Chapter 81: Here, wash the dishes.
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: Karai
“You’ve been there to see where the mermaid’s bones were found. What’s new?”
“I found more mermaid bones in another coral grove.” Lin Xu replied, “The bones weren’t collected so I thought that the entire mermaid population was extinct, but Professor Zhou told me that I, the mermaid bones, and the Thales mermaid genes are basically the same, and Thales is millions of light years away from Earth. Do the mermaids have the technology?”
Lin Xu’s brow had a wave of annoyance between it, as he felt out of control due to a link in this entire event being invariably mutilated.
“They don’t.”
The Empire had superficial knowledge of Thales which included the navigational and weapons technology of every extraterrestrials that the Capital Star warriors cared the most about. At first, Thales’ exterior layer of indecipherable “god-sent boundaries” scared them all, and it was only after confirming that the mermaid itself had lived a primitive life and the god-sent boundaries might have come from some benevolent higher civilization that they stopped their military preparation plans for Thales.
‘…. Some benevolent higher civilization?’
If the Thales’ mermaid had also come from Earth, then they may have had contact with the Spiritual Monarch.
“Lin Xu, I have an idea.” Heinrich said while setting up a sound barrier around the table.
After Lin Xu took the last bite of sardines into his mouth, he put down his knife and fork before he listened quietly as Heinrich repeated Kalt’s words for him.
“Spiritual Monarch….” The word swirled on Lin Xu’s tongue, “I can’t confirm which language the term comes from, and there was no record of human contact with alien civilizations before I left Earth. And now the fleet defense system is being strengthened to face the Spiritual Monarch?”
“Yes.” Heinrich knew what Lin Xu wanted to say when he saw that his eyebrows were raised, “I understand, our weaponry may not be able to compete with a civilization capable of propelling a planet, but at least make preparations, rather than just giving up on resistance.”
Lin Xu did not issue any comment on the military arrangements of the two fleets, and after Heinrich finished his sardines with a delicate chew and his garlic lobster with a subtle expression, he stacked all the dinner plates and cutlery together that he pushed into Heinrich’s hands.
“Go wash the dishes.”
Heinrich, “…?”
“You don’t know how? I’ll teach you.” Lin Xu took Heinrich to the sink before he grabbed the detergent and sponge from the robot’s hand which he shoved into Heinrich’s hand. “Rinse it with water first, then add detergent and lather it with the sponge, rinse it again after the grease is dissolved. Wash both pots and pans too.”
Heinrich’s face had a serious expression as he squeezed the pans and sponges tightly to scrub them, almost as if he were vigorously operating a mecha.
Lin Xu rummaged around for a white apron and put it on from behind Heinrich by tying a bow with a tie at the back of the waist, “Wear it well, don’t get your uniform dirty.”
Heinrich stiffened his spine as he could not resist, and the white chef’s apron against Heinrich’s straight black uniform and icy cold face were overflowing with an odd aura.
It was so much so that Honda Agana, who was looking around for Heinrich as she was ready to report to the other side, opened her mouth around the moment she saw Heinrich in this outfit, “Mar, Mar, Marshal….” She looked at Lin Xu, who was supervising, and immediately said before Heinrich’s eye blade arrived, “You guys get busy, I’m not in a hurry, I’m not in a hurry.”
—
Lin Xu pressed Heinrich to finish washing the dishes and then let the others go to work. He took the two boneless poached sardines back to his room, teased Blackie and Snowy, and then fed them a taste of the fish.
Outside the porthole, the moonstone ring radiated a soft and beautiful light, and the vacuum was full of solitude as the two rabbit-cats in the room twitched their long, furry ears as they ate happily.
Lin Xu pulled on a few rabbit-cat ears before he went to his desk to open Yan Yuan’s diary and start reading.
The diary’s overly fluttering font was so dazzling that Lin Xu had to look through it while transcribing it into a normal font and translating it into Imperial for Heinrich.
His diary contained not much information about his work, but more complaints and sighs such as the lack of energy in the base again, the artificial food that was very difficult to eat, the survivors’ psychological condition that was extremely poor, and so on.
Lin Xu occasionally saw his name appear in the statement.
“If only Mr. Lin were here….”
“How on earth did Mr. Lin endure?”
“Where were there so many problems when Mr. Lin was around?”
“Everyone misses Mr. Lin.”
“The deep sea genetic experiment leaked, and they thought Mr. Lin became strong because he received the transformation?…I don’t understand why some people are so resistant to the Spirit Realm program. If Mr. Lin was still around, he would have chosen this path too.”
“I still remember his words before he left, ‘True courage is not fighting for survival, but facing the fall of humanity head on.’ Those people lack a little courage to face the unknown path.”
‘The Spirit Realm Project?’ Lin Xu remembered that the name did not appear in the pile of folders that showed the failure or termination of the plan.
‘Was this the only plan that had succeeded?’
“Spirit World…. Spirit,” Lin Xu muttered, “Spiritual, spiritual? Spiritual Monarch.”
As if a bolt of lightning had struck Lin Xu’s brain, he instantly reacted to the possible form of the word that Heinrich had mentioned. All four meteorites smashed the remains of human military forts, and Lin Xu had seen the map; none of the four military forts were in his memory and were most likely built after he left just like the New East Region base.
The Spiritual Monarch was familiar with these five bases, and it was likely that He was also the one who brought the mermaids on the edge of death from Earth to a new planet back then, and put a protective shield over their habitat. He was inextricably linked to humanity and Earth.
Yan Yuan wrote that the Spiritual Realm Project was “an unknown path”; was he referring to the unknown higher civilization “Spiritual Monarch” for help? He also mentioned the courage to face the fall of humanity….
Lin Xu’s eyebrows lowered and his fingertips scraped across the ink as they left a clear indentation. Lin Xu had said this right when an almost unstoppable wave of rampaging zombies besieged the East Region’s main base. The leader of the North Region’s main base across the ocean called Lin Xu to say that they had arranged an air pickup team and asked Lin Xu to abandon the unsalvageable East Region’s main base and take a rescue plane to the North Region. He refused.
None of the rest of the top brass at the East Region base accepted the offer and stayed until the last minute, which was until there was no one left at the base who could hold a weapon. The last person would press the self-destruct button and die with the Zombie.
Lin Xu rushed into the zombie encirclement and killed the zombie king, and opened the time tunnel when he was seriously injured and dying. From the remains of the base three thousand years later, the East Region base at least survived the zombie wave, but then was destroyed by the attack of nuclear weapons from humans.
The remaining survivors in the new base became a corpse in the connecting pod, but the recorder with the base’s diamond-shaped logo drifted to the Kuiper belt.
Yan Yuan, Ye Shanshan, and Wang Feng were the last three people to enter the connecting pod. At least until they did, there were no problems with the pod and the Spiritual Monarch program was functioning normally. Now, the Spiritual Monarch knew the location of the human bases and was able to execute precise strikes, which meant that the plan to contact the Spiritual Monarch did come true.
The recorder floating in the distant Kuiper belt should have been created and launched by the survivors with the help of the Spiritual Monarch after they contacted it. The connection module was a link to Spiritual Monarch.
The Spiritual Monarch was still concerned about the Earth-speaking humans, but now that the pod had apparently been abandoned, what was the status of the survivors who had come into the pod?
Lin Xu pressed his temples in contemplation. His unsmiling gaze frightened the two rabbit-cats, one black and one white, causing them to freeze in place before Snowy boldly jumped onto the desk to lick the back of Lin Xu’s hand while wagging his short orb tail at him. Lin Xu closed his eyes as he scratched Snowy’s chin, and Snowy was so comfortable that he squinted his eyes and tilted his neck back.
On the bright side, the Spiritual Monarch was willing to give the Thales a safe haven and teach advanced technology during the voyage of the Ark fleet, not necessarily with the evil thoughts and fears of humans to speculate about Him. However, it was time to bring the translation of the audio clips to the forefront.
Lin Xu found the two museum books that Zhou Pingbo had given him before he held Snowy on his lap. After seeing the dangerous aura around Lin Xu converge, Blackie also ran over with twitching ears and jumped towards his lap before he rubbed his cat head against the small of Lin Xu’s back.
—
“How’s Dr. Lin doing?” Godric asked Ika in the encrypted channel.
“Fine, he’s been staying in his room reading a book since he came back from the surface.” Ika replied.
“That’s good, I saw the Abyss Fleet and the Elam Fleet have stepped up their guard lately and I’m a bit worried.”
“No need, no one knows the identity of the Crown.”
“The previous celestial attack…. Did the Crown remember something?”
“No.” Ika said, “I don’t understand the Crown’s intentions for the celestial attack.”
“It is a constraint of the human mind that humans and the Crown are variously located in a million gulfs, and we are unable to understand Him most of the time.”
“…. But the Crown gave me a codebook that was written in ancient Earth code to decipher, and I wondered if this was His revelation to me.”
Godric’s tone became a little more eager, “What did you decipher?”
“The first half is a consciousness catalog, somewhat similar to StarNet,” Ika paused, “Nothing special, the second half revolves around a formula, there is no derivation process, I did not fully sort out the relationship between the formulas and the operation of the code, but it seems to be related to entropy reduction. “
“Entropy reduction…. It’s a formula for reducing the level of chaos?”
“Well, it’s about fusion and reordering. I haven’t quite figured it out yet.”
“Do you remember the words left by the Crown in the Whispering Church records? True courage….”
“Not fighting for survival, but daring to face the fall of humanity head on.” Ika went on to say.
“Does returning to nothing after destruction count as a return to an ordered state?”
Ika thought for a moment, “This code and formula does not include destruction or attack.”
“Is this your idea, can you send it to me to see?”
“You don’t know the code or the physics.” Ika was puzzled as Godric did not have the skills to read these forms.
“I can’t wait to see the first oracle of the Crown.” He sounded almost like a fanatic.
“Oh. I’ll send it to you and you can read it yourself.”
