The Seventh Day on Glacier Planet.
Once again, Li Xu woke from a dream filled with ceaseless gunfire. He pushed himself upright, breathing heavily, his face grim as he forced himself to calm down.
Ever since waking from hibernation, Li Xu had been plagued by this recurring dream, like an alarm permanently etched into his mind, constantly reminding him of something.
After arriving on Glacier Planet and spending his days doing nothing, he had indeed managed to sleep well for a few days.
But ever since hearing about that planet related to Robert, Li Xu had once again been unable to sleep well.
In an unknown corner, the old robot still firmly remembered what had happened decades ago. A decision he had thought insignificant many years ago had come back like a boomerang, stabbing into his mind.
Was this his punishment?
Casting all these thoughts to the back of his mind and restoring his usual calm and gentle demeanor, Li Xu got up and left the rest area, heading for the gym.
He could do this. It was his way of surviving.
When he came out, Xiao Wei asked, “Li Xu, abnormal heart rate data was detected during your sleep. Are you in an emergency situation? Do you require assistance?”
“No, thank you.”
His body had completely recovered, and over the past few days, he had been gradually resuming physical training. The issue with his heart rate had nothing to do with his physical health. It was related to something he had to resolve.
Robert came over to greet him and chat, and after Li Xu exchanged a few words with it, he avoided it. Robert stood there pondering for a while, figuring that Li Xu was probably in a bad mood.
After training and showering, Li Xu changed into clean clothes. He glanced at his arms and abdomen, feeling that the muscles that had grown slack from spending too long in hibernation were slowly returning.
With his hair still damp and his collar open, Li Xu passed through the lounge in the main cabin, looking refreshed. He deliberately turned his head toward the main control room, wanting to see whether Cheng Weilu was there. She usually curled up there reading books, studying star charts, and making notes.
His gaze happened to meet Cheng Weilu’s as she came through the door.
Li Xu saw her eyes sweep across the large expanse of exposed pale skin on his chest before moving away without leaving a trace.
To make it seem less deliberate, Cheng Weilu shifted her gaze back to his face. After several days of rest, Li Xu’s complexion had clearly improved. His skin seemed to glow, while the damp ends of his hair rested against his collarbones, dripping with water.
Cheng Weilu rarely used the exercise equipment aboard the ship. Her basic requirement for her body was simply to have enough physical strength for whatever she needed to do, so only when she truly had nothing else to occupy herself with would she listen to an audiobook while walking on the treadmill.
Li Xu’s body before hibernation should have looked even better than it did now. The definition of his muscles, the firmness of his skin…
No, looking any longer would be impolite.
Cheng Weilu abruptly stopped herself, nodded at him, and walked outside with the object in her hand, only to be called back by Li Xu.
He came over while rubbing his hair dry and leaned closer to look at what she was holding. It seemed to be a folded blanket.
“Are you going to the snowfield again today?”
“I am…” Cheng Weilu nodded. “But not for a walk.”
He looked into her eyes and asked, “Can I come with you?”
Unable to refuse him, Cheng Weilu waited for Li Xu to dry his hair and put on his spacesuit before leaving the spaceship with him.
Outside, the sky was still a bluish white, but today it was noticeably brighter than before.
Cheng Weilu shook out the blanket in her hands and spread it on the ground. She seemed to press a switch somewhere, and within a few seconds, the blanket became rigid.
Cheng Weilu walked over and sat cross-legged on it. Li Xu watched her, then silently followed and sat down beside her. His hand pressed against the surface of the blanket, and even through the gloves of his spacesuit, he could feel a faint warmth.
She then tapped her wristband, bringing up a holographic interface, and operated it for a moment. The blanket carrying the two of them rose smoothly into the air.
Li Xu had never seen a blanket like this before. “Is this some new product made by a company? What is it for?”
“I made it myself.” Cheng Weilu looked a little embarrassed. “It uses a soft alloy that becomes soft when cold and hard when heated. Robert helped me weave the outer shell.”
Actually, when she had first discovered this alloy, what she had wanted to make most was a sword. With its ability to become both soft and rigid, combined with a levitation and propulsion system, wouldn’t that allow her to achieve sword flight like the cultivators in xianxia novels?
But in reality, when she made it the size of an ordinary sword, she couldn’t stand steadily on it at all. The moment it took off, she would fall right off. Making it into a giant sword looked ridiculous, so in the end, she had made a low-key yet practical hovercarpet.
Those thoughts were far too childish. There was no way she could expect people from the interstellar era to understand them, so Cheng Weilu would never say any of that out loud.
“It isn’t very useful for much. Its only purpose is to let me sit on it and look at the ice.”
The answer was unexpected, but Li Xu immediately felt that if it was Cheng Weilu, this sort of behavior didn’t seem surprising after all.
The warm hovercarpet carried the two of them for half an hour before stopping above a massive ice sheet. The hovercarpet hovered several dozen meters above the surface, and from below, they could see the deep-blue ice sheet and the black water beneath it.
“Robert told me that you really like this planet.” Li Xu looked at the desolate ice field around them. “But there’s nothing here.”
“There is. There’s ice, snow, and water. Beneath the ice sheet and snowfield, there are also rocks that we can’t see.”
Cheng Weilu raised her hand and pointed toward the pale horizon ahead. “The planet is now entering its warmest season. If we’re lucky today, we might be able to see a star, its ‘sun.’ We might even get to see the ice sheet melt.”
Li Xu remained silent for a while as he digested her words before asking, “Why did you choose salvage work as your profession?”
He had looked into this newly emerging postwar profession. It involved a heavy workload and required traveling everywhere, while the pay was not particularly impressive.
Cheng Weilu’s mental strength was unprecedentedly high. With such an extraordinary talent, even if she didn’t become a salvager, she had plenty of other professions and jobs to choose from.
“Because I can be in space.” Cheng Weilu smiled. “The starry sky is infinitely vast. Every time I set out, all the stars in the universe are there to welcome me.”
“For example, it’s quiet and cold here, and aside from the ice sheet and rocks, there is nothing else.” Cheng Weilu looked ahead. “But when I’m here, all I feel is the earth supporting me beneath my feet, while my field of vision can stretch infinitely into the distance. Here, I breathe in glaciers and wilderness. I breathe in the layers of rock that have existed here for hundreds of millions of years. I have unlimited freedom.”
“The universe gives me a powerful sense of belonging and security. Human society doesn’t. Human society is too crowded, too complicated…” She did not continue.
Perhaps she had become too sentimental. Cheng Weilu felt a little embarrassed. She hunched in on herself, tucked her hands into her sleeves, and looked down at the ice sheet below.
Li Xu lowered his lashes and remained silent for a long time. Then he looked at her nose, reddened by the cold, and finally spoke.
“Want to talk?”
Cheng Weilu sniffed. “Mm. Go ahead.”
Her casual attitude left Li Xu unsure where to begin. He paused, then asked as casually as he could, “Why won’t you let me look at the Star Network’s star charts?”
“What do you think?” Cheng Weilu glanced at him. “I’m afraid you’ll quietly start causing trouble again. I can’t handle it, Commander Li.”
“Commander Li.” Li Xu gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Can you tell me how much you’ve figured out?”
“This much is clear. You’re a fighter pilot. You were able to shake off the entire formation from Gray Dove Base by yourself, you’re familiar with the base’s systems and structure, and you were able to sneak in without anyone noticing. You altered the commands of their defense system, and when you planned to create chaos and escape, you didn’t want to hurt their people either, although things didn’t go according to plan afterward…”
Cheng Weilu continued, “You’re from the Alliance military, aren’t you? And you’re from the side that won the civil war. Do you know Arvid? Did you have some kind of grudge against him, so you specifically wanted to cause trouble for him?”
He usually seemed so laid-back, yet his powers of observation and analysis were remarkably sharp.
Li Xu looked into Cheng Weilu’s eyes again, making her uncomfortable enough that she turned her face away once more.
“That’s more or less correct, but I wasn’t specifically looking for trouble with him. I just needed to verify some things,” Li Xu said. “And I didn’t alter the defense system commands by myself. I borrowed your extraordinary mental strength. Without you, the backend commands couldn’t have been reset, and none of my subsequent actions would have been possible… You still haven’t told me how high your mental strength value actually is, Miss Cheng.”
Cheng Weilu gestured for him not to change the subject. “Stop. Don’t talk about that yet.”
“My hibernation back then was because something happened. Something I had never anticipated. I need to figure some things out.” Li Xu looked at the endless ice sheet, his expression turning cold. “I disappeared for fifty years. My identity within the Alliance must have been frozen long ago, and I don’t want anyone to know that I’m still alive.”
“So, I need a new identity.” Li Xu turned his head toward her.
“A salvager like me can’t do something like that.” Cheng Weilu’s eyes widened. “Besides, I’m a free citizen. I’m not even an Alliance citizen.”
When she had first awakened and arrived in this era, she had also gone to considerable lengths to obtain an identity, and that was in the Freedom Corridor, where management was the most relaxed and the population was the most mixed.
“I just need you to help me along the way,” Li Xu said. “Take me to the Freedom Corridor.”
“Once I reclaim my identity, I will give you half of all the assets under my name. That way, you can continue doing whatever you want without worrying about making a living. You can continue exploring the universe, even if you don’t remain a salvager.”
“Can I ask how much that is?”
“A lot,” Li Xu said. “The funds in my accounts will have to be converted after I meet my family’s trustees on Baicheng Star. I also own several private planets in other star systems, have investments in various fields, as well as several long-term family trusts…”
“They can’t be accessed now because of your identity, right?” Cheng Weilu tucked her hands into her sleeves and interrupted him. “You know, saying you’ll give me several planets after this is done makes you sound like Qin Shi Huang. As if you’re saying, ‘I need your help now, and once this is done, I’ll make you Chancellor.’”
“Qin Shi Huang… Chancellor?” Li Xu had no idea what Cheng Weilu was talking about.
People from the interstellar era couldn’t understand her terrible joke. She waved her hand. “I don’t need some enormous fortune that I don’t know when I’ll actually receive. After I take you to the Freedom Corridor, just give me monetary compensation within three months.”
“…How much?”
“One million star coins.”
She had already gone through all this trouble, not to mention the 800,000 that had gone down the drain, and she had invested more than 170,000 star coins upfront. Asking for this much was already very reasonable. She wasn’t trying to rip him off.
Li Xu fell silent for a moment. He hadn’t expected that his worth was only one million star coins.
“I might lose my job because of you. After causing such a huge commotion, my salvager account will probably be canceled. One million star coins really isn’t that much, Commander.”
Cheng Weilu thought he was unwilling and sighed. “Although saying this might make me seem ungrateful, you saved my life.”
“I salvaged your life too, twice.” Li Xu looked at her, emphasizing each word. “So I will definitely repay you, whether it’s one million star coins or something else.”
“Mm…” Cheng Weilu hunched her shoulders, noncommittal. Having such a huge carrot dangling in front of her made this somewhat wary donkey nervous.
Still, it was only taking him to the Freedom Corridor. It shouldn’t be that difficult, right?
Li Xu raised his left hand. “Then let this wristband serve as proof. Once we reach the Freedom Corridor, I’ll fulfill my promise, and you can remove it.”
At some point, he had removed his spacesuit glove. Cheng Weilu looked at the black wristband still fastened around his wrist and somewhat guiltily touched her neck.
“All right.”
She had agreed, and she really wasn’t very good at refusing Li Xu.
“Then are we on the same side now?”
“I suppose so.”
Li Xu extended his hand toward her. Cheng Weilu looked at that long, fair hand with its distinct knuckles, then slowly removed her own glove as well. After a moment’s hesitation, she reached out.
Li Xu immediately caught her hand and enclosed it tightly in his palm.
“Then I’ll be counting on you.”
Li Xu looked at her. For the first time in all these days, he gave her a relaxed smile, unguarded with a hint of mischief, completely different from his usual demeanor.
Cheng Weilu stared at him for a moment.
A faint crack, crack sounded.
Cheng Weilu turned around and listened intently, then excitedly shook Li Xu’s hand. “Listen. It’s starting.”
At first, the cracking wasn’t very loud. White fractures began appearing across the deep-blue surface of the ice. Then the sound grew louder and louder, like the heavy, crisp booming of an enormous drum.
Countless white cracks gradually spread across the entire ice sheet, expanding in all directions.
On the distant horizon, a small orange star emerged above the horizon and slowly rose.
Cheng Weilu’s face was unusually animated with excitement, and bathed in the orange light, it carried an extraordinary warmth.
Li Xu watched her intently. Even the natural coldness of his gray eyes was dispelled by the warm orange glow.
This was the first time in all these days that Li Xu had seen a glowing “sun.”
…
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