Chapter 93: Silver Pearl, Xuanze, and Hanming

Chapter 93: Silver Pearl, Xuanze, and Hanming

Picking up from the last chapter — the giant crystal ball, that silicon-based life-form, had taken my two green jade tokens, and then, unbelievably, two lines of tears had slid from its eyes.

I was completely lost. I couldn’t tell whether this was good news or bad.

My guess was that it recognized the tokens somehow.

But what exactly was its relationship to the person those tokens belonged to? I had no idea, and I didn’t dare ask.

The giant crystal ball extended a hand toward me. To my surprise, it actually returned both tokens, then spoke through cosmic force of consciousness:

“What is your relationship to Xuanze and Hanming?”

I had no idea how to answer that. Afraid a wrong word might land me in trouble, I told the truth.

“Who are Xuanze and Hanming? I don’t know them.”

The crystal ball said,

“You don’t know them? No. You must know them. Their aura is inside your body.”

Huh?

How was it that even I hadn’t known I carried someone else’s aura?

Could it be the Myriad-Dimensional Brain and the lotus-shaped green jade disk? Mother had told me I’d been irradiated by those two things more than once.

So I asked,

“Could you tell me more about Xuanze and Hanming? Maybe something will come back to me.”

The crystal ball said,

“Xuanze and Hanming were lovers on Cassiopeia HD Star — together for over ten thousand years. Then HD Star sent Xuanze out to survey a blue planet, and he never came home. Hanming was devastated. She built a craft of her own and went looking for him on that same blue planet. She never returned either.”

I asked,

“And what were you to them?”

The crystal ball said,

“I was Hanming’s playmate — her closest friend. After she vanished, I couldn’t bear to stay in the Han Estate any longer, so I came back to my own homeworld. And here, of all places, I’ve somehow sensed both their auras again. Did they find each other? Yes — they must have. How stupid of me not to see it sooner. Both their auras are on you.”

Wait. So this giant crystal ball was female? A woman?

Should I tell her that both the Myriad-Dimensional Brain and the lotus-shaped green jade disk were dead? But if I did, wouldn’t she get angry enough to eat me for real this time?

The crystal ball watched me stammer, then said quietly,

“They’re both dead, aren’t they?”

I hurried to answer.

“Well — it’s hard to say. I can’t tell you I don’t know, but I’m not certain whether they’re alive or dead. Their consciousness bodies may have transferred into something else — a quantum core supercomputer, say, the most advanced one on Earth. And because of certain… accidents, I carry traces of them on me too. So does that count as alive, or dead?”

The crystal ball kept bobbing its round body excitedly.

“Alive. Alive. As long as there’s consciousness, they’re alive.”

I said,

“You were Hanming’s playmate and closest friend? Does that mean everyone on your world looks like you?”

The crystal ball said,

“Oh — I got so worked up I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Silver Pearl. Just call me Silver Pearl. My true body is a crystal-condensed pearl. Xuanze and Hanming were both humanoid, and I’ve heard they closely resemble the people of that blue planet. That’s exactly why HD Star’s leadership believed the humans there might share the same origin as ours, and needed deeper study. Xuanze was actually part of the thirty-fifth survey group, not the first. Hanming was female, so she wasn’t chosen for the mission. I’m different from them — I’m not human. I was given to Hanming as a pet when I was small, and eventually neither of us could bear to be apart. We became the kind of friends who kept no secrets from each other. On HD Star, I would sometimes take a human shape. But now that I’m home again, I live as my true self.”

The moment she finished, the crystal ball transformed into a breathtaking young woman — large eyes, long lashes, dressed in flowing pink and violet, like a fairy stepped straight out of myth. Her…