Chapter 147: The Symposium
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: Karai
The symposium borrowed the Sky Auditorium at Capital Star University. The guest parking area was completely jammed, so Lin Xu took a detour and parked the aircraft in the student parking zone. Few students used aircraft on campus, so the student area was unusually empty.
Beyond the canopy of the street trees, the dome-shaped white auditorium roof appeared against the horizon. Lin Xu, carrying Yuanxiao, walked toward the auditorium. Along the way, he saw students from Capital Star University looking up at the Sky Auditorium. But once they entered the plaza around the hall, there were hardly any students in sight.
Various scholars, security personnel, and guides came and went, but what stood out most were the many extraterrestrial attendees of all kinds of appearances. A group of three-meter-tall giant slimes was gliding forward, and beside them, the Taisborontians—transparent, floating geometric lifeforms—moved along. Up close, one could see bioelectric defensive reactions inside their shapes.
The Siborians looked like enlarged spherical viruses with eight legs. The Lehmorians had shapeshifting abilities. Upon arriving in the human Imperial, they considerately morphed into human appearances—albeit without clothing or visible organs—making them one of the most “normal”-looking among the oddly-shaped alien species.
The Tedans were equally considerate. Their individuals lived inside strong magnetic field boxes. When visiting the human Imperial, they installed these magnetic field containers into humanoid robot heads. Though not exactly human, they at least appeared familiar.
They were active cosmic merchants. Imperial’s dream cow and saltwater smoke imports were mostly brokered through them. The invited extraterrestrials entered through a separate channel. From within the cat carrier, Yuanxiao peeked at the aliens through one-way transparent fabric and asked Lin Xu in the mental domain what these strange creatures were.
Lin Xu glanced at them from afar. He didn’t recognize some of the species either, so he only described the ones he knew to Yuanxiao in simple terms. There were quite a few new and obscure words in his explanation, and he wasn’t sure how much Yuanxiao could currently understand.
The Sky Auditorium at Capital Star University resembled a tall white mushroom. The main structure—the cap—was elevated in the sky. After a receptionist on the ground floor checked his invitation, they opened the passage and invited Lin Xu into the elevator.
A few scholars in the mathematical sciences field joined him in the elevator. They chatted enthusiastically while Lin Xu stood quietly in a corner, holding Yuanxiao and enjoying the peace.
When the elevator reached the designated floor and the doors opened, one scholar lagged behind his colleagues and approached Lin Xu.
“Hello, Dr. Lin.”
Lin Xu glanced at the name badge on his chest. “Hello, Dr. Briedo.”
“I’m a student of Professor Zhou Pingbo. I’ve heard him talk about you and Marshal Chu. It’s a pleasant coincidence to run into you today, so I thought I’d say hello. I’m looking forward to your speech,” Briedo said, then pointed to a section of the audience seating. “Dr. Lin, your seat should be over there.”
Not far away, a beta secretary-looking individual was waving at Briedo. He told Lin Xu, “Apologies, I have work to handle. See you later.”
Lin Xu watched Briedo jog over to the secretary and accept a light screen, tucking a briefcase under his arm and diving into work.
Lin Xu walked toward the seat Briedo had pointed to. A 3D nameplate floated above each chair, showing the assigned attendee. To his left was Zhou Pingbo’s name. Before Lin Xu could sit and think about what Briedo meant by “looking forward to your speech,” someone took the seat beside him.
“There you are,” Zhou Pingbo said, slightly out of breath. “And you brought Yuanxiao! Let me hold the little dragon.”
Lin Xu placed the cat carrier into Zhou Pingbo’s arms. As soon as the zipper opened slightly, Yuanxiao poked their head out. Zhou took the chance to boop Yuanxiao’s nose, making the little dragon shrink back their neck. He then gently rubbed Yuanxiao’s head and sighed in contentment.
“You’re sitting here?” Lin Xu asked. The Sky Auditorium had traditional hemispherical tiered seating. In front was a row of desks for the hosts and organizers, directly facing the podium.
As one of the inspection team leads, Zhou Pingbo should have been seated at the front rather than squeezed into the middle with Lin Xu.
“Yep, I’m sitting here,” Zhou said. “I’ve been too busy lately and didn’t have time to manage the symposium, so I handed everything over to Briedo. I saw you two bumped into each other just now. He’ll be hosting the event up front, so I don’t need to worry about it. I saw your name on the invite list and had him seat you near me. You probably don’t have much to say to your colleagues anyway, right?”
“No.”
“Great. I figured you wouldn’t want to talk to others. The person to your right is my colleague, but their wife’s due today, so they’re not coming. That means the seat to your right will be empty too—no socializing required.”
“Dr. Briedo said I’d be giving a speech… Is that true?”
“Not likely. Only prearranged scholars will be speaking today. If they wanted you to speak, they should’ve notified you in advance to prepare. There is a Q&A session after the presentations though. Maybe that’s what Briedo meant. If you don’t want to say anything, just stay seated. No one can force you to go up.”
Half an hour later, the guests and audience had mostly arrived, but the symposium had yet to begin. Experts from all fields sat in the same section and naturally started chatting. The entire auditorium buzzed with conversation.
In the extraterrestrial seating area, beings of different races used translators to communicate with one another. At that moment, Lin Xu’s terminal chimed. Zhou Pingbo said, “You got a message notification?”
“Mn.” Lin Xu opened the terminal’s message page and found it was a news update based on keywords he had subscribed to.
“—Imperial fugitive Rolson was arrested by police in the X District early this morning. The prosecutor will be filing formal charges.”
In the accompanying photo, Rolson’s face was bruised and swollen, a wound on his calf festering and oozing pus. He had completely lost the commanding presence of a chief inspector. Suddenly, the entrance fell silent for a moment. Then came the rustling of clothes and the thump of footsteps as people stood. The noise drew others’ attention, and the room gradually quieted. One by one, everyone rose to their feet.
Dressed in full regalia, His Majesty, the Emperor of the Marion Empire, was walking toward the center of the auditorium. General Neumann, head of the City Defense Army, followed one step behind. It was as if all the light and attention in the room focused solely on the Emperor. He accepted everyone’s respectful nods with a smile and made his way to the front row.
Lin Xu stood with the others. The sudden news had stirred up a storm in his chest, his brow tightly knit as he struggled to control his expression. When he lifted his eyes to follow everyone’s gaze, the double impact made his pupils constrict sharply. The Emperor… was attending the symposium? His name wasn’t on the guest list.
Just then, as the Emperor was about to take his seat, he glanced casually toward the audience. For a few seconds, his gaze locked with Lin Xu’s. But before Lin Xu could confirm the look, the Emperor looked away and sat down calmly, leaving Lin Xu with only the view of his back.
For some reason, Lin Xu’s instincts as a beast flared with a piercing alarm. A buzzing noise erupted in his mind, radiating outward from his hearing. His awareness blurred until only the Emperor remained in his vision. A still, ordinary white silhouette. Lin Xu’s original target, General Neumann, seated beside the Emperor, faded into irrelevance.
“Lin Xu. Lin Xu?”
“Hou wu…” Yuanxiao’s soft growl echoed in his mind. The quiet calls brought Lin Xu back from the brink of panic. Everything returned to normal—the Emperor’s white silhouette became just another figure among the crowd, no longer special.
“I’m fine,” Lin Xu muttered, gripping the paw Yuanxiao had placed on his arm.
“You didn’t expect the Emperor to show up?” Zhou Pingbo asked. “I didn’t either. But lately, the Emperor has been making more public appearances. The Crown Prince, on the other hand, has been absent. Maybe His Majesty’s in good spirits these days and feels like getting out.”
On stage, the host began the opening speech, but Lin Xu couldn’t focus. He was still preoccupied with that earlier moment of crisis instinct. A feral beast will lock eyes with its prey before the pounce. That gaze stirs fear and adrenaline. But humans are different—human hunters, the skilled ones, know how to mask their presence. Sometimes, when they show their hand, it’s just to toy with the prey. And the Emperor…
Lin Xu knew he was still a target for the Clearance Division’s assassination list. The royal family knew. They wanted to eliminate anyone who posed a potential threat. But this wasn’t about revenge—it was a calculated purge. Not a sadistic hunt.
Lights shifted on the stage. The first speaker activated their presentation. The symposium began with an overview of ancient Earth’s astronomical environment. Zhou Pingbo handed Yuanxiao back to Lin Xu.
【Pretty… orb orb】
Yuanxiao tucked his head back into the cat bag to peek through the one-way material and watch the stage. But he couldn’t yet grasp concepts like barred spiral galaxies, the Earth-Sun system, or the shattered lunar debris field. So he asked Lin Xu in the mental domain.
Lin Xu tried to explain simply, but the flood of information tangled Yuanxiao’s young mental space like a ball of yarn. The little dragon rolled onto his back, eyes flipped, limbs in the air, tongue out, groaning wordlessly.
Lin Xu wasn’t particularly interested in the speaker’s words. He sat upright with a stern expression, but his mind was almost blank as his fingers played with Yuanxiao’s tail through the bag.
“Grunt!” Yuanxiao squeaked when his tail tip was pinched. Zhou Pingbo turned to look at Lin Xu’s overly serious face and reminded him, “Keep it down, you two.”
“Ahem, sorry.”
Lin Xu unzipped the bag, stuck his hand in, and let Yuanxiao nibble on it. That way, the little dragon wouldn’t make noise. As the astrophysicists, geologists, climatologists, and biologists completed their foundational presentations on the Milky Way and ancient Earth, the extraterrestrial seating area grew silent. They didn’t share humanity’s nostalgic sentiment for Earth. They were only attending the symposium out of respect—or fear—for the Marion Empire.
To them, Earth was just another habitable planet. It had once hosted intelligent life and was unique in the Milky Way, but held no particular significance on a universal scale. Next to speak was a historian of spaceflight, who was also a psychologist. During the expedition, they had bounced between the anthropologists studying primitive humans and the lunar field survey team. Once on stage, she activated three holograms. The lights dimmed, and a waning moon floated beside her, radiating a soft glow.
“Today, I’d like to talk about the Moon,” she said. “But before I begin, I want to share a short poem from ancient Earth. I’ll be reading the translated version by Dr. Lin Xu, and I thank him for his contribution.”
A rustle of clothing spread through the audience as some turned to spot the mentioned Dr. Lin Xu.
“My boat is moored by mist-veiled rivershore;
I’m grieved to see the setting sun no more.
On boundless plain clouds hang atop the tree;
In water clear the moon seems near to me. 1
“We humans have always gazed upon the Moon. Whether it’s in the sky, on a river’s surface, in a mirror’s reflection, beyond a spaceship’s window, or deep within memory and dream.”
“She is not merely a low-mass satellite—
She is a dreamlike verse beyond reach,
And a cold reality within our grasp.”
Author’s note:
*From the poem “Mooring on the Jiande River” (宿建德江) by Meng Haoran (孟浩然).
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