Chapter 27: The Twenty-Seventh Day of Being a Salted Fish

“Send Siming off the Desolate Planet as soon as possible?” Goudan was stunned. “Why? Did something happen?”

“Nothing much, I just feel like he should leave,” Lu Yuan replied nonchalantly. “It’s not much trouble anyway, so I’ll give him a hand.”

Nothing much?

If nothing was wrong, would you suddenly change your mind and actually put in some effort?

Goudan didn’t believe a word of it.

But Goudan didn’t press further.

“Oh,” he said.

He knew very well that even if he asked, Lu Yuan wouldn’t answer.

In Goudan’s eyes, Lu Yuan was a very peculiar person.

The vast majority of people have varying degrees of intimacy with those around them, distinguishing between who is close and who is distant. But Lu Yuan almost never did.

Goudan had known Lu Yuan for nearly a year. If one had to say, he was already the person most familiar with Lu Yuan on the Desolate Planet. Goudan had received a lot of help from Lu Yuan, and they cared for and trusted each other.

Yet, Goudan didn’t feel like he could be considered Lu Yuan’s friend.

Lu Yuan treated everyone the same way.

In his world, no one was special.

He would certainly help people, but this help was without selectivity or specific bias. It wouldn’t change based on who the recipient was.

As long as it didn’t trouble him, or as long as it saved him more trouble in the long run, he was willing to help anyone and make things convenient for them. Or, even if it was a bit of a hassle, as long as it was within his range of tolerance, he was occasionally willing to exert himself a little. The prerequisite was that there had to be something about you that could move him.

Goudan believed Siming felt the same way.

Siming hadn’t been here long.

But by comparison, Goudan felt that he and Siming could already be considered friends. They worked together every day, mocked and laughed with each other, and chatted about their pasts and their hopes for the future.

They already understood each other, and their boundaries were gradually blurring.

Lu Yuan was different. Lu Yuan had a knack for guarding his sense of distance so fiercely that no one could take a step closer. His emotions were always hidden, his past was always unknown, and he was always uninterested in others.

He was just there. He rarely refused, he was kind to everyone, he never lost his temper, and he asked for nothing.

It was as if he existed in a world that belonged only to him. He could reach out at any time, whenever he wished, but no one could enter.

Sometimes, Goudan even wondered if the Lu Yuan from before he came to the Desolate Planet was also like this… isolated from the world.

Otherwise, it was hard to explain why he had stayed on the Desolate Planet for so long without feeling any homesickness.

To Goudan, although the Desolate Planet had many, many flaws, if he were to leave alone for a distant place, he would still miss it. Moreover, Lu Yuan had come here from such a wonderful place.

So, what exactly happened to make Lu Yuan want to exert himself again?

What did that kid Siming do now?

Goudan lay on the Starship, gazing at the unshielded sky and the brilliant Milky Way. At this moment, he suddenly felt like going back a bit sooner.

–

And Goudan did indeed return very quickly.

The next day, when the people on the Starship woke up one after another, the original captain was shocked.

In just one night, they had reached their first destination!

The Desolate Planet was a very large planet. Coupled with the influence of the planet’s magnetic field and atmospheric currents, ordinary aircraft simply couldn’t fly here. Even a Starship capable of navigating the harsh environments of space couldn’t fly very fast here. And the various locations where they dumped garbage were very far apart.

Starting from Lu Yuan’s area, reaching the first destination would take at least two days and two nights of flight at top speed. If they encountered bad weather, it would take even longer.

The captain’s name was Yu Cheng. He was in his early forties and had graduated with a degree in aviation from an obscure university on an obscure planet. He had over twenty years of flight experience and had been the captain of this Garbage Ship for five years.

He had never heard of a Starship being able to fly at three times its limit speed.

Goudan chuckled. “You guys aren’t up to snuff. With so many people controlling this Starship, you’re not even as good as Lu Yuan’s remote control.”

The captain: “…”

He had never heard of a Starship having remote control either.

But then again, that was Lu Yuan.

Fair enough.

In short, with Lu Yuan’s help, by the time the crew finished their circuit and returned home, only five days had passed of what was originally planned as a month-long journey.

Goudan now understood why Lu Yuan said no one would come to check on the status of this Starship within two months.

Every time the captain performed a mission, he had to wander the Desolate Planet for a full three months, dumping garbage at seventeen locations. Then he had to spend another month returning to the Mothership stationed outside the Desolate Planet.

The Garbage Ship was far too much of a piece of junk; it didn’t have the capacity for Warp. Therefore, crossing interstellar space was also very time-consuming for them.

After returning to the Mothership, they would Warp along with it, and only then could they go home.

The captain only performed one mission a year. Each time took nearly half a year.

During the three months on the Desolate Planet and the two months traveling between the Desolate Planet and the Mothership, they were also unable to connect to the StarNet.

There were no base stations here.

Due to the special environment of the Desolate Planet, they also couldn’t maintain radio communication with the Mothership.

So, during these five months, no one could get any news of them.

Even if they died on the Desolate Planet, no one would know.

Goudan suddenly felt that people on the outside didn’t have it easy either. For people like the captain, the half-year when they weren’t on a mission might be fine, but the half-year on duty was probably worse than life for those on the Desolate Planet.

The captain and his crew felt this deeply. The two who had families even took out photos of their wives and children, speaking of their homesickness.

It seems everyone misses home after all, Goudan thought.

Goudan had asked the captain why they were assigned such a mission.

Wouldn’t it save more time and effort to have them dump the garbage in a few adjacent sectors?

The captain said he didn’t know either. No one had ever explained the reason for doing it this way. They had made some guesses, but none had any basis or made much sense.

Anyway, after a few days together, Goudan gradually became familiar with the captain and his crew.

Oh right, Yu Cheng.

And his four subordinates: Xu Lan, Zhou Yulin, Zhang Xiyin, and Li Miao.

Goudan always forgot these people’s names. It was probably because their names were too complicated; for a person from the Desolate Planet who didn’t have much contact with outsiders, they were really hard to remember.

So, they had now been renamed Captain, Ship One, Ship Two, Ship Three, and Ship Four.

Li Miao: “Who wants to be called Ship Four! It sounds like ‘Death’!”

At times like this, the others would usually pat his shoulder sympathetically. “Calm down, our names aren’t much better.”

The short journey passed quickly amidst the noise and chatter.

In just a few days, they saw the other half of the planet currently in the sweltering heat of midsummer; they saw the far north where the sun hadn’t been seen for half a year; they saw deserts filled with gold where no plants grew; they saw the boundless ocean and pale stone beaches; they saw mountain peaks where humans could only survive by climbing with ropes…

On the way back, Goudan even felt a bit like he hadn’t seen enough.

The urgency of a few days ago had been quickly tossed to the back of his mind.

But as they gradually approached their own sector, that emotion was quickly replaced by relief.

An unannounced blizzard had been falling relentlessly for over a day and had yet to stop. Looking into the distance, everything was a sea of white. Even after the Starship landed at the junkyard, Goudan still couldn’t see the houses not far away.

Goudan stepped off the Starship. Leaving the range of Lu Yuan’s Mental Power protection, the piercing northern wind immediately whipped into his collar.

Goudan shivered instantly.

In just a few days, the temperature had dropped by a full twenty degrees. The howling wind and snow announced the early arrival of winter.

A second later, Lu Yuan’s Mental Power gathered around them again, and everyone finally breathed a sigh of relief. Behind them, the battered Starship trembled in the wind and snow, letting out a hum as if it were about to collapse.

“It’s cold, come back quickly,” Lu Yuan’s voice sounded in their ears.

“Okay,” Goudan replied.