CH 52.1

Chapter 52.1 – Echo

In this era, the storage space of data was limited, and many literary and artistic works had been lost.

There was not much music left, and there were few stage dramas, let alone this kind of… high-definition p*rn resources.

When Lu Tinghan was in school, a film that was so blurry that he couldn’t even see the faces clearly, with voices like a broken gong, and with exaggerated acting skills was circulated by the boys for three years and was treated like a treasure. If they could see this resource, they would probably treat this as a super rare treasure, and even name Alice a p*rn fairy.

Lu Tinghan: “…Shi Yuan, is this your understanding of love?”

Shi Yuan: “It should be. What’s wrong?”

Lu Tinghan: “…quite energetic.”

Shi Yuan had never seen Lu Tinghan show such a weird and indescribable expression, as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t.

Even he realized something was wrong.

Shi Yuan added: “I haven’t had time to watch it yet.”

Lu Tinghan’s face became better. He asked, “Which friend of yours gave you this?”

Shi Yuan promised Alice to keep her existence secret, and said vaguely: “Well, it’s a colleague of mine, you don’t know.”

“What’s the name?”

Shi Yuan: “Well, well, I, I don’t remember either.” He curled up the tip of his tail guiltily.

Lu Tinghan: “Is it a man or a woman?”

“Female.” Shi Yuan said, “A small child.”

Lu Tinghan was silent for a while.

Shi Yuan asked him, “What’s the matter? Show me what she sent.”

He was just about to probe to see, when he was held in place by Lu Tinghan.

Shi Yuan: ?

He probed again and was held down by Lu Tinghan again.

Lu Tinghan lowered his head, pressed Shi Yuan with one hand, and deleted the “Passionate Five People XXXX”, “Teacher, student, principal” and other “XXXX” on his mobile phone with the other.

He returned the phone to Shi Yuan: “What she sent is wrong, don’t ask her for them again in the future.”

Shi Yuan was confused.

Alice vowed, claiming that she knew the true meaning of love, and she was sure it was okay, but how could Lu Tinghan be wrong?

He said: “Well…she is my friend, would it be impolite if I refuse her?”

Lu Tinghan asked, “A very close friend?”

“I don’t know,” Shi Yuan replied, “But I am her only friend.”

When Shi Yuan said that, Lu Tinghan made concessions: “How about this, if she sends you these again next time, don’t look at it, let me handle it.”

Shi Yuan agreed.

They continued to look at the night view side by side.

The windmill rotated, the energy tower flashed with dim light, and the figure of Tower 4 blended into the thousands of buildings.

In the next few days, Shi Yuan got a new job.

In order to see Wu Zhengqing, he ran to the welfare center three to five times. Over time, he also had contact with other patients.

Severely ill mutants would behave strangely, which was a headache.

There was a mutant infected by trees, and everyone called him “Old Zou”. Old Zou was very nice, he loved to talk, laugh, and paint, and all of his paintings were weird-looking roots. He wanted to put the roots of the trees together to form a special shape, but often ended in failure.

As soon as it failed, he would make trouble.

Smashing things was a trivial matter. He liked to bang his head against the wall – fortunately, a hard bark was born in front of his forehead, which blocked a lot of shocks for him, otherwise, he would have had a concussion a long time ago.

No one knew what shape Old Zou wanted.

Except for Shi Yuan.

The first time Shi Yuan saw Old Zou, Old Zou was piecing together the drawing paper, scratching his head, and saying: “This is not right, this is not right!”

The table was covered with his paintings of infected tree roots. Shi Yuan stood beside him and looked at them for a while, pointing to two of them, and said, “They should be reversed and placed on top.”

Old Zou was skeptical but did what he said, and then he became so happy that he jumped up with joy: “That’s right, it’s right this time! It’s so right! How did you know that?!”

Shi Yuan couldn’t explain either.

It might be that he resonated with the soul of the monster, and when he saw these roots, he knew what they should look like.

Old Zou’s mood improved for half a month, and he stopped hitting the wall. The bark on his head gave birth to a green bud. Wang Yu and the staff were surprised.

In addition, Shi Yuan was also very popular with other mutants.

Patient No.7, who was haunted by nightmares, liked to talk about dreams with him; No.27, who always wanted to howl in the middle of the night, pulled him to chat about family matters; No.33, who had a grumpy temperament, only smiled kindly when he saw him.

Shi Yuan thought at first that they instinctively got close to him because of the infection – just like the dying patient that day who grabbed his wrist tightly, with a fanatic light in his eyes.

But after getting along for a long time, he became uncertain again.

“I don’t know why, the first time I saw you, I felt close and wanted to get closer, and then it was a little different.” Patient No.7 said to Shi Yuan, “You have a calming power, as if you will not change even if the end comes, and remember our story.”

No.7 was once a soldier, his lower body was paralyzed, and he was bedridden for a long time. Shi Yuan picked up a glass of water for him and put it on the head of the bed: “Well, I will remember.”

Soon, the welfare center invited him to work part-time to take care of and accompany the patients.

Shi Yuan talked to Lin Yeran. Lin Yeran agreed that he could go there three days a week.

So, Shi Yuan went to the welfare center on one, three, and five, and stayed in the hotline office on two, four, and six.

Daisy’s mood has also been good recently. She and her boyfriend got married. A simple wedding was held in the apartment without a ring. The two exchanged carefully selected and beautifully shaped canned pull rings – the pull rings for canned corn were small, suitable for Daisy, and the pull rings for canned lentils were large, suitable for men’s thick fingers.

She smiled with happiness all over her face: “I heard that the ’Echo’ project is about to be completed. There has been so much good news recently.”

Shi Yuan: “Yes.”

His cell phone rang, and his good friend Alice sent him the files as usual.

In the afternoon, the Alliance Technology Center, together with the Data Center, announced that the “Echo” project had been completed and Alice had found an electromagnetic frequency that could break through the limitations of the abyss and broadcast to the world.

At that moment, the entire Tower 4 and the entire Fengyang City were cheering.

People jumped around in the office and hugged each other. On the huge holographic projection, Fengyang City and the main city were two white spots of light, surrounded by darkness. They were two isolated islands in the pitch-black ocean. However, electromagnetic waves rushed forward and escaped at the speed of light, leaping over the vast wasteland and the vast sea, to a distance beyond their reach, to find another island.

As long as the other survivors still had the equipment to receive electromagnetic waves, they would be able to receive the signal.

And the Alliance would hear their echoes.

“Don’t worry about the other side not having the equipment.” Professor Zeng, who was in charge of the “Echo” project, said, “We can almost assert that if there is still a large-scale human civilization, they must have a more complete military force, and also have the ability to receive electromagnetic waves. Communication is always an essential part of combat.”

His words made everyone even more jubilant, and even Lin Yeran smiled.

[This is the Alliance] They called over and over again in the channel, [Please reply when you receive it, please reply when you receive it]

[Our city is still here, we are still alive, and we are calling you through a special channel. Anyone who hears this message, please give a reply…]

The Alliance and the Empire were old enemies, and it was generally difficult to distinguish which power was better, martial or imperial. Since the Alliance still had two big cities and a strong army, then across the ocean, the Empire should be the same, or better than them.