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Published at 20th of June 2024 05:43:17 AM


Chapter 66

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Chapter 66- Those Truths


Xi Guican did not log out immediately as usual. He stood in the dark corridor, his blue eyes emitting a cold light, resembling the eerie flames of hell.

It’s so dark here.

After transforming into human form, He Ruge no longer slept with him. Without He Ruge, the life that was supposed to change seemed no different.

He wanted to see He Ruyao, in any way possible. Just to catch a glimpse, even from a distance, would make the surging negative emotions recede like a tide.

The inner desire drove Xi Guican to take the first step. He walked faster and faster, eagerly heading towards the end of the corridor. Xi Guican reached the door of the monitoring room, placing his palm against the cold door.

Coming to find He Ruge at this late hour might frighten him.

Slowly, he withdrew his hands.

Xi Guican stood in front of the door, holding his breath. His tiger ears trembled slightly as he pressed them against the door, infusing energy into them, listening intently. However, he couldn’t hear He Ruge’s heartbeat.

He remembered He Ruge’s heartbeat, steady and powerful. He also remembered He Ruge’s breath, as gentle as the spring wind.

He even remembered He Ruge’s footsteps, a bit sluggish, lazy, just like how he had gradually walked into his heart and settled, never to move again.

But now, there was nothing. The monitoring room was just an empty house, unable to capture any sound from He Ruge.

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Where are you?

Didn’t you promise me? Next time you leave, you’ll let me know.

If all this wasn’t a game, he could stay by He Ruge’s side anytime, like a dragon guarding its treasure. Even in the damp and dark dragon lair, he could live contentedly every day. He was willing to spend all his time kissing He Ruge, just like a miser counting his money every day.

Xi Guican logged out of the game, staring into space in the quiet night. The spacious room felt like it harbored countless ghosts in the darkness. He turned on all the lights but still felt it wasn’t bright enough.

Next to him was a bag of newly bought fruit candies, all with a sweet strawberry flavor. Xi Guican sat on the lid of the game capsule, and for a moment, he thought he was sitting on a long coffin, buried with the deceased from the past.

He put a candy in his mouth, his face expressionless, chewing the candy into pieces. The slightly insignificant sweetness spread in his mouth. After tasting the sweetest things in the world, the pleasure these candies could provide was almost negligible.

Indeed, only ignorant and weak children could be easily appeased by a candy.

Adults had experienced much sweeter things than sugar, gradually developing their tastes. So encountering He Ruge was both his luck and misfortune.

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Xi Guican poured more than a dozen pieces of candy into his mouth together, chewing them expressionlessly. In the artificially created sweetness, he closed his eyes- it was too sweet and even caused slight pain, similar to the feeling of eating spicy.

The butt had been sitting on the hard game cabin for a long time. Perhaps tonight was the last time he would meet Mao Zhengyong, Xi Guican suddenly remembered the medicine search mouse Mao Zixie, who was now in charge of his condition

That audacious mouse who often shivered would often tell him some health tips. For example, “Ten men, nine hemorrhoid cases.” He advised Xi Guican not to sit often during his recovery, to move around more. In case he really got hemorrhoids, he shouldn’t hide the illness, as this mouse claimed to know a hemorrhoid expert.

Before, Xi Guican had not noticed one thing: Mao Zixie actually bore a resemblance to Mao Zhengyong, especially between the eyebrows. Mao Zixie’s always shrunk when he saw him, while Mao Zhengyong was calm and composed.

The difference in temperament between the two of them was like night and day, and Mao Zixie, who couldn’t even stand on the stage, wasn’t worthy to fill in Mao Zhengyong’s shoes.

But when Xi Guican ignored the difference in temperament between the two, he really found Mao Zhengyong and Mao Zixie to be surprisingly alike.

And they both had the surname Mao.

The surname Mao wasn’t a prominent one among the family of medicine rats.

Late at night, Xi Guican called Mao Zixie. The big gray mouse, who was sleeping soundly in his quilt was woken up by the “Xi Guican exclusive ringtone”.

Under Xi Guican’s deterrence, Mao Zixie didn’t show any signs of morning grumpiness. He softly said, “Major General Xi, are you feeling unwell now?” If it’s convenient for you, I’ll come to the door right now. ”

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The medicine-seeking mouse with a flattering face written on the video call may be more than three points similar to Mao Zhengyong- if you only look at the facial features, it can already reach six points of similarity.

Temperament really had a huge impact on appearance.

Xi Guican’s silence for a long time made Mao Zixie dare not come out, and when he was about to run out of breath, he suddenly heard the man in front of him who was like an emperor coldly ordered, “Tell me everything you know about Mao Zhengyong.”

“… Huh?”

Mao Zixie scratched his head and asked, “Why did you suddenly ask about my grandfather?”

“But you’re asking the right person, and no one else knows about it as well as I do!”

The word grandpa stirred up a thousand waves in Xi Guican’s heart. But even if he was already experiencing a tremendous feeling in his heart, his face was still calm on the surface.

“My grandfather, he is the pride of our Mao family!”

Speaking of Mao Zhengyong, Mao Zixie’s eyebrows and eyes suddenly relaxed a lot. He straightened up his small chest, but when he saw the icy appearance of Xi Guican, it quickly deflated like a balloon that had been punctured.

“Major General Xi, do you know the ‘Anlarhos Prize for Medicine’? This is the greatest honor in our medical profession, and my grandfather was its winner seventeen years ago!”

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Xi Guuican remained silent.

“My grandfather made significant contributions to the research of the mental consciousness field. Everyone says he’s a genius because no one else has such a profound understanding of these areas!” Mao Zixie’s eyes were filled with admiring gaze.

“It’s because of my grandfather that I chose to delve into the field of mental consciousness. However, I’m not very smart,” he became disheartened.

“There are many things I can’t understand, and all the concepts in the field of mental consciousness are elusive, with no practical opportunities. I think my grandfather is amazing. How did he come up with so many things out of thin air? I definitely couldn’t do it.”

Talking about his grandfather, Mao Zixie’s demeanor relaxed a lot. Even his address to Xi Guican unconsciously changed from “您*” to “你*.”

*T/N: 您 is a more formal/ polite way of addressing you in Chinese, while 你 sounds more casual

“Speaking of which, General Xí, you are quite a catch in our eyes,” Mao Zixie looked at Xí Guīcàn, smiling somewhat awkwardly.

“Because your illness is especially rare, like a treasure that’s hard to come by. Everyone wants to be your attending physician. Do you know, you are the second person in the entire interstellar history to have this illness! The first one was a patient my grandfather encountered seventeen years ago, supposedly a minor patient…”

His pupils suddenly contracted, while Mao Zixie continued to talk, Xi Guican’s memory seemed to flash back to many years ago. When he came out of the brainwashing room and was sent to the medical room, Mao Zhengyong seemed to have given him a diagnosis at that time—

Vortex Mental Devouring Syndrome!

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This memory was blurry because at that time, the monster inside him entirely controlled his body, and all memories given by the monster were very nightmare-like making him unable to distinguish if it was false, full of frenzied colors.

As a result, when he entered the medical room many years later and heard the name of this disease, he completely didn’t recall that past experience.

“…Supposedly, it was a minor patient who had Vortex Mental Devouring Syndrome, the first patient in the entire interstellar. My grandfather treated his mental consciousness in his own way. However, that method had significant flaws.”

“If, after adulthood, the person experienced a specific stimulus, the condition would relapse. Almost incurable, my grandfather’s notes mentioned that if that day really came, even if he tried his best to save, he couldn’t snatch back that life from the hands of death.”

“Where are the notes?!”

Xi Guican’s suddenly raised voice startled Mao Zixie. This timid medicine-seeking mouse turned into a bundle of nerves again.

He cautiously glanced at Xi Guican and said, “…The notes, the notes are with me, but this note is incomplete. Half of it was torn off and taken away by someone. The part that was taken away should be the more important one because the first half of the notes in my hands looks more like a diary.”

“Who took it?!”

Xi Guican felt like he had grabbed onto a crucial piece of information. The truth from many years ago seemed to be right in front of him, and a beam of light illuminated a corner of the thick fog.

“I really don’t know about this. My dad didn’t tell me,” Mao Zixie earnestly explained.

“I want to meet your father.”

Even if the other’s mouth was like a clamshell, Xi Guican had to pry it open.

Mao Zixie’s eyes suddenly dimmed. He whispered, “My dad committed suicide last year.”

“He said that my grandfather made a mistake back then, and it’s something the Mao family has to repay. My dad was very superstitious. He always believed in the idea of repaying debts from fathers to sons.”

“If the son didn’t repay, the grandson had to repay, generation after generation, and everyone would bear the sin. My dad, for many years, treated patients for free, always going to the poorest areas in the poorest galaxies. Last year, he was about to turn sixty. The average lifespan of our Mao family is one hundred and twenty or thirty, but my dad said he shouldn’t live that long.”

“So he chose to end his own life.”

“In fact, I’ve never understood what mistake my grandfather really made. In my eyes, he is my hero. My dad said that when I was five years old, there was a problem with my mental consciousness, and I became a vegetative.”

“My grandfather wasn’t originally researching the mental consciousness field. He changed the field he had studied for half his life because of my illness, delving into the mental consciousness field that had very little research at the time.”

“I slept for ten years. At that time, my dad thought I would never wake up again. Later, my grandfather came back like a hero. He cured me, organized his years of research, handed it over to the institute, and then received the highest honor.”

His name was Mao Zhengyong. He was a medicine-seeking mouse.

When his grandson contracted an incurable disease at the age of five, he abandoned the field he had diligently studied in the first half of his life and chose the less-regarded mental consciousness field.

For some reason, he went to the interstellar orphanage, participated in human experiments forbidden by the Federation. It’s unclear what happened, but he became a spy infiltrating into the space pirates.

This old man in his seventies or eighties did good deeds for most of his life. He was worthy of heaven, worthy of the earth, and even more worthy of their hearts.

The first interstellar war lasted for ten years, and ten years later, Mo Zhengyong who visibly aged returned along with the triumphant army. He saved his grandson, and he won the Anlarhos Medical Award.

Afterwards, at the most glorious moment of his life, he chose to commit suicide. He didn’t even attend the afternoon award ceremony; he died outside the noisy crowd. His will was to donate all his usable organs after death.

What’s more absurd was that he wanted his corpse to be thrown into the interstellar war, eaten by the insect race. If that couldn’t be realized, it could be fed to pigs or dogs, with just one request: not to let him rest in peace.

Perhaps, in the last moment before his cloudy eyes closed, two streams of old tears ran down into his graying temples.

He… was once guiltless.

However, in the end, he felt guilty.

Seven years after the first interstellar war, his grandson was regarded as a genius in the medical field. In seven years, he reached heights that ordinary people couldn’t achieve in their lifetimes.

Yes, his grandson inherited his legacy, becoming the youngest and most authoritative researcher in the current field of mental consciousness research. Even though some people secretly believed that he left a lot of valuable information for his grandson, it still couldn’t dim the brilliance of a genius.

At the age of thirty-two, Mao Zixie, although always obedient in front of Xi Guican, was highly respected in reality. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have become Xi Guican’s attending physician.

Xi Guican stared at Mao Zixie in a daze. In a trance, he seemed to see a young Mo Zhengyong, although he had never seen what Mo Zhengyong looked like in his youth. Still, he felt that Mo Zhengyong should be a more composed and serene version of Mao Zixie.

It turned out that from the beginning to the end, the Mao family was involved in his illness.

Like a silent atonement for the souls of the dead.

“…Give me the notes.”

Mao Zixie sent the notes  overnight, and repeatedly told Xi Guican not to destroy the notebook. After doing so, he reluctantly left.

The paper with the special interstellar preservation technique, even after more than ten years, the paper is still as new as ever, just like the owner of the note is still alive and has just written the note –

“Xiao Xie is sick, he is still so young, he hasn’t seen this wonderful world a few more times.”

“I’m a grandfather, I have to heal him. “

Medical notes were interspersed with bits and pieces of notes on everyday chores.

“It’s a bad environment and I don’t want to stay here.”

“I’ve seen a lot of children who just have it as hard as Xiaoxie. “

“This child has an unheard-of disease, so I am going to name it ‘Vortex Mental Devouring Syndrome,’ because his spiritual consciousness is full of holes, and the two forces are constantly fighting, like a whirlpool that blows towards the surface of the sea.”

“He’s so cute. I wanted to make him milk tea, but he wouldn’t drink it. “

“I barely cured his illness, but this treatment has many flaws, as long as…”

The remaining notes were torn up.

It came to an abrupt end, with those unspoken secrets.

Xi Guican looked at the notebook that was torn in half, looking at it motionless, almost sitting like a statue.

After a long moment, he let out a sneer.

However, the blue-eyed eye sockets were slightly red, like a child who had been wronged but had nowhere to confide.

His hand gripped the page so hard that it almost tore through the fragile paper. A tear fell, blurring the words of one of the sentences –

“That child is even more pitiful than Xiaoxie. Because, he has never seen the beauty of this world.”





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