pr: roki
When they’d searched for the research draft in Jiang Qi’s apartment, those Black Swan aircraft had surrounded that space-time area. If it weren’t for Tang and the others trying their best to hold them back, they might have just barged into the apartment area.
Later, the time-space apartment area collapsed. When Chu Si and Sa’e Yang left the area and got into their aircraft, the group of Black Swan aircraft were preparing to evacuate.
The one brought to the White Wolf ship was forcibly interrupted and dragged over by Sa’e Yang the moment it started to leap.
From the instant it had first appeared to its transportation into the White Wolf ship’s warehouse, there was no moment the people inside could’ve escaped. How could it be empty, without a single person inside?!
Chu Si and Roger entered the Black Swan aircraft one after another.
Inside the cabin, guards lined up in two rows, extending from the outside to the inside along the walls on both sides, all looking a little surprised. The tobacco scent had not yet dissipated. Although Chu Si had no particular interest in such things and couldn’t find any clues based on the smell, Roger took a deep sniff and said, “Caro smoke. It was popular in the army in the early years, very strong and addictive. Later on, fewer people smoked it, but the Homer Island area in the City of Silver is particularly fond of this type of cigarette. If you meet someone who makes sure this kind of cigarette never leaves their lands, there’s a nine out of ten chance they’re from there.”
Upon hearing this, Chu Si nodded thoughtfully.
The Black Swan aircraft were only produced for one generation, and they were hastily retired before entering service and turned into decorations. This wasn’t without reason. At least in Chu Si’s opinion, the design of the cabin was not very comfortable.
As far as he could remember, there was a period in the history of military weaponry where there was a fanatical pursuit of streamlined flatness. This Black Swan aircraft was probably born at that time. The external flat streamline effect could be described as slim and elegant, and one could imagine how much drag would be reduced during shuttle leaps, but the height of the ceiling inside the cabin was really quite terrible.
Not a single person among Chu Si and the others was short. After entering the cabin, their necks had to be bowed, their heads and backs lowered as they walked along. If this kind of aircraft was put into use, soldiers inside would have to bend their waists and bow their heads all year round. If this wouldn’t cause problems, who knew what would? No one would be able to bear it.
“God, it’s uncomfortable.” Roger rubbed his neck as he walked and couldn’t help but complain.
Fortunately, it was still a combat aircraft after all, and didn’t have a living space inside like the wanderers’ aircraft did. It was as simple as possible and the largest space inside was the weapons compartment. Chu Si was able to cross the cabin in just a few seconds.
After scanning across the entire cockpit, he could understand the reason for the surprise and strangeness on the guards’ faces.
On the cupholders next to the fixed seats in the cabin, nutritional soup was still steaming. A notebook was open on a tabletop, but the first two pages had been torn away, and the remaining pages were all blank. The notebook seemed to have been casually thrown aside, with the Black Swan’s number stamped onto the back.
“These days, this kind of paper notebook has more of a commemorative and collectible value,” Roger said. “Unless there’s something particularly sentimental, who would still use paper and pen to write things?”
Chu Si nodded in agreement and lightly added, “Things written by hand are largely matters that need to be remembered. One wouldn’t write out a draft or military deployments and strategic plans. They would only write diary entries or task reflections.”
Roger flicked at the edge of the torn page and said with regret: “A pity. If it hadn’t been torn, we might still be able to see what they did and encountered the past two days of their mission. “
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.
Chu Si ordered the guards to seal and collect the cups, notebook, and other items, then asked Roger to take the guards to check all those things to see if they could uncover any information. He himself stood alone in the Black Swan for a while.
“My dear, I don’t mind staring at your legs, but I think you might mind a little.” Sa’e Yang’s voice suddenly rang out. Chu Si was startled to realize that the holographic communication was still on, and that he had let his hand hang by his side, the camera circling around his leg.
Chu Si: “…”
On the other side, Shao Heng was already shocked for him. “What did you say just now?”
Chu Si calmly explained. “He calls everyone ‘my dear.’”
Shao Heng: “Oh? He doesn’t call me that.”
Chu Si: “…”
Shao Heng: “…”
After a moment of silence, Sa’e Yang sneered, and then Shao Heng realized that he was making his superiors lose face. He laughed dryly and said, “You two continue, I’ll take a short break.”
“I’ll remember this, Executive,” Sa’e Yang drawled.
“…” Chu Si looked at him expressionlessly and said, “What’s the need for a break? What did you two do just now?”
Sa’e Yang had long grown used to his tendency to sidestep the topic. He raised his eyebrows and said, “We went to check out some fragments.”
Not far away, Shao Heng, who was lying in a laid-back seat, pretending to be a corpse, sat up. “What ‘some’? Don’t brag, Mr. Kidnapper. There were only two fragments, and it took three leaps to get there, yet we still found nothing.”
This topic seemed to pique his interest, and he said with a strange and confused look on his face, “Huh— when it comes to this, I find it odd. Before, I learned in combat class that the number of leaps in a short period of time should be in moderation, else the body will become very tired. To be honest, three leaps isn’t very much at all, but right now I’m so tired that I feel like I’ve leaped three hundred times.”
Sa’e Yang didn’t glance at him and casually mocked, “Your physique is too poor, pretty boy.”
Who could bear to be told that they were in poor physical condition when they came from an elite position in the military? Shao Heng angrily yelled at the back of his head: “Fuck you!”
Sa’e Yang turned a deaf ear to him and said to Chu Si, “Given that someone’s slowing me down, it may take a little longer than expected, but at most it’ll only take one day. Remember to open the door for me when the time comes, Executive. I don’t want the alarm to go off the moment I enter the ship.”
Probably because his expression was so impatient when he mentioned the alarm, Chu Si actually felt a little amused. “Don’t frighten people in such a shocking way next time. The alarm shouldn’t be so broken as to go off on you once again.”
Sa’e Yang said lazily, “I’ve already been very careful. At least I waited until the pretty boy moved the people at the gate away before I took action.”
Chu Si raised his eyebrows. “Should I be praising you for your progress?”
Sa’e Yang laughed and changed to a more relaxed position, “That’s not necessary. I’ve noticed that I’ve been very, very passionate about keeping scores lately.”
Chu Si: “…”
After a few more casual sentences, they cut off communication.
Chu Si threw the communicator into his back pocket, then stood still for a moment. He suddenly felt this… was quite interesting.
If, back when he first saw Sa’e Yang at the sanatorium, someone told him, one day in the future, you’ll be holding a communicator and chatting on a holographic screen with this man who has “rebellious arrogance” and “looking for a fight” written all over him, being very peaceful and even cracking jokes every now and then…. Chu Si probably would have ripped the man’s head off and would’ve been able to guarantee that Sa’e Yang would react in the same way.
It had to be said that time was truly a wondrous thing.
Oh… if he wasn’t caught playing with his life every day, that would be even more wondrous.
Everything the guards sorted out from the Black Swan aircraft went into the investigation room. All the tests that could be done were done, nothing was spared, and a series of results, including DNA sequence data, were released.
Roger took it back to the database to search for matching information.
During this period, the military and the general government reported that all the borrowed soldiers and police forces were ready and that command authority had been transferred to the Security Building.
After that, Chu Si spent nearly all his time in the command center.
The joint meeting had been open since the deployment of the rescue team, facilitating the exchange of information and progress among the three parties. The specific deployment and arrangements were still made by Zilder Feng and the two deputy commanders. Chu Si was behind the glass wall with earbuds on the entire time.
When the display in the command center showed 18:00, all rescue teams left the ship.
At around 18:42, every rescue team arrived at their first landing point and successfully connected with their target planetary fragment. Each rescue team carried a portable camera, and their monitors, after stepping foot onto the planetary fragments, were synchronized and transmitted directly to the command center. The large central screen was divided into one hundred small screens, synchronously following the rescue process of each fragment.
In fact, the time spent on the journey was not much. What really took time were the next steps after landing.
The rescue teams needed to first locate the Dragon Pillar, load additional devices, search the entire fragment, move people from very unfavorable conditions into a rescue cabin, then guide those who awakened into an underground shelter.
By 20:28, almost all the monitors on those 100 small screens switched to underground, and the lights of a shelter’s long passageways came on one after the other from the center toward the periphery.
Back when Chu Si was in a passage, he’d opened the shelter with his own hands. Watching it then was one kind of feeling, but seeing tunnel lights lighting up every monitor from top to bottom on the huge central screen was something else.
The sound of a wheel turning as a shelter’s doors slowly opened rang out from each monitor. Bright lights and cheers of a crowd spread in a tidal wave from one corner of the screen to the other, and eventually all one hundred screens lit up.
Sa’e Yang’s second communication came just at this time.
Both the conference room and the control room were filled with excitement, and no one cared whose communication a small communicator was showing. Chu Si clicked to accept, then simply raised the communicator and stopped the camera at the central screen for a while before turning it back to say to Sa’e Yang, “See?”
Sa’e Yang said, “I see. Executive, you’re in a good mood.”
Chu Si sat leaning against the table, his long legs crossed. Although he was not as excited as the others, he did show some rare relaxation, and even his expression was a little warmer. He had never liked sharing his inner thoughts and emotions with others because he felt that it was a very, very personal matter and had nothing to do with anyone else.
But perhaps because his more personal side had already been seen by Sa’e Yang, he didn’t care anymore. He looked at the brightly lit screen for a moment, then retracted his gaze and said to Sa’e Yang: “I entered the Security Building as an enforcer and was promoted to chief executive. The higher up I went, the more classified information I came into contact with, so the likelihood of getting answers to the things I wanted to know increased. Other than that, there was not much else to be excited about or think about. But right now, I feel… not bad.”
Sa’e Yang said, “That just means the coldness on your face is all fake, just like your sharp mouth.”
He paused for a moment, then lifted his chin and said, “I’ve understood this point for a long time already.”
Perhaps it was an illusion, but his tone actually had a faint sense of pride.
Chu Si couldn’t help but curve the corners of his mouth.
“Executive, I’ve caught you, you’re smiling.” Sa’e Yang in a voice that demanded a beating.
Executive Chu, who was unwilling to break character even if he was beaten to death, said with a straight face and no expression: “You must’ve drunk too much.”
Since people were still in the command center and the rescue was still going on, their communication didn’t last long before it was cut off. The image on the center screen had changed again. After the rescue teams settled people in the shelters, they gradually evacuated from the first batch of fragments. On the synchronized star map next to the screen, all the planetary fragments that had been loaded with additional devices were marked.
At 21:00 sharp, the hundred rescue teams began to leap to their second destinations.
Chu Si was about to ask one of the nearby surveillance officers to get him another cup of coffee when the communicator he was holding in his hand suddenly fell to the ground with a thud.
He was taken aback for a moment and bent down to pick up the communicator, but after grasping twice with his fingers, he couldn’t hold onto it. It took a third try before he finally picked it up. He threw the communicator into his pocket, looked down at his palm, then suddenly stood up and walked out.
“Executive?” Several surveillance officers looked at him in confusion.
Chu Si lightly said, “I’m returning to my office, you all keep watching the monitors.”
UH OHHHH ITS ABOUT TO GO DOWN
THANK YOU FOR THE CHAPTERS TRANSLATOR
❤
“He calls everyone ‘my dear'”
AHAHAH
Ohhhh, I hope Sa’e Yang will be back soon.
Thank you for the update!
He’s losing mobility 😨
yeah, i bet you don’t mind staring at his “legs”