Five days later.
Just as Rong Zhiting had anticipated, over the past few days, Bai Jinqiu successfully discarded that alloy cane. The bones in his right arm and left leg fully healed, and the injuries on his chest and abdomen had also fundamentally healed on the surface, restoring his normal mobility.
Simultaneously, his vision completely returned to normal following the final medical treatment.
Bai Jinqiu possessed exceptionally gorgeous eyes.
Viewed from a distance, his eyes appeared black, but upon closer inspection, the irises near his pupils were tinged with a faint cobalt blue hue, resembling a deep and hazy sea, carrying a dangerous and sharp beauty like that of a siren. Yet, paradoxically, he possessed gentle eyes as well; when those eyes looked at you with a hint of a smile, very few people could resist falling for them.
Such eyes on an Omega with top-tier looks invariably exuded a distinctive and alluring charm. Yet this charm in Bai Jinqiu was typically reined in so completely that not a trace showed. On the rare occasions when he did release it, probably no one could resist it.
When his vision was restored, the moment those eyes opened, the brightness within his pupils was almost bewitching. At least, that was how it appeared to Rong Zhiting.
No matter how many times it happened, he invariably fell under the spell of those dangerous and sharp eyes that held only gentle smiles solely for him.
“Zhiting,” he heard that person’s smiling voice, “I can finally see what you look like.”
At that instant, Rong Zhiting skipped a beat. He did not know what expression was on his face, but he imagined it must be one of nostalgia and delight.
Bai Jinqiu looked at the person standing between youth and adolescence before him. The expression on his face remained mild and calm, yet a turbulent surge of emotion inexplicably rose within his heart.
Rong Zhiting possessed a scholarly appearance, the kind of clean and refined boy next door whose looks were not striking at first glance, but who grew more and more pleasing to the eye the longer you looked at him.
Bai Jinqiu was certain he had never seen him before in the past, yet the moment he clearly saw that slightly lean visage, his entire heart was filled by an indescribable emotion.
It was an extremely intense emotion, intermingling profound sorrow and longing, along with a joy originating from who knows where that made him almost want to shed tears. He did not know where to anchor such emotions, so he could only forcefully suppress them deep inside his heart.
Heaven knows he had to employ all the self-control he had spent years cultivating just to restrain himself from making any strange reactions.
Yet thirty years of separation, thirty years of solitude, countless nights accumulated with sorrow and longing, coupled with an inexpressible intensity of love, how could the person who loved him deeply fail to sense it?
“Brother Bai, what is wrong?” Rong Zhiting asked softly.
“Hm? What could be wrong with me?” Bai Jinqiu asked with a smiling counter-question.
“You look…” Rong Zhiting hesitated before voicing his thought, “You look very sad.”
“Is that so?” Bai Jinqiu was clearly stunned for a moment, yet the smile at the corners of his lips grew even more pronounced. He reached his hand out toward Rong Zhiting and asked, “May I hug you? I suppose I really am a bit out of sorts and need some comfort.”
How could Rong Zhiting possibly refuse.
Although he did not know what caused the shift in Bai Jinqiu’s emotions, he embraced him without the slightest hesitation. The next instant, his waist tightened, and his entire person sank into that person’s embrace.
An unpresented Beta was very slender, feeling somewhat bony to hold, yet his waist possessed the unique flexibility characteristic of a youth.
Bai Jinqiu’s eyes felt slightly sore, a trace of moisture lingering at the corners of his eyes.
He closed his eyes, holding the person in his arms tightly, and instinctively lowered his head to inhale lightly at the back of the other’s neck.
Of course, there was no scent whatsoever there right now. Yet he felt as though he faintly smelled the delicate, elegant fragrance of irises.
His long, dark hair cascaded down, brushing against Rong Zhiting’s neck and tickling him slightly, but he did not dodge.
This embrace lasted for a long time, with a force that nearly made Rong Zhiting feel somewhat suffocated. Yet he did not want Brother Bai to let go and release him even a little bit; on the contrary, such an embrace brought him an extreme sense of reassurance.
By the time he was released, the dampness at the corners of Bai Jinqiu’s eyes had vanished without a trace.
“Shouldn’t we be leaving?” Bai Jinqiu asked. “To the spaceport, for your entrance assessment.”
“Mm.” Rong Zhiting checked the time and nodded. “It is about time.”
“Then let’s go.” With that, Bai Jinqiu opened Mitian’s cockpit.
They directly abandoned the old mecha that had exhausted its energy and entered Mitian.
The interior of the cockpit had already been cleaned up, stripped of those terrifying bloodstains, and it was actually quite beautiful.
The cockpit of this top-tier super S-rank mecha of the Federation was specially designed, ensuring that pilots would not feel oppressive discomfort even when staying inside for extended periods. The space inside the cockpit was slightly more spacious than that old mecha, yet being a single-person mecha and a weapon of war, it was never designed with the function of carrying passengers in mind, so it could not be very spacious.
The two of them once again squeezed into a single pilot seat, with Rong Zhiting practically held in his Brother Bai’s embrace.
Rong Zhiting vaguely felt that ever since his Brother’s eyes healed, he had somehow grown a bit clingy.
However, he thoroughly welcomed this development, so he behaved very obediently.
The flight speed of a super S-rank mecha was fast and steady, offering a completely different piloting experience compared to old manual mechas.
Rong Zhiting’s mental power was not linked with the mecha, preventing him from seeing the three-hundred-sixty-degree panoramic view, yet through the forward viewing screen, he could still see the city ruins flashing past below.
He felt a long-lost sense of peace.
Mecha mechanics invariably loved mechas. Yet new-generation mechas, in order to adapt to the space combat environment, demanded not only mental power from the pilot but similarly high standards for physical constitution.
In his past life, Rong Zhiting possessed the manual piloting clearance for Mitian, but even when he reached C-rank constitution, staying in the cockpit would cause him to collapse from exhaustion after five minutes at most.
Back then, his Brother Bai would occasionally bring him along like this during breaks, flying around the base for a few laps under the guise of routine patrol.
On the front-line battlefields, whether as Bai Jinqiu commanding the entire army or himself as the chief mechanic of the command ship, they always had an endless stream of work to handle daily.
Consequently, such routine patrols counted as one of their very few moments of solitude together. Once war broke out in a crisis, such moments of solitude would grow exceedingly scarce.
Come to think of it, counting the time before his rebirth, these past half-months had actually turned out to be the longest period of uninterrupted solitude he had ever shared with Brother Bai.
With these thoughts in mind, Rong Zhiting suddenly felt a pang of reluctance to leave EQ952B3 so quickly.
Once he left this fringe planet, he would enter the strictly managed Seventy-Third Military Academy, while Brother Bai would return to the special operations unit he belonged to.
Four years remained until the outbreak of war, and the Seventy-Third Military Academy where he enrolled operated on a five-year system, spending the first four years studying at the academy and the fifth year interning in the military department.
Following the trajectory of his past life, he would join the Second Legion’s logistics support unit during his internship, and owing to outstanding performance upon graduation, be assigned to the front lines, subsequently gradually displaying extraordinary technical prowess. Two years later, he would enter the Second Legion’s general command ship and, through a twist of fate, get acquainted with this legendary Omega Major General, ultimately falling in love.
This parting of theirs could very well span seven years.
Struck by this thought, Rong Zhiting felt a wave of dejection wash over him, letting out a silent sigh in his heart as he leaned against Bai Jinqiu and muttered softly:
“Brother, I suddenly do not want to go to the military academy anymore.”
“Hm? What is the matter?” Bai Jinqiu asked in bewilderment.
Rong Zhiting reached out to wrap his arms around the other’s waist and said softly:
“Once I enter the military academy, you will have to leave, right? I do not want you to leave. Can I go with you? My mecha repair skills are really good; I can be your exclusive mechanic.”
He rarely spoke such willful words, and the latter half was largely playful spoiled whining. After all, he knew Bai Jinqiu was currently stationed in a special unit, making it impossible for him to casually bring along someone as ambiguous as himself.
Bai Jinqiu was amused to the point of speechlessness, knowing he was not asking seriously, so he reached out to stroke his hair and said gently:
“Rest assured, since I promised to be your brother, I won’t just up and leave like that; I will definitely come visit you when I have time. Besides, I haven’t repaid you for saving my life yet.”
The tone of those words was as tender as coaxing a child, making Rong Zhiting’s ears heat up. He closed his eyes, thinking to himself that this was simply too foul play, while reluctantly grumbling aloud, “Fine, you said it yourself. Then you have to come see me at least once a month.”
After pausing for a moment, he added:
“If you really have no time, once every half year will do.”
The remark sounded rather aggrieved. Torn between fond heartache and amusement, Bai Jinqiu readily agreed.
“Alright, as you say, I will go see you at least once a month.”
As dawn was just beginning to break, Mitian, operating under holographic camouflage, landed at the spaceport.
Prior to entering the spaceport, Rong Zhiting dug out his long-dusty identity wristband and put it on, alongside handing Bai Jinqiu another identity wristband acquired from the black market.
Since the fringe planet EQ952B3 lacked connectivity to the interstellar network, residents here generally did not have optical brains, relying solely on this single smart wristband to serve as a simplified version of an optical brain for identity verification, communication tools, and logging into the fringe planet’s internal local network. Rong Zhiting previously had to go to the specialized administrative area near the Star Government to apply whenever he registered for the military academy assessments.
As for smart wristbands, he used to use them for offline storage of study materials back when he was truly nineteen, but following his rebirth, he had completely stopped using it, leaving it to gather dust in his storage device for two months.
Now granting it a rare return to daylight would likely mark the last time he ever used it.
Two figures clad in protective suits appeared remarkably conspicuous at the spaceport. Because there were transit channels connecting directly to the underground city here, incoming and outgoing travelers dressed in ordinary attire, so upon arrival, the pair first headed to the locker rooms of the restrooms to strip off their protective suits before swiping their identity wristbands to verify tickets and enter the waiting concourse.
Inside the concourse, the people coming and going consisted almost entirely of examinees who had applied for the Seventy-Third Military Academy and their family members. Some individuals even arrived with their entire families and luggage, evidently planning to settle down on Sahomers Star the moment their child successfully entered the Seventy-Third Military Academy, moving away from this backward fringe planet for good.
With the waiting concourse bustling with activity, Rong Zhiting feared getting separated from his Brother Bai, so he proactively took Bai Jinqiu’s hand and led him over to sit down in a quieter corner.
Observing the scene before him, Bai Jinqiu remarked with a sense of sentiment:
“Based on what I understand, ordinary military academies typically establish examination sites at the recruitment locations to conduct entrance assessments, and only students who pass the assessments are picked up by starships to head to the academy. The situation here seems to be the reverse.”
“Because the surface environment of the fringe planet is harsh, the area of the underground city is also quite limited, and security is poor, setting up an examination site here incurs too high a cost,” Rong Zhiting explained to him.
“The number of examinees capable of passing the assessment here every year is already small, and dispatching a starship requires making a round trip no matter what. It is far more practical to bring the examinees over to the military academy side to conduct the assessment, allowing family members to accompany them at their own expense. This saves on the budget for building assessment venues and annual site maintenance fees, while the star fees paid by families out of pocket keep the starship round trips from operating at too severe a loss.”
“The Seventy-Third Military Academy is an ordinary military academy located in a remote region of the Sixth Sector, so its budget cannot compare to those large-scale military academies in the Central Sector, meaning they always have to be frugal.”
“With a tight budget, yet they have persisted in recruiting students on this fringe planet for years?” Bai Jinqiu’s expression grew thoughtful.
Rong Zhiting blinked and said, “It seems to be because they have recruitment quotas and are required to recruit here.” Moreover, thanks to this very fact, he had been granted the opportunity in his past life to test into the military academy and enter the Second Legion.
“Mm.” Bai Jinqiu nodded, offering no further comment on that.
In the time that followed, the crowd within the spaceport continued to swell.
Until over an hour later, when the starship dispatched by the Seventy-Third Military Academy docked at the spaceport.