Chapter 40: Tails and hugs
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: Karai
Heinrich’s orders were absolutely unquestionable in the Abyss Fleet. All anyone could do was communicate all the details of his strategy after he left, and Zhou Pingbo discussed with him which weapons to bring to the mecha against the Zerg.
An hour after the order was given, the five-man mecha formation was assembled, with Blizzard leading the way, leaping out of the Victoria and heading across the sea of fire toward the incoming Zerg on Abatis. Their concealment would not last long.
The Zerg on the battlefield outside the fortress may not have had time to take care of the five departing mecha, but out in the vast, empty universe, the Zerg were able to pinpoint the human genes’ location.
The mecha formation experienced several battles. Each battle was not aimed at victory, and they fought in the direction these Zerg came from, finding the place of origin, and everything became like a relay.
On the way, the formation lost three mecha, and three mecha masters ejected from their pods in an emergency and were saved by their companions, seriously wounded, but spared from being shredded under the Zerg’s muzzle.
Heinrich said, “Proceed.” His voice was distorted over the electromagnetically jammed communication channel, sounding like an old, hard, razor-sharp sword.
The two remaining mecha followed Blizzard through the Zerg thicket until a yellow planet appeared in front of them, densely packed with Zerg perched on the planet, visible from a distance as the Zerg burst out of the planet’s atmosphere. This is it!
Heinrich ordered one of the two remaining mecha to return to the Silver Fortress and check the planet, while he and the other mecha entered the planet to investigate the situation. But the closer they got to the source, the more danger there was. An attack by three A-Class Zerg separated Heinrich from the other mecha.
“I’ll kill them, you find a position to land.”
“Aye!”
Heinrich blasted the A-Class Zerg that was chasing the mecha, leaving the two remaining Zerg stalking him, their sharp teeth tearing at Blizzard’s shell.
When he pierced both Zerg in succession with his light saber, Blizzard’s braking and starting systems failed at the same time, and the huge steel giant was pulled into the atmosphere by the gravitational pull of the yellow planet. Heinrich was close to the ground when the exhaust port was activated, using the recoil to cushion the impact of landing, so that Blizzard did not fall into a piece of rubble. The cooling system failed and Blizzard’s shell was still smoldering.
Blizzard landed next to a rocky hill in the Gobi, the three A-Class Zerg’s huge bodies burned up in the sky as meteors, Heinrich’s eyes fell on the edge of a sand dune not far away, where a Zerg lay broken… Zerg do not have the habit of killing each other, who did that?
A few white objects not belonging to the Zerg beside the corpse caught Heinrich’s attention, and he gasped as he stepped onto the solid planetary ground he hadn’t seen in a long time, and carefully walked up and picked up the white material. It was synthetic fabric…the torn Abyss Fleet spacesuit.
Heinrich tugged at the shredded, bloodstained fabric in his hands, his eyes searching among the Zerg’s bodies, frowning, trying to figure out who might have been the dead owner of this thing. Who had arrived on this planet before him?
The next moment, a tug suddenly wrapped around his ankle and dragged Heinrich into the quicksand! The quicksand instantly flooded Heinrich’s mouth and nose, and he held his breath as his feet kicked at the unknown force, but it was as if he had kicked at a slightly flexible steel plate. But at the same time, it was also certain that an empty space existed under the quicksand.
Heinrich was not buried by the quicksand. He was thrown into the dark underground grotto. His combat sense made him instantly draw his short knife, but a cold hand appeared from the darkness and pressed his wrist fiercely.
The golden pupils from the dragon race turned vertical in the darkness, and the vertical pupils dilated to allow him to see, but even without looking, Heinrich knew who the person in front of him was. The sweet aroma wrapped around him, and the coolness pressed against his skin through his combat suit, suppressing his instinct to fight back.
“Lin…”
The index finger of the visitor’s other hand pressed against Heinrich’s lips, stopping him from making a sound, the nails of this finger becoming extraordinarily long, glowing with a cold, sharp metallic sheen, and resting sideways on Heinrich’s cheek.
It was not his intention to hurt Heinrich, but in the time it took to breathe, his cheek was scraped with a bloodstain by the sharp nail, and a slight sting made him squint. The other man froze, and after a moment, Heinrich felt a warm, wet, soft sensation slide across his cheek, but it was still cooler than normal.
He contained the beads of blood dripping from Heinrich’s wound, and Heinrich froze, “Lin…”
He tried to call out Lin Xu’s name, but Lin Xu’s index finger pressed hard against Heinrich’s lips, stubbornly and capriciously preventing Heinrich from making a sound. This time, however, Lin Xu switched to his fingertips, and the sharp edge of his nail would no longer cut Heinrich’s skin.
Heinrich could feel the pen calluses on Lin Xu’s index finger from years of holding a pen and writing. But Lin Xu was still silent, and it was hard to read his expression and gaze.
Lin Xu’s black hair seemed to have grown again, covering his forehead and cheeks in a soft and confusing way. The grotto was short, barely big enough for two people to lie flat on top of each other, so they had to move closer together, and the tips of Lin Xu’s hair swept across his jaw and the side of his neck, causing an itch.
Heinrich stopped talking. But Lin Xu seemed uneasy, turning to cover Heinrich’s chin below his nose with his entire palm, and then laying his head sideways on Heinrich’s collarbone. Unlike his almost predator-like fierce posture when he dragged Heinrich into the hole, he pressed his lips together at this point, like a quiet cat, lying on top of the person, breathing slowly.
Except for the initial touch on the wound, Heinrich felt like he was carrying a piece of ice in his arms, and the sandy ground was still a little hot, but the coolness of Lin Xu’s body completely covered up all the heat Heinrich had soaked up in the cockpit. His hands were cold, his cheeks were cold, his hair was like ice water, and he…
Heinrich found only the divide of this combat suit on his body between the two, Lin Xu bare upper body, that white space suit… was Lin Xu’s, was he hurt? Not knowing whether it was intentional or unintentional, Heinrich’s hands, which were frozen at his sides, slowly approached him and finally, tentatively, rested on Lin Xu’s back.
The latter did not resist. Heinrich hugged him gently. He realized that Lin Xu was really too thin. Heinrich had been taking Lin Xu to dinner on the Victoria before, and his orderly, Xu Xing, had reported that Lin Xu had been taking his supplements regularly, and that he seemed to have gained some flesh, but now he realized that it was just a drop in the bucket. Beneath the palm of his hand, just a thin layer of skin and flesh was the protruding rib cage and spine.
But Lin Xu was so powerful that he could easily knock Heinrich to the ground, and now his other hand was on Heinrich’s shoulder, the sharp edge of his fingers near an artery, ready to slit Heinrich’s throat and let him die of blood loss if he moved.
The conflicting temperaments in his body form an odd mixture of savagery and civilization, and beyond the thinness lie the scars that felt different to normal skin… With the long breaths that rise and fall. Lin Xu was… nervous?
He was trying to calm his breathing, but the subtle trembling of his skin revealed his anxiety, and Heinrich felt Lin Xu’s heart beating like a drum, pounding fast and hard against the right side of Heinrich’s chest. Heinrich wondered what Lin Xu had run into. He listened intently, the only sound in the grotto was the two of them breathing, safe for the moment. He gently moved his palm and patted Lin Xu’s back.
Heinrich stumbled upon the unhealed wound on Lin Xu’s body, a breath escaped his throat, and Heinrich felt a coolness slide down his neck, instantly holding his breath until he realized it was Lin Xu’s hair, not the sharp, knife-like claws that were about to slit his throat for his offense.
Heinrich was sure his heart must be beating like a drum at the moment, the threat of death at his side, but the passion of obsession was rekindled.
Lin Xu’s head rubbed against the nape of Heinrich’s neck, silent, his heart still beating fast and his blood flowing fast, but at least he wasn’t shaking as much.
Heinrich continued the comforting movements of his hands and closed his eyes, trying to use the silence of the grotto to calm himself down as well, not to be in a life-or-death situation because Lin Xu’s sweet scent had shamefully… again.
Wait a minute… He felt something wrong with the touch on his leg. It was hard, cold, and heavy, like being pressed against a frozen stone. A million guesses he and Zhou Pingbo had about Lin Xu’s true identity flashed through Heinrich’s mind as his hand moved down, slowly, to touch something cold and icy. Heinrich cautiously covered it with his palm, and into his hand was a cascade of cold, delicate…scales.
He moved his legs and found that what was pressed against his knees was a whole mass, and as his palm continued down, it was full of scales, and he could not feel the end of it.
–Lin Xu’s legs turned into a tail. And Lin Xu seemed uncomfortable with people touching his tail, huffing in Heinrich’s ear as his tail lifted up and slapped the ground.
–still a fishtail… Heinrich heard the sound of a broad tail fin slapping against the rock, kind of like a whip.
When he first dropped down into the grotto, Heinrich’s attention was all on Lin Xu’s face, and only now, as his attention shifted down, did he feel the scales against his legs seem to open and close, like breathing, but opening and closing more rapidly than Lin Xu’s deliberately long breaths, scraping across Heinrich’s touch and catching his fingers. Lin Xu was really a mermaid…
But Heinrich still didn’t understand why Lin Xu wouldn’t let him speak, and he opened his mouth to make a sound, only to run into Lin Xu’s palm. Lin Xu pressed down hard on Heinrich and lifted his head to look at him, but in the darkness, Heinrich could only barely make out the tip of Lin Xu’s nose.
Suddenly, Heinrich knew why Lin Xu was lying on top of him and why he was raising his head at this moment. A vibration came from the ground. Before, Lin Xu needed to listen to the sound with a solid medium, but now the vibration was so intense that the sand and gravel shook off the grotto, and he no longer needed to listen carefully through Heinrich’s chest.
The next moment, Lin Xu suddenly let go of the hand holding Heinrich down, supporting himself and flipping up, straight through the sand, Heinrich only saw a black fishtail sweeping across his eyes, followed by the hot yellow sand that cascaded down the hole Lin Xu had crashed out of, almost burying him in it. This was followed by the hissing of the Zerg outside the hole.
Heinrich immediately sat up short and pulled out his light gun and fired a shot at the hole. The heat and explosion burned the sand stream into a glassy substance, revealing a void, from which Heinrich quickly climbed out, relying on his combat suit for insulation.
Into view were three E-class winged insects, one of which was tumbling near death in flames that came from nowhere, posing essentially no threat. Lin Xu climbed behind a winged insect with his tail falling, his long sharp nails slicing off the winged insect’s clear wings that were strong enough to fly through the universe.
His hand held a stone blade, strangling the Zerg’s head where it connected to its lower limbs, the sharp armor breaking through the Zerg’s shell defenses one by one as the corrosive fluid from the winged insect’s two shoulder fiber pockets bulged and spilled out, dripping onto Lin Xu’s tail, beyond the smoking hole.
Lin Xu let out a low roar with ragged breath from his throat, his arms shaking with force, and the Zerg’s fibrous pouch in front of him looked like it was about to explode.
Another winged insect flew in mid-air with high-frequency vibrations and was about to dive down to attack Lin Xu, whose unprotected back was exposed. Heinrich raised his rifle and aimed it at the winged insect in the air, and the light bullets hit the Zerg’s double eye, dropping him with a sharp, piercing wail and buzz as he dived closer and closer to Lin Xu, who meanwhile struggled to sever the skull of his subordinate. As the shattered stone blade and the corrosive venom from the explosion met in mid-air, sending white smoke billowing out.
Heinrich fired two more shots, but only hit the wings of the winged insects, and the falling Zerg continued to approach Lin Xu.
“Lin Xu!” Heinrich tossed the light energy sword he was carrying down to Lin Xu.
Lin Xu tilted his head, his eyes flashed, reached out to catch the light energy sword, his powerful tail slapped on the headless Zerg’s body, leaped into mid-air, and plunged the light energy sword into the Zerg’s chest and belly, disemboweling the Zerg on its way down.
After landing, the Zerg had not yet lost all its signs, and its head twisted and tried to bite with its sharp mouthpiece, but Lin Xu stabbed it through the head without mercy.
Zerg’s bodily fluids gurgled out into the fine sand as Lin Xu rolled to one side, his dry tail slapping the desert. Under the hot sun, Heinrich could finally see Lin Xu in his full form.
Author’s comment.
These two seem to meet forever in a brawl.
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