Chapter 64
As expected, Shen Shiqian couldn't go to work the next day. As a jealous husband, he was particularly petty and also prevented Feng Ran from going to school. His reason was that he couldn't accept her going out with someone else's mark on her body. He wouldn't allow it until she was fully recovered.
Feng Ran was speechless, thinking that he was really meddling. When feeding Xiao Jiu in the morning, he gave it twice as much food, hoping that it would grow up quickly and kill that jealous husband.
With March fast approaching, Feng Ran had to start preparing for her birthday banquet. In fact, she didn't have to do most of the work herself; she could just pick one of the options Xing Tong had given her. There were professionals to handle the details and execution, and all she had to do was pay them. The only thing Feng Ran needed to consider was who to send the invitations to.
She still doesn't have a real sense of wanting to stay in the Kempe family. She feels there's no need to associate with the aristocratic families, and she always feels that no matter what, she will run far away. But this thought makes her feel complicated. Why does she have to run away? Wouldn't it be more satisfying to seize power and rule the empire with absolute power? If she has to live a miserable life, she can just gather more rebel groups and overthrow the empire. Why does she always think about running away?
Previously, there might have been reasons for finding it troublesome or not being very interested. Although she still finds it troublesome now, she can push all the troublesome things to others to solve. Otherwise, why would she keep Shen Shiqian and Bai Sha around?
Because of this slight ego inflation, Feng Ran waved his hand and gave money to all the prominent figures in Kenpaen. After all, he had spent a lot of money renting out the venue, so he had to make sure it was worthwhile. He even wanted to call Fran back and let Bai Sha cause some more trouble in Kiria.
Thinking of Bai Sha, Feng Ran finally understood why she subconsciously always wanted to escape from Qiliya—because she had forgotten something very important—4601!
Feng Ran brought up the automatic monitoring system that he hadn't paid attention to for too long. After the planet's cold season ended, the core energy began to accumulate again. The crustal movement caused many rifts to form on the planet's surface, but the calculation results given by Xing Tong remained unchanged. The official deviation was expected to occur in eight years and seven months. Of course, if 4601 could accumulate enough energy during this period, the initial velocity of the displacement would be greater than initially predicted. This would mean that it might have taken fifteen years to collide with Qilia after it started to move, but if the energy increased, it would not be impossible to reduce it to ten or eight years.
Although in Feng Ran's memory, the Empire had not discovered the anomaly of the planet until she died, it's not like the Empire was completely useless and couldn't even observe it after the displacement began, and then it was hit by the disaster. If that's the case, wouldn't it be a pity that she died too early and didn't see it with her own eyes?
But what is the truth? Feng Ran always felt that she had forgotten something. It couldn't be that she suddenly had a burst of kindness in her past life and said that she would spend her whole life saving people and then find a way to adjust the deviation route of 4601, could it? Wouldn't that be just plain crazy?
However, it seems rather insane that she left Qilia instead of staying on the Azure Star that Luo Le had prepared for her and instead provoked the Imperial authorities everywhere. In the end, why didn't she just go to the Azure Star in the first place instead of running around in interstellar space and constantly chasing and competing with Shen Shiqian for five years...
Wouldn't she be better off doing something else with that energy? It just goes to show that she's not quite right in the head, Feng Ran couldn't deny that. He started to wonder about what Shen Shiqian had said before about her blowing up the factory and killing two squadrons. Was that really what she did? What exactly did that factory do?
Filled with curiosity and questions, Feng Ran went to the study to find Shen Shiqian. Under the chair in the study of the young man with hemorrhoids, there was a softer and more delicate butt cushion than usual. If he was not mistaken, it was because he had scratched the glue off Xiao Jiu while taking a shower. Sometimes being too clean is not a good thing. What's wrong with getting a little rubbed on him? It won't hurt him.
Shen Shiqian hesitated for a moment while placing an order for diapers on the StarNet, then his hand trembled. He quickly closed the terminal and logged out, calmly looking at Feng Ran with a gentle smile: "What's wrong, Ranran?"
Feng Ran ignored his little tricks and strode up to him: "I have something to ask you. It's about the explosion at the weapons factory on the Pukali mining planet that you mentioned before. Wasn't that originally Bai Sha's factory? Why do you all think that the mechanical counterfeiting must have been done by me?"
Shen Shiqian: "The reason and timing of Bai Sha's arrest are too coincidental. It happened shortly after you left Qiliya. The reason that he was discovered by the patrol team and then surrounded and arrested because he forgot to turn on the starship's anti-reconnaissance device seems a bit far-fetched to me. After all, there is a hacker named Carlo in their team who almost broke into the prison's security system and escaped after being arrested."
"Even the reason why the factory was left unattended and only allowed to operate and produce by mechanical lifeforms and star-guarding robots is very suspicious. After all, the Kercy Sector is not far from Chilia and is within the scope of the Council's supervision. The lord and the sector chief would not dare to collude without authorization. Rather, they should pay more attention to this factory. How could they let the mechanical lifeforms do whatever they want without knowing what they are doing?"
Feng Ran blinked, seemingly trying to recall, "I remember now, the Mechanical Life Rebellion Case, right? For a while, StarNet Media used that as a gimmick to call me a murderous female demon, right? It was because of that that my wanted poster was upgraded to Special Class, right? You were only appointed to be in charge of hunting me down after that."
Shen Shiqian: "No, it was before that. After you sabotaged the technology exhibition and hacked into the Empire's cybersecurity space, I was in charge of hunting you down after that. The factory explosion was the first major case after I took charge of hunting you down."
Feng Ran: "Time is really subtle. Oh, but now that you mention it, it all makes sense. I went to Laplace because the factory was blown up."
Feng Ran touched the gauze on her neck thoughtfully, feeling all her memories instantly connect, filling in the last missing piece of the puzzle: the 4601 plan that she had left unfinished and entrusted to Xing Tong after she passed away.
She wasn't that compassionate; rather, she was in a daze when she left Chilia, unsure of what to do. She felt guilty about her desire for freedom and liberation, and remembered Basil. The only love she had learned from him was the hope that the other person would live. That's why she resolutely changed course halfway to Azure Star and went straight to 4601.
But that's not necessarily true. After all, she could have simply told Lolli to leave Chilia and stop caring about the lives of the rest of the Empire. That would have been more in line with her vicious and ruthless reputation. She could have avoided countless troubles by doing just that. But instead, she chose to hide and run away from everyone while secretly collecting resources and building planetary engines.
Others would probably think she had a deep love for the empire, but Feng Ran just thought it was no wonder she wanted to die in her past life; she was definitely a bit mentally ill.
However, it's not entirely incomprehensible. After leaving Kiria, Feng Ran would miss Luo Le terribly, but at the same time, he was afraid to see him. Moreover, Luo Le had sacrificed so much for him, and Feng Ran really didn't want his hard-won peaceful life to suffer any more turmoil. Saving the world because of love for someone sounds truly noble, but unfortunately, such nobility rarely ends well, making it all the more ironic.
Shen Shiqian knew that Feng Ran later went to Laplace Star, after all, the first spy they sent out had lost contact there. He was surprised that Feng Ran knew there was a black market smuggling contraband there. When Shen Shiqian and his team received the intelligence and went to deal with it, the people in the black market had already fled because of the information given to them by the star sector lord.
Feng Ran: "I didn't blow up the factory," she said with a somewhat sinister smile, "you all blew it up yourselves."
"Of course, I arranged for you to capture Bai Sha, and I also manipulated my subordinates to arrange the mechanical life form. I admit that, but do you know what that factory produces? It produces antimatter energy bodies."
"The squadron of soldiers who were investigating entered the factory, got into a fight with the Star Guardian robots, and broke the transport pipe of the storage tank, which caused the explosion."
In fact, Feng Ran's initial idea for Project 4601 was to use an antimatter explosion to directly annihilate and blast through most of the planet's strata. After losing mass and energy, the planet would naturally be bound and captured by the star's gravity and would never be able to escape. However, the factory was gone, and she was always blocked by Shen Shiqian when she tried to find a new location. Helpless, she changed to a more troublesome but safer and more secretive method.
Feng Ran looked at Shen Shiqian, whose expression was somewhat solemn, as if he were looking at an ungrateful ingrate.
Feng Ran's first official criminal activity was seizing a newly born energy planet in the Northern Star Sector, openly challenging the Empire. After the military surrounded the energy planet, she stole the military's communication privileges, issued random orders, and escaped in the chaos—a situation almost identical to Bai Sha's escape. Shen Shiqian could understand that her seizure of the energy planet, her trading on the black market, and her production of antimatter in factories were all for her purpose in saving the Empire's Project 4601. He could also barely accept that she did these things because she distrusted the Empire and wanted everyone to regret it. However, he had reservations about her actions of disrupting the technology exhibition and intruding into cyberspace security.
Shen Shiqian: "May I ask you why you sabotaged the technology exhibition?"
Feng Ran: "Because I'm in a bad mood."
Shen Shiqian recalled Professor Ziers, who was mentioned in the final video: "You hate the Academy of Sciences?"
Feng Ran: "It's so-so. Actually, the Empire's emerging technology and cutting-edge technology exhibition is quite interesting. I've always treated it as a joke, trying to pry open the brains of those designers to see how they could design things that would be needed two hundred years before human civilization could use them. Although there are occasionally some good things, what interests me is their entertainment."
"Until I saw some infuriating things at that exhibition. Hmm, Marshal Shen, how much do you know about that exhibition? What do you think was the most creative exhibit back then?"
Shen Shiqian took over the investigation and pursuit of Feng Ran after that, so he naturally knew about the exhibition. Although he couldn't fully understand Feng Ran's idea of watching the show, the exhibition did indeed feature a very valuable exhibit: "Universum System?"
When the exhibition was first launched, the brand-new Star Network Map Monitoring System amazed many people. Its enormous computing power can even predict the range and location of black hole formation before the instruments of interstellar monitoring stations. It is unimaginable how much help it could bring to real life.
Feng Ran sat lazily on his desk, pushing the files aside: "Aren't you curious why this system ultimately failed to be successfully released and used?"
Shen Shiqian casually helped her put the files into the drawer: "The R&D center said the system is not yet perfect because you hacked and modified the code of all the exhibits. They feel that the security performance needs to be improved." As he spoke, his brows furrowed. "But a security system that can defend against your intrusion has always been very difficult to develop, so most people have given up. Other exhibits have been put into production and use one after another, but the Universum system has not..."
Feng Ran's expression hardened: "After all, they only have that one chip, which was taken from a toy I lost before. They definitely can't make it."
It was that celestial projector that Feng Linye had thrown away. Actually, Feng Ran thought that after experiencing enough, she would be able to ignore such things, but she overestimated herself. Perhaps it was because she was sick that she was more reactive to things that evoked her unbearable past memories. If she could watch the exhibition live on the StarNet, she would have blown the entire venue up.
"Shen Shiqian, if one day you find that everything you've done is pushing you further and further away from your ideals, what will you think? Will you regret it?"
Shen Shiqian grasped her hand and looked at her reverently:
“I have already repented, Feng Ran.”
Feng Ran nimbly rolled over, moving from the front of the desk to face Shen Shiqian. She looked down at him, gently cradling his head as if imparting the highest teachings:
"Then you'll have to repent for the rest of your life."
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