Ghost

The air went deathly still. The onlookers, who had just been whispering among themselves as though watching monkeys at a zoo, went completely silent. Wu Xinghuan froze in place as if his brain had crashed. Xiao Yong crossed his arms and furrowed his brow, while Luo Yi sank into deep thought. As for Koala, he scratched his head just as before, his blank, beady eyes looking more and more like an actual koala's. *Your grave...* After a long pause, he broke the silence. "In other words... we're already dead?" "Yeah," Ye Shi replied with his eyes closed. "Then how did we die?" Koala pressed, refusing to let it go. "There has to be a reason, right?" "How should I know how you died?" Ye Shi gave him an incredulous look and answered matter-of-factly, "I haven't even entered the grave yet, have I?" "Hiss... Oh, right." Koala seemed persuaded, scratching the back of his head and muttering to himself. "You haven't gone in yet." Ye Shi didn't even have the energy to roast the recruitment standards of the Human Alliance Aerospace Force. He gave a deep sigh and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. His mind was a tangled mess right now, like a ball of yarn with no loose end to pull on. If anything was to blame, it was this game being too realistic. There wasn't even a menu interface; without his VM and the logout function, he truly couldn't tell whether he was still in the game or had genuinely transmigrated. Naturally, he hoped for the former. After all, even if someone had to transmigrate, nobody would want to transmigrate right into a burial mound. Not to mention he was perfectly satisfied with his current life and had no desire whatsoever to start over in an unfamiliar world. Yet if he was in the game, he couldn't understand why he couldn't log off, and he was even more terrified for his body in the real world. Several hours—maybe even over a dozen—had passed since he first lost consciousness. Jiu Jiu still hadn't kicked his door down to wake him, which could only mean some actual mishap had occurred, preventing him from waking up in reality. Dwelling on all this, Ye Shi felt his headache flaring up again. The only good news right now was that just before he woke up a moment ago, he had heard that voice calling his name once more. Along with that cute "Achoo!" There was no doubt it was Jiang Xuezhou's voice. It truly gave him mixed feelings—the person he was trying to rescue had ended up becoming his sole comfort. At least she was still somewhere nearby... "Looks to me like he's lost his mind." Standing by the doorway, Xiao Yong uncrossed his arms, shook his head, and walked away. Luo Yi didn't leave. He remained there, studying Ye Shi with a pensive expression, seemingly recalling something. Lin Youyou, standing beside the medical bed, gently placed her hand on Ye Shi's forehead, worry written across her face. "Your heart rate is unstable, and your metabolic levels are very low. You'd better lie down and rest..." "I don't need rest," Ye Shi muttered. Unaccustomed to such attentive care, he shifted slightly away. "...And I don't need you worrying about me. You'd better worry about yourselves." He wondered if these people were just excessively oblivious—how could they be so calm upon hearing news of their own deaths? Of course, it was also possible they simply treated him as entertainment, just like how players would occasionally treat an NPC's absurd plight as amusement to go with their meal. At first, he had worried they wouldn't be able to accept the harsh reality of their demise, but it seemed he had overthought things. Looking at the petulant youth, Lin Youyou simply smiled gently and drew back her hand. "We'll take good care of ourselves. And we'll take good care of you too, of course. Whatever the case, you're the patient here." "I'm not sick." Ye Shi replied listlessly. He was tired of repeating it. Especially since she seemed to treat him like a little kid, which made him feel awkward no matter how he looked at it. Just then, Dr. Wu, who had been squatting beside the medical bed, abruptly lifted his head. "I must be the sick one..." As if his soul had finally returned to his body, he muttered something under his breath and rose from beside the bed. Lin Youyou raised an eyebrow at the neurotic man, wearing a peculiar expression. "Why don't you lie down here for a while too?" "No..." Leaving behind that word and a completely baffled Ye Shi, Dr. Wu pushed through the crowd and hurried off. Lin Youyou sighed, raised an index finger to press between her eyebrows, and addressed the crowd gathered at the sickbay door. "My patient needs rest. If you aren't here for medical treatment, disperse." It was evident that the citizens of the Era of Prosperity generally possessed high civic conduct. Although the spectacle-seeking onlookers clearly hadn't had their fill of gossip and were burning with curiosity about what would happen next just as it got exciting, most of them still listened to the doctor. Instead of continuing to crowd the doorway, they promptly cleared out, leaving only Luo Yi standing at the entrance. Lin Youyou fixed her gaze on him. "And you? What's your problem?" Luo Yi pointed at the arm that had just undergone surgery and said to the on-duty doctor, "I'm here for treatment, and to have a couple words with the patient while I'm at it... Don't worry, I won't disturb his rest." Lin Youyou didn't say anything, merely casting an inquiring glance toward the patient on the bed. Yet the latter didn't look at her. He just stared fixedly at the doorway and stubbornly reiterated what he had said before. "I'll say it one more time: I'm not sick." "That's not up to you or me. It's up to what the doctor says." Luo Yi shrugged. Taking this as implicit consent to have a chat, he walked into the sickbay. Pulling up a chair from the side, he sat down next to the bed and stared at the young man lying on it. "You seem to know me... or to put it another way, you know the future me?" "Yeah." Ye Shi nodded, his eyes locked on Luo Yi. While his gaze remained vigilant, he didn't immediately attack like before. To be honest, thinking calmly about it, no matter which scenario he was currently facing, one thing was beyond doubt. This was definitely not the cruiser Orion in Wasteland Era Year 215 that he had collided with. Even if he killed this guy, it wouldn't do any good. It might even trigger some mess of a temporal paradox that would prevent him from returning. That possibility was not zero. Just like his suspicion that he had "transmigrated." The most important thing right now was to stay calm. And gather as much intel as possible to help him understand his current situation. At this moment, Luo Yi had no idea what was running through the mind of this boy purportedly from the future. He simply looked into his eyes and spoke up. "You've got good moves." Ye Shi gave a faint smile. "You flatter me." Luo Yi smiled. "Not flattering at all. When I was your age, I was still fretting over which university to apply for. Forget lethal combat skills—I'd never touched a gun, let alone seen one." Not averse to small talk with the man, Ye Shi asked offhandedly, "And then you enrolled in a military academy?" Luo Yi shook his head. "Nope. I ended up choosing Environmental Terraforming Engineering. Joining the military came later." Ye Shi: "...What is Environmental Terraforming Engineering?" "A pile of shit." Luo Yi grinned and continued, "Back then, relations between us and the colonies weren't so strained yet. People were still dreaming of terraforming Gaia into another Earth, and using tech researched out in the colonies to terraform other planets in the Solar System into terrestrial worlds along the way... Turns out that major was a massive trap." Ye Shi nodded in sudden realization. Understood. Put simply, the twenty-second-century equivalent of biology. Luo Yi looked at him and asked, "What about you?" Ye Shi answered candidly, "Twenty-fourth century... probably? By our reckoning, it's Wasteland Era Year 215." Luo Yi said with a chuckle, "Never imagined the apocalypse would last so many years." Ye Shi thought for a moment and said, "Over two hundred years. But it's almost over now." Luo Yi probed curiously, "Ended by that... Alliance?" Ye Shi replied, "You could say that. Actually, it wasn't just the Alliance; a lot of people put in a ton of effort... But then again, the Alliance is an alliance of all survivors to begin with. Getting hung up on exactly who ended the wasteland doesn't really matter." Luo Yi nodded, suddenly remarking with emotion, "Honestly, when I first heard you had all been languishing in the wasteland for over two hundred years, my heart sank. My family is still on Earth, and they'll never live to see peacetime. But thinking that those two hundred years have already passed, and that the future is filled with promising young men like you, brings me a measure of comfort... Perhaps the future isn't as grim as I imagined." Pausing, he added from the bottom of his heart, "That's good. Really... that's good." His words came straight from the heart, without the slightest hint of mere courtesy. Their civilization hadn't been destroyed, and through the crucible of the apocalypse, it had become younger and more united. That, in truth, was what gave it meaning. If before embarking on the journey home he had harbored lingering doubts over the outcome of the Three-Year War, fearing that what met his eyes would be nothing but devastated ruins, then right now he felt no more misgivings or unease about the future. Though the path was fraught with twists and turns, in the end, the future awaiting them all was bright. Ye Shi smiled. "Right? I think so too... It was pretty nice, originally." Luo Yi raised an eyebrow and asked half-jokingly, "Until you ran into us?" "To be precise, until I ran into you," Ye Shi said bluntly, looking right into his eyes. "You wiped out an Academy squad single-handedly—well, with help from your teammates." Luo Yi laughed sheepishly. "Didn't know I had it in me... And what happened after that? You chased a two-hundred-plus-year-old me all the way into space?" "This already sounds absurd enough..." Lin Youyou pressed her brow, her expression one of utter disbelief. She still leaned toward common sense: this guy had suffered brain damage from being frozen after failing to follow strict cryogenic hibernation procedures. Time travel? Something like that was far too ridiculous. Yet Ye Shi, lying on the bed, nodded and said bluntly, "Exactly... Actually, this wasn't even supposed to be our problem, but you piloted an Academy research vessel straight through the space debris up into geostationary orbit, and then boarded this destroyed missile cruiser. We got intelligence that this cruiser had a stockpile of a hundred thousand neutron torpedoes—or if not that exact number, not far off from it... Do you realize what that means? We had just finished fighting the final war and were getting ready to celebrate our civilization entering a new era, and then this had to happen." Luo Yi stared blankly at him, his expression gradually turning grave. "Did I say what I was planning to do?" Ye Shi curled his lip. "Did you need to say it? You joined an organization called the Celestials—a bunch of lunatics and terrorists hiding out in the Lagrange point space stations. Just like the Enlightenment Society, all they think about all day is bombing everything on the surface to ashes and hitting the reset button. "As for you, you didn't waste any breath talking to us, and anyone with half a brain could guess what you were up to: nothing more than carrying out the planetary bombardment mission that was left unfinished two hundred years ago, completely purging the surface of slime mold broodmothers and wastelanders alike, and then rebuilding whatever home you've imagined." Luo Yi's expression changed completely. "Planetary bombardment? I've never heard of that." Lin Youyou gave him an odd look, then turned to Ye Shi. "I can vouch for that. The fleet's operational schedule is public knowledge. There's no way something like that could be kept from us." "Maybe you just don't know," Ye Shi snorted. "Even our Administrator doesn't tell us everything, right?" Luo Yi placed a hand over his chest and looked at him solemnly. "I swear on my honor: even if, worst-case scenario, what you described is true—that we're carrying out a mission we don't know about, or have already committed unforgivable crimes unwittingly—I would never continue aiding criminals once I found out." Ye Shi let out a dry chuckle. "Who knows what you'll be thinking two hundred years from now?" Luo Yi fell silent for a moment, then murmured, "...You make a point. People change. But I don't believe I'd turn into that kind of person." "I'm just telling you what I saw. Believe it or not, it's up to you," Ye Shi remarked casually, staring at the ceiling. "Though to be fair, I actually believe you. After talking with you this long, you don't strike me as someone who'd pull that kind of shit. Maybe there's some misunderstanding." "Thank you for believing me," Luo Yi nodded. "Honestly, though, I understand your anger. If I were in your shoes and traveled back in time to find the criminal who later started a war standing right before me, I might also hesitate over whether to strangle him first... even if he hadn't done anything yet." Ye Shi gave him an intrigued look. "Aren't you scared, by the way?" "Scared of what?" Luo Yi asked. Ye Shi looked at him and reminded him, "I made it very clear earlier: you're already dead. The more cleanly you separate yourself from the 'Luo Yi' I know, the lower the odds that you're still alive. Either that guy was your clone, or an android." "Two centuries have passed; being dead is completely normal." Luo Yi shrugged and continued, "Besides, you only saw Orion's wreckage. That proves nothing. What if that happened many years down the line? We wouldn't be serving aboard this ship forever. Not to mention we still haven't figured out what's going on with your situation." Ye Shi looked at him with surprise. "You guys sure are optimistic." Lin Youyou placed a hand on his shoulder and teased, "After all, we aren't dead yet. We can hardly scare ourselves silly over a young man's words." "I share Dr. Lin's view." Luo Yi nodded, continuing to look at the boy on the bed. "My last question: why did you end up in the hibernation pod? Or rather... what did you encounter before you lost consciousness?" Regardless of whether Dr. Wu's deduction was correct, his instincts told him this held the key to breaking free from their present predicament. A flicker of confusion surfaced in Ye Shi's eyes. "I... to be honest, I'm not entirely sure." Luo Yi froze, exchanged a glance with Lin Youyou, and turned back to ask, "What do you mean by 'not entirely sure'?" "Just what I said—I must have passed out back then." Ye Shi tapped his head, looking troubled. "I don't have any memory of how I got into the hibernation pod. We took a hit from a neutron torpedo just as our shields ran out of power. I don't even know if I held out. Right after, we collided somewhere near the lower belly of Orion's wreckage. "Right, there was another person in the cockpit at the time. A girl around my age named Jiang Xuezhou... Did you see her in that research vessel?" Even though he knew the chances were slim, Ye Shi still looked at them with a glimmer of hope. Yet their reaction plunged his spirits to rock bottom in an instant. "If we're talking about the same ship, you were the only person aboard," Luo Yi looked at him gravely and said in a low voice. "There was only one hibernation pod inside, and you were the one lying in it." "That really is strange, though. If you were unconscious, how did you get into the pod?" Lin Youyou rubbed her chin between her thumb and forefinger, pondering seriously. "Either the impact caused memory fragmentation and you don't recall climbing in yourself, or, just as you said, there really was another person on the ship—we just couldn't see her." The sickbay fell quiet. Ye Shi suddenly felt a chill in the surrounding air, as though the place were haunted. As far as he knew, this game didn't have supernatural elements, did it? Yet common sense certainly couldn't explain what was happening before his eyes, let alone why he couldn't log off. "In any case, we have two important clues now: you were struck by a neutron torpedo, and then you crashed into our ship... our future ship." Having noted these two clues, Luo Yi rose from his chair. Seeing Luo Yi turn to leave, Lin Youyou raised an eyebrow. "Aren't you getting treated?" "Already got what I came for." He had two things to do right now. First, take another look at the explosion site; second, inspect the torpedo bay. Beyond that, he needed to take these two clues to that Wu fellow. Although the guy had never been reliable, he was, after all, the only physicist on board with the right specialization. If even he couldn't figure it out, Luo Yi couldn't imagine who else could. It wasn't as though they could rely on a grunt with a degree in "Environmental Terraforming Engineering." Lying on the medical bed, Ye Shi shut his eyes tightly, his face slightly pale. The voice had returned. And it was still those four lines— "Ye Shi..." "It's so cold here..." "Achoo!" "I..." ... In the security office on the lower deck, several senior officers from Division One stood before the surveillance monitor, watching the sickbay intently. Among them were Captain Zhao Tianhe, his second-in-command Wu Mengke, the navigator, and others. Respecting the doctor's wishes, they hadn't agitated the patient, choosing instead a more tactful approach—sending Luo Yi from the space combat team under Division Three to ask what they desperately needed to know. The two had talked for a long time, tracing events from the future all the way back to the present. And while the speakers shared those details casually, cold sweat broke out across the listeners' backs. Orion indeed had no plan to carry out an orbital bombardment of the ground, but the ship's command had indeed received a request for support from the Lagrange point space stations. Intelligence showed that mutant slime mold broodmothers had already covered the majority of the surface. Without a more thorough cleansing operation, the slime mold's reach would spread to the Antarctic and Arctic circles within ten years at most. Under such circumstances, rebuilding civilization was virtually impossible; human civilization might not even survive long enough to have that chance before being wiped out by the Children of Gaia. With the space elevator now destroyed and the colony ship Zhiyuan having abandoned its extrasolar colonization plans in disregard of the bigger picture, human civilization hovered on the brink of annihilation. The intention of the Lagrange point space stations was clear: since the shelter project had already begun and whatever nuclear weapons were meant to be used had long since been fired, chances were the survivors on the surface wouldn't make it anyway. Better to rip off the bandage and push the pedal to the metal. From the high vantage point of civilization, this was preserving the spark of mankind's survival to the greatest extent possible. The contradiction, however, lay in the fact that this act in itself undermined the very foundation of civilization. And precisely because of this, opinions within the Human Alliance and the aerospace high command were far from unanimous regarding whether to take things that far; in fact, severe rifts existed. This division hadn't originated today; it had existed since long before. Including, but not limited to, the core dispute of the entire war. One faction believed the enemy of the war was the insurgents, while another believed Gaia was the true threat. Disagreement was inevitable. Whenever two people stood side by side, a left and a right would always emerge, to say nothing of a whole crowd. Though the final war had been instigated by radicals, it was only the most radical faction among them. With the secession of the colonies, internal conflicts turned external. Among the conservatives who held overwhelming dominance in the upper echelons of the Human Alliance, new alignments naturally formed around the current agenda: those leaning right on the spectrum became the new conservatives, while those leaning left became the new radicals. From the latter's standpoint, the war was over and the insurgents had been eliminated. What needed consideration now was cleaning up the aftermath and establishing a new order. This order could accommodate the mutant slime mold, as eradicating such an entity entirely was simply unrealistic. From the former's standpoint, however, expelling every last trace of slime mold from the surface at all costs was an urgent, immediate imperative—one worth any number of sacrifices. Zhao Tianhe didn't care much for politics. His self-perception was clear: he was a career soldier, and his allegiance lay with the law... even if the mainstream of the aerospace force leaned toward the former camp. Yet even if he didn't want to take sides, when the tides of history swept over them, he and his subordinates were dragged into the fray, forced to make a choice. After all, when he received orders from the Lagrange Point Command Center, only two starships capable of interstellar flight remained across the aerospace force—indeed, across the entire Human Alliance. The Orion, and the Gemini. His ship held the largest remaining stockpile of munitions. By comparison, Gemini's neutron torpedoes had likely been nearly depleted during earlier orbital bombardments of Planet Gaia. In other words, they were the only ones capable of carrying out the Doomsday Protocol. No one else could do it... And his choice went without saying. He would rather turn his weapons on himself or his allies than aim them at the civilians he had sworn his life to protect. If he did that, what the fuck had they fought three years of war for? Standing before the surveillance monitor, Wu Mengke looked with concern at Captain Zhao Tianhe beside her. "The boy knows about that transmission from the Lagrange point stations. I don't think it's a coincidence—he might truly be from the future." Zhao Tianhe stared grimly at the screen and nodded slowly. "Yeah." With a conflicted expression, Wu Mengke looked away, her hands unconsciously gripping the chair's armrests. "Then we..." Knowing what she wanted to say, Zhao Tianhe shook his head, keeping his eyes locked onto the screen. "Hard to say. "No matter what, there's no doubt that you and I are still alive, and our adversaries have zero chance of turning the tables. "I'm actually more inclined to believe he doesn't come from our future. "Rather, the future of 'another timeline.'"