Chapter 97: Xuanze’s and Hanming’s Families

by cnwebnovels

Picking up where the previous chapter left off — Du Xiaoran and I had wiped out the Tengshe Star exploration team, captured their two female prisoners, and were flying toward Silver Pearl’s Crystal Palace with their data in tow.

The moment I stepped into the Crystal Palace, a familiar presence washed over me — the stirring of Xuanze’s and Hanming’s consciousness. I quickened my pace and strode into Silver Pearl’s reception hall.

There, in the seat of honor, sat a capable-looking middle-aged woman, and beside her, to her right, a middle-aged man in uniform. Both were humanoid, not so different in form from people on Earth. Silver Pearl sat at the woman’s left, with three young women standing behind her.

When I hurried in, the man and woman both rose and came toward me.

I looked at them, cupped my hands in salute, and said,

“Gu Beichen and Du Xiaoran of the Blue Planet pay their respects to Mother Han and Survey Inspector Xuan. We offer our sincerest gratitude for all that Xuanze and Hanming did for the people of the Blue Planet. It is for that reason we have come to call upon you.”

Mother Han hurriedly clasped both my hands, her eyes shining with tears.

“So you’re Gu Beichen. Beichen — good, good. To the people of the Blue Planet, our Cassiopeia lies in the direction of Beichen, the North Star. It seems your very name marked you for us all along.”

Xuanze’s father spoke next.

“We can already feel Xuanze’s and Hanming’s presence in you. Silver Pearl has told us your story. Xuanze and Hanming were both accomplished scientists on HD Star in their own right. That they chose you tells me they chose well. Let me see the green jade tokens you carry.”

Uneasy, I drew out the four green jade tokens and held them out. I still didn’t know whether the lotus-shaped disk was Hanming’s true body or merely a temporary refuge for her soul, and I was eager to hear how her father would explain it.

Xuanze’s father took them and passed them to Mother Han, who ran her fingers gently over the jade, her face taut with feeling.

I stepped forward to explain.

“There were originally six tokens — together they form the lotus-shaped green jade disk. But two of them are currently in use as core modules within the Blue Planet’s supercomputer. I haven’t been able to retrieve them, so the disk remains incomplete.”

Tears glimmered in Mother Han’s eyes.

“This lotus-shaped green jade disk was Xuanze’s token of love to Hanming — the symbol that bound the two of them together, inseparable.”

Wait — the lotus disk wasn’t a living being at all? I had assumed all along it was Hanming’s true body.

Xuanze’s father cut in.

“I obtained this disk from Opeya, the life-bearing main planet in Cassiopeia, and later gave it to Xuanze. Beyond its power to alter spacetime, it can also house a sea of consciousness. Xuanze meant it only as a token of love for Hanming — neither of them dreamed it would one day become her soul’s dwelling place. Such is fate.”

I asked at once, “Then is Hanming’s consciousness still inside these green jade tokens now?”

“No,” Xuanze’s father said. “Not anymore. Once the lotus disk came apart, it lost that function entirely. From what Silver Pearl has relayed of what you told her, both their seas of consciousness must have transferred fully into the Blue Planet’s core supercomputer by now. That supercomputer also built the mirror-image virtual world, casting human projections onto Bixian Star so that our people could observe the humans of the Blue Planet directly. That has Xuanze’s hand written all over it. I taught him how to do exactly that, myself, before he left.”

So the virtual world had been theirs to begin with — arranged long before any of us knew it existed. All this time, Earth’s people had wandered blindly into that world to live and adventure, never once realizing they’d become nothing more than a living exhibit for the people of HD Star.

I’d suspected as much already. But hearing it confirmed, out loud, still left something uneasy twisting in my chest.

Mother Han spoke gently. “HD Star holds no ill will toward the Blue Planet. Our worlds may lie impossibly far apart, and yet they may share a common root.”

“But the Blue Planet’s people are carbon-based,” I said quickly. “Aren’t HD Star’s people silicon-based?”

Xuanze’s father laughed aloud at that. “Do I look like a silicon-based life-form to you?”

I ran cosmic consciousness and my penetrating-wave ability over him and found, indeed, nothing silicon in his body — carbon-based, through and through. And yet within his brain lay something else: half of a silicon structure. I said,

“But we studied Xuanze’s half-skull. It was silicon-based. We called it the Myriad-Dimensional Brain. That very study is what let Xuanze and Hanming meet again inside the Blue Planet’s supercomputer. That’s how they transferred their seas of consciousness into it. And before that, each of them had already radiated a portion of their consciousness into me.”

Xuanze’s father nodded. “I see. What you call silicon-based isn’t entirely wrong, then. The reason only half of Xuanze’s skull survived is that his carbon-based body decomposed entirely, while the silicon-based portion resisted decay and endured. We of HD Star are, in truth, a fusion of carbon and silicon — silicon applied solely within the consciousness-bearing structures of the brain. Not something you would have guessed, I imagine.

“Don’t be too troubled, and don’t think it cruel that only half a skull remained of him. The true self, the true origin of a life, is its sea of consciousness. That is the source. The flesh matters far less than you’d think — think of it as a USB drive. What’s stored on it matters. The drive itself does not. You could even think of the physical body as no different from the lotus disk — merely a vessel for life. We never sent anyone to search for Xuanze, because we already knew: his sea of consciousness endured.”

Mother Han added, “Hanming loved Xuanze too deeply to bear their separation. She set out on her own to find him, against our wishes, and her body may well have met with disaster somewhere along the way. That is why she transferred her sea of consciousness into the lotus disk. Thank heaven you let the lotus disk meet the Myriad-Dimensional Brain and integrated both with the Blue Planet’s core supercomputer — only then did the two of them find a place to truly dwell. Had you taken the lotus disk apart before that meeting, Hanming might well have been lost to us forever.”

A cold sweat broke over me at those words.

I felt, all at once, a chill of retrospective fear at how recklessly my parents had dismantled the thing.

Thank heaven they’d waited until after Xuanze and Hanming had met, and their consciousnesses transferred, before taking it apart. Otherwise — I didn’t want to imagine it.

Silver Pearl invited everyone to sit again, while Du Xiaoran wandered off to chat with the three young women.

Mother Han took my hand.

“Part of Xuanze’s and Hanming’s seas of consciousness live inside you as well — a fail-safe the two of them left behind, for themselves. If the Blue Planet’s core supercomputer is ever destroyed, their consciousnesses will be destroyed along with it. And yet, even then, they will not truly be gone — because you will still be alive.

“Our technology on HD Star is capable of reviving both of their seas of consciousness from what remains inside you. Don’t be alarmed — this is simply what our science can do. Such a revival wouldn’t be as complete as their original seas of consciousness, of course, and it would take a long time to cultivate. Which means, in a sense, you could be called our child too.”

I gave a wry smile, not entirely sure whether to feel glad or troubled by that.

It seemed my father, back then, had had his reasons for wanting to kill me after all.

I asked, “HD Star and the Blue Planet are worlds apart. Why would humans on two such distant planets look so alike that you’d suspect a shared origin?”

Xuanze’s father said, “That is precisely why we set out to study the Blue Planet in the first place. Cassiopeia has known its share of interstellar wars, and we have long feared that HD Star might one day be consumed by one. So we placed our hopes on the Blue Planet — hoping to leave behind, there, some small spark of what HD Star is.

“As for why the Blue Planet’s people and our own share such similar genetics, we still have no answer. That will take further study. Perhaps once your true body arrives, we’ll finally find one.”

Silver Pearl spoke up. “Uncle, Auntie — could Beichen come with you to HD Star now? He’s longed to see it for himself. And so have I.”

Xuanze’s father shook his head. “HD Star isn’t safe just now. Tengshe Star has been stirring lately, and we’ve already raised our defenses. Once Beichen’s true body arrives, we’ll bring him in ourselves. But as he is now — only a quantum-entanglement projection — there would be no point in going. We would need clearance from the higher authorities regardless. Meeting Beichen today has already put my heart at ease.”

As he spoke, Xuanze’s father produced another green disk from within his robes — its pattern entirely different from the lotus disk’s, and yet unmistakably of the same substance, the same grade.

“This,” he said, “is the chakra green jade disk. Chakra speaks to the meeting of body and mind. It was once paired with the lotus-shaped green jade disk — twins, of the same origin, the same grade. Like the lotus-shaped green jade disk, it can control spacetime and house a sea of consciousness. But this chakra green jade disk can also serve as a weapon — it can forcibly seize an opponent’s sea of consciousness, capturing it outright. Beichen, this is yours now. Like the lotus-shaped green jade disk, it can be carried back through same-frequency quantum-entanglement projection, same as before.”

He handed the chakra green jade disk to me and returned the four green jade tokens of the lotus disk as well.

“Take these four green jade tokens back with you as well. Once you’ve gathered all six and recombined them into the complete lotus-shaped green jade disk, return it to Xuanze and Hanming. It was their token of love.”

I took the chakra green jade disk and the four green jade tokens, too overwhelmed to speak. A treasure like this — capable of forcibly seizing an enemy’s sea of consciousness — was nothing less than a wonder on the scale of the Pagoda-Bearing Heavenly King’s own treasure pagoda. All I could do was bow deeply.

“Thank you, Survey Inspector Xuan, for this gift. Such kindness is beyond words. Gu Beichen will carry this charge with him always. And thank you, Mother Han, for your care. Rest assured — I will bring Xuanze’s and Hanming’s seas of consciousness home as soon as I possibly can.”

Both Xuanze’s father and Hanming’s mother smiled, satisfied, at my words.

With the serious matters settled, I suddenly remembered the Tengshe Star exploration team. I called Du Xiaoran over and had him tell Xuanze’s father and Mother Han what he’d found in the Dark Forest.

Du Xiaoran had spent the whole exchange watching me talk with Xuanze’s father and Mother Han, positively green with envy, though he hadn’t dared open his mouth. Now that his moment had finally come, he launched eagerly into the tale of his hard, grueling digging through the Dark Forest in search of minerals.

Xuanze’s father took the matter seriously once he’d heard it out. This was a deposit HD Star truly hadn’t known about.

Once Du Xiaoran finished, I opened the Qiankun Pouch and released the ten crates of data from the Tengshe Star exploration team, along with the two female prisoners.

Xuanze’s father was startled at the sheer volume of survey material.

This was no small resource dispute. Had I not stopped the Tengshe Star team when I did, it was entirely possible that, before long, Tengshe Star would have gone to war with HD Star again over Bixian Star’s mineral wealth.

Xuanze’s father swept the material with his force of consciousness, clearly stunned that a Tengshe Star team had managed to do all this right under his nose without his knowledge.

“Beichen,” he said, “you’ve done HD Star a tremendous service today. Had this intelligence reached Tengshe Star’s leadership, war would have followed without question. No wonder there’s been so much strange movement from them lately. So this was the root of it all.”

Mother Han asked, “Were the exploration team’s communication devices and equipment all destroyed?”

“Rest assured,” I said. “I’ve dealt with every member of the Tengshe Star team, and all their equipment has been taken care of. I also covered the dig site with vegetation — from above, it would be almost impossible to find now.”

“Good,” Xuanze’s father said. “You need not trouble yourself further with this, Beichen. Leave the rest to me. This touches on the possibility of war between two worlds — we must return at once to prepare. I’ll take these materials and the prisoners with me.”

With that, he gave his sleeve a single flick, and the ten crates and the two prisoners vanished without a trace. I never even saw where he’d sent them.

Clearly, HD Star had already developed Qiankun Pouch-type storage artifacts usable in the real world too.