened his shirt and lowered his head to take a look.
1200:09:36
There wasn’t a missed digit. The countdown really had dropped from 123 days to 12 days faster than plummeting off a building.
Chu Si looked down at the countdown for a long time without speaking. From Sa’e Yang’s perspective, he couldn’t see Chu Si’s expression and could only glimpse the corner of a slightly pursed mouth, no different from his usual indifferent appearance, as if his emotions had no fluctuations at all.
A few seconds went by before Chu Si stood up straight and patted Sa’e Yang’s shoulder, gesturing for him to move out of the way. “So you really didn’t see wrong. But twelve days isn’t bad, it’s enough time to do many things and enough time to find people.”
He looked very calm, as if the countdown didn’t trouble him at all and was just a decreasing number.
“What’s this countdown? Intelligent machinery comes with a countdown now?” Although Sa’e Yang shifted to the side, he still reached out and grabbed Chu Si. “I’ve never seen mechanical treatment turn a person into a ticking time bomb.”
Chu Si’s wrist was grabbed. He paused his steps, glanced at his hand with some annoyance, and said, “As I’m in a bit of a hurry right now, can you let me work while I speak? It’d waste less time. Besides, you’re thinking too far into this matter. I’m nowhere near a human flesh bomb.”
Sa’e Yang didn’t immediately release his hand. He lifted the corners of his mouth, but there was no smile in his eyes. “While I love your sarcastic mouth, don’t expect to deceive me by speaking lies to my face. I’m neither one of those little fools from the training camp nor an official, guard, or captain suppressed under your authority.”
Chu Si looked at him. “So?”
“Your pulse is quicker than before. This countdown makes you nervous inside, meaning your calmness is all a pretense.” Sa’e Yang spoke, hitting the nail right on the head without saving Chu Si any face.
Chu Si: “…”
This was actually his conditioned reflex. He was accustomed to downplaying everything to avoid causing unnecessary speculation and panic. Therefore, when he saw the countdown, his instinctive reaction was to lower the severity of the situation first, no matter what.
He’d lived for many years, and this bad habit of false bravado had followed him for many years. It was so deeply ingrained that it practically grew out of his bones and tendons. Even Jiang Qi couldn’t change him in the slightest, let alone reverse his mentality in such a short period of time.
But people like Sa’e Yang were probably born just to cure him. Every mask he wore and every lie he said had no effect in front of Sa’e Yang, as though he were an emperor in new clothes.
Sa’e Yang not only stripped off these new clothes but could also always find reasons to support his own arguments, making Chu Si unable to refute them, speechless and silent.
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.
But it had to be said, when dealing with people like Chu Si, this straightforward and almost harsh approach was much more useful than any other method.
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“You still haven’t mentioned the consequences of the countdown ending.” Sa’e Yang’s stubborn nature had probably already surpassed Chu Si’s.
Chu Si carefully considered his words and spoke: “When the countdown ends, there might be an uncontrollable disturbance in the body, that is, it may decide to go on strike for a while.”
His statement could be easily understood. Half of his body wouldn’t be able to be moved, but compared to other serious consequences, this seemed quite mild.
But unfortunately, Sa’e Yang once again discarded all irrelevant information and asked a critical question. “Does the replacement range of the intelligent machinery include the heart?”
Chu Si moved his lips, but in the end, he only let out an “en.”
If it was just half his limbs that went on strike, the situation would be easy enough. But if his heart also decided to go on strike, the result was obvious. It wouldn’t just be a simple “body dormancy” anymore, it probably needed to be changed to “eternal sleep.”
After hearing this answer, Sa’e Yang turned completely expressionless. This expressionless look on him easily made one frightened and nervous.
But Chu Si felt something lightly scratch at his heart, so he blurted out, “It’s okay, there’s still time.”
After speaking, he himself snorted first, without any sarcasm, but with a hint of joking. “I’m the one carrying the countdown, how come you’re the one being comforted?”
In a normal situation, Sa’e Yang would’ve laughed and pushed back, probably saying something like “You know the reason very well in your own heart, Executive.” In any case, they’d dodged and circled around each other countless times already. But this time, Sa’e Yang did not speak. His gaze fell on Chu Si, and because his expression was too heavy and his eyes were too clear, he gave off the feeling that there was nowhere to hide.
This kind of gaze was more uncomfortable than him looking down at you.
Chu Si glanced at him and he finally withdrew his hand. The crumpled tie was thrown back onto the bed and Chu Si picked a new one from the closet, tying it while saying, “When we were eating earlier, I sent a message to Tang and the others asking them to synchronize that dragon pillar star map you pulled out from Fort Barney. Originally, I just wanted to mark the locations of each fragment so the White Wolf ship wouldn’t have to send out search and summon signals like a headless fly. Now, it’s come in handy. With a map, it won’t be difficult to find the White Eagle Military Hospital. There are people and equipment there that can help debug me.”
After speaking, he tightened his tie with a finger, then tidied it up. He’d thought he’d explained himself quite well and had no intention of opening his mouth again. But who knew Sa’e Yang would suddenly speak up and ask a completely unrelated question: “That Dr. Shao and the pretty boy who collected my DNA earlier, what’s their relationship?”
“…Pretty boy?” Chu Si was taken aback. “You mean Shao Heng? Dr. Shao is his father.”
Sa’e Yang let out an “en.”
Chu Si watched his expression and was about to say something when a knock came from outside the office.
“You…” He hesitated for a moment before finally blinking, saying, “Forget it, we’ll talk later.”
As he spoke, he strode out of the bedroom.
The people outside were the two deputy executives from Office No. 1, obviously sent by Zilder Feng.
“Executive, the command center has just received the dragon pillar star map. Please head over to make a decision on the allocation of rescue forces. In addition, Leader Zilder Feng has some permissions that need to be handed over to you.”
Old Feng, who had never passed words through his mind before speaking them, done countless troublesome things, and caused a headache for Chu Si more than once, had risen from publicity official to an acting leader. Still, he stubbornly upheld this spirit and tirelessly added obstacles for others—
These two deputy executives, as followers of Office No. 1’s executive, now had to watch Chu Si take all the authority of the Executives into his own personal hands. Their feelings were probably very complicated.
Chu Si glanced at them and nodded, saying, “Alright.”
He turned his head and instinctively wanted to call “Sa’e,” but as soon as he opened his mouth, he silently closed it again, putting a fist to his nose and coughing once. After clearing his throat, he said again, “Mr. Yang.”
While they had been speaking, Sa’e Yang no longer stayed in the bedroom but leaned against the couch in the living room, crossing his arms and pondering about something.
As soon as Chu Si spoke, he lifted his eyelids. At first glance, his expression was no different from usual, and he even lifted his chin at Chu Si, saying, “We’ll talk about other matters when you return, Executive.”
“???” Chu Si thought, since when was Sa’e Yang so easy to talk to? It was as if the look in his eyes just now like he wanted to roast off someone’s skin wasn’t even his.
However, at this moment, it wasn’t the time to study Sa’e Yang’s character flaw of flipping his expressions faster than flipping through a book. He nodded and was led out of the office by the two deputy executives, walking all the way to the command center.
Zilder Feng was supporting the side of his face in front of an enormous star map screen, talking to the temporary captain responsible for monitoring the navigation of the White Wolf ship. When he saw Chu Si enter the door, he welcomed him.
The command center of the White Wolf was located at the core of the office area, not far from Chu Si’s office. It was a nest-shaped building, with star maps, navigation maps, and data maps of the White Wolf ship along with real-time monitoring screens distributed on the walls. There should’ve been twenty surveillance personnel in each area, but at the time, there were less than ten navigation and surveillance personnel sitting here, and the temporary captain was only a special-grade pilot from the original White Wolf ship.
In the middle of those huge screens, there was an oval-shaped conference table.
“Executive, please sit.” Zilder Feng invited Chu Si to take a seat and said, “We just made a preliminary area division for the star map you sent us to synchronize. We were waiting for you to come and take a look. This division can fully cover all the planet fragments protected by a dragon pillar in the shortest time possible.”
“Which is how long?” Chu Si looked at the crisscrossing dividing lines on the screen and asked.
“One week,” Zilder Feng said.
“One week…” Chu Si repeated, but his heart skipped a beat. There was actually another problem he hadn’t told Sa’e Yang about before. Although the countdown showed twelve days, by the last five days, due to the system’s self-protection, the entire mechanical system would enter pre-dormancy to reduce the damage of the disturbance to the main system.
The time given by Zilder Feng was very awkward, as it happened to just be the last day before pre-dormancy. If the fragments of the White Eagle Military Hospital could be found early on, that would be wonderful. However, if the search dragged on until the last one or two days, things would become a little troublesome for him.
Besides, this was a general statement.
While searching among the fragments, there was also a possibility that he could encounter some rare events— for example, becoming restless and jumping off a building, and, for example, entering pre-dormancy before the last five days….
He probably needed to plan ahead for some things.
As he pondered, Zilder Feng said, “I also have some permissions to hand over to Executive, such as unlocking the black-gold armbands of Space Prison prisoners.”
The unlocking permissions of the black-gold armbands were divided into four parts. As the Executive of Office No. 5, Chu Si had exclusive control over A-character permissions, accounting for 50%. The two deputy executives under his command had separate control over the other three B-character permissions, each accounting for 10%. The remaining C-character permissions were jointly controlled by the Security Building’s entire Executive Alliance, accounting for 20%.
Now the representatives of the Security Building were temporarily replaced by Zilder Feng, so the authority he controlled actually included three B-characters and one C-character, his total authority on-par with Chu Si’s.
As a shameless, outstanding representative, Executive Chu could even say the words “hand over all the ABCs.” After all, in the present circumstances, a centralized concentration of power wasn’t a bad thing. To some extent, it could even improve efficiency.
But at the moment he had the problem of “might enter dormancy,” so he had to carefully tidy up his shamelessness. He allowed Zilder Feng to continue holding onto one B-character authority, while the other two were handed over to the deputy executives of Office No. 1.
As for the C-character authority representing the Executive Alliance, he very impolitely ushered into his grasp.
Just as they’d finished handing over authority and Chu Si wanted to find Shao Heng from the security forces to renegotiate the planetary fragment coverage plan, a piercing alarm suddenly sounded from the third screen of the command center.
“What’s going on?!” The officials were startled and strode over to the screen.
Only for a surveillance official to shout with a frightened expression on his face: “Captain Shao Heng’s been kidnapped!”
Everyone: “….Say that again?”
The surveillance official anxiously explained, “Just now, the monitoring screen was disturbed by someone and stuck on one interface. When I found a way to eliminate the interference and switch back, I saw that the flight gate at position 7 was forcibly opened. A tall man in a black sleeveless shirt tied up Captain Shao Heng and jumped… jumped out…”
Chu Si: “…”
Go Sa’e! Go save your man!
Sa’e Yang means business 😤
heh, watch him do it in a couple of days )
What is the time format of Chusi’s clock? Go help your darling, Sae Yang~
Thanks for the update! 💖
Tick tock tick tock Chu si