Zhao Chen covered his face with one hand, unable to keep from laughing.
This A-Yun, truly — to open a video communication straight into a person's room without so much as a word of warning beforehand.
How awkward a thing to arrange!
Huang Qiqi, out of the hot spring now and changed into a bathrobe, kept glancing awkwardly at Commander Zhao Chen in the video picture.
Mortifying!
How should the Commander be seen just when one is bare as a peeled stick!
He must have seen every inch.
"Huang Qiqi!" Shen Bing put more weight into her voice.
For she had called several times just now, and Huang Qiqi opposite had not come to herself at all.
That gaze of hers drifting about the Commander — everyone naturally understood well enough what this young lady was thinking.
"Ah? Bingbing, what is it?" Only now did Huang Qiqi come to herself; though even so her eyes went stealing toward the Commander from time to time.
"Did you not fall upon the field before this? I watched with my own eyes as your own ship was destroyed. You even had a last talk with me then, and told me that in our next life we should be dear friends again!" Shen Bing demanded, unable to make it out.
The sorrowful feelings of before were wholly gone.
Above all upon seeing that while she had lost her bearing and wept and could not eat.
Her own dear friend was over there soaking in a hot spring! Drinking a little wine! With a face mask on! Eating refreshments! And being massaged besides!
What a fine time she was having!
"Ah? That I do not know either. I… I shut my eyes and opened them and I was here. And then I was told I must undergo a stretch of convalescence, and could not get in contact with the outside meanwhile." Huang Qiqi wore a look of perfect innocence.
Shen Bing and the rest — above all Wei Shishi and Ye Xiaotong, whose feelings had broken loose just now — looked urgently toward the Commander.
"Very well; it is time this secret was told you as well. Our Owl Dragon Legion has a piece of black technology. The T4 Reviver-class Clone-Human Starship…………" Zhao Chen began to unfold this matter for them all.
Before now, apart from those who had themselves passed through the T4 Reviver-class Clone-Human Starship, and the crew who worked aboard her.
Only Zhao Chen and a few others knew of this thing.
Not even legion commanders such as Shen Bing could know of it.
"Revived and brought back to life?" Chu Xuan covered her mouth in astonishment.
"This piece of black technology is rather abstruse; I shall not explain too much to you. In sum: those crew now serving in our Owl Dragon Legion's fleets have all, by my arrangement, had something like a beacon injected into their souls. At the moment of their death, the T4 Reviver-class Clone-Human Starship receives their soul's will and injects it into a clone body prepared beforehand, so that they live again in this form. Because, as all know, the several empires have always resisted human cloning technology, it was not convenient for me to make it public. Those kin and friends of yours who fell, those crew, those subordinates and the rest. All of them can be brought back. Though there are certain particular cases: those who suffered pain before death, for instance, will upon revival possess wholly the memories they had before dying, which leaves some of them in a poor state of mind after revival — but they too are given proper care of the mind until they recover. So… you understand my meaning."
"At the least… they are still alive." Wei Shishi wept for very gladness.
"Then why do you tell us of it now? Is it only because… of the present case…" Commander Medusa inquired.
Zhao Chen explained, "That is only a very small reason. The most important reasons are two. First: with the Owl Dragon Legion's strength as it now is, even should others learn we hold this restricted technology, no one would dare do anything to us. Second: in this campaign we lost a third of our interstellar warships, and the front-line fighting personnel fallen reached a full tenth of the whole. With so vast a gap in crew, and the revived to fill it hereafter, in all likelihood it could not be kept hidden any longer. So I tell you now while the moment serves. Though as to this piece of black technology. Though from this moment the highest grade of secrecy is lifted, a third-grade secrecy will still be enforced. Is that understood?" Zhao Chen looked round them all.
"Understood."
This third-grade secrecy means that a piece of information is not spread of one's own motion, but that every crew member within the Owl Dragon Legion's fleets has the ability to know it, while toward the outside world it is kept secret still.
As for when the outside world discovers this thing, Zhao Chen did not care.
"Very well; you may go on with this victory feast now, I take it?" Zhao Chen pointed at the fine food upon the table. "To waste food is a shameful thing."
The knot in their hearts untied, their spirits came back at once.
"Commander, since there is no need of secrecy now, may we get in contact with those revived?" Wei Shishi inquired.
"Of course you may." Zhao Chen nodded.
Wei Shishi looked at Shen Bing, who was chatting with her own dear friend; but considering the present occasion, she forced down the notion of contacting her own comrades and subordinates.
The Commander would not deceive her, at any rate.
At the thought of so glad a thing, Wei Shishi took up the wine bottle and toasted Zhao Chen outright, and without waiting for Zhao Chen's assent poured it down herself.
At which the air within the whole private room grew a great deal better.
"Huang Qiqi, and I was so anxious for you, more fool me! When you are back, I shall arrange your work for you properly." Shen Bing glared at Huang Qiqi opposite, with a show of anger.
She had been so anxious for the other, and the other had been enjoying life.
"Bingbing, Bingbing. I know I was wrong, I truly know I was wrong. If I could have got in contact, I should assuredly have contacted you at the first instant. When I can come back, I shall treat you to the hot spring, and scrub your back for you — will that do?" Huang Qiqi spoke soft words to Shen Bing.
And just as Shen Bing's face had eased a good deal.
Huang Qiqi said to Shen Bing in a low voice, "Bingbing, take a few portrait shots of the Commander for me, so that I can paste them on my—"
Before Huang Qiqi could finish, Shen Bing cut the communication window outright.
"How is it you do not go on talking?" Zhao Chen, seeing the video window here closed, turned a curious look upon her.
For after setting the matter out just now, Zhao Chen had let Shen Bing and Huang Qiqi talk on their own, and so had not heard what Huang Qiqi said afterward.
"Let her go and sit wherever it is coolest." Shen Bing said it through her teeth.
Thereafter she took up her chopsticks and fell to upon the fine food before her with a will, for all the world as though the piece of meat in her mouth were a certain conscienceless creature.
To think that these few days past she had slept badly and eaten badly for anxiety over that girl.
Today she meant to make the whole of it up!
Sniff, sniff, sniff.
Charlotte, seated beside Zhao Chen, of a sudden sniffed at him several times.
"What is it?" Zhao Chen looked at Charlotte in doubt.
Charlotte looked at Zhao Chen in doubt of her own. "How is it I feel there is some particular scent about you?"
Good grief — is that a hound of heaven's nose?
Several days have gone by and she can still smell something?
"What scent could I have? You must have smelled it wrong. Strange — how is there no snail-rice noodles here? Order me a bowl of snail-rice noodles… no, ten bowls of snail-rice noodles!"