C85

Since Duguang star was also one of the Marshal’s stars, Meng Jinhuai’s sudden visit didn’t alarm anyone. No one on the planet except Duan Hengye knew that the marshal was also at An Luo University.

 

Meng Jinhuai knew that if he appeared suddenly, he would probably cause a lot of trouble for the organizer of this event – that was, An Luo University. So Meng Jinhuai didn’t choose to go with Duan Hengye to this day’s event, but stayed at his residence and continued working.

 

The news that Duan Hengye would be attending the school history show day had already spread through An Luo University. However, because the number of guests today was relatively small, there were only a few volunteers to participate. By the time Duan Hengye came, there was no big commotion on the scene.

It wasn’t long before Duan Hengye disappointedly found out that his parents didn’t seem to have too much interaction with their classmates back then. The Ye Tian Empire and An Luo University in those days were much more chaotic than now, and the mecha major was related to the fundamentals of the empire. In addition to a group of students who were admitted by their strength, there were also many who were “sponsored” by various families in the empire.

 

Because they knew that their surroundings were complicated, the students always got along with each other with such a polite and distant feeling. Duan Hengye’s parents weren’t sponsored students, and after seeing their talent, there were many noble forces in the empire that wanted to draw them in. But the two finally chose not to get close to any of the forces, but buried themselves in research.

 

If he had to guess who they were familiar with … It was estimated that it was the former vice president of An Luo who spoke on stage yesterday.

 

After finding out that the lady didn’t come to the event site today, Duan Hongyi couldn’t help but be a little disappointed. After he finished attending several public events on the day of the school history show, he was ready to go straight back to his residence. But a familiar face from the Mecha Department suddenly appeared in front of Duan Hengye.

 

The visitor was the head of the Mecha Department, whom Duan Hengye saw almost every week during class.

 

“Hello Professor Duan, sorry for the interruption.” He spoke in a low voice, obviously not wanting people around to hear him. So Duan Hengye nodded, and then lowered his voice slightly, “It’s okay, go ahead.”

 

“Here’s the thing, I don’t know if you remember Ms. Zhu who spoke on stage yesterday – the former vice principal of An Luo.” The teacher said in Duan Hengye’s ear, “She wants to meet you.” After hearing the staff member’s words, Duan Hengye was a little surprised. It didn’t occur to him that the lady wanted to see him as well.

 

Upon hearing this, Duan Hengye nodded without half a moment’s hesitation and continued, “Of course, but …… where are we meeting?”

 

“It’s up to you to decide.” The staff said.

 

Although Duan Hengye came to An Luo almost every week, his activities were limited to the mecha department and his residence. After such a long time had passed, Duan Hengye was still not very familiar with the rest of the places on the Duguang Star. And he didn’t have to think about it to know that recently, An Luo University was holding a school celebration and was very lively. Not only in An Luo University, it was estimated that the corners of Duguang Star had been crowded with guests and reporters who came to attend the event, as well as visitors from all over the world.

 

Although he didn’t know why Ms. Zhu was actively looking for him, Duan Hengye knew that appearing in public hastily wasn’t a good choice.

 

Duan Hengye hesitated a little bit and then said to the teacher from the Mecha Department, “There are a lot of people on An Luo as well as the whole Duguang Star today, why don’t …… we use my home as the meeting place.”

 

After hearing Duan Hengye’s words, the teacher immediately nodded, “Okay, I’ll tell Ms. Zhu.”

 

As the former Vice President of An Luo University, Ms. Zhu had retired but still lived in the small building the school had gifted to her many years ago. Speaking of which, Ms. Zhu’s house was actually not far from Duan Hengye’s residence.

 

After communicating with this teacher, Duan Hengye boarded the hovercraft and flew towards his residence.

 

……

 

As a marshal, Meng Jinhuai was surrounded by the same number of security personnel. However, because they didn’t want to disturb the people nearby, the security guards all stayed in a hidden place. Looking down from the hovercraft, no special scene could be seen at all.

 

Duan Hengye returned home, and as soon as he opened the door, he saw Meng Jinhuai sitting in the living room dealing with documents. When he found that Duan Hengye had returned so soon, Meng Jinhuai’s expression was slightly surprised, he put down the work he was doing and asked Duan Hengye, “Why did you come back so soon?”

 

Duan Hengye glanced at the time on the light computer, then he took off his coat and sat down on the other side of the sofa, “My parents’ classmates back then weren’t too familiar with each other, so I tried to find Ms. Zhu – that was their teacher back then, but she didn’t attend today’s event.”

 

“Hmm.” Meng Jinhuai nodded silently.

 

Then Duan Hengye continued, “Just as I was about to leave, a familiar teacher from the An Luo Mecha department told me that Ms. Zhu also wanted to meet with me in private. Because of the recent activities in Duguang Star, I invited Ms. Zhu to come here later.”

Before Duan Hengye finished speaking, an alert rang out on the light computer that had been hovering beside him – Ms. Zhu had arrived at the door of Duan Hengye’s residence.

 

Duan Hengye and Meng Jinhuai stood up from the sofa together. By this time Duan Hengye had already clicked on the light computer to confirm the opening of the door, just as they walked to the doorway, the wooden door slowly opened and a lady wearing a dark green sheath dress was standing there.

 

“Professor Duan ……” As soon as the door opened, Ms. Zhu flashed a smile at Duan Hengye and then prepared to come forward to greet him. But before she could say the next words, she saw Meng Jinhuai standing beside Duan Hengye.

Meng Jinhuai’s appearance obviously surprised Ms. Zhu, she couldn’t help but freeze for a moment before calling out in a slightly excited manner, “Lord Marshal? Uh …… Good morning.”

 

“Greetings, Ms. Zhu.” Meng Jinhuai smiled and nodded towards the other, then shook her hand, “Please have a seat.”

 

Ms. Zhu finally eased up a little from her surprise. She smiled at Duan Hengye and Meng Jinhuai, “I didn’t expect Lord Marshal to be here, if I had known in advance, I would have said hello to the military department beforehand.”

 

At that, Meng Jinhuai shook his head, “You don’t have to be polite, my arrival in Duguang was rather sudden and I didn’t notify the public.”

 

“Okay ……” Ms. Zhu gently took the coffee from the robot’s hand, she briefly exchanged pleasantries with Duan Hengye and Meng Jinhuai for a while and finally got to the main topic.

 

At this time Duan Hengye was sitting diagonally across Ms. Zhu, after putting down the coffee in her hand, the woman turned to Duan Hengye, “Professor Duan, I came to find you today because there’s something serious I need to tell you.” Duan Hengye put down what he was holding, and then seriously looked at Ms. Zhu.

 

“It’s like this ……” Ms. Zhu cast her gaze towards the window, she spoke while reminiscing, “When your parents were young, An Luo was more chaotic, so they rarely socialized with their classmates, but instead spent all their time on research.” Duan Hengye learnt that this morning, hearing it again from Ms. Zhu didn’t surprise him.

 

Then the woman continued to recall: “At that time I happened to know them, and I was one of the few people in the department that wasn’t involved with the major interstellar forces, so they often came to ask me questions, one way or another, we got acquainted.”

 

Duan Hengye listened while gently nodding.

 

“Later I learned that they had been studying Scale Ignition Fire and also the related weapon assembly.” Without warning, Duan Hengye heard that familiar topic from Ms. Zhu.

 

Duan Hengye and Meng Jinhuai subconsciously glanced at each other, and then saw Ms. Zhu frowning slightly as she continued: “But despite being their instructor, I don’t know exactly how far the research had gone. I just felt that their research in this area was deeper than anything the Interstellar has ever done before.”

 

Although he knew that the assembly of light energy weapons wasn’t a simple matter, Duan Hengye didn’t expect that this research had started from their university days and had taken such a long time.

 

After seeing Duan Hengye’s reaction, Ms. Zhu guessed that he already knew about the research. Ms. Zhu fixed her gaze on him: “Although I don’t know if there is still a use for those decades old data …… but, since it is something left by your parents, then it’s better to hand it over to you. ”

 

After saying that, Ms. Zhu took her light computer from the side and loaded a system that Duan Hengye had never seen before.

 

Seeing Duan Hengye’s curious expression, Ms. Zhu smiled and explained to them, “This is a data recording system that was popular in the mecha research industry back then, but few people know about it now.”

 

As expected, just as Ms. Zhu said, the internal system looked a bit old, and there was a clear difference in style from the various websites on the Interstellar network now.

“The data from their experiments back then was recorded in this backend.” Ms. Zhu said while entering the account numbers of Duan Hengye’s parents into it. Then she let out a long sigh of relief, “Because they’ve been gone for more than ten years, according to the system’s internal inheritance procedure, you can now directly transfer the data to yourself.”

 

Although Duan Hengye had received relevant training before and it had left a shallow impression in his brain, these impressions were after all no more than detailed data records, after hearing Ms. Zhu’s words, Duan Hengye immediately thanked her gratefully. The lady gently waved her hand to Duan Hengye, “I didn’t do anything either. It’s only right that this data comes to your hand.”

 

After saying that, Ms. Zhu opened the system’s function of changing the person to whom the data belonged, and then taught Duan Hengye to transfer the data little by little. A few minutes later, a light green check mark suddenly flashed across Ms. Zhu’s light screen, and at the same time, an alert appeared on Duan Hengye’s computer.

 

Seeing this, Ms. Zhu gently clapped her hands in satisfaction, “Okay Professor Duan, you can go read those test records.” Although her relationship with Duan Hengye’s parents was very good, after all, more than ten years had passed, and after the sadness of those memories dissipated, all that remained in Ms. Zhu’s eyes was a longing for the future.

 

Duan Hengye talked with Meng Jinhuai and Ms. Zhu for a long time. During the conversation, Duan Hengye discovered that Ms. Zhu was a very outgoing and cheerful person. One could imagine how rare such a personality was in An Luo back then.

 

And by the time she finally left, they took a group photo with her. A few hours later, when Duan Hengye re-boarded the starship for the return trip, Ms. Zhu posted that photo to her social account along with the other group photos.

 

As a former Vice-Principle who worked at An Luo University for most of her life, Ms. Zhu had a large number of students who came to this school celebration, so she posted more than ten group photos. Although she had retired many years ago, as a person whose name often appeared on textbooks related to mechas, Ms. Zhu had many fans on Starnet.

 

Especially after retirement, she couldn’t stay idle, so from time to time, she checked new academic reports and interacted with netizens. The moment Ms. Zhu posted the photos, she received a large number of comments and likes. And after another moment, when everyone clearly saw who the people on the photo were, the comment section was full of screams.

 

“X-floor.
I’m not wrong! You actually took a picture with Professor Duan and the Lord Marshal! Was Professor Duan also your student?”

 

This relatively early message was on top, but before Ms. Zhu could reply, everyone was educating the commenter on interstellar general education. And for these people who knew Duan Hengye better, seeing his photo with Ms. Zhu appear on the star network was something that was expected …… just, how was Meng Jinhuai also in the photo?

 

According to the schedule previously announced to the public by Southern Star, Meng Jinhuai shouldn’t be in Duguang now. After discovering this matter, some people began to ask when Ms. Zhu and Duan Hengye and Meng Jinhuai took this photo.

 

Because he had been following his teacher, Su Mingge also found this post and saw the photo taken by Ms. Zhu with Duan Hengye and Meng Jinhuai.

 

He couldn’t help it. Su Mingge, like those netizens, couldn’t help asking, “The Marshal also went?” Why didn’t I see him? ”

 

Not a moment later, Su Mingge got a reply from his teacher. Ms. Zhu wrote in the message area, “He came to Duguang Star, but didn’t participate in the school celebration, it was a private trip.”

 

The tone of Ms. Zhu’s reply was very plain, but after seeing this, netizens suddenly had a feeling of being stuffed with dog food …… Meng Jinhuai actually temporarily adjusted his schedule to find Duan Hengye ah ……

 

The photo of Ms. Zhu and Duan Hengye and Meng Jinhuai spread across the stars in a short period of time, and at this time, Duan Hengye and the others were about to arrive at Southern Star.

 

In the recent period of time, because he was learning mecha driving, Duan Hengye returned to the Marshal’s residence in Southern Star much more frequently than before. The identity of the female protagonist Shang Mengzhen, had been officially announced recently – she was a member of the Duan family who was displaced from the stars due to the war. And as a member of this ancient family, Shang Mengzhen also had her own place to live on Southern Star as well. But as a film queen, she was so busy with work that she rarely appeared here, even though her identity had been restored.

 

The Marshal’s residence was so large that it was almost all empty. Walking down this side of the corridor, hearing the sound of his lonely footsteps, Duan Hengye, who had already read some interstellar as well as Ye Tian’s history, couldn’t help but feel a sense of despondency.

 

But today, everything seemed a little different.

 

After arriving at Southern Star, Duan Hengye went back to his office separately from Meng Jinhuai. But before Duan Hengye could reach the door, he heard a noise coming from the other side of the corridor. Duan Hengye felt a little curious, he stopped walking into the office and turned towards the direction the sound was coming from.

 

Although it sounded far, it was a short distance away from where Duan Hengye was now. After waiting for a while, Duan Hengye felt it, there was a person there …… not right, in addition to him there was another creature.

 

Duan Hengye slowed down his steps. After a while, he finally saw, right at the end of the corridor, stood a little boy wearing a blue sweater, as well as …… a dog?

 

Seeing him, Duan Hengye finally remembered that in addition to him and Meng Jinhuai, there was Meng Jinhuai’s nephew Meng Hexi. Because his classes often diverged from Duan Hengye’s days here, and he liked to go around playing, Duan Hengye hadn’t seen Meng Hexi for a long time.

 

This time, Meng Hexi finally noticed Duan Hengye.

 

Children always changed, and perhaps because he was more educated, compared to when Duan Hengye first met Meng Hexi, he had a lot less of that playfulness in him. After seeing Duan Hengye, Meng Hexi bit his lips, then stopped moving.

 

At the same time, Duan Hengye saw that the little guy that was trapped at the end of the corridor by Meng Hexi just now had finally caught air. It didn’t pause for a second as it darted away from Meng Hexi’s side. The dog’s legs weren’t long, but its movements were very agile, and in a few moments, it ran from Meng Hexi’s side to Duan Hengye.

 

Seeing that the dog was going to run away, Meng Hexi finally shouted in Duan Hengye’s direction: “Ahhhhh! Professor Duan, help me catch it!”

 

“What?” In his two whole lifetimes, Duan Hengye had never met someone who asked him to help catch a dog. Although his heart hesitated uncontrollably for a small moment, Duan Hengye didn’t hesitate for a moment. He slowly squatted down, and a few seconds later, the puppy crashed into Duan Hengye’s arms.

 

Although its body wasn’t big, its strength wasn’t small either. When it hit him, Duan Hengye’s body leaned back a bit. But he quickly stabilized himself, and then picked up the little guy who was still in a dizzy state.

 

Duan Hengye saw that the puppy he was holding in his arms was very much like a Shih Tzu on Earth. The little guy’s hair was long, and the top of his head had a small braid, it looked very cute. Meng Hexi walked towards Duan Hengye’s side, and after seeing the puppy in the other’s arms that carefully didn’t dare to move around, he pouted, “Why did it suddenly become so well behaved?”

 

Duan Hengye had never had a pet before, so his posture was a bit awkward, seeing its little master coming, Duan Hengye slowly bent down and prepared to return the dog to Meng Hexi.

 

But, the little guy turned to look at Meng Hexi, then suddenly turned his head to burrow into Duan Hengye’s arms. The braid on top of its head rubbed against Duan Hengye’s neck, and because of his fear of unintentionally harming it, Duan Hengye finally put the little guy on the ground.

 

But he didn’t expect that even then it didn’t run, instead it wagged its tail and began to spin around Duan Hengye. Seeing this, Meng Hexi’s pout became more pronounced, he reached out and touched the puppy’s head not very gently: “This is the marshal’s gift to me, but I don’t want it now.”

 

Hearing Meng Hexi’s words, Duan Hengyi was a little surprised. After all, from his impression, Meng Jinhuai didn’t look like a person who would give a child a pet at all. It seemed that after the last incident, Meng Jinhuai had slowly tried to care about this child who had been accidentally neglected by him for a long time. ……

 

Duan Hengye had wanted to see what was going on and go to work, but after seeing Meng Hexi’s little squirming expression, he changed his mind.

 

Duan Hengye picked the puppy up again, then squatted down and said to Meng Hexi: “Slowly touch it, reduce the force you use.”

 

Perhaps it was because it was being held by Duan Hengye, the little one finally stopped hiding. After listening to Duan Hengye, Meng Hexi tried to slowly reach out his hand and touch the puppy’s back.

 

This time, it didn’t run away.

 

For the second half of the afternoon, Duan Hengye spent the afternoon with Meng Hexi and his puppy. At the beginning, Duan Hengye wanted to leave for work, but after seeing Meng Hexi’s obviously different behaviour compared to last time, he didn’t leave.

 

Meng Hexi made Duan Hengyi remember his brother Duan Hengxing, his mood became a little complex – mixed with emotion and a little self-condemnation. Inevitably, Duan Hengye’s attitude towards Meng Hexi also became more gentle.

 

By the time the sunlight outside the window turned warm orange, the relationship between Meng Hexi and his pet finally eased up. And at some point, Meng Jinhuai also showed up, he looked at Duan Hengye and smiled, then slowly walked over and picked up the puppy under Meng Hexi’s adoring gaze.

 

Looking at this scene, Duan Hengye’s heart had the desire for time to stand still. But knowing the progress of mecha research, he knew better than anyone else in the world that perhaps this quiet life had also entered a countdown.