Before leaving, Rong Heng personally washed Ruan Shiqing's body and changed him into clean clothes.
09 usually does these things, but if he is at home, he will do it himself.
Compared to before, the young man's body was more slender and flexible, and his skin was fairer and more delicate. Once his eyes fell on him, he couldn't bear to look away. Even though he knew that the other person was asleep and had no idea of the outside world, Rong Heng still turned his eyes away with red ears.
This job is both sweet and torturous for him. It often takes him a long time to calm down his surging emotions afterwards, but he still enjoys doing it.
After blow-drying and combing the other person's hair, Rong Heng carried his beloved, who had changed into soft pajamas, back to bed and considerately adjusted the angle of the pillow.
"I'm leaving now."
When he was about to leave, he hesitated for a moment, took out the medal hidden in his trouser pocket, and pressed it under the young man's pillow. It was a metal medal he had carved himself, bronze in color, in the shape of a five-pointed star, with the initials of Mainin and the emblem of Ymir engraved on it.
He carved this on his way back when he was missing Ruan Shiqing.
In the past, no matter what kind of difficulties and obstacles they faced, they always fought side by side. But this time, Ruan Shiqing was absent. He always wanted to do something to stay for these days, so that when Ruan Shiqing woke up, he could tell him that although he was unable to participate in these battles, they did not leave him behind.
Finally he carved a medal.
It is engraved with the glory of victory, as well as his unspoken thoughts.
"Come back later." He leaned over as usual and gave her a light kiss.
But this time it was not at the corner of her mouth, but right on her lips. He was not good at kissing and was a little shy, so he gently rubbed it twice, sucked on the soft lips, and then left with red ears, like a thief.
The war with the Zerg is far more difficult and lasting than imagined.
More and more planets were attacked by Zerg, but the Empire turned a blind eye to them, as if it would sit back and do nothing as long as the Zerg did not attack Sikkim. After Si Yan recovered from his injuries and appeared in public again, he completely dropped his hypocritical appearance. With the support of the four chaebols, he concentrated all his forces on the Sjarlan Planet, vowing to completely capture the Melches District and conquer the Sjarlan Planet.
Naturally, the Sijialan planet was unwilling to passively take a beating, so it joined forces with the Nine-tailed Fox Clan of Tutar planet, and successively dragged many surrounding planets into the water, making the water even more muddy.
The peace of the past was completely broken. Except for the central region, the rest of the planets under the jurisdiction of each administrative region were in dire straits. There was the threat of Zerg outside and forced conscription inside. The war cast a shadow on everyone's heart, and the protests on the holographic network became more and more intense day by day.
The online protests eventually turned into real-life demonstrations.
Many ordinary people united together, listing the crimes of the government, accusing the government and the military of inaction, and demanding the emperor to abdicate; others began to build their own forces, attempting to form a new government and armed themselves to save themselves...
Various organizations and churches also sprang up like mushrooms after rain, and began to absorb angry or desperate civilians to strengthen their own strength.
Among them, the Holy Legion developed the fastest. They slandered the Empire, instigated racial and class conflicts, and deceived many dissatisfied civilians to join the Holy Legion. They also preached the doctrine that "the Creator controls everything, and all races that are not illuminated by the light of God will perish", claiming that only by accepting the guidance of the Creator and establishing the Holy Empire can one survive the Dark Age, stay away from suffering, and obtain salvation.
On the way to interstellar rescue, Rong Heng occasionally paid attention to the news on the holographic network and paid attention to the situation of the empire. But most of the time, he was busy fighting the Zerg.
The front-line defenses were completely useless, and the Zerg entered the Empire's star field like no one was there. It seemed that the previous attacks had tasted the sweetness, and they no longer attacked on a single line, but started a war in full swing.
In order to ensure the efficiency of the rescue, Rong Heng personally led the cubs every time. He dispersed the cubs. At the beginning, he let them go out with Hector or several captains. Later, when there was a shortage of manpower, he let the cubs with more experience lead the rescue alone.
In the arsenal of the b3024 star in the rear and the military base of the neighboring nameless star, workers, robots and production equipment worked day and night to produce warships and batches of weapons and ammunition to ensure rescue.
After the military base was fully put into operation, antimatter warships and weapons were produced one after another. The efficiency of rescue and combat was greatly improved, and casualties were greatly reduced.
But even so, the rescue work is still struggling.
In order to ease the rescue pressure on planet B3024, Rong Heng proposed to no longer provide free rescue. From now on, every time a planet is rescued, an agreement will be reached with the rescued planet to let it join the Eastern Alliance and promise that if other nearby planets are attacked by Zerg in the future, these planets that have been rescued will be obligated to provide rescue to the attacked planet.
He not only wanted to protect these planets from the Zerg, but also hoped that they could protect themselves. After all, the power of a single planet was limited, but if these planets could unite and help each other, they would not be without a chance of winning against the Zerg.
Originally, this work should have been done by the imperial government, but Si Yan was focused on the civil war, so Rong Heng took over the responsibility of building the defense line.
At the beginning, only a few planets were willing to join. Later, as the Eastern Alliance became more and more famous for its invincibility against the Zerg, more and more planets were willing to join the rescue alliance. Even some remote and weak planets actively applied to join.
Rong Heng accepted all the offers. Afterwards, he established a huge star network with B3024 as the center, and the AI who managed and monitored this star network was Noah, who had extremely high authority.
All planets that have joined the Eastern Alliance will immediately report their coordinates once they find traces of the Zerg. Neighboring planets will mobilize to send reinforcements, and the "Vostok" on standby on the b3024 planet will arrive in the shortest possible time to assist them in slaughtering all the Zerg.
However, in just half a year, one-fifth of the planets in the empire joined the Eastern Alliance. Relying on these planets, Rong Heng initially established a new line of defense within the empire's territory.
He could no longer remember how many planets he had rescued. He only knew that the glass jar on Ruan Shiqing's bed, which was filled with the star medals he had carved himself, was almost full.
Ruan Yue, He Li, and Nota were already able to stand on their own. The code names that were once printed on wanted posters have now become the names of heroes. Even Ruan Jiao, who had never grown up, began to grow up gradually. Under Garland's continuous research, he began to learn how to control his mental power. Now when he released his mental power, the low-level Zerg he created no longer dared to disobey his orders.
The Falling Star vines in the yard had produced new fruits. 09 was surprised to find that the new fruits no longer contained toxins and tasted sweet. He found an old winemaking recipe from somewhere and made wine with the Falling Star fruit. Before Rong Heng and his children left, he would always give them a bottle of the golden and translucent Falling Star wine.
Everything was getting better, except Ruan Shiqing who never woke up.
After Ruan Shiqing tried his best to reach the water, he finally woke up from that long dream.
But something seemed to go wrong in the middle, and when he woke up, he was not on planet b3024, but in his original world.
He was lying on the single bed in the institute dormitory, with a vibrating communicator at hand.
—He returned to his previous routine life.
Every day, I am in the laboratory, cafeteria, and dormitory. I am either working overtime or on the way to work overtime. Occasionally, I take classes with the instructors to learn fighting skills, or during the breaks between meals, I listen to colleagues complain about the difficulty of raising children to relax my tense nerves.
Originally, he should have felt happy, as he had finally returned to a familiar place from a strange world.
But whenever he heard his colleagues talking about raising children, he would think of the well-behaved and sensible cubs. Although the cubs have grown up, they are still cubs psychologically and are very clingy. Now that he has suddenly returned, he doesn't know if they can take care of themselves.
And Rong Heng, he must be very anxious.
Ruan Shiqing thought of the ambiguity that he had not been able to expose before, and felt a little regretful. He accidentally discovered the other person's thoughts, but he did not feel disgusted. He even found that the other person always took the opportunity to be intimate with him, and he thought he was very cute, and could not help but cooperate and deliberately tease him.
Although he had never been in a relationship, he was not young and ignorant. He had originally thought to see how long Rong Heng could endure. If the other party really couldn't take that step, he might as well do it.
It’s a pity that there is no chance anymore.
Ruan Shiqing sighed and dragged his feet on the way back to the dormitory.
When his familiar colleagues greeted him, he smiled and said hello. But after returning to the dormitory, he was still surrounded by a strong sense of loneliness and felt suffocated.
He sat at his desk, with the design drawings that needed overtime work already opened on the computer screen in front of him, but he just stared at it blankly, his mind wandering somewhere.
When I came to my senses again, an hour had passed.
With another deep sigh, Ruan Shiqing simply closed the design software, hesitated for a moment, opened the search box, and searched for information about the Galactic Empire.
B3024, Sikkim, Driftwood… Familiar names appeared in the search box, but he found nothing. He turned to searching for people's names, trying to find the book he remembered, but still to no avail.
He closed the light computer in frustration and closed his eyes tightly. After a moment, he opened it again and searched desperately for "how to travel through a book" and "how to travel through time again after traveling back through time".
I did search for some posts, but they were all made up by netizens and were useless.
Ruan Shiqing stared blankly at the computer world for a long time. After a while, he leaned back and raised his hands to cover his eyes.
The desire to go back was stronger than ever before, but he could not find any information related to that world.
He seemed to be on an isolated island and could no longer find a sense of belonging.
After a long period of depression, Ruan Shiqing finally regained his spirits. He carefully recalled the information that might be related to the two worlds, and after a long time, he typed "Blue Star" in the search box.