CH 42

“Brother Pei, is this from you?” Si Huaixi looked at the additional one million in his bank account with a mix of amusement and fury.

Pei Zhaozhou arrogantly and reluctantly nodded, saying, “You mentioned being unemployed recently, so I thought I’d give it to you.”

Si Huaixi’s eyes sparkled as he smiled and replied, “I’m not short on money, but I appreciate your kindness, Brother Pei. This one million interstellar credits is too much for me, and I won’t be able to spend it all.”

After saying that, he transferred the money back to Pei Zhaozhou.

A transfer confirmation message lit up on the phone screen, but Pei Zhaozhou didn’t even spare a glance. His cold and stern gaze furrowed slightly, revealing a hint of confusion and hesitation. He said, “…You don’t need to return it to me. According to our contract, you are under my care, and I should bear these expenses.”

Si Huaixi retrieved the contract for their arrangement, which he had carelessly thrown in a corner. His sapphire eyes gleamed mischievously as he said, “Do you still remember the regular intimate contact mentioned in the contract, Brother Pei?”

“I want you to kiss me.”

Pei Zhaozhou’s heart skipped a beat. His amber-gold eyes turned slightly shy and awkward. He brought his ten fingers together in front of him, his ears blushing. With an air of pretended calm and seriousness, as if negotiating, he said, “This is a public place. I… will kiss you later.”

A hint of amusement curved Si Huaixi’s lips, and his eyes deepened. Sometimes, he felt that Brother Pei spoiled him too much, making him unable to resist the urge to test the boundaries and crave more.

A knock on the door interrupted them.

Si Huaixi sat back on the sofa, stealing glances at Pei Zhaozhou, who was inexplicably tidying his collar, with a face that carried a hint of anxiousness and guilt, like a boss who didn’t want his subordinates to discover an office romance.

They hadn’t done anything, though.

“Please come in.”

However, it wasn’t Si Huaixi’s familiar  Assistant Jin, who entered.

Assistant Lin, entered with a slightly urgent stride and said, “Mr. Pei, something happened to Assistant Jin!”

Pei Zhaozhou frowned and asked, “What happened to Assistant Jin? Didn’t I just send him on a business trip?”

Assistant Lin replied, “Yes, he was on the spacecraft that had an incident. The outside news has been blocked, but the police said the ship was hijacked by a group of space pirates. The signals are being jammed, and we have no idea what’s happening inside the ship. Assistant Jin is in great danger.”

A spaceship?

It couldn’t be just a coincidence.

Si Huaixi asked, “Which spacecraft?”

Assistant Lin mentioned the name, and Si Huaixi suddenly understood. It was indeed the same ship, the one where the protagonist Bai Huaiyu went missing.

If that’s the case, there’s no need to worry. Following the storyline, a mysterious figure piloting a mech will engage in combat, allowing the protagonist and other passengers to escape into safety.

Assistant Lin hesitated and nervously looked at President Pei, whose complexion was not good, voicing his suspicion, “President Pei, you changed your itinerary at the last minute, letting Assistant Jin go on the business trip in your place, and then there was a star pirate hijacking. Isn’t this too much of a coincidence?”

Assistant Lin was also one of Pei Zhaozhou’s confidants, and his concerns were not baseless. Blue Air Mech Company held a sensitive position. Because of the superior performance of mechs designed by President Pei, even the Imperial military would acquire them, but inexplicably… Pei Zhaozhou, who also came from the Imperial army and was once a brigadier general, always faced suspicion from the higher-ups in the Empire.

The products of Blue Air Mech Company had to be used, but precautions had to be taken as well.

Sometimes the infiltrating spies turned out to be enemy agents or business competitors, which was manageable, but occasionally they captured Imperial agents, and after arresting those agents and sending them to prison, the outcome was that they disappeared without a trace. It didn’t take much imagination to know they were sent back to their original confidential department.

It truly made people feel frustrated.

Pei Zhaozhou’s expression darkened instantly. Assistant Jin was his capable assistant and confidant. Recently, due to the pregnancy matter, he had delegated all the outbound work to his subordinates.

Si Huaixi listened from the side, and his eyes also deepened.

He didn’t participate in the conversation between Brother Pei and his assistant, but when he thought about the plot in the original book, he couldn’t help but suspect that this star pirate hijacking incident might be targeting Brother Pei. Now the only remaining question was whether the mysterious person piloting the mech was indeed Brother Pei.

On the spaceship.

“Don’t kill me! I’ll give you money!” The passengers pleaded desperately, crying.

The ferocious star pirate army had somehow infiltrated the spaceship, even killing the captain, and now they had nowhere to run.

The star pirates laughed wickedly, “How much money can you give us?”

The passengers immediately opened the phones to show these brutal space bandits, trembling lips saying, “I-I have over three hundred and fifty thousand, I’ll give it all to you, please spare my life, honorable star pirates!”

One of the star pirate’s companions nudged the stubble-faced star pirate next to him and narrowed his cold eyes, saying, “Stop fooling around. The signal is blocked by the boss now, no matter how much money, we can’t transfer it. Don’t delay the main task.”

The stubble-faced star pirate grumbled unhappily, “Then isn’t that a waste of money? We went to such great lengths to come here, we should at least make a profit.”

The star pirate companion glanced coldly and said, “Then go tell the boss.”

The stubble-faced star pirate sneered and fell silent.

How could he dare to speak to the leader of the Star Pirates? After all, this ship had the leader’s archenemy on board, the former Imperial Major who had once crippled their pirate gang. The leader had even been shot in the leg by Lieutenant Pei, leaving him with a deep-seated hatred for Pei Zhaozhou. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have agreed to cooperate with those people.

Seeing their companion’s silence, another star pirate spoke up, “Deal with these passengers.”

The stubble-faced star pirate felt a slight dissatisfaction, but last time he had learned his lesson. He would handle the passengers first before speaking up.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Several gunshots rang out, and the passengers fell to the ground, lifeless.

The stubble-faced star pirate followed his companion’s footsteps, muttering in complaint, “Our pirate gang has never killed so many people. We’re in it for the money. It would be better to let them go, like cutting a patch of leeks. We can wait until they’ve earned some money and then harvest another batch. If we kill them all, who would dare to pass through this star domain in the future?”

His companion, more knowledgeable about the inner workings, replied in a low voice, “Do you want to end up like those passengers? If so, go ahead and continue blabbering like a never-ending trumpet. Did we want to kill them? We’re star pirates, not assassins. It’s what those people demanded.”

A flicker of fear flashed in the stubble-faced star pirate’s eyes, and he kept quiet.

After they left, Assistant Jin, hiding in a concealed compartment of the spaceship, finally breathed a sigh of relief. In the narrow darkness of the compartment, the faint glow of the screen lit up, and Jin anxiously stared at the signal indicator on the screen.

– Hurry up! Send a signal already! General Pei, I have urgent matters to discuss with you, and my life is in danger!

Jin had quickly realized the commotion caused by the arrival of the star pirates on the spaceship. As soon as he became aware of it, he took advantage of the chaos and hid in the ship’s concealed compartment. 

Some of the metal panels in the ship could be moved aside to lay electrical wires, and Jin, as the versatile chief assistant of the Blue Air Mech Company, was well acquainted with these mecha spaceships. Occasionally, when he came across spaceship blueprints in his work, he would take a glance at them, and that’s how he noticed.

Never in his wildest dreams did he expect that there would come a day when he would need this knowledge. Jin felt a mix of excitement and the urge to cry, but he couldn’t shed tears. Crouching in the cramped compartment, he had to huddle his body and keep his eyes fixed on the phone.

He wrote a tear-stained farewell letter to his family, tirelessly typing out thousands of words. He even waved his hand casually, bidding farewell to General Pei and some friends, each letter comprising several hundred words. Then he deleted the thousands of e-books of Green River Overlords from the phone.

Deleting them made Jin’s heart ache, as those were treasures he had cherished for a long time and occasionally revisited.

After completing these tasks, Assistant Jin, crouched in the narrow compartment and resigned himself to fate.

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