Chapter 32: Thirty-Second Day of Being a Salted Fish

“Drumming?” Geshu Qing thought for a moment and shook his head. “I didn’t hear any sound.”

Lu Yuan lowered his eyes and nodded.

He actually hadn’t held much expectation to begin with.

He had a premonition that the sound of those drums might hide many secrets, and what he had encountered was merely the tip of the iceberg. This had always made him feel a faint resistance toward the matter, a reluctance to get involved.

• It felt like it would be a lot of trouble.

But now that he had received a negative answer, he found a strange sense of disappointment rising in his heart. He didn’t quite understand it; it felt peculiar.

However, he quickly ignored it.

Lu Yuan was not the type to be sensitive to his own emotions. On the contrary, he was quite dull.

He rarely experienced emotional fluctuations, and even when he did, they were usually slight and easily overlooked. Moreover, he didn’t care about them. In fact, throughout the years past, there were many times when he had to deliberately dampen the impact of emotions on himself.

“Actually, most of the sounds I receive are human voices,” Geshu Qing explained. “But there are no complete conversations, almost all of them are scattered fragments and phrases. I might need to organize them carefully to piece together some content.

“Right now, it’s just a mess of sentences. And the voices of the people saying each sentence or word are different… in short, it’s very chaotic.

“I’ve been thinking about slowly organizing them…”

“We can help you,” Siming said.

He was also very concerned about this matter.

The way Zhu Rong’s mother – his friend and someone who could even be called a life mentor – Chen Xingfan, had arrived on the Desolate Planet was actually very similar to Lu Yuan’s. What Lu Yuan cared about, he cared about as well.

Additionally, Siming was deeply concerned about the secrets of the Desolate Planet itself: what it used to be like, why it had become this way, and how to change the current situation.

He was perhaps even more concerned than Lu Yuan.

Geshu Qing smiled at him. “Sure. I think I can write those phrases down and then piece them together. If someone helps, the work will be much easier!”

Geshu Qing knew very well that he was going to live here – at least for a while – so he needed to get on good terms with the people here as soon as possible.

He couldn’t deliberately try to curry favor. That would seem sycophantic and could easily backfire, causing the others to dislike him. All he could do was remain polite and respectful, and respond to their kindness with enough enthusiasm and gratitude.

Even if that kindness wasn’t entirely pure. But when did free lunches ever fall from the sky? In many cases, mutual interest was a sufficiently stable bond. Besides, cooperating with this person was genuinely helpful to him.

At the very least, it guaranteed that in the coming days, he would have enough time to interact, speak, and work together with the people here. Working together was the easiest way for everyone to get to know each other.

Lu Yuan observed his reaction, thinking to himself that while this youth wasn’t old, he certainly had a lot of schemes.

…Very much in line with the usual style of the Geshu family.

But he didn’t particularly mind.

“Fine.” Siming nodded to Geshu Qing, agreeing to his arrangement.

“However, speaking of the drumming, perhaps two things are worth mentioning,” Geshu Qing added.

This was addressed to Lu Yuan again.

In their brief conversation, he had already realized who was dominant among the people in the room.

The man who had just offered to help him and the burly man next to him who called himself a director held relatively high status in this house. But the core figure was still the one with silver hair.

At the same time, the one who knew the most was likely also this person.

Therefore, Geshu Qing was very diligent when answering Lu Yuan’s questions.

Geshu Qing recalled carefully and said, “First, although there was no drumming in the content related to you, if I had to say, there was content about a group of people drumming.

“Some were images carved on walls, others were actual scenes. Such images appeared many times, with many people involved, and the people inside were different every time.

“However, there were also many scenes of people playing other instruments. I’m not sure if the drums have any special significance.

“Furthermore, aside from the content I received with sound… or my memories of sounds, I seem to have heard some strange noises. They were also rhythmic tapping, but not drums; they sounded more like metal being struck.

“Very rhythmic.”

–

In short, after the conversation, Lu Yuan was surprised to find –

He indeed possessed more information, but instead of solving any problems, his questions had increased at the same rate!

Well, he wasn’t actually that surprised.

The more ignorant a person was, the fewer questions they had. The more one knew, the more problems would arise. Lu Yuan understood this clearly.

Moreover, Lu Yuan could feel that although no conclusions had been reached, this conversation had brought them closer to the answer.

It was like a jigsaw puzzle. He had already possessed some pieces, and now he had acquired more. Although these pieces couldn’t yet form a complete picture, the truth would eventually surface.

Lu Yuan was in no hurry to get the answer. At least, he believed he had nothing to be anxious about.

After chatting for a long while, everyone was tired. Goudan hadn’t even managed to eat yet, so he started eating now and dragged Geshu Qing along with him.

Although Geshu Qing had been unconscious for a day, his physical condition was fine. Aside from some discomfort and obvious muscle soreness he felt at the beginning, there were no adverse reactions.

This was quite normal.

People of the Desolate Planet were generally quite resilient.

Geshu Qing’s fainting was merely caused by receiving too much information and his brain momentarily overloading; it didn’t stem from any illness. Therefore, there would be no lingering effects upon waking.

In a place where one might feast one day and starve the next, going hungry for two days was really nothing. Siming had also fed him Nutrient Solution, so his digestive system was fine.

As for the body aches…

That was inevitable.

According to Geshu Qing’s memory, when he received the information from the Desolate Planet, he was standing on a very open patch of ground. Then he passed out.

Everyone guessed that the wind probably picked up after he fainted. Then the wind rolled him all the way here…

Being rolled by the wind for so long, it was impossible for things to remain calm. He had inevitably bumped into things. Geshu Qing had lifted his clothes to check; his body was already covered in black and blue bruises.

During the meal, everyone introduced themselves, and Geshu Qing gained some understanding of the situation here.

Like Geshu Qing, Goudan and Siming also intended to build a good relationship with him. Both sides hit it off, and the conversation was pleasant for both hosts and guest.

Lu Yuan didn’t care about any of this.

Anything was fine, everything was okay, not bad, quite good.

• This was his attitude toward the vast majority of things.

The small shop couldn’t accommodate too many people, so Siming stated he would take Geshu Qing to live at his place.

Lu Yuan and Goudan both knew he wanted to take the opportunity to talk more with Geshu Qing about the Desolate Planet and discuss his ideals for revitalizing it, so they both tacitly accepted his arrangement.

And so, Geshu Qing settled down here.

In the following days, Geshu Qing gradually transcribed the images and sentences from his memory.

Paper and pens, being rare items, were not available here. Fortunately, with Lu Yuan around, he manufactured several “typewriters.” They looked like ancient personal computers but only had text editing functions.

Geshu Qing could convert the things in his mind into text and input them into the “typewriter.” Then others could see and edit them through the other “typewriters.”

This was a somewhat arduous task. The amount of information in Geshu Qing’s head was truly not small. Especially since much of it existed in the form of images, describing them in words was not easy.

But Geshu Qing insisted he could do it.

He was literate and had even read many books. This was absolutely rare among the people of the Desolate Planet.

On one hand, there were truly not many books on the Desolate Planet. Most of the time, the Garbage Ships wouldn’t dump books – in fact, physical paper books were rare even outside the Desolate Planet now. And the Desolate Planet had no other channels to obtain books.

On the other hand, most people on the Desolate Planet wouldn’t spend time learning to read or study books.

When Lu Yuan first started making “merchandise,” because novel readers were simple and easy to make, he had made many and placed them here. Only later did he discover that such things almost never sold.

Other things would occasionally have buyers, but novels…

There weren’t even many literate people in this place!

That was why he had been so surprised when he saw that Zhu Rong was literate. He later learned that when Siming entrusted Zhu Rong to Lao Tong, he had specifically left many books for them. After Lao Tong settled here, she had continuously encouraged Zhu Rong to read them.

After Geshu Qing moved in with Siming, he was pleasantly surprised to see the collection of books there.

Siming generously allowed him to read them. He also reminded him that if he wanted to read, Lu Yuan had even more books.

However, Siming’s collection was indeed substantial.

Siming himself wasn’t particularly fond of reading, but he valued knowledge. Especially in a place as intellectually barren as a Desolate Planet, knowledge became increasingly vital. Thus, he always tried to collect books. Although books were scarce on a Desolate Planet, he and his subordinates had managed to accumulate a great many over the years.

Geshu Qing’s opinion of Siming instantly soared.

He was someone who loved to read.

To him, books were the best “teachers” he could find on this Desolate Planet.

The Desolate Planet was a wilderness, while books were civilization.

As an orphan, Geshu Qing had been taught by kind people when he was young, learning how to survive. But no one taught him how to “live” – how to lead a good life. Perhaps few people on a Desolate Planet understood such things anyway.

But books taught him.

Starting from a tattered children’s dictionary, Geshu Qing slowly absorbed knowledge, learning how to conduct himself and gaining a deeper understanding of the world.

He could travel to different places, meet various people, communicate with them, gather information, analyze that data, and explore the things he was curious about… all of these were things books had taught him.

If he hadn’t read books, Geshu Qing felt that even if he had awakened his Mental Power, he might never have discovered these wonderful things. He might have simply been plagued by those microorganisms forever, eventually dying from a bout of sheer claustrophobic terror.

–

Siming, however, did not follow through on his promise to help Geshu Qing organize his information. He pushed the task onto Lao Tong and Zhu Rong.

As for himself, he had a much more difficult mission –

Building a mecha.

Lu Yuan had previously handed Siming a reader containing information about mecha manufacturing.

From the very beginning, Lu Yuan had determined that the only way to leave the Desolate Planet was by mecha.

A starship was out of the question.

The larger the volume, the harder it was to accelerate, and the more energy was required for interstellar travel. The Garbage Ship was packed to the brim with energy, yet it only held enough for three months of operation around the planet, plus two months for the round trip to the Mothership.

To leave the Desolate Planet and reach the nearest Habitable Planet without a warp jump, two months was nowhere near enough time.

This was why, after Lu Yuan intercepted the Garbage Ship, he had dismantled it without hesitation. He never even considered letting Siming and the others use it to leave the Desolate Planet.

There simply wasn’t enough energy.

Of course, it wasn’t impossible to use it if they absolutely had to. If Lu Yuan wanted, he could have taken the Garbage Ship back to the Mothership, seized the Mothership itself, and then flown that elsewhere…

But Lu Yuan didn’t want to.

Siming and his people clearly didn’t have the skill for that, nor were they familiar with starships.

In short, to save as much energy as possible, one had to minimize the volume and weight of the craft.

Thus, a mecha became almost the only choice.

If they could have a single mecha and the energy salvaged from the Garbage Ship, flying to the nearest Habitable Planet became a possibility.

But it was only a possibility.

Achieving this on his own was nearly impossible for Siming.

Hand-crafting a mecha was far too difficult.

To reduce the size and mass of an object while maintaining its existing functions, the design had to be simpler and the components more precise.

Lu Yuan had provided the blueprints. But Siming couldn’t manufacture the precision parts.

Processing such parts required equally precise machinery, and Siming couldn’t even build the equipment.

Therefore, before Lu Yuan hijacked the Garbage Ship, Siming had reached a complete stalemate.

Progress had ground to a halt.

Perhaps after some time, Siming might have slowly found a way.

But that would likely have taken a very long time.

Fortunately, there was Lu Yuan.

Lu Yuan actually had a solution.

He hadn’t mentioned it before because he didn’t think it was urgent; he wanted Siming to learn slowly and research it himself. Only after he decided to help did he start thinking about teaching his own processing methods to Siming.

However, over the past few days, he had to use his Mental Power to pilot the starship every night. He couldn’t spare the focus to teach Siming, so it had been delayed. Now that Goudan was back, the matter was finally put on the agenda.

And so, Siming was dragged away by Lu Yuan to learn mecha construction, leaving him no time to help Geshu Qing with his data.

To solve Siming’s predicament, Lu Yuan provided a method that didn’t require processing equipment –

Processing with Mental Power.

Mental Power was more precise than human hands or eyes. Even the steadiest hand would tremble, and even the sharpest eye could not distinguish a gap of a hundred micrometers.

Precision parts often required accuracy at the nanometer or picometer level.

This was where Mental Power came into play.

The resolution of Mental Power was far greater than that of the eye.

Geshu Qing’s Mental Power allowing him to perceive microorganisms invisible to the naked eye was a classic example.

Therefore, using Mental Power to carve parts could achieve much higher precision.

The only problem was that it required training.

Lu Yuan took a piece of iron and demonstrated by carving a series of marks with gradually decreasing intervals.

At first, Siming could still see the distance between them. Later, he couldn’t even sense the existence of the marks. It wasn’t until Lu Yuan produced a high-magnification microscope for him that he could see those tiny, dense grooves.

Siming asked, “…Is this something a human can actually do?”

“Humans can do much more. This is just the simplest part.”

Lu Yuan lay on the sofa with a smile, reaching out to push a new reader toward him. “The method is in here. Study it well.”

Siming was speechless.

Lu Yuan encouraged him, “Work hard. I believe you can learn it, for your dreams! To walk off this Desolate Planet!”

Siming replied, “I don’t think I can learn this.”

Lu Yuan smiled. “I think you must learn it.

“You can’t expect me to build a mecha for you. It’s impossible; I won’t do something like that. It’s too exhausting.”