Chapter 55 Part 2

The group sat down at their usual round dining table.

Jiang Ye took out the three fragments one by one and pieced them together. Miraculously, after the two semicircles formed a ring, the little orb slotted smoothly into the ring and began to rotate, glowing with a cold, metallic sheen.

“This little thing is so small. Is it really useful?” Bai Tao, sprawled on the table, stared at the fragments that defied mechanical principles and frowned.

Jiang Ye chuckled helplessly. “It’s just the core. The real space communication station is huge. This is all that’s left after it was destroyed—a core that’s hard to destroy.”

“Just the core? Is it still useful now? How do we use it!” Bai Tao anxiously straightened up from the table.

“We don’t need to use it, and we couldn’t even if we wanted to.” Jiang Ye let go, and the fragments floated in midair. The orb and ring rotated slowly on their own without any wind. “As long as they’re assembled, it becomes a communicator orb that monitors and sends signals on its own.”

“What do you mean?” Bai Tao was confused. “Monitors on its own? Monitors what? Human numbers? There are so many humans—that’s even more far-fetched.”

Jiang Ye smiled. “There are even more far-fetched things. Remember? We humans inherently have faint mental power.”

Bai Tao didn’t take it seriously. “What can mental power do?”

Thinking of all the ways mental power had been used so far—all targeting the mind—Bai Chen Zhu fell into thought.

Jiang Ye explained, “The total amount of human mental power is limited. A drastic change in the total mental power indicates instability in the population, which will trigger the communicator orb to automatically send an alert to the alliance—this is according to someone in Bai Chen Zhu’s family. It’s one of the clauses in the alliance treaty they signed. The alliance will come to investigate promptly upon receiving the signal.”

“By the time they come, it’ll be too late.” Bai Tao said wistfully. “They don’t come early or late, only after things go wrong. If that’s the case, why not send someone from the start? We have embassies elsewhere.”

At this, she suddenly realized something.

Tang Zhao reminded her, “Embassies are very conspicuous. What if something happened to all of them…”

Such an obvious flaw—the other side had no reason to ignore it.

Damn! Bai Tao covered her mouth, eyes wide.

Mental power total. Zhou Zhuo Hua tapped her chin with her index finger in thought. She looked up and pulled the topic back from where Bai Tao and Tang Zhao had derailed it. “By what you’re saying, the Insect Race couldn’t come to Earth in large numbers. Plus, their Male Insects have very powerful mental power superpowers, so they definitely couldn’t come.”

“Right.” Jiang Ye laughed. “Sister Zhuo Hua is as sharp as ever. Actually, there aren’t many Insect Race on Earth right now—but that’s compared to eight billion humans. Now human numbers have plummeted sharply and will only decrease further. What their species is most famous for is combat prowess, and they can fly too. All very tricky.”

“Wait!” Tang Zhao let out a voice even louder than Zhou Zhuo Hua’s. He widened his eyes and looked at Bai Chen Zhu. “Brother Bai, didn’t you lose your memory? How do you still remember about someone in your family? Was it that woman in the white coat we met that day?!”

Jiang Ye and Bai Chen Zhu both fell silent for a moment.

As the saying goes, one lie needs another to cover it. They’d both forgotten about the “Bai Chen Zhu lost his memory” thing.

Bai Chen Zhu pressed his temples, his head aching. Deceiving outsiders was one thing, but deceiving their own people weighed heavier on the conscience. But what could he do? Tell them: Actually, I’m a book transmigrator, Jiang Ye is reborn, so we know all this?

That would be insane.

This was much harder to prove than the existence of aliens.

Bai Chen Zhu gave up thinking about it. Propping his chin, he turned to stare at Jiang Ye, dumping the whole mess in his lap.

Jiang Ye turned his head. “He’s lost his memories, but I haven’t.”

Jiang Ye struggled to explain it away. “We were classmates before, good friends. He told me everything right before he lost his memories. So I don’t know exactly which family member it was, but no matter who said it—look, aren’t these fragments and superpowers right in front of us now? That proves it’s all real.”

As for the claim of their “good relationship,” Zhou Zhuo Hua—who had witnessed their early clashes—stayed silent, merely furrowing her brow. She knew there were tons of suspicious points. If it were up to her to investigate, their flimsy answers would be full of holes like a sieve.

Though she lacked Li Min Nian’s superpowers, she could vaguely discern truth from lies, so she didn’t speak up. Over words from the mouth, she trusted actions over intentions.

They had talked about these things long ago, but Jiang Ye had been vague back then, leaving everyone only half-understanding. It wasn’t until today, after all these events, that the veil was fully lifted.

Perhaps due to prior mental preparation, the three of them weren’t too doubtful and accepted it quite naturally. They just had a tiny bit of confusion over the details.

Bai Chen Zhu clapped his hands to draw attention. “Alright, the topic’s veered off. We’re discussing the fragments. Now that we have this one, we should think about the next step. Where’s the fourth fragment?”

Jiang Ye gave an address. “Deer Cry Ancient City.”

Bai Chen Zhu mentally calculated the distance in his head. That place was far—even driving, given the current situation, it would take several days.

“Only you know the fragment’s location? Jiang Ye.” Zhou Zhuo Hua said seriously. “This is important. If the Insect Race you mentioned knows too…”

“They probably don’t know at this point.” Jiang Ye thought for a moment. “Probably.”

“If I were their leader,” Zhou Zhuo Hua said gravely, “after killing so many people, I wouldn’t leave anything harmful to me unchecked. We’ve had smooth sailing so far, but we need to be extra careful from here on out.”

Everyone’s mood sank.

Zhou Zhuo Hua took a deep breath and forced a smile. “Alright, alright, just a reminder. Let’s not rush off. Spend the next few days gathering supplies and preparing. Heading into the mountains means we need a lot of stuff.”

Back in the room, Bai Chen Zhu still had Zhou Zhuo Hua’s words in mind. He asked, “Jiang Ye, how do you know the locations of those fragments?”

Jiang Ye paused, then sat on the edge of the bed. “At first, no one knew they were fragments. They just ended up in mutants’ hands—like the mutated cow in Floating Cloud City or Bai Guang Zheng in Luozhou City. They wreaked havoc everywhere until the base leaders noticed and hunted them down, claiming the fragments as trophies.”

“Once we learned their purpose from survivor accounts back then, we tried uniting the bases to search together. Luckily, the fragments fell in a range around the crash site and weren’t too scattered. But in the end, we only found four. That’s why we couldn’t put them to use for so long.”

“And for the last one, I only know the general area.”

That was why, the moment he woke up, he urgently sought out these fragments—to avoid a decade of detours.

He couldn’t save everyone, of course. But if things resolved fast enough, before the infection spread further, more uninfected people might survive.

Bai Chen Zhu propped his chin, pondering. “So you’re saying the searches for those previous four fragments never ran into the Insect Race?”

“Right.”

Bai Chen Zhu nodded and leaned against the table. Actually, he was always a pessimist, so bad possibilities inevitably cropped up in his mind now.

To think they had to face off against an entirely unknown race.

Bai Chen Zhu joked, “Jiang Ye, what do we do? I don’t want to do this anymore. How about you run away with me?”

One standing, one sitting. Hearing this, Jiang Ye looked down and pinched the fingers dangling at Bai Chen Zhu’s side. His well-proportioned hand had little softness to it, and his body temperature ran cool.

Jiang Ye blinked at him. “But haven’t I been the one leading you along this whole way, making you follow me?”

Bai Chen Zhu tilted his head, eyes curving into a smile. “So I’m a pitiful, fragile hostage, huh?”

Jiang Ye tugged his hand. Curious what he was up to, Bai Chen Zhu leaned down with the pull—only to get playfully patted on the cheek twice.

Bai Chen Zhu froze. Then he heard Jiang Ye confirm, “Yeah, you’ve been mine for a while now. Where else could you run to?”

“Hm?” Bai Chen Zhu snapped back, touching his cheek.

He straightened up, thought for a few seconds, dropped the playfulness, and said very seriously to Jiang Ye, “You need to fix that flirty habit of yours. Otherwise, people might misunderstand.”

If he didn’t know Jiang Ye so well, he’d think Jiang Ye was dropping some major hint.

Bai Chen Zhu had put up with Jiang Ye’s flirtiness for a long time.

Jiang Ye asked, puzzled, “Why? Misunderstand what? What’s to misunderstand? Isn’t it the truth?”

Bai Chen Zhu sighed, hesitating to speak. “You can’t just say stuff like that to people.”

“Who else can I say it to?” Jiang Ye released his hand, leaned back on both hands, and smiled at Bai Chen Zhu. “I’m not the type to chat up random strangers on the street.”

Bai Chen Zhu didn’t know what to say. Maybe it was his particular orientation making him overthink—Jiang Ye hadn’t done anything wrong. Straight guys were always like that, no boundaries—sitting on laps and such was commonplace.

He let it drop, skipped the topic, and turned to go find Tang Zhao to inventory supplies.

But his wrist was grabbed.

Looking back, he saw Jiang Ye looking tense. “Hey! You’re really mad?”

Jiang Ye scratched his head irritably, thinking he was upset over the “kidnapper and hostage” joke, so he tried to explain. “Don’t be mad. I meant it literally.”

“And I only say those jokes to you.”

…

What did “only to you” mean? Bai Chen Zhu took a deep breath. “You…”

“What’s wrong with me?”

“Shut up.”

“Huh? Oh, okay.” Jiang Ye watched him with puppy-dog eyes.