Chapter 25: Twenty-Fifth Day of Living Like a Salted Fish

Old Fourth fell silent.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to speak. He was simply used to silence, having long since forgotten how to get close to others.

This was exactly why Lu Yuan was encouraging him to talk.

Previously, Lu Yuan hadn’t noticed much. Although he knew Old Fourth’s home was always empty and that the occasional person seeking repairs wouldn’t exchange more than a few words with him, Lu Yuan had simply assumed Old Fourth preferred a quiet life.

But lately, Old Fourth had been coming to his shop constantly. Even if he didn’t speak or have any business, he would still come. This made Lu Yuan realize that the man also yearned for a bit of liveliness.

In the past, he probably just lacked a reason or felt too embarrassed.

Under these circumstances, Lu Yuan was willing to give him a chance to reintegrate into a crowd. After all, it wasn’t difficult for Lu Yuan. It was just a matter of a few words.

“Besides,” Lu Yuan said, “when you were out there, I was probably still very young. I never saw what the Empire was like back then. Only you would know.”

These words finally gave Old Fourth a breakthrough.

“I came here about twenty years ago,” he finally began. “But I think the Empire back then shouldn’t be much different from how it is now. Life was very convenient…”

He thought for a moment. “You wouldn’t be cold, and you wouldn’t go hungry.”

His words were simple, and he didn’t describe anything truly advanced or sophisticated, but the eyes of the children already lit up.

Not being cold and not going hungry were the most attractive words imaginable to them.

Perhaps it was the same for Old Fourth. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have blurted out such a sentence.

Lu Yuan glanced at him quietly.

Old Fourth stopped again.

He seemed to be organizing his thoughts or perhaps reminiscing. His hands didn’t stop wiping a component with a cloth, but he had already wiped that same part back and forth several times. The fabric was coarse, and the component was delicate and fragile; by now, it was nearly ruined.

Lu Yuan didn’t care much, and Old Fourth wasn’t in the mindset to care either.

“The Empire is huge, with many planets. I worked for a logistics company back then. I followed the logistics ships and visited many, many planets. Every single one was better than the Desolate Planet. I never imagined the Empire had a place like this. Even less did I imagine I would end up here.”

“How much better is ‘much better’?” Ying Ying asked. Beside her, Yan Yan was also watching intently.

Old Fourth was momentarily at a loss for words.

Suddenly, he realized he didn’t even know how to describe the outside world to these children.

What they had seen and known was simply too little, to the point that many things didn’t exist in their cognition at all. How do you explain color to the blind? How do you describe sound to the deaf? It was truly too difficult.

Old Fourth hesitated for a long time before saying, “The good food taken from that Garbage Ship is just the most ordinary stuff on the outside. The things in the cargo holds are even better than what you see in this shop. The houses outside are far warmer and more comfortable than this building.”

As he continued, Old Fourth’s speech became more fluid.

“Even better than these things?” The children marveled, looking toward Lu Yuan for confirmation.

Lu Yuan nodded to them, confirming Old Fourth’s claim.

“The StarNet has a holographic mode. When you log in, it’s like entering another world. Many games are in holographic mode; you can’t hold them in your hand, but you can be right inside them!” Old Fourth said. “Like your Mecha game. There’s nothing like that outside; there are only games that make you feel like your whole body is inside the Mecha, where every operation is exactly like real Mecha piloting, just with the difficulty lowered a bit.”

Zhu Rong’s eyes lit up. “Really?”

“There are virtual musical instruments too. You input the score, and the Artificial Intelligence simulates the performance directly. Although it can’t replace a human performance, they say composers love it because it’s so convenient.”

Old Fourth had opened the floodgates. Memories of his youth gradually surfaced. Although forty long years had passed, and although he had carefully buried and deliberately forgotten these memories to adapt to this place, recalling them now made his past life seem incredibly vivid.

A long time passed. He spoke until his throat was nearly parched before he finally stopped.

The whole circle was listening intently. Siming had finished making dinner at some point and was already sitting across from Lu Yuan, his gaze also fixed here, focused and serious.

Only Lu Yuan, having hastily eaten a few bites of food, was already lying back on the sofa, rotting away.

“The kind of Garbage Ship we see is a model that was phased out long ago,” Old Fourth said, returning to the topic of starships. “I graduated from university at twenty-three. The first starship I served on was better than a Garbage Ship. That was already forty years ago.”

“How can starships be getting worse?”

Old Fourth shook his head. “They’re getting better. It’s just that the good starships aren’t sent to the Desolate Planet.”

“Oh.” The children understood.

“I was an onboard engineer. For over a decade, I spent more than half of every year living on starships, traveling through the universe with them.

“Even on a starship, life was better than here. Starships are climate-controlled with no seasons. The food inside is relatively simple but rich in nutrients.

“On a starship, you can see many extraordinary sights. Sometimes we would get close to nebulae, where the youngest stars are. We would pass through wormholes; the Empire builds new wormholes every year to facilitate interstellar travel…”

Old Fourth spoke as he reminisced, and by the end, the rims of his eyes were slightly red. He paused and let out a deep, long sigh.

“Why did you come here?” Siming suddenly asked.

“…” Old Fourth was silent for a long time.

Then, to Siming’s surprise, he answered, “I don’t know.”

“It was supposed to be a very ordinary voyage,” Old Fourth said after thinking it over. “Supposedly, the company signed a contract with a research institute to help deliver a batch of equipment.

“But for some reason, when we arrived, there were no researchers in the institute, only a group of guards. As soon as they saw our starship land, they rushed over and arrested all of us.

“Then I was thrown into prison. Not long after, I was sent to court. I’m a mechanical engineer, yet they insisted I was a biological engineer! Our entire crew from the logistics company somehow became employees of the research institute!”

Old Fourth’s voice grew angry. “They said we were conducting human experiments in that institute! They said we were heinous criminals! They said many people were demanding our execution, but out of ‘humanitarianism,’ they wouldn’t kill us. They would only send us to the Desolate Planet!”

Scapegoats.

Scapegoats who would never again have the chance to defend themselves.

This was exactly why Lu Yuan was extremely suspicious of the population makeup of the Desolate Planet.

Back when he first met Old Fourth, Lu Yuan had specifically looked up the man’s files out of curiosity, or perhaps a vague impulse.

The files were perfectly crafted.

Naturally, they didn’t record Old Fourth’s innocence. They only stated that this man was a mechanical engineer on the surface but actually worked for an evil human experimentation facility, where he committed countless horrific atrocities.

If it had been any other crime, perhaps Lu Yuan wouldn’t have discovered the problem so easily. He would have simply thought that those sent to the Desolate Planet were indeed beyond redemption.

But as it happened, he had stayed in that very research institute for a long time.

And Old Fourth was definitely not a member of that institute.

He was just unfortunate enough to replace the real members of the institute, bearing the guilt that should have been theirs.

And Lu Yuan suspected there were probably many people like him who had been sent to the Desolate Planet.

Because the Desolate Planet was simply too perfect a place to dispose of these scapegoats.

It was much better than a prison.

Prisons allowed visitations, many people were confined together, and new people arrived constantly.

But the Desolate Planet was different. It was vast, with a large population. Adding a few newcomers was like dropping water into the ocean; it wouldn’t change the overall environment at all.

Moreover, it was truly isolated from the world.

Garbage Ships came occasionally, but they never landed. Except for someone like him, it was impossible for anyone else to use a Garbage Ship to leave.

As the only place in the Empire without a connection to the StarNet, even the last channel of communication with the outside world was severed. Not only could they not speak out, they couldn’t even hear the voices from outside.

If this were an era where the death penalty could still be carried out, executing the scapegoats would naturally be safer. But in the current era, exile to the Desolate Planet was the best choice.

No matter how much public attention these scapegoats had received before, once they were dropped onto the Desolate Planet, they would completely lose any chance of having their cases overturned.

“So you were part of that wave too,” Siming suddenly remarked from the side.

The children nearby listened with some confusion. They didn’t yet understand what human experimentation meant, nor did they grasp why those people called Old Fourth heinous or why they sent him to the Desolate Planet.

But Siming understood.

Lu Yuan tilted his head slightly and said nothing.

There were many “involved parties” in that case. Siming had likely encountered other victims before.

“Have you met my colleagues before?” Old Fourth asked.

“…Sigh.” Siming let out a long breath.

He paused, then said earnestly, “Do you still want to find a way to overturn the case? I don’t know how to do it yet, but maybe we can figure something out together!”

He glanced toward Lu Yuan.

Lu Yuan: “…”

Lu Yuan shook his head. “I don’t know. Unless I reclaim my identity and identify the real criminals. But there are surely other cases, and for those, there’s nothing I can do.”

He had once been inside the research institute, so he could at least exert some influence on this specific case. But regarding the others, he was powerless.

So, even though he knew the situation, he had been content to let things slide.

It was too difficult, too much trouble. He wasn’t suited for this kind of work. Once he committed to it, he wouldn’t be able to extricate himself for another eight or ten years.

Lu Yuan didn’t consider himself a particularly good person. At the very least, he was currently unwilling to sacrifice that much time and energy for the sake of others.

And so…

Lu Yuan looked at Siming, their eyes meeting.

And so, he truly did admire people like Siming. People who held noble dreams and were willing to strive and fight for the happiness of others.

Such a person was, in essence, far more noble and dignified than a “salted fish” like himself.

Lu Yuan gave a soft, quiet smile.