He and It Chapter 108: Utopia (4)

If you want more of this novel, we are accepting donations on Ko-Fi for sponsored chapters. https://ko-fi.com/exiledrebels

Chapter 108: Utopia (4)

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: GaeaTiamat

 

“If you backtrack, I can backtrack too.” Tian Yuan rebutted.

Gu Xingqiao stared at the white metal wall above his head as if it was the only thing he was willing to do at the moment.

“Reverse it,” he said. “As you wish.” 

Now Tian Yuan was truly confused.

He had never seen anyone like this before! Only moments ago, he had been touched by his offer of a deal, and stumbled between self-destruction and the desire to live, but now he had become very impassive and insensitive, as if his earlier faltering had been nothing more than a short-lived hallucination.

“If you really don’t care about the deal I’m proposing, then you shouldn’t have terminated the self-destruct process,” Tian Yuan said suspiciously. “It’s illogical.” 

Gu Xingqiao blinked slowly, and his tone of voice was a drawn-out slackness, “The heart is fickle. Don’t you understand?” 

He admitted that, for a moment, Tian Yuan’s proposed deal did make his heart flutter slightly.

Yet vengeance…vengeance was a bitter wine brewed in blood that only worked on those who were about to die of thirst. So, was he a man about to die of thirst, or was he already rotted, physically and mentally, and just wandering around because of inertia? 

Gu Xingqiao couldn’t figure it out.

He had no way out. No future, and only a poor present. His country had hunted him, his homeland had spurned him, his once proud friends and pillars…

At the thought, he had to force himself to interrupt his thoughts.

Nausea was not a sudden emotion, or a physical contraction of the throat. Nausea was a sticky, lacquered skin that wrapped around your nerves and just slid in there as a friction that dissolved your eyes long enough to make them melt and numbed the base of your tongue deep enough to tingle.

“Revenge is a fallacy.” He spoke quietly, but not to Tian Yuan. It was more like a low monologue. “Theoretically, a strong desire for vengeance only proves that you’re not ready to face your new life yet, that you’re being held back by vengeance and letting it burn.” 

Gu Xingqiao’s lips moved slightly as he murmured and recited, “If you must leave a place that you have lived and loved, and where all your yesterdays are buried deep – leave it in any way except a slow way, leave it in the fastest way that you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour…” 

“…because it is dead.” 

He hesitated to say the last sentence, so Tian Yuan grabbed the text from his data stream. “Beryl Markham.” ¹

It was, by far, the longest sentence Gu Xingqiao had ever spoken in one breath. After he said it, he lay motionless on the platform, in a wandering trance, for a long time.

“Remove what is on me,” he said suddenly.

He was directing it towards him, towards the owner of the space he was in, Tian Yuan realized immediately.

Who did this human think he was, that he dared to lean on his own worthiness to do whatever he wanted? According to my usual behavioral instructions, currently, it is only right that I should create some wounds on him that will serve as a lesson.

…Well. However, this feeling was indeed very new. After a long period of time, this was the second carbon-based creature that has been able to order me around but made it impossible for me to punish it.

Tian Yuan didn’t need to raise his hand. The confinement on the platform retracted into its original place.

Gu Xingqiao rolled to his feet and headed for the door without saying a word.

Confused, Tian Yuan asked, “Where are you going?” 

“I don’t want to stay in the same room with you, okay?” Gu Xingqiao said without looking back.

I can’t believe there’s such a creature!

Tian Yuan had the rare experience of feeling his core module overheating. His breath gradually quickened, and even the flow rate of his cold maintenance fluid began to speed up. He understood that this should be the emotion called anger.

Tian Yuan was angry even as he spoke calmly, “You are prepared to survive in my space, yet you are unwilling to pay the appropriate reward and have no respect for me. This is not reasonable at all.” 

“I’ve died twice at your hands,” Gu Xingqiao said. “According to the Empire’s Most Wanted list, you can collect the money for two bounties, which add up to six hundred grams of celluloid crystals. Ask the Empire for it. They’re paying for me.” 

He kicked his foot against the seamless alloy door and said in a voice that was even and moderate in volume, “Open the door.” 

His processing center spun faster. Tian Yuan could really appreciate the meaning of the word “unbelievable.”

Celluloid crystal? Celluloid crystal was the product of some low-priced interstellar ore veins. Do you want to use something like that to get rid of me, human? 

However, Gu Xingqiao didn’t care what kind of waves rose in his heart. The youth just walked straight into the straight pale corridor. The internal structure of the Tian Yuan class warship was like an intricate hive. Corridors and bridge structures, ladders intertwining, countless silver-white honeycombs set in a starry sky-like, high, open dome.

It was the ultimate heaven that all architects, engineers, physicists, and biochemistry experts dreamt of, not to mention the dream of all warship drivers. However, Gu Xingqiao just walked forward, numbly walked forward. As long as there was still a road in front of him, he would move his two legs, and keep walking mechanically forward.

What am I going to do? He thought woodenly. I’ve been stranded here, but also recovered my life. Should I feel grateful? 

He knew nothing about the rest of his life. Even a newborn baby had more direction than Gu Xingqiao. At least a baby knew how to cry when it was hard to bear things, and how to suck on breast milk when it was hungry.

Gu Xingqiao didn’t know what else he could do. After he left the medical chamber where he’d fought against that powerful incarnation, he suddenly lost all his will and focus. He thought of Sissel, and the emotions in his heart didn’t fluctuate. He thought of his homeland which hated him, shouted, and cursed his people with the vilest of words, and Gu Xingqiao just blinked his eyes dumbly.

Merit, fame, prestige…all the things that he had earned with his blood, sweat, and heart, were now just floating dust. Even he was floating dust. Floating wherever he wanted, it didn’t matter.

I should die. He shrugged his shoulders. That stupid incarnation mentioned revenge, but that could only make me hesitate for a brief second. My arm has long lost the strength to carry the sword. I can only go forward. Even one more glance behind me, will make me bear a fatigue that is endless.

Tian Yuan didn’t follow. In fact, the entire warship was his true body, so as long as Gu Xingqiao was still on board the warship, he could always sense the coordinates and movements of the other party.

The human was walking.

He maintained a fairly average speed as he strode across the many horizontal trestles. It was as if his spirit and mind were completely lost, and all that was left was the instinct to move forward controlling his body.

What the hell was he doing? 

Tian Yuan couldn’t see through this life form. He was different from all the people he had met before. Logic could not be applied to Gu Xingqiao, and the incarnation of will born within his core module was the most afraid of the human’s ability to maneuver at will.

In the face of Gu Xingqiao, Tian Yuan actually felt a tiny impulse. If he could understand human speech and behavior that had no logic, would he gain something new? 

But impulses were impulses in the end. Tian Yuan’s rationality was built from a lot of sophisticated logic programming, and taking away logic was the same as taking away the foundation of his construction.

His light purple eyes reflected Gu Xingqiao’s figure. Tian Yuan stretched out a finger, and under his deliberate operation, the cloud path under Gu Xingqiao’s feet was bent and extended without any effort, so that the previous path was connected into a repeated circle.

It was like a smothered ant, and he wanted to see when he would notice it.

From this prank, a sneaking sense of pleasure rose in Tian Yuan. He drew a Fibonacci spiral with precision, and the cloud paths within the warship were like randomly changing canvases that simultaneously followed his mind.

Apparently, Gu Xingqiao never realized it. His footsteps didn’t stop. Tian Yuan manipulated the space and changed the route many times in succession, but Gu Xingqiao was oblivious to it and only walked like a sleepwalker.

Finally, Tian Yuan took a break from the revengeful feeling of “getting out of a bad mood,” and began to be puzzled again.

Gu Xingqiao had been walking for several hours and had reached a distance of 25.65 kilometers. This was certainly not the limit of human beings capabilities, but according to his heart rate and blood flow rate, those two times suicide attempts had caused a lot of damage to his body, and his walking activity was close to his current limit.

Tian Yuan instantly felt very bored.

The spirit was so strong, but the strength of the body was so unbearable…He had to stop his teasing, so with a slight twist of his fingers, he levitated a brand new cloud path in front of the human.

Gu Xingqiao walked in a muddled manner. It wasn’t until he hit the alloy door panel that he realized that the path in front of him had come to an end.

He thought nothing of it, since he had thrown away all aspects of thinking and was acting only on instinct.

When he saw the door open from both sides, he walked in. When he saw a bed in the room, he lay down on it. While his body was already tired to the extreme, and his mind was still in a cold and calm state of inactivity, he kept his eyes open and quietly stared at the ceiling until his eyes were also too tired to continue and they closed heavily.

Gu Xingqiao fell asleep.

He didn’t know how long he slept, and in the darkness of his slumber, it was rare that he didn’t dream. Halfway through his sleep, Gu Xingqiao was woken up by noisy sounds beside his ears.

He opened his eyes dizzily and realized that his throat was swollen and sore, his limbs felt like they had been yanked out of place and were completely out of control, and his body temperature was abnormally high, making his eyes blurry.

When it was obvious that Gu Xingqiao had woken up, the loud noise in the room immediately ceased, as if the noise was just an illusion.

Gu Xingqiao didn’t want to pay attention to that idiotic incarnation of a warship, plus he didn’t have the strength to do so. He breathed deeply and sank back into the bed, as he closed his eyes drowsily.

In less than ten minutes, the metal table suddenly made a shrill, whistling shuffling sound, the furniture clanked and clunked as if haunted, and the stereo began to play the cheerful “March of Glory” – an old song celebrating victory.

Gu Xingqiao opened his eyes again, and the room was silent once more, like a morgue.

Through the visible metal walls, the data streams in Tian Yuan’s eyes were leaping with joy. If he was used to making human expressions, then his demeanor at the moment would be a smirk.

A grinning smile filled with malice.

“…I’m only going to say this once, so listen,” Gu Xingqiao’s voice was rough like sandpaper as he half-opened one eye and cast it upwards listlessly. “It’s kinda hard for me to die like this, and it seems to call into question my resolve. So, you wake me up one more time, and I’ll blow myself up. No backsliding, no talk of vengeance, much less any deal. We’ll just say goodbye.” 

Silence and taciturnity surrounded the room.

Gu Xingqiao whispered, “You just try it, okay? You just try.” 

Before long, Tian Yuan’s core module was heating up again.

This kind of “forced to stifle his laughter in the middle of a sentence” led him to want to rush to Gu Xingqiao’s bedside, grab the young man by the collar, and repeat those human speeches that inspired the morale and heart, and even went down in history, a hundred, or even a thousand times in the other person’s ear.

However, he couldn’t do that. According to the prediction model he’d established for Gu Xingqiao, the maximum probability result of his doing so would only get him a bed of fried brains.

Once upon a time, Tian Yuan had never understood why human beings yelled, screamed, desperately pulled their own hair or collars, and then pulled other people’s hair or collars, instead of remaining calm and strategizing ways to break the game.

Now, at last, he empathized.

Angry, he was so angry, but was unable to really do anything about him, which made him even more angry.

Without Tian Yuan’s harassment, Gu Xingqiao laid down peacefully. His sleep was so dark that he didn’t know how many hours had passed. In the end, he was woken up by his own thirst.

By that time, he was already feverish to the point of some delirium, and felt like his brain was spinning wildly within his skull. He was unable to distinguish between reality and illusion, or the present and the past. His fingers struggled to move slightly, and his throat ached as if he had swallowed a handful of sparking carbon, yet he was unable to get up, much less get out of bed to find water.

After floating in pain for who knows how long, a thin hose coiled around his cracked lips, and dripped cold liquid, sweet as a spring rain on his mouth.

Gu Xingqiao laboriously opened his lips and sipped hungrily, as he swallowed mouthful after mouthful and replenished that precious water. He immediately felt better.

His vision was indistinct. He could only see an upright, tall figure standing beside the bed, and the scattered light from the doorway, which stretched the shadows to a long length.

Gu Xingqiao’s delirium dimmed his mind. It was as if he had been transported back many years ago, to a similar night when he had overloaded his mental energy in a vain attempt to navigate a Scimitar-class cruiser that was beyond his handling, only to bake his brain until it was about to crack open.

As he burned in a daze, it was Sissel who stood in front of his bed and nursed him day and night, wiping the sweat from his forehead, as he said in a gentle tone, “I’m worried about you. You must get well soon…”

“…Sissel?” Gu Xingqiao murmured hoarsely.

Tian Yuan, “…” 

An impulse surged through Tian Yuan’s emotional processing module once again.

It wasn’t enough for him to break through the restrictive treaty and move his body out of the ravages of cosmic turbulence, but it was enough for him to move the person named, “Sissel,” into his list of tasks under “need to see the real Sissel.”

“Don’t know Sissel,” Tian Yuan said indifferently. “But I will if I have to.” 

Gu Xingqiao didn’t hear his reply. The water Tian Yuan had provided contained a drug and he passed out again as sleep overtook him.