Chapter 61: Dragon Rider
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: Karai
After passing through the Kuiper Belt, the fleet officially entered the Solar System, where it was only thirty astronomical units from the Sun, and could see through the portholes the bright star that had shone on Earth for trillions of years. It looked no different from any other young star.
Lin Xu had seen stars in the sidereal region, aging red giants and cooling white dwarfs on his journey to Capital Star, whose artificial environment was essentially the same as Earth’s. Looking up at the sky in the early morning on Capital Star’s university campus, the rose-colored sunset through the lush green shade of the trees was not unlike the Earth sunset.
To minimize the disturbance to the Solar System’s cosmic environment, the fleet shut down its warp engines and glided toward Earth at regular speed with the help of the planet’s gravity. The fleet had approximately one week to go before reaching Earth’s orbit.
Lin Xu’s health was gradually recovering and his sleep was returning to normal from time to time, and he rescheduled the restoration of the ancient book of Phaedo.
Lin Xu found a platform in the middle of the Victoria, which had few visitors because of its proximity to the archives, facing a huge glass porthole where Lin Xu sat on a bench and had a galaxy view in front of him.
The planets orbiting the sun had familiar names and appearances, but this was the first time he had seen the Solar System’s seven planets from space.
The fleet was passing Saturn, a large, earthy planet with glowing rings, and looking out the porthole, each ring of Saturn was evenly colored, as if painted in pencil. But if one gets close enough, one will notice that these daylight-reflecting rings consists of dust and different forms of dihydrogen monoxide, many of which exceed a meter in diameter.
But Lin Xu on the Victoria was too far away to see it clearly, and looking in the other direction, Earth, still a small dot, was also a pure blue planet in view, with no white clouds or green fields visible. The Old World poets were fond of depicting in their fantasy works the freedom of mankind to roam in the Solar System, in magnificent and fantastic strokes.
When Heinrich entered the platform, Lin Xu was reading from an old book given to him by Godric. He looked up at Heinrich and then looked down.
For the first few days, Heinrich came here to see Lin Xu on Ruth’s tip, and had to use the excuse of going to the archives to pick up a file. Now, there was no need for words to explain what they had come for; they sat quietly side by side, facing the vast galaxy, exchanging breaths in silence. Heinrich might come and sit for half an hour, and then leave again to return to his work.
But since Heinrich had finished dealing with the legacy of Imperial and the Silver Fortress, and the fleet had entered the Solar System, a stable and calm environment, his workload had gradually decreased. He had not given Lin Xu a chance to “help him sleep”.
Lin Xu’s physiological and psychological state returned to normal, and he was no longer greedy enough to barge into Heinrich’s office to seek reassurance, his questions about the white chocolate were buried in his mind for now, waiting for the right time to be answered.
The stars were spinning in the universe and Lin Xu was halfway through the pages of his book when Heinrich spoke up to break the calm, “Ruth has new clothes for you.”
“New clothes?” Lin Xu looked up at Heinrich, “Are they planning to have another party when we arrive at Earth?”
Ruth was not intelligent enough to prepare gifts for the passengers on the starship, and orders beyond the norm had to be given by someone with authority before they could be executed.
“No.” Heinrich said, “Not a tuxedo, she had everyday clothes cut from skin-friendly fabrics that I think you could use these days.”
“For what?” Lin Xu didn’t understand.
“Are your breasts swelling?”
When Heinrich uttered this word with his icy expression and icy voice, Lin Xu snapped the book in his hand closed and took several deep breaths.
“Heinrich Chu…”
“I looked up some information, which said that if it can’t be discharged properly, it may lead to fever and inflammation, and also introduced some special forms of clothing. But I thought, you probably don’t like those clothes, let Ruth choose the right fabric to cut normal clothes to reduce the friction.”
Heinrich was surprisingly explaining everything.
“Then why don’t you help me yourself?” Lin Xu had to interrupt Heinrich’s sincere but embarrassing words.
Lin Xu’s rhetorical question froze Heinrich for a moment, his gaze sweeping over Lin Xu’s eyes, the seam of his lips, then the lean shoulders and chest shrouded beneath his shirt. In fact, nothing was visible on the surface, and only when he got closer could he smell the sweet, milky scent.
Heinrich sat in the seat next to Lin Xu for some days before finally confirming his suspicions, and once confirmed, numerous blush-inducing images crossed Heinrich’s mind for no apparent reason.
“If you need, I can…” do anything for you. Lin Xu raised his hand to cover Heinrich’s mouth.
There were times when Lin Xu could often see an innocence between Heinrich’s sharp brows, but at this moment, this innocence that existed only for one person paired with these topics that should be extremely private made Lin Xu’s heart burn.
“This condition will disappear on its own with time,” Lin Xu forced his tone to be calm, his fingers slowly loosening, “without help.” As Lin Xu’s cold fingers left, Heinrich blinked, “Okay.”
For a moment, neither of them knew what topic to carry on next, Lin Xu sat upright and reopened the book to read, Heinrich looked at the pages in relation to Lin Xu’s fingers, the language used by the Old World Poets school was slightly different from Imperial, but some words could be connected.
“Dragon Rider?” Heinrich tried to spell out the pronunciation of the word, “What is it?”
“This book…” Lin Xu clattered through the book in his hand and gave Heinrich an overview, “The author tries to introduce the fantasy legends of ancient Earth to solve the extinction dilemma encountered by ancient Earth humans, including the introduction of mythical dragons as mounts for humans to fight the Zerg.”
Put into the modern society of Earth, where all the disasters have yet to happen, this hodgepodge of settings may feel whimsical to the point of ridiculousness, but when written by the exiled remnants of ancient Earth, it breathes the infinite bleakness of memory.
“Speaking of which,” Lin Xu said, not wanting to delve into the topic of grieving time, “I haven’t seen what a real dragon looked like in the interstellar era, were you born in human form?”
“Mn, I can’t take on a dragon form. What did the dragons of ancient Earth look like?”
“The dragons of ancient Earth were just creatures of human fantasy, they didn’t really exist,” Lin Xu clicked on the terminal hoverboard and casually sketched out two lifelike images, “These are images of dragons from two different civilizations on ancient Earth. “
One was an Oriental dragon with horns and no wings, and the other was a Western dragon with a long neck and wings. Lin Xu drew quickly and with simple lines, and the two little dragons looked kind of peculiarly cute.
“Who do the cosmic dragons look more like?”
Heinrich pointed to the western dragon and suddenly asked, “Do you want to see the image of the dragons with your own eyes?”
“Is there an image?”
Dragon planet was far away from the human Empire, the dragons were grumpy and powerful, rarely captured by humans in photos, and they themselves did not fall in love with StarNet, ordinary people could hardly come into contact with relevant image materials.
“It’s my father’s dragon form, I’ll show you?”
“Yes!” Lin Xu got up holding Heinrich’s hand, a few glimmers in his gray eyes, “Let’s go now?”
—
Heinrich did not let go of Lin Xu’s hand on the way, leading him all the way to the lower level of the starship, the human figure gradually became thin, Heinrich finally completed a series of iris and fingerprint inspection in front of a door, the alloy door opened to both sides. A huge space presented itself.
“This is a mecha repair room in the technical department.” Heinrich’s voice was reflected by the walls in the mecha repair room, echoing back and forth and superimposed.
The entire mecha repair room was taller than the giant warehouse Lin Xu had seen on S105, tall enough for a giant mecha to stand in, surrounded by countless elevated operating platforms and giant intelligent robotic arms.
The AI in the repair room was welcoming Marshal Chu in a calm voice, and there was no one else in the large space except for the two of them. It was a Blizzard, and it was being repaired.
The wreckage of the right leg that was cut off by Lin Xu’s sword on the Sand Star was also dragged back by Zhou Pingbo with a spaceship, and reassembled and repaired by technicians. The shape and physical damage to the mecha had been largely repaired, leaving only some painting and cleaning and debugging work to be done.
“The technicians are dining in Area C at this point, so we can go up and take a look.”
Sneak up there while no one is looking. Lin Xu didn’t know what the mecha had to do with the Dragons, but followed Heinrich’s lead and entered the long-lost mecha cockpit via the elevator.
“Welcome back, pilot Marshal Heinrich Chu,” the AI said as he lit up the cockpit for the two of them, everything clean as new, the yellow sand that had been swept into the cockpit by the winds of Sand star had been cleared away, and the bitingly flat metal exuded a technological chill.
Heinrich let Lin Xu sit down in the right pilot seat, and then put on the mental energy link helmet as he sat in his own pilot seat, “my mother used the mental energy manipulation system when driving the mecha. The internal memory of Blizzard is functioning normally, so we will see an image from her when she was piloting Blizzard when she first met my father.
“Enable tandem piloting privileges.” After confirming that Lin Xu was wearing the link helmet, Heinrich asked the AI to confirm the permissions. Lin Xu focused his mind and allowed his consciousness to access the mental energy co-link.
“Blizzard’s mental manipulation system has been accessed, welcome, Mr. Lin Xu.” The familiar statement rang out once again, and the white light in the initial scene of the mental energy co-connection quickly wrapped around him, and Lin Xu then gathered his consciousness and thoughts.
Before Lin Xu, Heinrich had never thought he would one day share the mental energy linkage system with anyone, so even though he had already experienced it once, he was still not skilled at putting his thoughts together neatly to avoid disrupting the conversation with a flash of inspiration in his head.
“I will open the mental domain memory storage.” Heinrich did not speak, and the mental energy link allowed Lin Xu to receive this information at the same moment Heinrich was thinking.
The next moment, the white light scene completely dissipated, Lin Xu found that the mecha front view window in front of him was not quite the same as before.
“Follow the wind, there is an unknown moving object in front of you.”
“Lin Xu, this is the memory of the two pilots.”
A female voice and Heinrich’s prompt crossed Lin Xu’s mind at the same time, and the old information transmitted to him by the mecha system framed the driving scenario in Blizzard for Lin Xu’s perception system from decades ago.
He turned his head to look at his companion, Imperial Admiral and 7th Legion Commander, Chu Suifeng.
“Katrina was my mother’s comrade in arms, and she had an excellent mental energy fit, co-piloting the two-person mecha Blizzard.”
In Katrina’s vision, Lin Xu saw Chu Suifeng as a beautiful and stern female alpha, with a tightly furrowed brow almost identical to Heinrich’s, like a lime green bush with spikes in a frosty sky.
“I saw it.” Chu Suifeng replied, “Is that . . the Zerg?”
Under the naked eye, a strangely shaped moving object in the distant dust swarm was approaching Blizzard. Lin Xu leaned back in his chair, his vision following Katrina, “No, not quite, this thing has a slower wing rate than the Zerg, and I’ve never seen a silver-white Zerg. It’s coming straight at us!”
The object in motion on the other side was still as small as a stone in the field of view, but once you associate the distance between the mecha and it at this point, you can surmise how large this thing is.
Blizzard sent electromagnetic signals to the other side, carrying the languages of all known cosmic races. No response.
Chu Suifeng turned on the particle cannon to accumulate energy, Katrina simultaneously raised her hand to assemble the light energy sword. The two pilots tacitly prepared for battle, they would not immediately attack, so as not to provoke the incoming, but if the other party shows clear intention to attack when approaching Blizzard, longsword and sharp cannon will never show mercy to it!
At the same time, the thing broke through the cosmic dust and small celestial bodies all the way, and its silvery-white shape gradually became clear in the mecha’s extended vision. Chu Suifeng opened her eyes wide, she had a pair of amber pupils, “This is… Dragon?”
The existence of dragons in the universe was part of Imperial humanity’s common knowledge of biology, but almost no one had the opportunity to meet dragons directly in person.
The distant planet glided in its own orbit, the star no longer obscured, the intense light poured into the deep sky ink, illuminating the figure of the silver-white dragon, its smooth, beautiful silver-white scales reflecting a dazzling luster into the cockpit.
The two people in the mecha instinctively closed their eyes when the strong light flashed, and the next moment, the silver-white dragon had rushed to ten meters in front of them! The wide dragon wings were flipping up and down, and it was still closing in on Blizzard!
Just behind the silver white dragon, countless running celestial bodies were smashed into rubble by him and scattered in all directions. One could imagine how terrifying the strength of this dragon’s body was.
The particle cannon turned the distant debris into dust and gas, and Katrina immediately controlled Blizzard to fall backwards, otherwise the two would have collided straight away.
Inertia made the dragon too late to change direction, silver-white smooth dragon belly from mecha front view window a few meters above, dragon scales flowed through the pearl-like fantasy luster, and the dragon tail a strong flip.
Chu Suifeng looked up, “strange, how does the dragon clan not have a pe–
Beep…
Heinrich suddenly cut off the memory playback, but he and Lin Xu’s mental energy co-connection, Lin Xu in Heinrich’s consciousness to listen to him unconsciously finished repeating Chu Suifeng’s doubts.
Penis…
Lin Xu looked straight ahead, “Ahem, I understand, privacy protection.”
Heinrich in the real world was always cold and majestic, but after entering the mental energy co-connection, Lin Xu could directly feel his blank and clueless mood at the moment.
Lin Xu’s mind and consciousness were well blocked by the mental walls he had built up and would not be easily leaked. He thought carefully and selectively added in words, “You do, I know that.”
If Heinrich were a robot, he’d probably be jamming and smoking by now.
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