Just after these spacecraft left, a familiar bright red spacecraft landed once again in front of the tower on the garbage planet.
Levy opened the hatch and jumped out, his face not looking too good.
Eight days had passed since he last saw the man in black.
He originally thought that what he saw last time was the black-robed man's real body, so he went to great lengths to bring him back to the capital star, but it was clear that this man had tricked him again.
After returning from the medical center, he stayed at Roy Palace, but on the seventh day, the man in black did not visit as usual.
Levy then remembered that the last time the man in the black robe told him a story, he said, "You can take this as an ending."
Ah, the ending.
Whether he agrees to the ending depends on his consent.
Levy looked around.
He had encountered the man in black robes here last time, and he had also seen him swept away by the electric grid. He searched the surrounding area for the discharge devices, but they had now been shut down.
After wandering around the garbage planet for a while, Levy didn't find anything.
The man in black robes left decisively, without leaving him a single clue. Perhaps in the first place, this man never intended for him to find him.
A dark, obsessive glint flashed in his blue eyes.
He's having a great time running around taking him for a walk, isn't he? Wait until he finds the person...
Back beside the aircraft, Levi turned and glanced at the tower behind him.
Last time he left in a hurry and didn't have the mind to go inside and check. This time he thought about it and found the entrance to enter the tower.
The people inside had already evacuated, and they were experienced in counter-tracking, leaving no trace.
Levi descended the stairs to the ground floor, only to find the incinerator furnace already extinguished. The surrounding temperature was still very high. Levi looked down and found a fresh gash in the flat floor, seemingly the mark left by a heavy object.
He followed the trail to the steps and frowned as he looked at them.
There was a glistening drop on the side wall of the lowest step. He reached out and rubbed it with his finger; it seemed to be some kind of nutrient solution.
Looking around, Levy went up the steps.
Upon reaching one of the floors, he paused, taking a deep sniff of the air. The humidity on this floor was slightly higher than in other areas.
As the humidity increased, Levy saw a makeshift bathroom.
There was still some condensation on the opaque curtain outside. He reached out and yanked it open; of course, there was no one in the bathroom. The shower had stopped, and all the toiletries had been taken away, not even a towel.
But... tangible things can be swept away, while other things dissolved in the air remain.
Levi's keen sense of smell could detect a faint, cool, and chilly scent mixed in with the warm steam in the bathroom, like a cold wind blowing from an ice field.
After blinking twice, Levi pulled up the curtain and left the tower.
Outside the tower, dust still swirled in the air on the garbage planet, and the traces of the spacecraft's parking had vanished.
Levy stopped and looked down for a moment.
He remembered stepping on a red plant when he left last time. It wasn't anything special, but Levy was surprisingly eager to look for it.
The plant's thorns were embedded in the soil, so it shouldn't have been blown away by the wind so easily.
But after looking around, Levy found nothing.
On another spacecraft near the capital planet, Qin Chu sat in a compartment and looked out the window.
He held a bright red, thorny stem in his hand, but the upper half of the plant seemed to have been mercilessly trampled on, drooping listlessly.
"How was your rest?" Burke pushed open the door and walked in, then paused when he saw what Qin Chu was holding. "What are you doing with that? I remember you've never been interested in these flowers and plants. When we were young, you saw people searching for this stuff all over the planet, and you even asked me if it was edible."
Qin Chu glanced at him, then casually set the root aside.
Burke's expression suddenly turned serious: "You're not really an AI impersonating someone, are you?"
"..." Qin Chu raised his hand and rubbed his temples, saying coldly, "Although I just came out of the sleep pod, beating you up is still no problem for me."
“I was just kidding,” Burke said with a smile as he sat down next to him.
He glanced at Qin Chu for a moment, then sighed, "But when you woke up this time, I really felt that you had changed a bit."
"What changes?" Qin Chu looked down at Noah's status on his personal terminal.
"Well..."
Burke stroked the stubble on his chin as he pondered.
The National Defense Forces were unfamiliar with Qin Chu, and when he first woke up, they were alarmed by his cold demeanor. However, when Burke saw Qin Chu, he felt that Qin Chu seemed more human than before he entered the sleep pod.
He and Qin Chu had known each other for a long time. Although Qin Chu was cold and had a bad temper when he was young, he was still just an indifferent boy. On the contrary, after entering military academy, he became more and more rigid and meticulous. In addition, his later battles of wits with the cabinet made him seem like he was possessed by military regulations.
The current Qin Chu looks somewhat like he did when he was young.
"Anyway, you're fine the way you are." Burke reached out and patted Qin Chu on the shoulder.
"Is the training room ready?" Qin Chu stood up.
“It’s all ready, I’ve prepared it for you,” Burke said.
Qin Chu nodded and walked straight into the training room at the back.
Staying in the sleep pod for an extended period of time will inevitably have some impact on his health.
Although his body was asleep, Qin Chu's consciousness remained active, and he had also been injured in the virtual world. So after staying in the training room for a few hours, he returned to the rest room and slept soundly.
The soundproofing on the aircraft was not good. As soon as Qin Chu regained his senses, he heard someone talking in the cockpit in front of him.
"There are too few people on the capital planet. Other planets are better than this."
"The mainframe isn't stupid. There are many important figures on the capital planet, so it definitely won't release them."
"Hey, look, isn't that Roy Palace? Burke, your post has arrived!"
Upon hearing the words "Royal Palace," Qin Chu instinctively said, "Stop."
His voice wasn't loud, but the people in the cockpit still heard him. The aircraft circled briefly before coming to an emergency stop.
Because of the sudden stop, the aircraft lurched, and Qin Chu sat up, fully waking up.
He glanced at the Royal Palace below through the window, rubbed his temples, and a barely perceptible hint of annoyance appeared on his face.
As Qin Chu walked out of the lounge, he saw that everyone in the aircraft was staring at him.
"Is this... a landing?" Burke asked. "Did you go to Roy Palace for business?"
"It's nothing," Qin Chu replied immediately.
His refusal was so decisive that it made his previous order seem all the more peculiar.
Under the questioning gazes of his subordinates, Qin Chu slightly shifted his gaze to the white bulkhead of the aircraft.
After a two-second pause, he explained, "Burke works at Roy Palace. Shouldn't you be going back?"
“I could go back to stand guard when you weren’t here, but what’s the point of going back now?” Burke waved his hands repeatedly.
Now that Qin Chu has returned, the military personnel have relaxed, and they immediately began to mock Burke's peculiar experience of being reduced to a gatekeeper.
The aircraft continued moving forward, and Qin Chu looked out the window and pursed his lips.
Levi returned to the capital planet late at night.
He went back to Roy Palace first, found Cumming, and asked, "Has anyone come looking for me?"
Kamin shook his head groggily, "Nobody's here. Nobody comes to Roy Palace."
Levi turned to leave, but Cumming suddenly remembered something and sat up: "Oh right, someone came by!"
"Who? Did they leave a message?" Levy asked.
“It’s someone from the cabinet.” Camin shrank back, afraid that Levy would be angry. “They came to inform you that there’s a meeting in three days that you need to attend.”
"I'm not going." Levi opened the window and jumped out.
Without resting, Levi went to the hospital in the dark.
Although he hadn't found anything on the body the man in black had used last time, he was still not entirely convinced.
For some reason, after the man in black left, he felt a vague and inexplicable anxiety.
The man in black robes had stood him up before, but Levi was always certain that he would come back to find him again. But this time, Levi was not so sure.
After checking the instruments, no abnormal mental waves were detected.
Ignoring the fact that someone was still sleeping in the ward, Levy slammed his hands heavily on the control panel of the machine.
The man didn't wake up, but he accidentally pressed something and entered the password. The instrument screen flashed twice and displayed the previous medical records.
Levi had no interest in looking at this nonsense. Just as he was about to turn off the equipment, a glance out of the corner of his eye caught a familiar name—Qin Chu.
The medical center is currently short-staffed and the management of equipment is chaotic. Unexpectedly, this equipment turned out to be the one that was previously connected to Qin Chu's sleep pod.
Levy frowned as he glanced through the medical records.
The instrument records the fluctuations in consciousness of the patient in the sleep chamber. Unexpectedly, the initial fluctuations in consciousness of this person named Qin Chu were almost zero.
Looking at the record, Levy couldn't help but chuckle, thinking to himself that it truly was a personification of military regulations.
He continued scrolling down, only to find that, without him noticing, the consciousness of this "personification of military regulations" gradually fluctuated more, slowly approaching the average line of the data, and even reaching a peak in the later stages, with the curve rising and falling dramatically.
Levimo stroked his chin, unaware of what Qin Chu had encountered in the sleep pod.
He tried to continue reading, but found that the data recording abruptly stopped, as if someone had forcibly disconnected the instrument from the sleep pod.
I glanced at it twice; there didn't seem to be anything I needed to pay attention to.
But his gaze suddenly fell on the character profile in the upper right corner. Perhaps because the man in black had mentioned the name, Levy became unusually curious.
He opened the data, and the photo, which had previously been only the size of a coin, suddenly enlarged and filled the entire screen of the instrument.
A standard ID photo; the person is wearing a military cap, has dark eyes, and possesses an exceptionally handsome face with naturally superior facial contours. Even on this not-so-high-definition screen, he is still excessively good-looking.
Levy was taken aback for a moment.
He knew Qin Chu.
I encountered him when I was in military school, but I only caught a glimpse of him from afar.
Logically speaking, this person shouldn't be attractive to him; he dislikes people who are as boring as military regulations.
But when the photo was presented, Levy couldn’t help but look at it again and again, without even realizing that his gaze was lingering.