CH 61.2

Chapter 61.2 – Su Enqi

“He used to be an Abyss Watcher, and until now, has to do regular psychological assessments. The evaluators are all my people.” Su Enqi looked at Su Liang steadily. “The Alliance President has no real power in his hands. I am the only one who can restrain him, you want me to give up my power? Do you want to let him tamper with the evaluation results at will, do you want him to do whatever he wants?”

His words were too shocking.

Su Liang never expected that one day he would hear this argument from Su Enqi, Lu Tinghan’s teacher, friend, and comrade-in-arms.

Obviously, Su Enqi should be the person who believed in Lu Tinghan the most in this world – everyone thought so, and perhaps, so did Lu Tinghan.

Su Liang was dumbfounded: “I thought…”

“If it’s Lu Tinghan, I absolutely trust him 100%. I watched him grow up, knew how much he wanted to guard the city, and saw everything he did for the Alliance,” Su Enqi said lightly, “But when I saw the watchers who had lost their minds again and again, I wondered what if? We can’t afford to gamble on the possibility.”

He added: “I believe in his determination and support him as commander, I don’t want to lose him, and I’m willing to die for him if necessary. But while I am still alive? I will never allow him to be in sole charge of the army.” He raised his chin again. “I’m not old yet. Bypass me? It is impossible.”

Su Liang couldn’t speak.

“I don’t care about the march and slogans.” Su Enqi clenched his hand, his eyes burning with fire. “I have fought a lifetime of battles, and no one is qualified to judge my decision-making, accuse me of so-called ‘mistakes’, and no one can pull me off my seat. You were all still sucking milk when I was on the battlefield. I’m sitting right here. I was here forty years ago and I’ll always be here.”

“If you want to laugh at me, criticize me, expect me to make a fool of myself in my old age, then you are rejoicing too early. All my comrades-in-arms are dead, and only I live to this day. This is also the city I have guarded. The decisions I have made so far have been correct, even if there are shortcomings, if another person is brought over, they will not be able to do better. Who can question me and who dares to deny me?”

Su Liang was silent.

After a long time, he suddenly said, “Mother is right.”

Su Enqi raised an eyebrow.

Su Liang: “She told me before that she likes roses and asked you to buy a bouquet for her on Valentine’s Day. But what you bought was the moonflower.”

Su Enqi paused, seemingly puzzled.

Su Liang looked calm and continued to speak: “She told you that you bought the wrong one, it’s a moonflower, not a rose, their buds and leaves are different. You told her that it was a rose, it was beautiful and had thorns, how could it be a moonflower? She did her best to explain, but you still didn’t want to believe it, and you spent your whole life thinking of moonflowers as roses. From that time on, she knew that you were a proud and stubborn person who couldn’t admit your mistakes.”

Su Enqi’s tone was angry: “What do you want to say? Don’t use her to pressure me.”

“I have heard something about Jiang Huazhi.” Su Liang’s figure was straight and he looked directly at Su Enqi. “You treated him as if he was your own. I spent a while with Brother Huazhi when I was young so I knew he was a bastard, sooner or later something will happen. And it came true later. I don’t know what he did, but you covered him up, didn’t you?”

Su Enqi stared at him in silence.

“Now Brother Huazhi is staying in prison, waiting to go to court,” Su Liang said, “So now that it’s happened, do you think you were wrong? Or rather, do you regret protecting him?”

Su Enqi’s gaze was like a knife.

The answer was self-evident.

“So I was thinking, what my mother said was absolutely right,” Su Liang said softly, “You don’t want to divide power and don’t consider giving in. Is it because you can’t trust General Lu, or is it because you can’t admit that you are old, that you are not as skilled as others, and that you will be replaced by others? Which reason, exactly, has prevailed?”

“Su! Liang!” This time, Su Enqi was furious, slapped the table, and stood up, the blue veins on his neck burst, “You say that again!”

“I won’t say it again, you need to rest,” Su Liang said, “But 41 years ago, it really was a bouquet of moonflowers.”

He took a few steps back, saluted, turned, and left.

Su Enqi stood alone in the office.

The old illness had not yet passed, and the pain had turned up again, and he was panting heavily, like an angry trapped beast.

*

Shi Yuan spent several days learning the violin.

Lu Tinghan offered to teach him, but Shi Yuan refused – it was the first time he had rejected Lu Tinghan so firmly.

The reason was none other than…

It was so unbearably ugly, his tail would blow up once he heard the sound.

Alice sent him the performance repertoire of the violin and the video of the concert. Shi Yuan practiced slowly, barely pulling out a few out-of-tune notes.

At his level, he was already stronger than Lu Tinghan.

While he was practicing with the violin, Lu Tinghan was sitting on the sofa, reading and listening.

Shi Yuan was also producing sawing-wood sounds. Fortunately, for the tone-deaf Lu Tinghan, the noise had no effect on him, and they got along unexpectedly well.

Occasionally, Lu Tinghan would take a look at the music score on Shi Yuan’s mobile phone, and delete the “Shocking! XXXXX”, “Super taboo XXXXXX”, “XXXXXX little black house!”.

Shi Yuan’s interest in music came and went quickly. Unlike Lu Tinghan, he had self-knowledge and quickly accepted that he had no talent in music at all.

He put the violin away and hid it under the bed in the second bedroom to make sure Lu Tinghan would never find it again.

Soon, he became interested in new things again.

Shi Yuan pulled out Lu Tinghan’s sketchbook, looked at it one by one, and suddenly said, “Lu Tinghan, will you teach me how to draw?”

Lu Tinghan agreed and started teaching Shi Yuan that night.

Although he was a music idiot, his level of drawing was good, and he was not separated from art. During the ten years in the observation tower, he often used sketches to pass the time, and drew a lot of sketches of the abyss scenery that made Shi Yuan’s ears red.

He asked Shi Yuan: “What do you want to draw?”

Shi Yuan replied: “I want to draw you!”

Beginners shouldn’t draw people, but Shi Yuan just decided to draw Lu Tinghan. He painted crooked squared, rectangles, and balls for a few days, and while Lu Tinghan was reading a book, he painted a vivid and exquisite portrait of Lu Tinghan.

He held up the painting with his tail and came to Lu Tinghan to ask for praise and reward: “Look!”

Lu Tinghan said, “What is this? A long spaghetti with eyes?”

Shi Yuan: “……”

Lu Tinghan: “It’s not a worm in a ball of wool, right? Or rotten seaweed?”

Shi Yuan: “……”

Lu Tinghan looked at his face and realized that something was wrong: “Could it be an…alien?” He pondered for a while. “It’s very creative. It doesn’t look like a human at all. It’s a bit like a special infected creature, the kind that can’t be beaten.”

Shi Yuan threw away the painting sadly.

After that, he honestly drew squares and rectangles.

Lu Tinghan taught him patiently, but Shi Yuan didn’t know why, every time, his tail would always be rubbed, and he would always end up sitting on Lu Tinghan’s lap, being kissed dazed and confused, with no power to fight back.

General Lu was naturally good at dealing with monsters, in every way.

They slept in the same bed at night.

Shi Yuan always talked about what he had seen and heard for a day, and at the end, he asked Lu Tinghan: “How is the ‘Overlook’ plan?”

“I heard from the data center and the Academy of Sciences that soon, we will be able to locate a habitable planet,” Lu Tinghan replied.

Shi Yuan thought of the rocket model again and said, “You said that you wanted to go to space to have a look before.”

“Well, it was a long time ago,” Lu Tinghan said, “People always want to see the unknown world.”

Shi Yuan asked him: “If the ‘Overlook’ is successful, will you go to space?”

Lu Tinghan: “No.”

“Oh.”

“We only have one spacecraft. According to its capacity, after it is filled with fertilized eggs and seeds, we can take up to one or two more people. No one else will leave, and I will definitely stay,” Lu Tinghan explained, “It’s nothing, just pretend that the ‘Overlook’ doesn’t exist, and I’ll continue to command the battle. It wouldn’t have changed the status quo, and it’s not beneficial to the war except for boosting morale.”

“I don’t care about this,” Shi Yuan said, “Those are too complicated for me to understand. I just want you to look at the space you like.”

“……” Lu Tinghan smiled and rubbed Shi Yuan’s head.

Shi Yuan: “Purr, purr, purr.”

In this way, another month passed, and the battle situation became tense again. Lu Tinghan recovered from his injuries and was busy with command, and he had less time to accompany Shi Yuan.

Shi Yuan commuted to and from work on time.

Answering the phone, listening to Wu Zhengqing’s science of the universe, spending time with children and then being overwhelmed by them.

Learning to sketch, observing his human, being petted, and then being kissed so much that his tail was soft.

It wasn’t until the last day of July that Shi Yuan was dragged by the excited Wu Zhengqing as soon as he walked into the welfare center.

Wu Zhengqing was full of ecstasy and stuttered, “‘Overlook’… ‘Overlook’ is about to succeed! I’ve been waiting for almost forty years, f*ck gravity, we’re going to the stars!”