pr: roki
Fifteen minutes later, Shao Heng was quite surprised that he was still alive. But looking at the situation, it seemed that Mr. Yang just didn’t have any free time to lose his temper and left everything to be settled at a later date.
The place he was at right now was nowhere else but the top floor of the White Eagle Military Hospital, in his father’s office with the mechanical treatment device. At his left was his unconscious father Shao Dun, at his right was his similarly unconscious boss Chu Si, in front of him was Mr. Yang, who was bending down to inspect the device, and behind him was the office’s entrance.
The last words that Mr. Yang had thrown at him were: “Get out.”
His tone was no different from “scram.”
Shao Heng thought, my old man is still in your hands, can I fucking scram? Of course not!
So he stubbornly stayed in place. After holding his tongue for some time, he finally said, “I’ve seen my father adjusting this device before. Maybe I can help a little, right?”
After learning that it would take another five hours for the old man to wake up, this Mr. Yang, who seemed to be in a great hurry, finally exhausted his last bit of patience and decided to take matters into his own hands. Like bombarding little chicks, he blasted the two professional doctors into the underground control room and told them to keep an eye on things from below.
Originally, Shao Heng was included with them, but after Mr. Yang wanted to bring the medical capsule back to the top floor, he immediately changed his mind and followed along annoyingly, being ignored until now.
“I really know a little,” Shao Heng added.
Sa’e Yang finally turned his head and glanced at him, before stepping to the side and staring him in the eye. “Go ahead.”
These two words were spoken in a deep tone, and no matter how they sounded, there seemed to be half a threat left unsaid.
Shao Heng coughed and nodded his head as he walked to the side of the device. He raised his hand in the air and gestured twice at the instrument, then suddenly put it down and kneaded his fingers. “Wait, I’m a little…”
Before his words were finished, Mr. Yang’s human-devouring gaze swept over. Shao Heng immediately let out a hollow laugh. “I’m fine, I’m fine now.”
The initial adjustment of this device had little to do with machinery and the like. It was more about miscellaneous settings such as medicine dosage, probe needle depth, and so on. These various settings, added together, had a total of more than seventy adjustment areas. Although half of the adjustment areas did not need to be changed and were already in their most suitable setting by default, the other half had to be adjusted for each use.
People from the security troops, if nothing else, had observational and memory abilities far superior to those of ordinary people. Shao Heng was not just boasting. Although he had only seen Old Master Shao adjusting this device once before, he remembered each and every step clearly.
It was only an occupational habit, and he’d never expected there to be a day where it’d come in handy.
He completed the initial adjustment by memory. A connected holographic panel instantly leapt out, displaying a simulation of the blood vessels in Chu Si’s body. Just by looking at them, the intricate vessels seemed extremely difficult to deal with. Veins, arteries, nerve networks, and the like were labeled in different colors, layered on top of each other. The section that started at his left shoulder and continued to the outside of his leg was shown in gray.
“Dear god, he actually…” Shao Heng was also seeing the extent of Chu Si’s mechanical replacement for the first time. “Half of his body had been damaged? I’d always thought it was just an arm or something. His left hand was always a little stiffer than his right.”
Sa’e Yang gave him a gloomy look, and it was clear that the subject “extent of damage” had put him in a very bad mood.
Shao Heng sensibly didn’t pursue this and no longer asked any more questions. He immediately changed the topic, using a finger to draw on the holographic screen. “The next step after the preliminary adjustments are completed is the most important and also the most troublesome. The first step is to identify any faults in the billions of angstroms of components within the entire mechanical body. I’ve heard my dad mention that this piece of complete gray means that the body has had a severe rejection of the mechanical body. In the process of rejection and adaptation of the two sides of this confrontation, the body is partially damaged, and the mechanical body suffers some damage as well. Therefore, identification is the first step, as well as the simplest one. And then… “
He rambled on for a while, explaining all six or seven steps. But in the end, he wasn’t a professional doctor. How could something that even doctors in the field of non-mechanical treatment couldn’t figure out be clearly analyzed by his three to five minutes of explanation?
Even if he expressed himself brilliantly and Sa’e Yang comprehended it all with remarkable understanding and fully digested it with a 100% conversion rate, as soon as he moved his hands, his unfamiliarity and amateurism would be evident unless there was a person at his side whom he could consult step by step.
Consulting?
Sa’e Yang stared at the device for a few seconds, then suddenly stood up and turned on the optical computer on Old Master Shao’s desk.
“What are you doing?” Shao Heng was startled.
“Looking for something.” Perhaps because Shao Heng had just done a favor of sorts, or perhaps because a sudden thought had occurred to him, Sa’e Yang didn’t ignore the question this time and replied simply.
Ding — Identity verification
Unsurprisingly, there was no way an optical computer used for work purposes could be easily available to outsiders.
Sa’e Yang, however, didn’t take this seriously at all. He intelligently connected his long-rested SkyEye with the optic computer. Shao Heng, who was baffled beside him, was waved over and his face dragged against the optical computer.
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.
While the data was still being analyzed, SkyEye disrupted the data analysis of the optical computer by spreading an instant virus, all the while directly aging Shao Heng’s facial data by seventy years before fine-tuning it slightly.
Ding—
The progress bar on the optical computer finally reached its end. The identity verification showed a 78% match.
The lower limit of the poisoned optical computer fell from 99.99% to 50% like a leap off a building. Shao Heng’s 78% clearly exceeded that half, so the optical computer gave a wave of its hand. “Passed.”
Shao Heng: “…” This fucking bastard had this kind of ability?!
“Why didn’t you just drop the limit to zero, so you could scan your own face?” Shao Heng couldn’t help but vent.
Sa’e Yang kept his half-lidded eyes glued to the screen. “The defense level is too high.”
Shao Heng: “…” Was this sarcasm?
Ding—
This time, SkyEye’s voice came through. “Successfully hacked into the surveillance database, searching for the target.”
The optical computer screen switched to the surveillance database of the entire White Eagle Military Hospital. The countless scenes that had been captured and the people in them shifted rapidly. A blue target box kept bobbing and weaving around the screen, never settling on any face.
“Could it be that you want to find a scene of Executive coming here for adjustment or treatment?” Shao Heng finally understood what his intentions were.
The surveillance here was of the omni-directional encircling type. If they could find the video from the past and follow Old Master Shao’s technique from start to finish, then they wouldn’t have to worry about making any mistakes. At the very least, it’d be better than fumbling around in the dark.
Ding—
SkyEye: “Unfortunately, database data ends at 5702. Search complete, target not found.”
Sa’e Yang’s brow furrowed. “5702…”
“So coincidental?” Shao Heng frowned as well. “If I remember correctly, 5702 was a special year. That year had an extraordinarily large number of major events, and it seems to be the year that Executive was injured…”
He muttered a few words and then affirmed, “Yes, it was that winter. I remember the news of Sa’e Yang’s imprisonment came not long after, announced planet-wide over and over again for days on end. I can’t have remembered it wrongly. It was the year 5702.”
No sooner had he said this than he realized that Mr. Yang glanced at him lightly again.
“What’s wrong?” Shao Heng was taken aback.
Sa’e Yang snorted expressionlessly, and instead of answering, entered a new string of commands.
Ding—
SkyEye: “New command successfully received, target reset, search beginning.”
Chu Si was injured in 5702 and the database cut off just before. These two facts, when put together, really did seem strange. But there still existed a problem— the treatment Sa’e Yang was about to perform was a last-minute idea. Before now, who could’ve predicted he would use this sort of method? So the database cutoff was clearly not in response to Chu Si’s present recovery treatment.
Could it really just be a coincidence?
But coincidence or not, trying to find the footage of Old Master Shao healing Chu Si was bound to be impossible. That was why Sa’e Yang had just reset the target to Old Master Shao and the mechanical treatment device.
Soon, SkyEye picked out a hundred or so target results. Sa’e Yang refined the screening criteria again, finally picking out someone who had also undergone large-scale mechanical replacement and projecting that healing process onto a holographic screen.
After this series of events, Shao Heng realized that this Mr. Yang was probably really racing against time to the point where he had no intention of losing his temper. He looked at the full-angle holographic projection and finally turned his head to say, “You… Executive is in your hands. I’ll be right outside the door, give me a call if you need anything.”
Every step involved in this kind of mechanical treatment was so delicate that the slightest instability would lead to irreversible deviations in results, so it required a high degree of mental concentration on the part of the doctor. Old Master Shao was extremely wary of being disturbed during this process, and Shao Heng was well aware of this, so he exited the office when Mr. Yang was about to take action.
Sa’e Yang picked up the remote control and set the lighting in the entire office to the dimmest mode. The holographic projection of Old Master Shao’s treatment process became clear, as another device had been turned on next to Sa’e Yang, working in sync with him.
As the dim light fell onto Chu Si’s pale face, his contours softened slightly, and he no longer seemed as lifeless as before.
Old Master Shao in the holographic projection was in the preliminary adjustment phase, a step that had already been taken by Shao Heng, so these few minutes then seemed to be very empty. Sa’e Yang bent over the edge of the device, staring at the shirt covering Chu Si’s waist with his eyes downcast, in a daze. After a few moments of silence, he lifted his hand a little, as if he wanted to lift the shirt up and open the piece of simulated skin to take another look at the countdown.
Eventually, though, his hand dropped back to the edge of the device, and then, as if in self-deprecation, he curled up the corners of his mouth.
In all his decades of life, he had never really cared about the concept of “time.” From the beginning to the end, it was a different concept for him than it was for anyone else.
Long? Short? All the words associated with time simply had no meaning to him. Nor could he appreciate the range of emotions and feelings that most people thus experienced. To him, it was all like watching a play through a screen. Without being able to empathize, it was impossible to understand.
So he never thought that one day, he would feel the loss of time through another person.
It turned out that when time was irreversible, it would flow this fast, so much faster than he had ever imagined.
“My dear, you’ve had me threatened by a countdown all day.” Sa’e Yang said this and ultimately didn’t look at the countdown.
He knew how much time was left without looking, because he counted every minute.
……
The light in the office had been dim for a long time. Shao Heng was waiting outside, borrowing a communicator to connect with the security troops’ rescue teams. He felt as if he’d been sitting there for a century when he finally heard some other movement coming from inside.
The sound of familiar coughing, as well as some vague words.
Shao Heng froze for two seconds before jumping up with a bang. After knocking twice, he rushed into the office without waiting for a response, only to see the glass cover of the medical capsule open, his dad standing between his own holographic projection and Mr. Yang, covering his mouth and coughing twice while saying with a stern expression, “Your complexion is so bad yet you’re still standing here? This treatment takes a long time, let me do it instead!”
“Dad?” Shao Heng instinctively glanced at the time on the communicator, and surprisingly, it had been five hours already?
When Old Elder Shao saw him, he only waved his hands, telling him to leave, before continuing to say to Mr. Yang, “If you were my son, with your complexion, I’d have knocked you into a medical capsule and locked you up.”
Shao Heng: “…”
As Old Master Shao spoke, he snapped on the lights and the holographic projection dimmed instantly. In the light, Sa’e Yang’s complexion was clear. With that face, if he laid down on a countertop, he’d look even worse than Chu Si.
“My goodness…” Shao Heng raised his hand and pointed to the medical capsule. “Seriously, Mr. Yang, go lie down inside for a while! Why have you suddenly become like this? To be honest, when we were leaping, I felt something was wrong with you. It was also strange, even though I didn’t leap, I was already quite exhausted. But not at the level you are now, and…”
And why does your face even look a little different than before, Mr. Yang???
Shao Heng furrowed his brow. Just as he was about to say a few more words, his old man, who usually ignored his son once he started working, scolded him again. “Get out and stay out, we’re racing against time!”
As he spoke, he pointed to Chu Si again and asked Sa’e Yang, “How long has it been since the countdown cleared?”
Sa’e Yang was silent for a moment before saying, “Three hours and seven minutes.”
“Fortunate, fortunate.” Old Master Shao breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s not too late. You… if you’re really not at ease, just watch from the side. That’s okay, right? I’ll reluctantly make an exception for you. If you won’t lie down in the medical capsule, at least attach the lines to yourself. It’ll be better than nothing.”
Old Master Shao had just emerged from the healing chamber, looking very well except for that moment of coughing from the cold air he had just inhaled. After he took the tools from Sa’e Yang’s hand, he put his head down and got busy, his movements much more skillful indeed.
Sa’e Yang walked over to the medical capsule and stood leaning against the display, sticking external treatment lines onto himself with lazy and perfunctory movements. He didn’t even look to see if their position or order was wrong, his eyes never leaving Chu Si’s side.
Old Master Shao’s movements were simple and clean, with not even a pause in between. It was as if he had done this too many times, forming muscle memory and conditioned reflexes for each and every thing, so skillful that it was as if it was part of his body.
Such treatment lasted for another two and a half hours. At the end, Old Master Shao, who had never stopped, suddenly froze for a moment and stood with his hand raised and paused in place for quite a while, as if he suddenly couldn’t remember what to do next.
“What’s wrong?” Sa’e Yang tensed and stared at Old Master Shao’s face.
Old Master Shao turned his head to look at him, then shook his head, waved his hand, and said, “It’s fine, it’s fine… It doesn’t affect anything.”
His hand, which had been hovering for a while, finally managed to land on the holographic model that was synchronized with the machinery inside of Chu Si. Fearing that Sa’e Yang would be worried, he soothingly explained, “I suddenly forgot something, but another method will achieve the same result.”
Despite his words, Sa’e Yang still pulled out the various treatment lines from his body and walked over to Old Master Shao. By this time, Old Master Shao’s hand had already moved out from its position behind the holographic model’s head, and it was obvious that the problem had already been resolved. He was a little helpless at Sa’e Yang’s unease, and while adjusting the last few things, he said, “Almost there, I’ll just close this… and this…”
With the sound of several gentle clicks, Old Master Shao said, “That’s all!”
Sa’e Yang glanced at the still-lifeless Chu Si. “You’re certain? But…”
“Certain! It’s normal that he hasn’t awakened yet. Who can open their eyes right away after their heart hasn’t beaten for several hours?” Old Master Shao hadn’t been too easy on Chu Si in the hospital back then, and he wasn’t too easy on Sa’e Yang now either.
He put away his tools, and with another rather disdainful look at Sa’e Yang’s face, turned to open the door and said to the man outside, “Come in and get these two out of here. It makes me angry to see people who don’t take their bodies seriously!”
Shao Heng practically pounced in. “All done? Is Executive awake? How are you, Dad?”
“I’m not one way or the other, Little Chu is fine.” Old Master Shao waved his hand and said, “There’s a rest room next door, take both of them over to rest for a while. Little Chu should be able to wake up after a while. You… I’ll sit here for a while, come back once you settle the two of them, I have some questions to ask.”
The rest room was actually converted from an intensive care ward, designed for doctors who had been working continuously for long hours to come over and sleep for a while. There was also a nutritional machine next to the beds for emergency energy replenishment, allowing those overworked doctors to fully recover.
Shao Heng, listening to the Old Master’s instructions, had no choice but to drag Mr. Yang over and throw him onto a bed. In any case, the bed was big enough to squeeze in four doctors on a normal weekday, and more than enough for two people.
He glanced at Mr. Yang’s face, thought better of it, and yanked the nutritional machine over. He snapped a wristband with an auto-injection device onto the man’s wrist and dropped a sentence, “I’m going to go find the old man.” Then he hurriedly ran away.
The room was on natural light mode, neither overly bright nor dark enough to be too quiet. Sa’e Yang moved his wrist and gave a somewhat impatient tsk, but ultimately didn’t untie that wristband.
He was tired, very tired. Some of his earlier actions in the haste of the moment had overdrawn him a little. If he just closed his eyes, he could probably fall asleep immediately.
But he continued maintaining a hint of clarity.
*******
Chu Si felt like he was having a long dream, a messy one, containing many things from his childhood, as if he was on his deathbed looking back on his life. Only, the life he dreamt of was certainly not the same as the one he really lived.
Any chosen scene would be full of nonsense…
For example, he dreamt that he was standing on a high branch of one of the tall trees in the sanatorium, reaching for something, when the ground suddenly shook and he slipped and fell straight to the ground.
Just before he hit the ground, his back hit someone’s chest first, and then the voice of a young Sa’e Yang rang out in his ears. “I’ve caught you.”
A young Sa’e Yang would probably have to swallow an entire bucket of rat poison to do such a thing.
Because it was so bizarre, Chu Si was awakened by that one sentence.
He felt himself first jolted out of the dream before his consciousness slowly came into line with reality. A little sound gradually came to his ears, and his whole body’s senses slowly revived. Before his eyes could open, he tried to bend his fingers a little.
As soon as he moved, he felt someone turn next to him and hold him in place with an embrace.
Chu Si still hadn’t opened his eyes. He frowned and moved his lips, whispering, “Sa’e?”
“En…” A low voice sounded in his ear, and he could feel Sa’e Yang’s chin against his shoulder, a little pressing, but not uncomfortable.
“You’re too heavy.” Chu Si still didn’t open his eyes, only giving a half-asleep complaint. His caught fingers struggled again. “Move aside.”
Sa’e Yang laughed and said vaguely, “No, I’m too sleepy…”
Within seconds of the words being spoken, Sa’e Yang’s breathing became long and even, and he fell asleep just like that.
The author has something to say: I set my own flag, I have to finish writing it even if I’m down on my knees…
I’ve already read the entire novel in raw but is rereading it through your translations, and you did such a great job, the vibes of the original shines through so well! Loving it!!
Also love this part so much aaaaaa
Woah this really had me on the edge lmao
Thanks for the translation
Their romance is so sweet（ ＴДＴ）
Thank you for the update!🌺❤❤
thank you for the chapter!!!
Please please please please please let there be fluff! 😭🙏🙏🙏
The most awaited sugar was definitely sweet~
Thanks for the update! 🥰