Chapter 20: Day Twenty of Lying Flat Like a Salted Fish

The thunderous drumming stopped abruptly at its most frantic and passionate peak. Silence filled the shack for two seconds before the harp began to play softly.

Ying Ying sat by the harp, gently plucking the strings. The harp’s volume wasn’t high, but its tone was clear and pleasant, soothing the heartbeats that had raced along with the drums, beat by beat, ripple by ripple.

A flute joined in at the perfect moment, rising from low to high, shifting from transparent clarity to a bright, soaring melody. The harp quickened its pace to match, the two instruments weaving together as the pitch climbed higher and higher.

Then, a horn blast suddenly rang out! Like a signal to charge, the drums resumed, dominating the soundscape the moment they entered. For a time, the flute and harp were overwhelmed, their melodies flickering like candlelight in a storm.

But then, the Guqin¹ cut in. As one of humanity’s oldest instruments, it possessed a unique voice even in this era. The clanging notes were solemn and stirring, entering the fray with absolute calm and resolve.

Finding their backbone once more, the flute and harp regained their steady composure. The five instruments played in unison for a while; during this movement, the drums and horn softened, while the flute became more melodic and lingering, and the harp grew ornate and elegant.

The music slowed, gradually taking on a tone of joy and celebration. One by one, the teenagers stopped playing. After a brief Guqin solo, the entire piece reached its conclusion.

Lu Yuan’s expression had gradually softened throughout the performance. By the time the music faded, a faint smile even touched his lips. He looked almost nostalgic.

The shack remained silent for a long moment before Lu Yuan finally opened his eyes. He saw the children looking at him with expectant gazes.

Even though only a few minutes had passed, and despite the late autumn chill, the sheer intensity of their performance had left them drenched in sweat. As a girl, the drummer Er Ya lacked the raw stamina of the boys, and since drumming was physically demanding work, Lu Yuan could see beads of sweat rolling down from her temples.

It was as if they had just fought a battle.

Perhaps they really had.

The choice of instruments wasn’t perfectly ideal, their technical skill wasn’t masterful, and many parts of the composition were overly simple or unrefined.

Yet, as Lu Yuan listened to the piece, it felt as though a great campaign had unfolded before his eyes.

And none of the flaws were actually the fault of these children.

The instruments had all come from the last Garbage Ship. Most were battered and broken, and finding five functional ones had been difficult enough. Designing a piece that could actually harmonize the distinct timbres of these specific instruments was an even greater challenge.

From the moment they received the instruments to composing and practicing, only a little over a month had passed. To have reached this level of proficiency was already astonishing.

Lu Yuan had heard of others learning music. Many children studied for years, practicing sporadically, before they could complete a complex piece. The threshold for composition was higher still.

But these children had no teacher; they had relied entirely on their own exploration. Reaching this level was enough to surprise even Lu Yuan.

However, they might not have been entirely without a teacher.

Lu Yuan thought for a moment and asked, “Did you compose the entire piece yourselves?”

The teenagers exchanged glances.

Lu Yuan already had his answer.

Er Ya bit her lip and spoke up. “The drumming at the beginning wasn’t us. Uncle Siming taught us that part.”

“But everything after that was our own work! Really!” Tiechui emphasized.

“I see.” Lu Yuan nodded.

No wonder. So Siming had a hand in this.

“We originally designed a drum sequence too,” Er Ya explained. “But after Uncle Siming heard it, he said he had a more suitable one he could teach us. So we used that.

“That drum part is really good. Maybe… our own music doesn’t quite live up to it…”

“No,” Lu Yuan interrupted her. “The music you composed is also very good. I’m very satisfied. As for these other instruments…”

He looked around, his gaze sliding over each instrument before stopping on a violin missing a string.

Then he smiled slightly and said in a low voice, “I’ll help you fix them up.”

Inside the control room of the Garbage Ship, the moment Lu Yuan’s smile appeared, Siming and Goudan recoiled in their seats.

In the footage before them, Lu Yuan had clearly turned his head toward the camera on purpose.

He narrowed his eyes, his dark gray gaze seemingly piercing through the lens to look directly into Siming’s face.

And then he had suddenly smiled.

Siming and Goudan were horrified!

After a moment of silence, Goudan grimaced. “Does he know we’re secretly watching him?”

Siming shot back, “What do you think?”

“…”

The Captain chuckled. “Hehe.”

The two of them suddenly identified the culprit. They turned their heads simultaneously, glaring at him.

“Why did you think he wouldn’t know?” The Captain blinked and asked, “That’s Lu Yuan we’re talking about.”

“…”

Silence.

After a long while, Goudan suddenly grabbed the Captain’s collar and shook him violently. “Then why didn’t you warn us! Ahhh!”

The Captain looked serene, almost amused.

Goudan paused. “…Hey, it seems like you’re not afraid of us at all anymore?”

“I’ve realized something,” the Captain answered honestly. “If Lu Yuan wanted me dead, I’d be dead already. If you two wanted me dead, I’d be dead too. Even if I bought my life with information you didn’t have…”

He glanced at his four subordinates nearby. “They would have been dead long ago.

“The fact that we’re still breathing means you don’t want to kill us. Besides, Lu Yuan is the Empire’s War God; he’s always been our protector! Why would he kill us? What is there to fear when I’m by Lu Yuan’s side?”

“You’re quick to catch on,” Goudan muttered, disgruntled.

Siming, however, remained unusually silent.

Through the lens, Lu Yuan was using his lip movements to speak to him: “Those drumbeats… I’ve heard them before.”

On his way to this Desolate Planet.

–

Lu Yuan had not arrived on the Desolate Planet by conventional means.

A starship losing control in the vacuum of space is a terrifying thing.

For a drifting ship with zero power to happen to float near a star, be captured by its gravity, and have that star happen to be a habitable planet… it was like asking someone to close their eyes and draw a random line on a massive sheet of paper, hoping it would pass through one specific, predetermined point.

Even on a normal sheet of paper, such a thing would be nearly impossible. The universe was a “paper” of a vastly different scale.

Under such circumstances, a disabled starship would normally be doomed to drift forever in the lonely void, untethered and lost.

Yet Lu Yuan, despite his Command Ship being completely disabled with no hope of timely rescue, had crossed nearly half the galaxy—tens of thousands of light-years—in just a few days to crash-land on this Desolate Planet.

It was practically impossible.

Even light would take tens of thousands of years to travel from that battlefield to this planet. Without control and without the ability to Warp², how had he arrived here so precisely?

More absurdly, similar events had happened more than once—

Zhu Rong’s mother had also fallen onto this Desolate Planet from a battlefield where she was fighting the Zerg.

Lu Yuan had no idea why this happened. There was no way to investigate.

Shortly after the Command Ship lost control, the life support system failed. In the oxygen-deprived environment, he had lost consciousness, only waking up after arriving on the Desolate Planet.

The only thing he knew was—

While unconscious, he had heard a sequence of drumbeats.

Translator’s Notes