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Character ListQiao Zhiya: Half-elf, half-dwarf MC.
Chu Rong: Marshal ML.
Fan Xiangnan: ML’s second-in-command.
Chu Yan: ML’s younger brother. Is the same age as MC.
Lin Zhen: MC’s designated teacher during his stay in ML’s warship. He also helped him in gathering the Star Sand.
Chu Huai: ML’s older brother, he’s in politics.
Gu Yan’an: Chu Huai’s wife. She’s a doctor.
Feng: The Imperial High Advisor. Advertisement
After the game, Qiao Zhiya became famous again in the school, and even had a group of little fans who came to him specifically to take photos with or get his autographs. The newly-popular youth  was so embarrassed that he hid in the dormitory after class, not daring to stay outside at all.
After a few days, the enthusiasm of fans gradually subsided and they no longer chased him everywhere. He breathed a sigh of relief and began to look forward to meeting Chu Rong at the weekend.
He worked hard to survive until Friday. After school, he immediately said goodbye to Sang Bu. He didn’t even go back to his dormitory. He took out his school-issued hover car and drove out of the school. On the way, he called Chu Yan. When his request got through, he said happily, “Xiao Yan, are you going home this week? I’m on my way to the school gate, where are you?”
“Qiao.”
Chu Yan’s voice came after a pause. It sounded a little low, like his mood was down. “Dage is at the school gate. Let’s meet there. I’ll hang up first.”
The call was hung up. Qiao Zhiya’s ears twitched in confusion. After thinking about it, he quickly put Chu Yan’s problem at the back of his mind and sped up his vehicle. ‘Dage came to pick us up in person. It seems that Chu Rong is coming back and everyone is getting together again!’
Arriving at the school gate with a smile on his face, Qiao Zhiya quickly found Chu Huai’s hover car. He ran over and knocked on the door. After the door opened, he immediately got in. Seeing that Gu Yan’an was there, the smile on his face became brighter. He happily called out, “Dage, Dasao, why are you all here? Aren’t you busy today?”
Chu Huai and Gu Yan’an looked at each other. Just as Gu Yan’an was about to speak, Chu Yan opened the car door and sat in with an ugly expression. He asked quietly, “Dage, I heard from Yuan Xiu that something happened to the old Emperor and Erge. What happened? Why didn’t I hear anything? What did you hide from me?”
“Something happened?” Qiao Zhiya asked.
After a moment, he suddenly panicked. He held Chu Yan’s arm, asking with a smidge of eagerness in his tone. “Xiao Yan, what are you talking about? What happened? Isn’t Chu Rong coming back? You…”
As he spoke, he looked at Chu Huai and Gu Yan’an. Seeing that their expressions were a little ugly, his heart sank a little bit. He trailed off, no longer able to find his words. He looked back and forth at them helplessly, and his face slowly turned pale. He opened his mouth and asked dryly, “Chu Rong… what happened to him?”
“Let’s go home first,” Chu Huai said, trying to make his expression normal. “Lao Er and the Emperor’s ship encountered a black hole just as they traveled to the Empire’s capital planet. Because of that, their ship was destroyed, and all the people on the ship were missing. The only thing I can be sure of now is that Lao Er’s safe and his life is not in danger.”
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‘Black hole?’
Qiao Zhiya’s eyelashes fluttered as his mind blanked. He lowered his head and clenched his fist.
Chu Yan’s expression immediately became solemn. ‘Encountering a black hole while sailing is the worst situation, Erge…’
He glanced sideways at Qiao Zhiya beside him. The youth’s expression was covered by his blond hair. After hesitating for a moment, he raised his hand and patted his shoulder, silently comforting him.
The hover car arrived home. Chu Yan asked about the situation in detail and learned that the news of Chu Rong and the Emperor’s accident had actually been sent back two days ago.
The news had already spread in the Empire. In order to stabilize the citizen’s anxiety, the Emperor’s oldest son was pushed out to temporarily take charge of the Emperor’s affairs. Rescue teams searching for the Emperor and Chu Rong had been sent out several times, but no news came back.
“As they said, no news is good news. Lao Er’s spiritual strength has been restored. As long as he does not encounter another Zerg Queen, he should be fine.” Chu Huai comforted himself and everyone, and affirmed his guess, ” I have notified the people on the border mining planet and asked them to secretly launch a search. News will be sent back as soon as possible.”
Chu Yan couldn’t help but curse in a low voice, “These damn black hole monsters! They have all disappeared for a decade already, why can’t they disappear forever?!”
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Qiao Zhiya, who was sitting next to him, was so frightened by the undisguised murderous hatred in his tone that he could no longer sit still. He stood up and said hurriedly, “I-I’m sleepy. I’ll… go back to my room to rest. Good night everyone.”
After saying that, he turned around and walked quickly towards his room. On the way, he accidentally tripped on a furniture and almost fell.
When the old butler saw this, he hurriedly tried to help him, but Qiao Zhiya quickly stabilized his body and returned to the room without looking back. There was an unsettled atmosphere all over his body.
Chu Huai frowned when he saw this. He looked at Chu Yan and said, “Xiao Yan, try not to mention black holes in front of Qiao in the future. His village was destroyed because of a black hole. Although he lost the memory of that time, he is still afraid of these things subconsciously.”
Chu Yan frowned. He didn’t expect that there was such a hidden secret. He always thought that Qiao was just a simple rescued mining slave. Thinking of Qiao’s appearance just now, he felt worried and wanted to comfort him, but was stopped by Gu Yan’an.
“Let him stay alone for a while.” Gu Yan’an shook her head. With sorrow in her eyebrows, she let out a long sigh. “Things have come to this… Take a rest for a while, I’ll brew you a cup of hot tea.”
After passing a space jump point, Fan Xiangnan checked the damage of the mecha and said urgently, “Sir, the mecha can’t hold on any longer. We must land as soon as possible.”
“Find the closest planet to land on, and then contact the military.”
Chu Rong’s voice came from the mecha’s internal communicator. Ehe old Emperor’s painful groans were also mixed in the background.
Fan Xiangnan immediately heard the implication of his words and asked, “Sir, aren’t you going to land?”
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Chu Rong controlled his mecha to speed it up again, ignoring the old Emperor’s pained grunts in the co-pilot seat, and also the Imperial Head Advisor who silently sat in a corner of the cockpit. “I will go home directly.”
‘Go home?’
Fan Xiangnan was stunned, and immediately disagreed with that. “Sir, there’s still another space jump point before you can reach the capital planet. Your mecha will not be able to survive.”
“My mecha can,” Chu Rong replied, his tone flat, as if they just went out for a walk and were now discussing which route to take home. “I promised Qiao to spend the weekend with him. The closest planet from here is the B07 planet. There’s the Chu family’s troops stationed on it. You land there, this is an order.”
“…Yes.” Fan Xiangnan had no choice but to compromise. Suppressing the momentary speechlessness in his heart, he operated the mecha to prepare for landing.
The two mechas separated in the vast and beautiful universe, one headed towards the nearest planet, and the other flew to the next space jump point.
Chu Rong took advantage of a Marshal’s privilege and passed all the jumping points in the name of the Chu family’s mineral transport ship. Once he saw the capital planet within his field of view, he opened a special communication channel and ordered, “Lin Zhen, get me permission to enter without delay. I want to land directly at the main residence of the Chu family.”
Lin Zhen, who was nervously waiting for the news in the capital planet, was stunned by his sudden voice. He immediately reacted, responded excitedly, and hurriedly called his subordinates to arrange it efficiently.
The Imperial High Advisor, who had been leaning silently in the corner, raised his head when he heard the Marshal’s words. He glanced at the now-unconscious old Emperor in the co-pilot seat. A trace of joy appeared in his narrow eyes, but it quickly disappeared. His hand touched the wound on his arm and slowly pinched it. He used the stabbing pain to keep himself awake.
‘Finally… that dirty and rotten Empire is falling apart.’
Qiao Zhiya hugged his knees and huddled inside his quilt. Everytime he closed his eyes, he always saw the image of Chu Rong being swallowed by the black hole. But he also saw the image of him being rejected by a disgusted Chu Rong, who came from a black hole. Various emotions of panic, fear, and worry were mixed together, overwhelming his brain. He was confused, his heart was beating too fast, cold sweat broke out on his palms and forehead.
‘No, it will be okay. Chu Rong is so powerful and will definitely come back safely. Chu Rong will not look at him like that. No, no way.’
He raised his hands to cover his face. The uneasiness that had been eliminated by the stable life began to fight back fiercely. His thoughts were in a mess. But then, he suddenly thought of something. He hurriedly climbed out of bed and knelt on the ground to start drawing a magic array for searching. This time, he put his ring to search Chu Rong, instead a way to go back to his hometown.
“It’ll be okay, it’ll be okay…” He kept mumbling. The strand of hair started to spin around in the array, causing his reddened eyes to widen.
Half a minute later, the rotation of the hair slowed down, and finally pointed straight at him, and then stopped.
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He was stunned, stood up and looked behind him, but of course he didn’t see anything. His mood became more and more chaotic, and he was on the verge of collapse.
“Why is it malfunctioning? Please, please succeed once and let me find him. Please…”
He knelt down and drew the formation again, then put all the things Chu Rong gave him at the eye of the array. In order to increase the effectiveness of the formation, he bit his finger and dripped some blood into it.
The array glowed, and once again, the hair rotated wildly. Then, it suddenly stopped, pointing at him.
“How could this happen? Don’t, don’t fail again, please…”
He shook his head and waved his hands randomly to erase this ineffective array, trying to concentrate his magic power on his fingertips again. As a result, as soon as his finger came close to the floor, a drop of blood dripped, as his injury got wider.
He felt like he was hallucinating. He could hear the sound of his own blood dripping, mixed with the roar of a mecha engine from far away.
His ears twitched and his eyes suddenly widened. He looked at the bloody hair that was wiped aside on the ground, and he felt something in his heart.
A guess formed in his heart. He quickly looked up, then immediately got up from the ground and rushed out of the room.
Chu Huai and others in the living room were startled when they saw him suddenly running out with some blood stains on the floor on his clothes. They stood up and approached him. Gu Yan’an was the first to ask, “Qiao, what’s wrong with you? Why are you not even wearing any shoes? What’s going on with all this blood?”
Qiao Zhiya ran past them as if he didn’t hear anything. He quickly ran to the yard, and looked up at the sky full of stars.
“Qiao!”
Chu Yan quickly chased after him. He frowned and pulled him to the living room, his voice trying to be soothing, “Don’t worry, Erge will be fine. You go back to the room with me first and put on your shoes. Then we can clean all this blood on your body.”
“He’s back,” Qiao spoke, almost like in a trance. He broke free from Chu Yan’s grip, and stared at the sky without blinking. His eyes darted back and forth, as if he was looking for something. His ears were straight in alertness. “I-I… I heard him. He’s back.”
After hearing this, Chu Yan also looked towards the sky, but saw nothing. He felt more and more that something was wrong with Qiao Zhiya’s current state, as if he was crazy. He frowned hard and reached out to pull him again.
“Qiao, you need to ca-“
“Chu Rong!”
Qiao Zhiya suddenly took a step forward, dodged his hand and waved vigorously towards the sky, shouting towards the sky as loud as he could: “I’m here! Chu Rong! I’m here!”
Chu Yan’s heart skipped a beat, and he quickly put his arm around his shoulders to stop him from running forward. He was so anxious that he said, “Qiao, calm down, Erge, he—”
A mecha roar came faintly, and then the sound became clearer and clearer. His words stopped abruptly, and he looked up in shock.
In the distant sky, a small black dot suddenly appeared. As it gradually got bigger, it’s clear that the small black dot was actually… a black mecha.
“Fuck…”
Chu Yan was stunned, watching the black mecha quickly approach the ground at an incredible speed. Then it decelerated precisely dozens of meters away from the ground, very steadily. It stopped on the lawn in the courtyard, making Chu Yan so shocked he was speechless.
‘So Qiao really heard it? This kind of hearing… I thought this can only happen in dramatic TV shows.’
The air flow from the landing of the mecha hit the door directly. Qiao Zhiya immediately ran over there and shouted, “Chu Rong!”
The cockpit of the black mecha opened in response, and a tall figure jumped out of it, and then ran towards Qiao Zhiya, who was also running towards him.
As the two finally met in the middle, Qiao Zhiya immediately buried his face in the side of the taller man’s neck and took a deep breath of his light grassy breath. The nerves that had been tense for several days finally relaxed.
Chu Rong took a deep breath, then whispered, “I’m back.”
“Yes!” Qiao Zhiya hugged him tightly, with a big smile on his face, but his eyes were reddened, and his voice was muffled with a cry. As he nodded vigorously, he said, “Welcome back, I know you will definitely keep your word, definitely…”
He sniffed, suddenly buried his head in his shoulder. He tightened his hold, bit his lips and started crying.