Volume II: The Road of Thorns

The real-time navigation map on the "Beijing" mech displayed only a blank figure. Right now, the pa.s.sage they were pa.s.sing through was an underground pa.s.sage not on the map. It was opened up by the countless smugglers traveling around in the Eighth Galaxy, which meant that safety was not ensured at all in this pa.s.sage.

"Beijing" -- this was the name of Jingheng Lin's small mech.

Normally, only heavy mechs like Zhanlu would have their own name and serial number. Tiny mechs like these, basically a model of a mech, could only count as a measly bug in this boundless universe. Without an AI, there was also no need to give it a name, of course. But Bixing Lu insisted on calling it "Beijing", as if to use this mech, the last one from Beijing β, to commemorate the place they could never go back to.

Jingshu Huang half knelt, half sat in a corner of the training room, a palm-sized teeny window opened on the mech's walls. She gazed out from the small window. There was still only unchanging darkness outside, nothing able to be seen. No lights, no company, and no celestial bodies either. In interstellar traveling, gravity could be deadly, and pa.s.sages had to avoid orbits of large celestial bodies.

Only in rare occasions did the mech ran into some s.p.a.ce particles. Those tiny specks of dust floated and spinned, reflecting lights from faraway stars. Gazing at them from a far distance, they were like a paper-thin layer of gauze glowing a faint halo, thin like the wings of a cricket.

They were close to travelling on this underground pa.s.sage for a month. In the duration, they had gone through several non-emergency jumps, Jingshu was slowly able to tolerate the feel of her innards being squeezed close to bursting from her torso.

Additionally, the mech's surroundings had always been like this, not exciting, and not thrilling, either. It dazedly made people feel like this endless loneliness was the norm.

Whether it was the colossal war between the Union and the interstellar pirates, the crazed Prince Cayley, or her calamized, dissipated homeland...They all seemed to be nothing more than a bizarre and unusual dream of refracted lights.

The backwards students born from a backwards place did not gain any unusual talents from their unusual experiences, either. They were still enc.u.mbrance.

A simulated mech was built into the training room, one that even had a tiny imitation of a mental network in it. They trained like crazy for a month, but until now, none of them had successfully connected to it even once.

White was a weakling -- no matter if it was fitness or anti weightlessness, he ranked the least in his cla.s.smates. Even now, he still would immediately pa.s.s out the instant he connected to the simulated mech.

Rickhead, the giant dumba.s.s, was contrastingly good at fitness, and had zero problems with what they were eating. But there was a sight problem -- his mental growth was indeed unpleasing. Lacking the most primary education level, he was basically semiliterate. It wasn't even about teaching him any high grade, precise, advanced skills -- even making him read a small household appliance manual was hard enough. Not to mention that there were also behavioral disorders, such as violent tendencies and attentional problems.

If the two just mentioned above were challenging but could be slowly taught over time, then Mint's situation wasn't that easy to solve.

She had *nyctophobia to a pretty d.a.m.n far extent. Before, no matter whether the time when she was at the orphanage or at the girls' dorm, she wasn't alone at night, so her symptoms weren't as prominent. But once she was connected to the mental network, her senses would be shared with those of the mech's in the great universe. Just like a normal person would place most of their concentration on their surroundings and wouldn't notice their heartbeat or breathing unless they actually meant to, someone who had just connected to a mech's mental network would be drowned in the colossal amount of information from outside the mech -- the absolute darkness of the s.p.a.ce environment brought her great emotional stress. Once she connected to the mental network, she would start screaming around and sobbing relentlessly within five seconds, her whole body covered in cold sweat, her heart and lung functions in such disarray she almost needed medicinal intervention.

*nyctophobia: fear of darkness

As for Jingshu Huang -- an empty brain was an empty brain. Until now, her compatibility with the mental network had not even once reached 30%, the reason unknown.

A pull ring being pulled open sounded, someone had opened a can of beer beside her, the smell of it drifting over. Jingshu Huang turned her head.  "Pres Lu."

Bixing Lu pulled out a paper cup, and poured half of the beer for her. "This is from Lin's previous stock. Probably stuffed in the mech by his subordinates or something like that. They don't know that he dislikes drinking these -- they're definitely close to expiring."

"You're still so petty even if no one's going to drink it and it's close to expiring. Can't you just give me an entire can?"

"Half a can is enough for you, kiddo. How much more do you want me to spoil you all?" Bixing Lu held out his hand, "If you're not going to drink it, give it back."

Jingshu Huang immediately took the paper cup.

Waiting until she had finished most of her drink, Bixing Lu finally spoke, breaking the silence, "The error rate of the homework you submitted yesterday was extremely high, and there were also traces of copying in the short answer questions. The whole thing was just puked out -- this has never occurred before, so why?"

"How did you know that I copied?"

"I don't give my students extra reading lists with books I've never read, and it's clear that you bunch of ignorant things don't have the habit of reading on your own." Bixing Lu leaned against the wall on the side of the training room, his posture relaxed, but not so that it would make him seem improper. "So I know exactly which book and what part of it you copied from, what's surprising with that?"

Jingshu Huang, unafraid of anything as she was already in deep s.h.i.+t, lowered her head. "Oh, then you might as well take my points off."

Bixing Lu looked at her, patiently waiting for her to keep going on.

Jingshu Huang tipped the remaining beer in her cup down in one gulp, wiping her mouth with a full "popular girl" poise, "Pres Lu, some things just can't be achieved with just hard work, some people are just better than others -- some people are born without a hand or a leg, some people are born to be nothing, and are destined to be eliminated -- for me...for many of us, it's like this. Defective products once we were produced. I'm sorry, Pres Lu, teaching us to operate mechs are harder than teaching a hamster to jump through a ring of fire, right?"

Bixing Lu neither agreed nor disagreed. "There's no aesthetic value in watching a hamster jumping through a fire ring."

"But since a war has started, it's going to be hard for people that don't know how to operate mechs to survive in s.p.a.ce, right? We don't know what's going to happen in the future, and we can't be useless for the rest of our lives and just rely on someone else our whole lives," Jingshu Huang said calmly. "Operating mechs requires top notch toughness both mentally and physically, and you have to be smart enough and have no genetic defects. Don't you think this is a natural selection of some sorts? To wipe out those that are defective, and only keeping those that are 'correct'."

"Ah," Bixing Lu arched his eyebrows, slightly surprised, "I, as your teacher, am shocked to hear this."

The corners of Jingshu Huang's mouth twisted downwards unpleasantly. "It's not talent that you're lacking, you're just not working hard enough, and you have to pay more attention to the way you're studying —— that's what you wanted to say, right? Pres Lu, you teachers' speeches haven't changed for millions of years, am I correct?"

"Nope, I just wanted to say that I've always thought that only more introverted youngsters would reflect on themselves and society —— I never thought that ones like you, whose hobby is getting into fights with a beer bottle in one hand, would be the the same," Bixing Lu said. "It seems that exploring topics like these are simply in the human instinct when you've reached p.u.b.erty. I never thought you were one — one that believed in the ancient, simple social Darwinism and advocated the survival of the fittest."

Jingshu Huang: "......"

Even though she didn't really understand what he just said, it definitely did not seem like something pleasant.

"Both human society and evolution are too long, and too complicated. When you use your even less than twenty years of life experience to judge it, it's going to be like that looking at one spot on a leopard and you can visualize the whole animal." Bixing Lu spoke at a perfect pace, "I've already said it before on the first day of school. This world is changing too fast, maybe even once every ten years. Can you precisely predict what the next decade is going to be like? Your whole life's going to be hundreds of years long, and if you can't even predict the next ten years, then what makes you think that you can decide what is defective, and what is correct?"

Jingshu Huang was overwhelmed.

Bixing Lu took a slow sip at his beer. "You little girl -- from what I know, there's no proof that people with vacucerebral syndrome absolutely can't feel mental networks. While you might be low on talent, after you've fully understood yourself and mechs , you can choose to develop towards other directions instead of running away when you're slower than the others at the beginning. If you have the chance, you can go ask Commodore Lin that even in the Silver Fortress, not everyone's mental strength is as tough as his."

Before his voice died down, he heard Jingheng Lin's answer come from the broadcast system of the training room. "Of course not. Except for frontline soldiers, Silver Fortress doesn't have any mandatory requirements for mental strength."

Not expecting this, Bixing Lu almost coughed the mouthful of beer into his lungs.

Didn't someone say that the underground pa.s.sage was full of hidden dangers? How come the pilot still had the leisure to eavesdrop on him lecturing a little girl?

Bixing Lu suddenly had an illusion. Lin's gray and misty eyes were everywhere, following his every move at any time. The beer he just drank suddenly felt like it was mixed with several kilograms of chicken feathers, and his throat felt dry and itchy. He quickly cleared his throat hard, and s.h.i.+fted his standing posture, "Didn't you say that we're close to reaching the supply station in the underground pa.s.sage?"

"According to your map, our travel still has a day or two."  Jingheng Lin replied. 

The training room was sealed up well...too well. If the door was closed, there would be a faint echo inside, making the voice from the broadcast system seem like it was right beside his ear.

Bixing Lu vaguely flinched, pus.h.i.+ng the door open and walking out.

Standing in the stairwell in front of the training room  entrance, he could look down at the mech's bottom. On it was splayed a giant underground pa.s.sage map, and in 3D at that.

Unlike highways on the ground, Interstellar pa.s.sages couldn't remain stationary where they were. The pa.s.sage map kept spinning and changing periodically, the thickly dotted coordinates smearing people's visions. So complicated, they could make dear cla.s.smate Rickhead cry.

Standing on the map himself, Jingheng Lin had the spinning little dots of light running past his clothes, sometimes even illuminating up his features. When seen from afar, they had a dreamy effect. Bixing Lu discovered that this human, although dressed lazily and casually, had the straight and upright att.i.tude of a soldier unconsciously hinted in his manners. Mixed together, they gave him a bizarre and contradicting temperament. His irises reflected grey, and his natural hair color wasn't that black either. Examined under the light, they were on the faded side. Every single one of his facial features, if pulled out individually, could be savoured for a long time. But combined together, they somehow made one afraid to look at them closely and clearly, and left only a cold face in memory.

Having known him for five years, Headmaster Lu realized for the first time that he really didn't look at him enough.

"Commodore," Bixing Lu s.h.i.+fted into a well-practiced charming pose, leaning on a rail, "How many letters of confession did you receive a year back in Silver Fortress?"

Jingheng Lin's was stunned for a second, seemingly a bit shocked.

Zhanlu, in his side, cut in. "Commodore's inbox had filters on, and refused to receive any mail from unknown sources. But Silver Fortress' public inbox did receive hundreds and thousands of letter meant for you everyday, especially after you publicly refused Miss Yevghania in public."

"How didn't I know that?"

"As they contained no information of importance, your guard captain and secretary got rid of them after searching them," Zhanlu replied rhythmically, as if he was a news anchor. "Based on calculations, about half of the letters was to condemn you for hurting their G.o.ddess's feelings, and the other half of the letters was to pa.s.sionately confess their feelings for you, saying that no matter if you're an impotent violent maniac, or a s.e.xually frigid pervert, they would still keep on loving your face pa.s.sionately."

Jingheng Lin: "......"

"Yes, it is true that some of them were extremely disrespectful," Zhanlu reasonably said, continuing, "But statistical data shows that when people are facing public figures, they are more easily to publish disrespectful and uncivilized comments. It does not mean that social morality is at a low point."

Jingheng Lin: "Stand to attention and shut up."

The AI loyally carried his command and became muted right where he was.

Bixing Lu, somehow gaining the courage, cut in. "Why are you so harsh -- can't you even let people compliment you as you're hot?"

Jingheng Lin gave a nonchalant gesture of his hands, and scolded neither really furiously or sternly. "Bulls.h.i.+t, don't you have anything else to do? If you have nothing to do, go check the arms and weaponry."

Bixing Lu licked his dry lips, crushed the empty beer can in his hands, and tossed it into the mech's garbage disposal unit. He left obediently, feeling like his bold sentence spoken just now sounded like he was trying to hit on him.

"He wasn't angry even at that." Bixing Lu was like an experimenter full of exploring spirit, silently marking this in his memory. He felt like he had just completed a small adventure, excitement bubbling in his heart for no reason. He went to work happily.

Half an hour later, the Beijing mech suddenly detected communication signals -- there was people around, and that meant that they had reached the edge of this underground world!