pr: roki
In the command center, the communicator in Chu Si’s hand suddenly vibrated.
Sometimes, at critical moments, one’s intuition would become extremely wondrous and accurate. At almost the exact second when movement or noise occurred, a certain strong and unignorable premonition would arise.
Before even reading the content of the message, Chu Si knew that, one by one, the curtain was being lifted on some of the things they had been investigating.
Le Pen’s message was cautious, speculative, but Chu Si could sense her shock and disbelief through the screen when she sent it—
“Executive, we’ve forgotten someone— this may sound a little far-fetched— if I’m wrong, just treat it like I’m speaking nonsense. Have you ever suspected Jin’s daughter? It suddenly occurred to me that we don’t even know her name yet.
I just saw an expression on her face that was totally out of character for her age, and I’ve had the same feeling about Jin these past few days. Could it be, I mean, is there any possibility that they’re also related to the time experiment?”
Some things that seemed ridiculous had actually revealed clues for a long time. They just lacked a clear hint.
Le Pen’s message was that “clear hint.”
While scanning the contents of her message in a single glance, a speculation had already appeared in Chu Si’s mind—
He’d been in the habit of mentally referring to Jin and his daughter as the big and little mop, because his first impression of them had been too overwhelming. But Jin had actually told him his full name before—
The night Sa’e Yang had been thrown out of the Space Prison by SkyEye, he’d said, “I have a name, Jin Fergus.”
Fergus…
Everything naturally arose from the depths of his memory. In Old Master Shao’s graduation photo, the man whose chair was pulled out by Jiang Qi and who fell to the ground never showed his face… The old master had described him as “well-behaved, timid, and would squeak when teased,” and also said “he, Fergus, was the chief designer of the Black Swans.”
Same last name, same personality, same dealings with aircraft, and an inexplicable appearance by Chu Si’s side.
No one in their right mind could call it a coincidence.
If Jin was the Fergus who had skipped grades with Jiang Qi, then it really wasn’t Chu Si’s fault that he couldn’t make the connection. Jin had disguised himself too well at first, like a real stranger… The only thing that could’ve given him away was the sentence “I go camping in the Black Cedar Forest every winter.”
As for Jin’s daughter, the little mop…
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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So when Chu Si tried to recall information about the little girl, he could only think of a few things. She couldn’t speak because her throat was injured, her hair seemed to be dark brown, and her eyes were clear and bright…
The first person he subconsciously thought of was Elena, the girl who’d also appeared in the graduation photo. This subconscious tendency might’ve been because he always felt that Elena was somehow related to Sa’e Yang, and he wished that Sa’e Yang could’ve had more of a connection to the world.
But in a flash, he had another, more probable guess—
If Le Pen’s speculations were correct, and the information in Fort Barney that couldn’t be traced back to its source came from the overlooked little mop, then the girl had to be an expert in that field. Chu Si didn’t know whether Elena was good at it, but he knew someone who had to be. The same dark brown hair, the same bright, clear eyes, and even the same injured throat that couldn’t speak— the research expert Esther Cabell who had appeared in that video.
Thinking about it carefully, there was a slight resemblance, even though the body changed a little between childhood and adulthood…
As the identities of these people surfaced one after another, Chu Si finally understood what Old Master Shao had said at the beginning— “Wait a little longer, there’s no need for you young people to intervene right now.”
Compared to them, Chu Si and the others were indeed the younger generation.
And because he remembered what Old Master Shao had said, he felt a vague hope in his heart. Perhaps these people weren’t standing against them, or even… they could’ve been solving some problems for the younger generation.
These problems were undoubtedly related to the time experiment.
Even though it was an unconfirmed hope, Chu Si wanted to clear up any and all possible scenarios with Sa’e Yang, who was, after all, the one hunting down the Black Swans.
“Sa’e—” Just as Chu Si opened his mouth, a burst of white suddenly appeared on Sa’e Yang’s screen, and the sound from his end became intermittent.
Faintly, an alarm could be heard in the cockpit: “…Space-time zone…obstacle…warning…safe…”
“What’s going on?!” As soon as Zilder Feng and the others saw this situation, they became extremely anxious.
Everything related to space-time always involved unpredictable troubles.
Chu Si furrowed his brow and immediately ordered the surveillance team to strengthen the signal link, but the intermittent connection remained unchanged.
They could only see Sa’e Yang turn his head and open his mouth to say a few words on the glitching screen— “Wrong space-time zone… I…”
And on the other screen, the external camera of Sa’e Yang’s aircraft was similarly frozen on an odd scene— as they approached Fort Barney, the nearly-a-hundred Black Swans simultaneously opened some kind of cloak. The faint circles of light were like water ripples suddenly spreading across a lake, forming a circle of ripples in the vast sea of stars, with the Black Swans as their center.
The appearances of the planetary fragments behind the ripples were distorted and blurred, as if separated by air currents or heat waves.
This scene lasted for less than two seconds, and then suddenly went dark. The images inside and outside Sa’e Yang’s aircraft were cut off at the same time.
At that moment, the entire command center seemed to move in slow motion—
The members of the surveillance team pressed on their headsets to make emergency calls. The strategic star map on the screen was synchronously refreshed, and the dots representing Sa’e Yang and the Black Swans suddenly disappeared.
At the same time, a message marked as urgent appeared on Chu Si’s communicator, and its contents popped directly onto the screen—
“Executive! Guy just lost Jin’s daughter, and right after that we intercepted another message sent to the military that read: Prepare to get out of bed. You have 30 minutes to freshen up.
Also, something happened in the star zone in front of Fort Barney. The entire planetary fragment shook for about three seconds.”
Prepare to get out of bed…
Such a style of speaking was really a perfect match for Esther Cabell’s lively emails.
If Chu Si had seen the contents of this message a few minutes ago, he might’ve been completely confused. But now, after the identities of various people around him had surfaced, he guessed the identity of the recipient in the military the moment he saw the message.
Inside the core cabin of a medium-sized spaceship of the military, the cryo-capsules of unawakened officers ranked major general and above were neatly placed. The low noise of their operation seemed to make the cabin even quieter.
Buzz—
The silence was broken by the sudden vibration of a communicator, but because it was enclosed in a capsule, the sound was a little muffled. The guards outside were unable to notice that disturbance through the heavy metal door.
In the midst of the many functioning cryo-capsules, a particular cryo-capsule had at some point quietly changed its mode of operation from extremely low freezing temperature to continuous oxygen supply.
General Millard, one of the three heads of the military, opened his eyes under the glass cover. He picked up the communicator in his hand, looked at it quietly, and then silently sent out a new message.
And next to his cryo-capsule, the cryo-capsules that should’ve held Generals Morton and Xiao lay empty.
Half a second later, at the conference table of the military’s White Eagle Ship, He Xiuwen’s communicator screen lit up. While everyone else’s attention was on the strategic star map, he impassively glanced at the screen. New information was quietly displayed on it—
You’ve worked hard. 30 minutes to get ready. Prepare to catch the thief.
He Xiuwen gently swiped the screen with his thumb, and it went black again. Then, his gaze fell back on the strategic star map.
Meanwhile, inside the White Wolf Ship, Chu Si was giving order after order.
“Surveillance team, continue searching for Mr. Yang’s communication signal!”
“Shao Heng, the pursuit team will immediately surround Fort Barney.”
“Feng, go contact the military. Don’t reveal anything, and find out if there are any unusual movements on their side.”
“Roger, gather all mobile guards to the living area and activate the wartime alert.”
“Tang, tell Le Pen and the others to restrict Jin and his daughter’s movements.”
He stared at Sa’e Yang’s two black screens with a frown. Just when he was about to dispatch a task force and lead it straight to Fort Barney himself, one of the black screens suddenly flickered and lit up again.
The monitor shook for a second, as if the miniature camera had been removed from its fixed position and moved somewhere else.
“Sa’e!” Chu Si immediately connected a two-way call.
Sa’e Yang’s face appeared in the shaking monitor— to be precise, a face wearing some kind of protective mask appeared, but Chu Si still recognized those eyes behind the goggles in an instant.
Sa’e Yang didn’t answer, but raised his index finger and touched it to his lips.
Shh—
He had just retracted his hand when a number of people dressed similarly to him appeared on the monitor. They appeared to be heading somewhere along a metal track.
Without hesitation, Chu Si cut off the two-way call.
Seeing that Sa’e Yang had reappeared in front of the camera unharmed, Chu Si’s rationality instantly returned and he changed his mind. He said to Tang, “Tell Le Pen and the others to bring Jin and his daughter here, immediately.”
Woo that gave me so much anxiety 😭😭 Everything started to piece together!!
Ah!! Everything begins to fit in. I hope nothing bad happens to Sa’e! Thanks for the chapter “)