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Kapitel 1

Shadow 380,000: Level 17 Suspended Spirit Hurricane Arrives

Author: Unknown

Part One of "Shadows of 380,000"

A global race to land on the moon has begun, and humanity will once again set foot on the moon.

Thirty-four years after the last Apollo mission, the United States and other major spacefaring nations around the world have launched a new race to land on the moon.

Since the United States announced the resumption of its lunar landing program last August, NASA has been carrying out a series of actions in earnest. The NASA lunar landing program has a budget of $104 billion.

The Los Angeles Times reported and commented that the moon landing is a marathon, and humans will set foot on the moon again within the next 10 to 15 years.

Currently, the European Space Agency's unmanned probe SMART-1 is the only probe orbiting the moon, marking humanity's first lunar exploration mission in the 21st century. However, SMART-1 will undoubtedly be joined by more "companions" in the future.

China planned to launch the Chang'e-1 lunar probe in late 2006 or early 2007 to study the lunar environment. China's Chang'e lunar exploration program was divided into three phases: 1. Launching a lunar probe to the moon; 2. Launching a lunar lander to land on the moon; 3. Launching a robot to land on the moon. Between 2012 and 2017, China planned to have a spacecraft land on the lunar surface and return samples. Afterward, China planned to send astronauts to the moon.

India has 20,000 staff working on a 2007 lunar mission. With an annual space budget of $600 million, India employs 20,000 people—the same number as NASA. The country will launch its $100 million Chandrayaan-1 probe in September 2007, which will orbit the lunar poles for two years and create a chemical map of the lunar surface.

As early as 1990, Japan launched the Hiten probe to the moon. In the coming years, Japan plans to launch the Lunar-A and SELENE probes to explore the lunar geology and topography.

James Gavin, head of NASA's Lunar Orbiter program, commented that the probes and spacecraft heading to the moon "will form a fleet."

Part 1, The Night That Changed My Fate (1)

The wind was strong on the deck, and the hem of my clothes fluttered and rustled in the darkness.

I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. The fishy smell in the air went straight from my nostrils to my stomach. The dinner I had just eaten, especially the fresh octopus, seemed to have come back to life from the pile of minced meat in my stomach, churning and throbbing as if it were about to come up out of my throat.

That wasn't the smell of seawater, but a thick, overflowing stench of blood!

Hurried footsteps came from behind.

I turned around, and two men who looked like security guards walked briskly towards me from the direction of the cabin.

"What is it?" someone said, shining a powerful flashlight, which was held upside down, in my direction.

"Ah!" The two of them shouted almost at the same time, paused for two seconds, and then rushed towards me.

As I ran, the beam of the flashlight swayed back and forth across my face and the face of the old man leaning against the ship's bow. Two pale faces, one white, one bluish, one alive, one dead.

"I..." I uttered only one word when a warm sensation spread across my arm. I looked down in surprise at my right hand, where a blood-dripping dagger lay. Large spurts of red liquid gushed from the chest of the burly old man beside me, splattering across my right side. It trickled down my bare arm, branching into several streams that converged at my palm, flowing over the gruesome blood grooves on the dagger's blade, dripping almost continuously in a dense line of blood that splattered onto the deck.

My mouth dropped open, and the dagger I was holding fell to the ground with a clang.

Before I could react, two men pounced on me with their momentum. They had clearly learned some basic grappling and fighting techniques, while I was in a daze and had no intention of resisting. In the blink of an eye, I was pinned to the ground, my hands and feet pinned down by them with all my might. The excruciating pain in my joints made me wonder if they had been dislocated.

Bang!

The old man, who had been leaning limply against the ship's railing, was bumped by a security guard's leg. He lost his balance and fell heavily onto the deck. His head was less than a meter from my face, which was turned to the side. I could clearly see the muscles in his cheeks and the terrible tremor from the impact on the slightly elastic composite wooden deck. His wide-open eyes were still open, and his face was covered in a large pool of blood on the ground. In the dim light of the flashlight, he looked like a demon.

This is May 2006. The luxury cruise ship I was on was called the Emerald Pacific.

This is China's first truly luxurious ocean-going cruise ship, which was just launched this March. Shanghai Yile Cruise Company, which operates this 60,000-ton behemoth, has extensive connections and has arranged a Southeast Asian tourist route departing from Shanghai and stopping at the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam along the way.

Previously, China only had cruise ships heading to single destinations. Cruise routes that visited multiple countries, similar to those in other countries, had always been difficult for travel agencies or tour companies to secure due to complex entry procedures. Yile Company's Southeast Asia route was the first of its kind, demonstrating the formidable strength of this foreign-invested passenger transport company. Furthermore, the Pacific Emerald's facilities were extremely luxurious, including a water park, a skylight pool, a cinema, and various entertainment venues—it was hard to imagine it not causing a sensation.

On May 1st, taking advantage of the May Day holiday, the Pacific Emerald embarked on its 16-day maiden voyage. E-Land extended invitations to reporters from major Shanghai media outlets for a free cruise on the Pacific Emerald. I heard that they plan to open European routes in the future, and E-Land clearly hopes to cultivate good relations with the media for future publicity. I was one of the invited reporters from Morning Star News.

In fact, a significant portion of the passengers on the maiden voyage, like us journalists, were paid for by Yile Company and traveled for free. Of the 761 passengers on board, many were entertainment stars who frequently appear in front of the camera, as well as a number of renowned scholars and scientists—a truly eye-catching and intellectually stimulating group. They were all living advertisements; hiring many of them for a proper advertisement would have cost a fortune. So, all things considered, Yile Company still made a profit.

Besides social celebrities, most of the other participants who paid out of their own pockets for the inaugural flight were business elites. It is said that the most expensive cabin cost as much as $18,000.

At 9:00 AM on May 1st, the Pacific Emerald slowly departed from the Waigaoqiao Wharf in Shanghai, quickly leaving the Yangtze River estuary behind and heading southeast at a speed of 29 knots. The sea was calm with light winds and gentle waves, barely able to shake the massive hull of this giant ship.

This was my first time on a cruise ship of this class. The only other experience I had was when I was seven years old, when I took a thousand-ton ocean liner from Shanghai to the Zhoushan Islands. Apart from the endless sea that I could see from the deck, there was absolutely no comparison between the two.

I shared a cabin with a reporter from the Morning Post. Although it wasn't the highest-class cabin, it was comparable to a standard room at a five-week hotel, just a bit smaller. All the facilities on board were free to use. My favorite activity was swimming. With the blue sky above and the azure sea all around, the oval-shaped sky pool rippled with the waves as the cruise ship sailed forward. This unique experience was something I never had in ordinary city pools or even at the beach.

Before that night, this luxurious trip, which was somewhat work-related, had been very enjoyable. The only unpleasant encounter occurred on the afternoon of my departure from Manila, right at the Sky Pool.

The whole thing happened inexplicably. I had a big lunch, swam for a while, then climbed onto a floating chair, sprawled out, and drowsiness quickly overcame me. I closed my eyes and reminisced about the Spanish Riviera I had rushed through that morning. Walking through this city within a city in the heart of Manila felt like being in an old European town. In less than half a day, I couldn't fully appreciate this best-preserved medieval city in the world, and as I reconstructed those images and feelings in my mind, I felt a pang of regret.

I imagined myself lying on a giant waterbed, indulging in this comfortable life. I'd longed for a waterbed for a long time, but they were too expensive. Now that I had one for free, I wanted to enjoy it while I could. The waterbed swayed gently, like a cradle, and with my sleep ability almost surpassing that of a pig, I quickly drifted off to sleep. Unfortunately, that's when it happened. In my half-awake state, I vaguely felt the frequency of the swaying of the mat beneath me suddenly increase, and then something struck my right shin, knocking me into the water.

I struggled to stand up from the water, choking on some water in the process, and then I saw an elderly man frowning and covering his hands, glaring at me.

He looked to be at least sixty years old, very muscular, and his muscles weren't flabby, which was quite rare for his age. He wasn't wearing swimming goggles, so I guessed he had his eyes closed while freestyle swimming, which is why he bumped into me. I got hit on the leg; his hand must have been in even more pain.

Some people get furious when they're woken up, but I don't have such a good emergency response mechanism. At this time, I'm in a helpless state where my mind goes blank.

"What, you don't want to say anything?" he said to me.

I haven't quite processed what's happening yet. Um... am I being interrogated?

“Hey, people these days.” He shook his head.

Part 1, The Night That Changed My Fate (2)

"You're the one who hit me," I said, coming back to my senses.

He frowned, his dark eyebrows furrowing. "I only swam in this direction because I saw no one. You're just using this thing as a boat to row around, are you trying to get me to crash into it?"

I immediately got angry. I never expected to run into such an unreasonable person here. I was just having a wonderful dream, and the beauty of the dream was in stark contrast to this annoying old man in front of me: "Grandpa, I was lying up there sleeping. Who was paddling around? You must have misjudged him."

"How dare you speak to your elders like that? Didn't anyone teach you?" The old man waved his thick arm, becoming even angrier.

"Nobody cares about seniority with you. Are you trying to start a fight?"

By this time, our argument had attracted the attention of others. Thinking that things would be difficult to resolve if this continued, we decided not to hold a grudge against the old man any longer, shook our heads, and prepared to go back ashore.

"What's wrong with beating you up, kid?" The old man reached out and grabbed my wrist.

Without turning my head, I struggled hard, causing him to stumble and fall back into the water.

"Don't let me see you again, you little brat." I was already out of the pool when he got up, so I could only jump up and down and curse from behind.

Looking back, the cause of this little incident was probably that the wind blew my float aside, or that he swam with his eyes closed and unknowingly drifted off course. The latter is much more likely.

In any case, this old man has a really bad temper. I originally thought he was a big boss in a family-run business, who was usually bossy. But my roommate Li Jian from the Morning News, after some gossip, told me that this old man named Yang Hongmin was actually an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, a senior engineer of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, and a member of the lunar landing program advisory group.

The predecessor of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) was the Ministry of Space, which was abolished in the 1990s and replaced by the China Aerospace Industry Corporation. A few years ago, it split into CASC and CASIC. Although I've never understood why China changed a department into a company when even the US has NASA, there's no doubt that CASC still has a strong official background, with national funding budgets often reaching hundreds of billions of yuan. Yang Hongmin is a senior engineer at CASC and a prominent consultant for the lunar landing program; clearly, while not the top scientist in China's aerospace industry, he is definitely a heavyweight.

It seems that just as a writer's literary talent is not necessarily related to his moral character, great scientists are not always reasonable in their daily lives.

Although the Pacific Emerald is large, there are still occasional chance encounters. In the following days, I ran into Yang Hongmin twice more. Fortunately, he didn't actually jump up and fight me as he had said in the swimming pool; he just gave me a few unfriendly looks. No matter who he thinks he is, I'll just pretend he doesn't exist.

On the night of the accident, the Pacific Emerald was en route from Malaysia to Thailand.

The cruise line had thoughtfully arranged a buffet dinner, followed by a jazz band performance. I was dismayed to find myself surrounded by women in low-cut evening gowns and gentlemen in sharp suits, casually holding their glasses, gathering in small groups, sometimes breaking up, sometimes joining together, exchanging a few words and a laugh before scattering like butterflies. In comparison, I, in my short-sleeved shirt, felt utterly out of place. In this heat, on a vacation, how could I possibly have thought to bring a suit? Looking around, my fellow travelers were all in similar attire, making me feel slightly awkward.

Even if I put on a suit, I still can't be as comfortable as others. This kind of social interaction requires a lot of talent.

I inevitably saw Yang Hongmin again, but luckily he didn't notice me. I consciously avoided him to avoid trouble.

Around 8 o'clock, I started to feel a bit bored, reminiscing about playing cards with Li Jian and the others that afternoon, and the exhilarating feeling of beating him until he turned pale. I think I've been able to control my curiosity somewhat lately, but my gambling addiction is getting stronger and stronger. Of course, we don't gamble for big stakes, but we care about the feeling. So my friend says that my most annoying moment is at the card table, when I'm unforgiving and act like a petty person.

Unfortunately, judging from Li Jian's shameless behavior of flirting with wealthy women while holding a wine glass, I think he's probably thinking about how he's doing well in love after losing at the casino, so there won't be any card games tonight.

I decided to leave the banquet hall after finishing my next drink. In my opinion, there are many more fun places on this ship than here.

The waiter passed by me with a tray of wine. I was about to hand him my empty glass and exchange it for another one when I noticed that there was something extra in the glass.

It is a small strip of paper folded into a square shape.

I quickly scanned my surroundings, a hint of surprise in my eyes. My senses are remarkably sharp, honed through numerous adventures. Although I had held the empty glass low to my side, to slip this note into it without me noticing was no simple feat requiring exceptional dexterity.

I noticed nothing unusual, and frowned slightly, but I was actually getting excited inside.

That's interesting.

Reach out, grab the paper strip, and unfold it.

The blue ballpoint pen writing on the white paper was neat and orderly, each stroke square and precise.

"Go quickly to the starboard deck; there lies the thing that will change your destiny."

"Change my destiny?" I grinned, a huge question mark forming in my mind. Whose kid is this, with that attitude?

This is troublesome. I have a bad feeling about this.

Generally speaking, given my cat-like curiosity, I usually end up getting into trouble. I always have a pretty good idea that I'm asking for trouble, but when trouble actually comes my way…

The person who wrote this note seems to have a good grasp of my temperament. Even if I felt something was wrong, I couldn't resist going to the right deck to take a look.

As I hurried out of the banquet hall, I had no idea what kind of trouble I was about to encounter.

The banquet hall was on the sixth floor. When the elevator took me to the first floor, there wasn't a single tourist in the luxurious lobby.

I stepped out through the door on the right. The deck was quiet; the night was dark, without starlight or moonlight, and the lights coming from the cabins seemed insignificant. Perhaps because of the banquet, the high-powered lights on the deck were not turned on, and a few small streetlights shone forlornly, their light seemingly swallowed up by the darkness after only a short distance.

I strained my eyes to scan the shadowy deck, trying to see what could possibly be the thing that could claim to change my destiny.

That's when I saw Yang Hongmin.

Part 1, The Night That Changed My Fate (3)

Of course, I didn't recognize him at first; he was just a dark figure, a dark figure leaning against the ship's railing in a dimly lit place.

I walked over to him immediately. After all, it was unusual for someone to be alone on the deck when almost everyone was gathered in the banquet hall, and it was strange even if he was a crew member.

My eyes had gradually adjusted to the light, but I still had to walk up to its base to recognize it.

Yang Hongmin stared at me, his breathing as labored as a broken bellows, his slightly open mouth emitting gasps. Each breath would stop halfway through, pause for a few seconds, and then he would take another.

My first instinct was that he was going to harm me, so I took a step back. Only then did I realize that there was a dagger stuck in his chest, slightly to the left of his head. It was a fatal blow. If I pulled the weapon out now, he would die instantly.

It was a murder case! Did the killer call me here? What does he want? This thought flashed through my mind, but I didn't have time to think further. I turned around and shouted, "Is anyone there? Someone come quick!"