Chapter 124: What’s That Supposed to Mean?

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: Karai

With the great enemy pressing in, the Federation’s upper echelons decided, after careful deliberation, not to handle the Helios Group with a heavy public hand. The military had long wanted to bring Helios under control, but the company was vast and powerful, and no one dared act rashly. Now, with the new energy technology Lu Yao had provided, they finally had the leverage. Everything unfolded quietly, like rain soaking into the earth.

Three months after the war formally began, twenty percent of Helios’s stock had already fallen under military and government control. Some of the group’s magnates hinted at negotiations, offering carrots and sticks. At one point, they nearly cut off energy supplies to a frontline fleet—only for the military to turn around and power that fleet with Lu Yao’s gravitational conversion energy. The Helios executives’ faces changed instantly.

The slow dismantling of the Helios Group continued. Using the opportunity, the Federation Intelligence Bureau traced their lines of funding to a series of illegal laboratories. Yet, just as with the CROSS lab, some matters were deemed unfit to disclose at such a time, lest morale falter. Most of the findings were suppressed, allowing the Bureau to bypass courts entirely and “deal with” the labs in their own way.

While the situation in the rear stabilized, the frontlines grew only more dire. Once one fleet adopted the new energy, a second and third quickly followed. Lu Yao’s research advanced rapidly; the energy could now be integrated with large-scale cosmic weaponry. A saying spread through the barracks: The new energy cannons—everyone who’s tried them swears by them.

The NTL models rolled off the production lines and joined the war against the alien beasts. But it was still not enough. The alien swarms poured in wave after wave, like cockroaches that could never be exterminated. They turned their very bodies into weapons in the void, while humanity could only rely on starships and mecha for protection. Several fleets suffered devastating losses. The Federation had no choice but to pull exploration corps from deep space, train them in anti-beast combat, and throw them straight into the fray.

Fragmented strikes against scattered beasts were no longer sufficient. After intense debate, the military made an unprecedented move: Zhou Yunchen was granted supreme wartime command of the Federation fleets. He now held the highest military authority, charged with coordinating every fleet until victory was secured.

The appointment left Zhou Yunchen even busier. Once, he had managed to steal brief moments between battles to send secret notes to Lu Yao. Now, even pausing to catch his breath had become a luxury. Only during inspections, when he overheard soldiers praising Lu Yao’s new energy, could he spare half a heartbeat to recall the touch of Lu Yao’s hands in his memory.

By the sixth month of the war, the alien swarms still surged strong. They conquered one human world after another, spreading unrest from the border systems into the Federation’s inner worlds. The ripples of crisis reached the very edge of human civilization.

New energy was being deployed on a massive scale. Lu Yao’s FL and NTL mecha designs rolled off assembly lines in batches. Combat data sent back from the front enabled three full system iterations at the First Research Base, drastically improving mecha pilots’ kill and survival rates.

Yet as the war dragged on, the Federation populace’s fear turned to rage and condemnation. They had grown used to peace; order had become a given. After the first wave of patriotic fervor faded, the chaos of war became unbearable.

By then, the Federation leadership had all but completed their quiet takeover of Helios. In the midst of public outrage, they gambled: they declassified evidence of Helios’s illegal beast experiments, and during wartime trials, exiled those responsible. The revelation shocked the entire galaxy.

No one had imagined that humanity itself had invited this disaster. Intellectual circles trembled; society grew restless. Conspiracy theories and despairing voices spread like wildfire. But at least the fury shifted away from the military, sparing them from fighting a political war on the home front.

Still, such struggles over power and narrative did little to slow the alien tide. Humanity’s defense lines sometimes won fleeting victories, but more often they crumbled. The Helios Group had learned how to lure the beasts, but not how to close that fatal door.

Lu Shiyan and Qian Shan continued their beast research on the front, retreating with the military lines more than ten times already. The two old men labored day and night, setting aside their long-standing disputes. The only thing that mattered now was finding a way to stop the swarm. But progress remained bleak.

When Lu Yao received a call from Lu Shiyan, the man’s physician had just given him a cardiac injection. Even without seeing it firsthand, Lu Yao could picture the tense, overworked atmosphere of the lab. Much of his own reserved, severe temperament had come from his grandfather.

“In the past decade, New Blue Star has had only three hundred cases of sudden death from overwork. Do you really want to become one of them, Grandpa?”

“I don’t, and I won’t. You must trust modern medicine,” Lu Shiyan rasped. Trust modern medicine—not trust that he would rest. Lu Yao’s lips pressed into a hard, thin line.

“Enough wasted words,” Lu Shiyan went on. “I need you to do me a favor.”

“Just say it.”

A dry laugh came over the line. “Just say it, is it? If I told you to dissect a beast, could you do it? You’re a mechanic, not a biologist. No, nothing so troublesome. I simply need you to go home. In the underground vault, there’s a set of paper records. Take photos and send them to me. The door lock requires bloodline verification—you’re the only one who can open it.”

“I can head over right now.”

“Good. Call me once you arrive.”

Lu Yao had just finished presenting the latest energy research update at the central district. After parting from Mo Feng, he piloted his flyer toward home. The house where he’d grown up was a translucent pale villa, its walls like glowing spheres of water—an architectural aesthetic popular in Lu Shiyan’s era.

Landing his flyer, Lu Yao walked straight to the doorless villa. At his touch, the strange material of the outer wall yielded and drew him inside. The interior followed the same flowing, luminous style, until he descended to the second basement. There, cold steel and concrete replaced the softness of water and glass.

In the underground chamber, Lu Yao connected the call again and followed his grandfather’s instructions step by step, unlocking the vault. The heavy door swung open. The first thing he saw was two sets of gray military uniforms. He froze for several seconds before realizing: these were his parents’ relics. If his family had not been torn apart by the beasts’ claws, perhaps Lu Shiyan would never have abandoned astrophysics for the study of voids.

At a twist of fate’s wheel, Lu Yao and his only remaining kin had found themselves in the same peril once more. And again, humanity seemed powerless, filling the trenches with blood and bone.

“Go left. There’s a bookshelf,” Lu Shiyan instructed calmly. Lu Yao obeyed.

“On the fifth shelf, directly in front of you, there’s a black-covered notebook. Open it.”

Inside, Lu Yao found time stamps from fifty years ago, the very period when his parents had died and when Lu Shiyan had first shifted from wormhole astrophysics to void civilization research.

“Flip through. There should be a note about beast bone density and their ability to fly in vacuum.”

Lu Yao skimmed rapidly, ten lines at a glance. But before he found the keywords on bone density, another passage seized his attention.

“Have you found it yet?”

Lu Yao marked the page, then flipped on, locating the section his grandfather wanted.

“Found it.”

“Each notebook page is labeled with a code,” Lu Shiyan said, “matching a storage cabinet diagonally above. Go open the corresponding locker and take out the file inside.”

B675. Lu Yao carried Lu Shiyan’s notebook a few steps, located the cabinet, and retrieved the folder. “What’s this?”

“These are early human reports on initial contact with the beasts, purchased from private collectors,” Lu Shiyan replied. “We want to conduct a longitudinal study—to see if anything new emerges. Scan the contents and send them to me.”

Lu Yao tucked the notebook under his arm and scanned the yellowed papers from the folder, sending them to Lu Shiyan. While he worked, he asked, “You’re still trying to manipulate the beasts, send them back?”

“Yes. Helios Group’s frequency machines that attracted the beasts are shut down. We’re studying them now, to see if we can reverse-modulate and return the aliens.”

“Humans can’t communicate with the… flux,” Lu Yao said, recalling past debates. “I remember you always opposed Qian Shan’s view.”

“It’s easier to summon a god than send one back,” Lu Shiyan said with a heavy sigh. “The Aelion Void is a one-way portal. Humans can’t smash open the beasts’ home and shove them back. Negotiation or communication is impossible. Even if we wanted to build a wall… we’d first need a clear space for it. And right now, humans are in retreat; the beasts would have destroyed every defense before any wall could stand. Alright, I’ve received the images. I have to go.”

“Wait!”

“What is it?”

Lu Yao glanced at the notebook beside him. “May I borrow your notebook for a while?”

“Oh? Interested in its contents?”

“I saw a few physical problems I need to think through.”

“Take it. Everything here will eventually be yours anyway.”

At that moment, someone called Lu Shiyan’s name. He ended the call in a hurry, leaving Lu Yao alone. The basement had a fully equipped ventilation and dehumidification system, but to preserve the collection, the temperature remained low. There were no tables or chairs, so Lu Yao simply leaned against the wall, spreading the notebook open on his lap.

In this section, Lu Shiyan discussed the physics of voids. Fifty years later, his conclusions were no longer revolutionary—they were basic knowledge in the field. Yet, Lu Yao felt an inexplicable pull toward them. It had nothing to do with the content’s perceived value; it resonated directly with his own knowledge framework. His mind was signaling something.

“A cosmic void is not a celestial body… impossible to measure mass or gravity…”

“Its shape reveals energy flow… but no waves can be detected…”

Impossible to detect…

Lu Yao remembered hearing about something in the universe that could not be detected: the Temporal Stream.

Zhou Yunchen had refused to enter the hibernation chamber when searching for the Temporal Stream in the past. Radar and gravitational sensors couldn’t pick it up, and the mecha AI could not wake him automatically—he had to stay awake and search personally.

The structure of the Temporal Stream might be similar to that of voids. The operating principles of the new energy shared similarities with the Temporal Stream. And Lu Yao already fully controlled the energy’s logic. Perhaps this could serve as an entry point.

If… if he could manipulate a void, even temporarily closing it to block the beasts’ reinforcements, it could give the human fleet a critical breathing space—and maybe a chance for a counterattack. Lu Yao’s chest heaved, his mind electrified with the new idea. His temples throbbed with the intensity. Grabbing the notebook, he dashed from the spherical villa and onto his flyer, heading toward the Eighth Sector Base.

Halfway there, he forced himself to calm down. Going to the base now was pointless. He slowed, turned the flyer around, and called: “Mo Feng, prepare a ship for the Stream Experiment Zone.”

“Now?”

“Yes. I’ll be at the second launch site soon. Take Torque for the next few days. Then notify the Institute’s High-Energy Physics team. In an hour, I want to see them at the launch site.”

“Your tone…”

“Send it in the name of the Mecha Research Institute Director.”

“Ah, I see.” Mo Feng laughed. “So you’ve learned how to wield your authority. What exactly are you planning? I can help draft the message.”

“To test a hypothesis on void structure.”

Author’s note:

I want to clarify some intent here. I chose not to narratively focus on Helios Group’s executives as individuals. My aim was to depict capital in motion, not personal decisions—the faceless magnates are merely gears in a machine. They either comply with the system or are removed due to personal quirks; their identities are inconsequential.

Jiang Wei, by contrast, is different: not yet a magnate, but his twisted, controlled personality is already apparent.

Similarly, when describing Chang Jian and Teng Xiansheng, the emphasis is not on them personally but on the roles they embody within the machinery of power. Teng Xiansheng is not a villain, but within the bureaucracy, he acts impersonally, occasionally showing traces of past personal experience as an agent. Chang Jian leans more toward a political figure. Their interactions with Lu Yao focus on friendship rather than mechanics of power, and much of the system’s design remains in the background.

Finally, on Li Mo and Zhao Minghe: the contrast drew me. Li Mo, a self-exiled outsider, is rugged and free, while Zhao Aide, an earnest and dutiful assistant, is the embodiment of temperance, order, and compliance. Their interactions spark tension and complementarity: Li Mo is moved by Zhao Aide’s disciplined presence, while Zhao Aide is unsettled by Li Mo’s raw independence. Li Mo thrives outside societal rules; Zhao Aide is the one whose inner world needs exploration.

 

 

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