pr: roki
As he walked from the command center to his office, Chu Si was in a mixed mood. He was well aware of the impending storm but had instinctively hoped for it to come a little later.
But even so, his pace did not slow in the slightest. The reaction had come much earlier than he had expected, and it was difficult to say whether it had been a sudden and transient disruption, or whether it would continue intermittently until the last moment.
It would be too embarrassing if the reaction suddenly developed in his legs while he was walking.
He remained calm the entire way, even nodding at the guards on both sides as he walked to his office door.
Just as he stepped into the office, he took a step back, holding the door handle, and said to the guards, “I have some confidential documents that need to be handled. Before Mr. Yang and Captain Shao come back, do not let anyone enter.”
The left hand holding the door handle went numb for a moment, but Chu Si’s expression remained unchanged. He added, “In addition, before I finish handling the documents and leave the office, no matter what happens, Mr. Yang’s requests are equivalent to my requests. For everything outside the official business of the Security Building, including my personal safety and his own personal safety, he enjoys the highest processing authority equivalent to my own.”
These guards had been with him for several years, and this was not the first time that he’d suddenly shut his door and handed over some matters, so the guards were not surprised. They snapped their heels together, said “Yes!” and then returned to guarding the door with straight faces.
Chu Si moved his fingers to hide the stagnation of his movements and entered the office, closing the door behind him.
He stood in the doorway, frowning for a moment, before striding toward the bedroom. Lifting the hem of his shirt at the full-length mirror in the closet, he opened his simulated skin.
As expected…
The reaction in his fingers wasn’t what normally happened before his body’s disturbance, but because of a problem with the countdown.
0007:16:39
Chu Si had anticipated that going in and out of Jiang Qi’s apartment and shuttling back and forth between different spacetime zones would have an effect on the countdown, but he hadn’t expected the effect to be so large. Compared to the changes measured out in past simulated environments, it was so large that it was unbelievable.
He’d also vaguely guessed that the sudden emptiness of the Black Swan aircraft also had something to do with the intersection and chaos of spacetime, but he hadn’t expected that just by entering and exiting to investigate the situation inside the aircraft, his countdown would suddenly shorten from 12 days to 7 hours.
No wonder the loss of control of his fingers came so suddenly. Compared to the usual situation where the disturbances started in the final five days, it was a miracle that he was still standing straight with only seven hours left.
However, miracles at times like this often disappeared the moment they were discovered. As soon as this self-deprecating thought popped into Chu Si’s head, an indescribable sense of stiffness and numbness spread from his fingertips to his shoulders.
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.
He felt his mechanically simulated body temperature fading rapidly, and as it did so, his control over half of his body rapidly diminished, like a hand full of sand sifting through his fingers. He could clearly feel a sense of emptiness as it passed through.
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As the left half of his body began to rapidly lose sensation, Chu Si had already settled into a sofa.
He didn’t want to lie in bed. That position was too much like waiting to die, and the state he was in now wasn’t that kind of death.
He even retained the same composure he usually held as if handing work before a business trip, tapping on his communicator with his still-awake right hand.
First, a command was sent to Zilder Feng’s public channel: when Mr. Yang and Captain Shao return, grant access to all areas of the ship to them.
Then, he called up his A-character access as Chief Inspector of the Space Prison and his C-character access as representative of the Executive Alliance to unlock Sa’e Yang’s black-gold remote monitoring armband.
These two permissions combined accounted for 70% of monitoring authority. In accordance with planetary criminal law, when a person serving a sentence in the Space Prison was released after completion of their sentence (if there was ever such a day), considering their extraordinary danger, more than 30% of the black-gold armband’s monitoring authority would be retained and wouldn’t be completely removed until the end of a five-year observation period.
That was why he handed over the three B-character permissions to Zilder Feng and the deputy executives and, retaining the original A-character permission, kept the C-character permissions in his hands.
Firstly, being the only executive who had woken up, he was perfectly justified in doing so. Furthermore, without going through anyone else, he would be able to directly release Sa’e Yang from control.
Leaving only 30% control meant that Mr. Sa’e Yang, who had been a headache for the military, the general government, the Security Building, and even Chu Si personally, said goodbye to his status as a prisoner and was officially released from his sentence.
Lastly, he organized all the public and personal authorities he controlled and set their first and second inheritors.
The public authorities were easy to handle. Security Building rules and regulations had pretty much arranged everything for him already, so all he needed to do was follow them.
What was troublesome were the personal ones…
Over the years, he had accumulated a considerable amount of personal properties and belongings. Even though the planet had fallen apart into pieces, what eventually survived should’ve still been substantial. However, he no longer had any family members to pass them on to…
This was a process he had rehearsed countless times. When he was in the training camp, there was almost always such a process before each mission.
At that time, in the first inheritor column of personal properties, he wouldn’t even think before filling in “none.”
But this time…
Buzz—
It was only when his communicator vibrated that Chu Si realized that his consciousness had just blurred a little.
He managed to gather his concentration and selected to connect.
The person on the other side of the screen was still Sa’e Yang. The moment the call connected, he opened his mouth and said,“My black-gold armband was suddenly unlocked by 70%.”
Resting the communicator on a nearby round table, Chu Si lowered his eyes while looking at the holographic screen. “En, congratulations on being released from prison.”
”Why the sudden unlocking?” Sa’e Yang noticed something wasn’t right with him and furrowed his brow.
In just these few hours, he’d frowned as many times as he had for the past forty years Chu Si had known him, combined.
“As is fair, according to your sentence back then, your imprisonment lasts as long as the planet’s lifespan. Although its destruction was obviously not of a natural nature, the fact that the planet is no longer whole is undeniable.” As Chu Si spoke, his voice grew softer as he lost strength, and when he realized this, he subconsciously raised it a little.
Although the sentences of the inmates of the Space Prison were incredibly long, they all listed specific numbers, with the shortest being 100 years and the longest 800 years. Only one person, Sa’e Yang, was given the staggering “until the end of the planet’s lifespan.”
No one would have thought that with the planet’s explosion, he’d be the first to finish his sentence instead.
However, both he and Chu Si knew very well that in this current chaotic doomsday situation, no one would be willing to release these dangerous people from their cages, lest they stir up the situation even more.
So there had to be a reason why Chu Si suddenly unlocked him. Even a fool could see that.
“Move your left hand,” Sa’e Yang suddenly said.
Chu Si forced the corners of his mouth upwards. “I’m afraid that’s a little difficult…”
Sa’e Yang’s face instantly darkened. “Is it the disruption beginning in advance or has the countdown changed again? How much time is left?”
“Seven hours, though there will be a final 24 hour buffer after the countdown ends.” Chu Si lowered his eyelids and fell silent for a while, as if he was about to fall asleep. The speed of his blinks slowed, and after a moment, he asked softly, “Sa’e, I’m a little tired. Will you be able to make it back in time?”
“I will,” Sa’e Yang almost immediately replied. “I’ve already found the place and am standing in a hallway of the White Eagle Military Hospital right now. I’ll be back soon.”
He blinked once, quickly, and added in a low voice, “I promise.”
Chu Si said, “Alright.”
He finally raised one finger of his right hand and cut the communication, then switched back to the previous interface and transferred the authentication privileges of one of the private living-combat dual-purpose aircraft that had been given to him within the White Wolf ship to Sa’e Yang.
Of all his personal possessions, this was perhaps the only one that could be of some practical use at the moment. To have it lying around would be a bit of a waste.
Perhaps because he had been trying to gather his energy, he was unwilling to fall completely into dormancy. Where the left half of his intelligent mechanical body merged with his normal body, four thin needles stretched out in accordance with the setting, and a drug that forced physiological dormancy was injected into his body. Chu Si quickly lost consciousness.
In the last few seconds, his fading consciousness suddenly reminded him of what Jiang Qi had said before.
He suddenly had some understanding of why Jiang Qi didn’t like to use and manipulate time at will.
Likely for a reason similar to now— how he, in this unnatural state of temporal chaos, walked step by step towards death, yet didn’t even feel fear or sadness.
It was only when he thought of Sa’e Yang’s “I promise” that he felt a little regret…
On a planetary fragment a star zone away, two days from the rescue teams’ planned rescue process, the White Eagle Military Hospital sat silently in a corner of the fragment.
The energy system there had been turned on and the top floor of the intelligent mechanical treatment center corridor was brightly lit. After Sa’e Yang hung up communication, the atmosphere was so heavy it was terrifying. Looking at his expression, Shao Heng wanted to get as far away as possible, and his intuition told him that something had happened to Executive Chu.
“I’ll kick open the door!” Shao Heng had been halfway through unlocking the door before he chose to give up and switch to a simpler and rougher way. Mainly because he was afraid that if he didn’t, this Mr. Yang was going to blow up the building.
Bang—
His so-called kicking was, of course, not carried out by his feet, but he simply pulled out a gun, switched to meltdown mode, and blasted the door‘s lock four times in a row.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry. Before the planet exploded, my dad happened to be on a communication channel with me. This is his office, I told him to lie straight down in a cryocapsule. The mechanical treatment device you mentioned is right there, we’ll be…”
Before the words “back in no time” could be uttered, Shao Heng froze. The cyrocapsule in the corner where his father should’ve been lying in was completely empty…
I cannot take this cliff😭😭
Thanks for the chapter
Oh shit… Sa’e might end up killing some people… 😬
i was wondering when he’ll unlock the armband thingy.
thank you for the chapter, i’ll be biting my nails till the next update!
Uh oh! 😰