Chapter 75

If one had to use a single sentence to describe Fu Luo's state of mind, it would be that she was completely in disarray.

Curiosity is a sickness, and can't be stopped with medicine!

To be honest, in her own view, there wasn't really anything remarkable about this rescue mission. The core of the plan was simply to replicate Ye Wenlin's experience of breaking through the other star system's blockade alone. Aside from testing her acting skills a bit more, it was all quite lackluster - she hung out with all kinds of space pirates every day, and if she couldn't learn to act like a bunch of hooligans by now, she might as well go back to the surface and get her IQ tested at a hospital.

However, this was destined to be a battle that left a deep impression on her, because her mental world had undergone a baptism and cleansing like a great wave washing over sand, leaving Fu Luo a bit disoriented.

Fu Luo thought in exasperation, "I'm not a technical person, so why am I looking at technical issues for no reason? I can't understand it anyway, isn't this just asking for trouble?"

She glanced around guiltily, surreptitiously changed the strategic key points written in the format of a will back to their original state, re-locked the screen to restore it, rolled it up and stuffed it back into the drifting bottle... Finally, she even secretly wiped the obvious fingerprints on the reader with her sleeve.

As if this could destroy the evidence.

In Fu Luo's barren life, apart from a budding crush that she herself had smothered in her even more immature years, she had never dealt with such a thing before. She was even more nervous than on her first day reporting to the Second Department, because at least for that she had six years of relevant training from a school.

On the several-hour return voyage, Fu Luo had been leaning against the cold wall of the spacecraft the whole time. She was on pins and needles, her mind elsewhere, and she was genuinely distracted for a while.

However, after pondering the whole way, she really couldn't figure out the reason.

Finally, the captain of the Penglai, who was responsible for taking over the Third Department, couldn't bear it any longer and came to ask Fu Luo, whose mind was not at home, "General Cao and the others' command authority is still locked down, Lieutenant Colonel, what do you think we should do?"

To put it nicely, this was to protect the safety of the commanding officers during the battle. Bluntly speaking, it was equivalent to house arrest.

Fu Luo raised her head and stared at the Penglai captain with wide eyes for a while, inexplicably asking in return, "How would I know?"

Captain: "..."

This captain was a bit older and steady. He closed his mouth and didn't say anything, but his eyes revealed a pleading look of "Madam, can you not tease me".

Fu Luo stared at him with her ignorant big eyes, showing a completely unreliable look, "I really don't know. Didn't Colonel Yang give any instructions? I, I, I, I just got promoted to A-level soldier this year, and have never spoken more than a few words to a Major General in my life. Don't come ask me about this kind of thing!"

The captain continued to silently condemn her with his eyes.

Finally, after thinking for a bit, Fu Luo came up with a lousy idea, "I can't make the decision, you can't make the decision, and the one who can make the decision can't get out of bed. I think it's better if we both pretend to forget about this matter, what do you say?"

The captain's long face first lengthened by an inch, then shrank back. He understood Fu Luo's implied meaning.

The captain glanced at Fu Luo and cautiously asked again, "Then what if Major General Cao protests, what should we say?"

Without thinking, Fu Luo said righteously, "Emergency situation."

The captain persisted, "What kind of emergency?"

Fu Luo justified, "Aren't we being chased by a bunch of space pirates behind us?"

Her expression was sincere and naturally urgent, as if it were really the case.

In her countless experiences of being tricked and tricking others, she had only dabbled but miraculously realized the principle of "a thousand tricks are not as good as one fresh trick". Fu Luo believed that since her IQ was not enough to support endless changes, it was better to respond to all changes with one unchanging move, using the single trick of "playing dumb" to trample all schemes and tricks.

She had a very unique positioning for her life—to feign ignorance while remaining, as much as possible, an aware and honest person.

The captain personally experienced her unconventional shamelessness, and left as told, pretending that there really was a large group of space pirates of unknown origin chasing behind them.

When Yang Ning truly woke up again, they had already returned to Saturn Fortress.

Fu Luo was reading the news from the surface, not seeking to make sense of it, but hoping that she would at least not be completely in the dark and clueless when asked.

Yang Ning didn't move, slightly narrowing his eyes, as if the gemstone flower clasp on her wrist from Dong Jialing had flashed in his eyes for a moment.

"Where did you get that from again?" When Yang Ning first woke up, his heart was very calm. He silently observed for a moment, thinking, "It's pretty."

After admiring it for a while, he finally slowly came back to his senses, and the tranquility in his heart was shattered, making him feel extremely weary.

"Looks like I didn't manage to die," Yang Ning thought to himself.

When a person is seriously injured, their energy and spirit are insufficient. With insufficient energy and spirit, the heart becomes tired. The Saturn Fortress was like a huge, heavy burden, pressing on him until he could barely breathe, and for a moment, the thought of throwing in the towel arose.

Yang Ning aimlessly retracted his gaze, allowing himself half a minute to think that if there were no wars in the world, if he were not the son of Yang Jinghe, and not some damn space battlefield commander... then he should probably go to the city center and be a respectable white-collar worker, right?

Perhaps if he hadn't had so much unnecessary resentment in his heart in his early years, his life wouldn't have been so hard. Maybe he would only need to use a little wit each year to earn enough money to get by, living from day to day with no pressure.

After half a minute passed, Colonel Yang called his thoughts back to the treacherous universe on time, using cold rationality to mercilessly expel the fantasy from his mind just now - this short vacation was over.

Only then did Yang Ning lightly cough, finally startling Fu Luo... no, it would be more accurate to say frightening Fu Luo.

She was originally sitting straight as a stone statue, but was suddenly startled by Yang Ning's movement and sprang up from the chair. In the process, the reader slipped from her hand. She flusteredly reached out to grab it back, and for some unknown reason, mindlessly hid the reader behind her back... Her flurried movements were like a stone statue experiencing an earthquake.

Then, under Yang Ning's puzzled gaze, Fu Luo remembered that she had clearly been holding her own reader just now, so what the hell was she feeling guilty about! Realizing that she had done something stupid, Fu Luo felt her ears getting hot. Fortunately, her long hair covered them. She tried her best to appear nonchalant and asked with a wooden expression, "How are you feeling?"

At first, Yang Ning smiled at her very gently.

Fu Luo's palms were sweating, feeling even more nervous.

Fortunately, Colonel Yang didn't neglect his duties for personal matters. The next moment, he dropped his smile and asked in an extremely weak voice, as thin as a mosquito, "Didn't I tell you to seal off the Fortress? Who allowed you to send reinforcements on your own?"

His questioning immediately cured Fu Luo's sweaty palms. She instantly felt refreshed from the scolding, and her tongue was no longer tied. She reported smoothly, "I sealed off the Fortress. Most of the ships I brought were small and medium-sized ones captured from space pirates. For the few that were lacking, I used our military ships that had been refitted. All the warp drives were installed with auto-destruct programs. If the warp drive is captured, it will self-destruct immediately and won't fall into enemy hands."

After saying that, she added without taking credit, "The idea of impersonating space pirates was Captain Ye's, and the modifications were guided by Yesi."

"You didn't bring a single large ship and charged straight into a fleet with giant ships," Yang Ning paused for a moment, his breath a bit short, before continuing, "Did you think you were quite the hero?"

Fu Luo listened to the scolding with relish, wishing he would scold her more, as if only then would things be normal.

Unfortunately, after a couple of sentences, Yang Ning seemed to have difficulty continuing the scolding.

He rested for a good while before weakly asking Fu Luo to report the entire process. Fu Luo recounted everything from beginning to end without hesitation, including how she had "forgotten" about Cao Kun. Finally, her tone subtly paused as she pointed to the drifting bottle on the bedside table and said, "By the way, your flagship was destroyed. They found your drifting bottle inside."

Yang Ning lifted his eyelids and glanced at the tightly sealed little bottle.

Then, he heard Fu Luo say the stupidest thing she had said all day. She said, trying to cover up, "I didn't look at your reader."

Yang Ning: "..."

"Damn it, if you didn't look, how do you know there's a reader inside? Had Yang Ning gotten so old and muddled that he forgot whether he sealed his drifting bottle or not?" Fu Luo came to her senses a beat too late, biting her tongue fiercely and cursing herself in her heart. "How do I get out of this?"

That nameless nervousness that had been scolded into submission trembled and reared its head again.

But to her surprise, Yang Ning suddenly laughed a moment later.

He tilted his head slightly to the side, laughing out loud, but afraid of aggravating his wounds, he could only suppress his laughter in a very restrained state.

Fu Luo lowered her head to look at the tips of her boots, inwardly criticizing her "playing dumb" strategy for having a fatal flaw. For example, if she kept it up for too long, what if her willpower wasn't strong enough and she actually became dumb?

It seemed to be heading in that direction already, how worrying.

"So you looked, big deal." Yang Ning said in a sigh-like soft voice. After giving Fu Luo a meaningful glance, he calmly withdrew his gaze in the midst of her bewilderment and said something even more meaningful.

He said, "Go do what you should be doing."

Indeed, his unknown half-minute vacation had ended.

At this time, Earth stood on high alert.

Wang Yacheng was crouching low, his back bent into a semicolon shape, almost drilling into the computer screen.

His eyes did not blink at all as he spoke into the communicator: "That bastard just sent a signal before dying. The nearest enemy patrol will arrive within a minute. Hurry up and finish!"

Last time, Wang Yacheng had escaped through the sewers of the occupied zone in order to steal the logistics transportation map and schedule within the occupied area. They planned to seize a brief moment to carry out a raid when the enemy passed through the non-occupied zone.

As an important external support for the entire operation, Wang Yacheng had a heavy task. By the time he called for retreat, he had already been lying here staring at the screen for over forty-eight hours.

He could clearly feel his vision deteriorating severely, almost becoming truly nearsighted. Although in this era, vision correction was as ordinary as filling a cavity, and glasses had become mere accessories, in such chaotic times, who could care about these trivial things?

He had no choice but to dig out a pair of glasses to wear temporarily, making himself look even smaller, almost like a silly middle schooler.

Wang Yacheng quickly cleaned up the scene, pulled down the brim of his hat, and left the inconspicuous small motel where he had been hiding.

It was said that the other star system's side had already labeled them a terrorist organization. This title, which sounded like a pile of crap to normal people, strangely hit Wang Yacheng’s sweet spot— Just imagine, a terrorist code-named "Ergou" — how awesome was that?

This slightly delusional teenager had thought he would at most become a big-time thug, but unexpectedly, he was promoted halfway and became a mighty terrorist.

He was in a good mood, starving, and pulled out a piece of bread from his backpack, opening his mouth wide, preparing to take a heroic bite and chomp down half of it.

However, when he passed the street corner, he saw a homeless man.

Homeless people were not rare— in these chaotic times, displaced people were less fortunate than even peaceful dogs. Who knew how many people had seen their life savings blown away by a drunk pirate’s random shot, survived, but were left homeless. The wartime collapse of economies made it impossible for them to survive, and the government's relief efforts were stretched thin.

Such homeless people were everywhere.

The homeless man was not alone; he was holding a small child, it was unclear how old, unclear whether it was a boy or girl, but clearly just learning to walk, still tottering unsteadily.

Upon hearing footsteps, the pair simultaneously raised their heads, staring fixatedly at the boy’s wide-open mouth and that rough piece of bread, their eyes glowing green with jealousy.

Wang Yacheng walked past them indifferently, but they kept watching his back with longing.

A moment later, the boy cursed under his breath and turned back, throwing the bread into the homeless man's arms: "This thing is expired. If you get a bad stomach, don't blame me for not warning you."

However, his fierce warning had no effect. In that instant, he saw a burst of brightness in the homeless man's eyes — like fireworks suddenly blooming in the darkness.

Wang Yacheng froze for a second, then stormed off angrily.

In his twisted and bizarre heart, he thought that this kind of behavior was completely beneath him, unworthy of his newly promoted "terrorist" status.

Yet when he reached the street corner, for some unknown reason, he turned back for a glance.

He saw the man chew up the bread, then spit it into his hand, and feed it to the little child who hadn’t yet grown a full set of teeth. The child clutched his hand, craning his neck forward eagerly, his eyes still fixed greedily on the rest of the bread.

"Bad hygiene habits," Wang Yacheng commented coldly.

He lifted his foot to leave, when suddenly, a bright flash crossed the corner of his eye. Without thinking, Wang Yacheng’s body reacted instinctively— he darted behind a dilapidated building corner, alertly shielding himself.

A loud explosion followed. The ground shook violently. It took a long moment for the shockwaves to settle.

Wang Yacheng cautiously waited until the aftermath of the explosion was completely over, then carefully peeked out to check.

Then he froze.

The wall of the alley he had just walked through had collapsed, blackened with smoke and cannon fire marks. The small child had been thrown onto a nearby manhole cover, his limbs and forehead scraped and bruised, but he seemed too terrified to even cry.

As for the man — he was completely crushed under the rubble, only a scorched leg burned by a high-energy cannon barely sticking out.