Imperfections Chapter 34

Bixing Lu thought about it and suddenly said, "Old Lu, Are you angry because of that?"

Moneye Hawk paused at first, and then said in a gruff voice, "Get out and don't be so narcissistic. This father of yours cherishes my possessions that's why I'm like this!"

Bixing Lu patted his shoulder, and said : "This possession thing, it's like building a dam made of sand in a river and enclosing a bit of water. . At birth you have nothing, and in death you take nothing. In a hundred years, the dam will collapse and the water will go into sea with the sand. From the perspective of the universe,  time is meaningless. At best, it will have to be left to somebody -- anyway, it will be left to me one day, so don't worry, alright? I didn't say anything."

Monoeye Hawk was still obstinate and gave a sneer, "Who said you will inherit my possessions? You are not my son. You were picked up from the trash bin!"

It was said that this lie had been included in a special chart which would intimidate children under four years old, along with 'if you don't sleep at night, the wolf will pick you up'.

Bixing Lu listened to the silence for a while and felt a little embarra.s.sed. He couldn't help but look around, sneakily saying: "Old Lu, I am already 30 years old. Can you stop calling me 'baby' in public?"

Monoeye Hawk:"......"

Bixing Lu made fun out of his Persian cat dad, but he did not forget his business,"Did you shoot Spencer? Do you have the earliest blueprints of this site? I'm going to use it."

"You don't need it." Monoeye Hawk's expression was dark. "The general of the IU decided to use this base as bait for the interstellar pirates. Have a good rest for a few days, don't spend the whole day being idle. Do not let your students run around everywhere. We should prepare to evacuate anytime. Otherwise, if an accident is to happen, n.o.body will help them."

Bixing Lu looked back at the congested buildings and crowded streets: "Evacuate so soon? That still needs to solve the energy problem. Otherwise, if so many people will walk at the same time, and large-scale mechs or starships take off at the same time, the base may be overloaded if it is not properly operated, and... "

Monoeye Hawk interrupted: "No, you don't understand."

Bixing Lu stopped talking.

"It's just a little s.p.a.ce station, and it's full of rubbish and worthless sc.u.ms. Even Wotto, the capital of the First Galaxy, could throw it away without hesitation if necessary. Do you know what war means to these people? It's only a game of chess, the casualty rate is just a number." Monoeye Hawk said, "Do you think he was helpful to you on Beijing-ß? That's because you didn't have any interest that time. You don't know him."

Bixing Lu raised his eyebrows. "Old man, I haven't seen you leave the Eighth Galaxy since I can remember. In terms of Admiral Lin's age, what kind of resentment could you have with him? Did he smash a slingshot through your window when he was a kid?"

Monoeye Hawk bit the cigarette in his mouth hardly.

Bixing Lu said seriously: "Whether it is a grudge or not, even if you know him, this thing is actually quite strange, can you say that? It doesn't matter if you can't say, I will continue to side with him and not you."

Money Hawk: "So you know you're being biased!"

Bixing said: "He is my sponsor, and you? You're just a stingy dad, and a dad who doesn't give money is not a valuable dad ——besides, he is younger and more beautiful than you."

"Younger" and "giving money" were objective facts, and Monoeye Hawk lost out to Admiral Lin.

Bixing: "Or do you have a grudge against his elders?"

"The elder of Jingheng Lin...I don't know how to call him, his father? Teacher? Nevertheless, he is an old friend of mine." Monoeye Hawk said with hesitation, as if it was difficult to say, then he added,"A best friend——for some reason, the man was framed and died."

Bixing Lu:"Your friend? Have I ever seen them before?"

"No, you weren't born that time then." Monoeye Hawk paused. "This man... He was popular, those who framed him thought he was powerful, and the league was full of his a.s.sociates. Even if he died, they could still frighten the courage of some people. So those who killed him needed to find a person that could control this force. That person is Jingheng Lin."

Lu hesitated for a moment: "The villain in this story... are they all so respectful of laws of succession?"

"No," Monoeye Hawk looked at him quietly. At that moment , his sight seemed to pa.s.s through the young man's body, landing on the deserted but hopeful Eight Galaxy of more than one hundred years ago, "At the beginning, they didn't believe Jingheng Lin will be loyal to the Union. Just then, there were a few unruly insurgencies who have ulterior motive around them. In order to test him, they sent him to go to sound out their intention. Do you know his military exploits? The great Commodore Lin was a novice. He became famous because of this war. He destroyed over hundreds of the enemies' mechs, even destroyed a military camp. Three of the old rebels - two of them were killed, and one of them was seriously wounded when Jingheng Lin forced through his mental network."

"He fell into a vegetative state?"

"Became dull and had dementia." Monoeye Hawk gave a weird smile, "Then the man was put in a special prison and never saw the sun again. I don't know how he's doing. Maybe he lives like a dog? Now, you understand why I hate Jingheng Lin, right? When the accident with his elder happened, he was still young. If he stood out, he'd be expendable, I suppose he wanted to be wise and survive, and I agree with that. After he grows up, he becomes a soldier and swore loyalty to the Union...I can understand that because he was born from a famous family and graduated from the first military school. Unexpectedly, he indifferently killed his uncle who had watched him grow up. If he had any humanity, he should have shot Bart. It was better to die like a man than to lose his dignity."

"Bart?" Bixing repeated the name which Monoeye Hawk inadvertently leaked, "Luther Bart? Your friend is Commodore Xin Lu? I've seen it in novels,  but in the Union's official information... official information could not be found."

In fact, he could actually find information. Although the Union wants to hide information about Lu Xin , his two major crimes of "betrayal" and "anti-humanity" were clearly recorded. Bixing Lu's readings in his free time have always been niche and miscellaneous. He had seen all of this. But just to take care of Monoeye Hawk's feelings, he temporarily pretended not to know.

Monoeye Hawk felt that he had talked too much, and he waved his hand, refusing to mention it again.

"All right," Bixing was very understanding and stopped asking, "I'll go and talk to Lin."

Monoeye Hawk frowned: "I just said so much just now. Are you deaf?"

Bixing Lu smiled: "Though he is basically a stranger, I'm familiar with him on Beijing-ß, and there's still a little bit to know about him. Old Lu, you said a lot of things which are not from your personal experience. All these you know are second-hand information. Logically, second-hand information is not necessarily more accurate than my observation."

"Observation, your a.s.s!" Monoeye Hawk angered, "You only observed his face!"

Bixing Lu was in a good temper and tolerated the irascibility of the old man in menopause, turning his head and whistled a long whistle to his students: "Heroes, is the battle over?  We will go back home!"

Monoeye Hawk looked at him and suddenly raised some doubts in his heart. Although Bixing Lu had been obsessed with all kinds of strange techniques since childhood, he could not be seen as a freak on the surface. He was quite good at dressing up and making people like him. When he was a teenager, he attracted a lot of women on the Cayley planet. Monoeye Hawk always thought that he looked vivacious, but in fact, he was a geek deep in his soul, planning to marry a mech in the future.

Now it seemed that, this boy who was so pure-hearted, it was possible that he did not like girls, and at that time there was just no neat man around!

The hair on the back of Monoeye Hawk 's neck all stood up: "Wait! Bixing Lu, you come back! I have something to ask you!"

Bixing Lu must be in a hurry, having already walked so far.

When Jingheng Lin saw Monoeye Hawk taking Bixing Lu out of the crowd, he turned back to his room. He had a hunch that Bixing Lu would come to him soon, so he made a large pot of tea and looked through the messy personal terminal of Cow while waiting.

However, the third time he went to the toilet, Lu still didn't come.

The energy tower had turned to the back of the s.p.a.ce station. As night fell in the base, Jingheng Lin glanced at the time, tracing the underground channel on the personal terminal of Cow, pretending to deduce coordinates carefully, and asked Zhanlu as if nothing had happened: "Where is Lu taking his students to visit?"

Zhanlu - charged with electricity for a day and a night, had been able to support the shape of the machine armour core to listen, went on the side, and through the base intranet, quickly invaded the monitoring equipment available everywhere: "Headmaster Lu and the students, led by a member of the Self-Defense Force, ran the entire base around, and they are now on the way back."

"Ran around? What is it for?"

"Surveying and mapping, trial runs, inspecting... conveniently teaching the students while putting the lessons in practice." Zhanlu said, "The students are all in the car now, and they have fallen asleep all over the place."

Teacher Lu talked about the energetic teenagers as zombies. They drifted back to their houses one by one and fell asleep. On the contrary, he became more and more energetic. He might be some kind of a super-long standby.

When he returned to the house, he centralized all the information collected in a day with his personal terminal, organized his mind efficiently and quickly, and then sorted out his personal image after dawn and knocked on Admiral Lin's door.

Jingheng Lin probably just washed his face, water still dripping down. After opening the door, he was too lazy to go to the bathroom. He just put his hand on his face and flicked away the water, wiping them: "Sit down."

Bixing Lu looked around - Admiral Lin himself was not very particular, but the room was very neat, the bedding was flat as if he had never slept, there was no wrinkle, tea cups, teapots, tables, chairs and benches... They all kept the uniform layout of the rooms - he was a bit stiff at the moment, a little embarra.s.sed to sit down.

"I know what you're going to tell me," Jingheng Lin said directly,  making a cup of coffee without raising his head and pushed it in front of him. "But without the external communication signal, I couldn't contact the Ninth Squadrons. I don't know which alliances of interstellar pirates don't have the technology and weapons, but they have been fighting fierce battles with each other for hundreds of years. Even heavy mech has been discarded directly. These people's fighting level is probably much higher than that of known alliances. I have to call up the the Tenth Squadrons."

Bixing Lu smelled mint on him, rubbed his nose and instinctively sweetened his sentence: "I see the information published by the Armed Forces of the IU. You have not lost the battle with the interstellar pirates. Will the people who can overthrow the whole Self-Defense Force be so cautious?"

Jingheng Lin wanted to inquire about "you have also looked into my achievements", but felt that there was obvious suspicion. He answered solemnly, "The Self-Defense Force need not be lifted, it can turn over by itself. I can blow out a few candles at will. It doesn't mean I can spit out a tornado in one breath. People who think too highly of themselves usually don't live long."

"External communications require the use of base hardware. The other two supply stations are short of corresponding hardware facilities because they don't settle there very long, do they?" Bixing Lu said, opening the personal terminal and projecting a rather complicated drawing face to face onto the small table, "I can solve this problem."

Jingheng Lin leaned back and his eyes were almost blinded because of the messy design. "What is this?"

"What I did overnight is to construct a s.p.a.ce field on the periphery of the underground pathway, using the energy of the plasma energy tower, which is equivalent to making a large reflector. If the other party tries to track the signal and locate the base, it will be misled to other places by the random turning reflector,"Bixing  Lu said. "I'll tell you about this anti-tracking principle..."

Jingheng Lin didn't want to listen. In the past, he ordered the technicians to do design if he needed it. Never had a technician dared to come up to explain it to him endlessly. Jingheng Lin raised his hand twice to interrupt him. Looking up at Bixing Lu's shining eyes, he couldn't bear to continue, thus he raised his finger to himself and pressed a red mark on his temple.

Bixing Lu suddenly stopped his speech and looked at Lin's face carefully, asking, "Didn't you have a rest yesterday?"

Jingheng Lin: "... Very good."

Zhanlu, who was helping to check Bixing Lu's design drawings, raised his head and scanned Jingheng Lin's expression. His database which retained floating waste products recorded two phrases - one was "forced to laugh", and the other was "endure humiliation and burden". The curious AI felt that he had found something interesting and happily saved the data.

Bixing Lu: "Do you think this arrangement is good?"

Jingheng Lin thought for a moment then summed up his sentence: "Many interstellar pirates have an advance team system, which is called "sacrifice" and uses human lives for information. When it is impossible to determine the enemy actual situation, they will send a team of "sacrifices" to test the strength of the enemy's firepower and equipment. Sometimes, the advance troops are even more than a group of people. I suspect that in the past few decades, their attacks, large and small, were of this nature. They are very cautious. A false interstellar coordinate can't deceive them."

But hundreds of years later, the s.p.a.ce station with tens of millions of people was a powerful bait.

Especially this s.p.a.ce station that was on the underground channel, where Xin Lu took only eight months to recover the Eighth Galaxy. It was because of the collective betrayal of gangs and people on the edge of the underground, opening the back door to the underground channel so that the Armed Forces could enter the s.p.a.ce station. This was the pain of  Prince Cayley, Ares Von would be desperate to get the news.

"How about using the Self-Defense Force as bait?" Bixing Lu said quickly, "No, not actually a bait. I checked that Spencer's mech and equipment are enough to arm a medium-sized army. The Self-Defense Forces can use intricate underground channels and mirror images to fight guerrillas. We have advantages because the base is small and the well-concealed coordinates are equivalent to invisible, unlike Cayley planet, whose targets are not clear enough to let them explode. The Self-Defense Force only needs a little training - Lin, you and the Silver Nine can serve as the secret weapon in this war."

For Bixing Lu's optimistic delusion, Jingheng Lin almost blurted out "f.u.c.k off", but he bit the tip of his tongue before swallowing the words back. Because he couldn't think of a euphemistic synonym for a moment, he was speechless and had to smile.

Bingxing Lu was already used to his sneer, the cold smile which never reached his eyes, he even personally simulated that smirk himself, but never had he seen such a helpless and pained smile——the corners of the mouth are stretched, but the eyebrows were not raised, the eyelids dropped gently, a little amiable that was very unlike of him, almost as if he was indulging and doting.

"He is really different towards me, it's quite obvious," Lu thought, feeling parched, bowing his head and drinking a cup of coffee. "Again and again, how many times has this been... So, does he like me?"

As soon as the two words "like me" came out, Bixing Lu felt like a computer virus grew in his heart. These words repeated indefinitely, endlessly, bursting his memory, turning the scientist into a wooden head, and even the air felt embarra.s.sed.