Across the web, immortals and true beings, their thoughts and energy creating the heavens.

Chapter 119 Preparations for Farewell, Akagi's Gift

After resigning from the library, Lin Zhuo strolled through the streets of Hongshui City.

He spent his entire education from kindergarten to high school in schools at the surface level. After school, he would wander around the surface, visiting parks, exhibition halls, and playgrounds, or doing homework with his classmates in the tea room. Strangely enough, all the elementary school students in Jiping liked to sit in the row of seats by the window. The narrow, long table was just big enough to hold their homework, and they always sat on high stools, so their legs could dangle and swing back and forth. Even though he now works on electronic screens, he learned to write with paper books when he was a child.

Lin Zhuo was the same way back then. He would lie on the table and do his homework. When he got tired, he would look up at the street scene outside the window. He could sit there until the city lights dimmed and the artificial sunset illusion was a dim yellow. It was reflected on his exercise book through the glass, dissolving the neat pencil writing in the squares as if it had disappeared.

Of course, he can't remember the friends who sat next to him back then, including his classmates and friends from junior and senior high school. He hasn't kept in touch with them since. Hongshui City is really big, with a large population. Many people parted ways and never saw each other again in their lives.

Actually, it's easy to say goodbye to a city. Just like him now, wandering aimlessly and taking one last look at the scenery he's been gazing at since childhood is enough to bring him comfort.

Considering the vastness of the universe and the number of planets that humans have already explored, Hongshui City itself, like its inhabitants, seems insignificant. Once people say goodbye and leave, they may never have the chance to set foot on this land again in their lifetime.

In the future, the people of this city will continue their ordinary, fulfilling, and carefree lives. His familiar neighbors will gradually grow old, and generations of children will move away after they grow up. The little figures playing happily in the community corridors will no longer recognize him.

Years later, Lin Ci will grow up and get married, Lin Chen will marry the girl he loves, and his two younger sisters, Lin Si and Lin Nian, will grow into well-behaved and reliable adults. Lin Wubing might even get into university and become as upright and proper as his older brother.

When that time came, only the two elderly people, father Lin Kangping and mother Zhou Lingning, would be left at home. They would move back to a smaller double apartment, their hair would turn gray, and they would spend their days relaxing with relatives and friends, chatting and occasionally calling the children back for a family reunion dinner.

"Everywhere dogwood is planted, but one person is missing—" Lin Zhuo suddenly thought of this line of poetry and chuckled to himself.

Of course, he had long been prepared to leave home at a young age and return as an old man. Even his family knew that sooner or later they would be separated from Lin Zhuo. In the future, travel would be slow, news would be slow, letters would be sent across the Milky Way, and wild geese would travel back and forth for a long time. It might take several days, a week, or even several months to greet each other or exchange an email.

Humanity has not yet developed real-time faster-than-light communication technology. If two colony planets are not in the same star system, the only way to contact each other is through dimensional travel spaceships.

A starship carrying numerous storage units shuttles between planets. Upon arriving at each colony, it uploads necessary information to its local storage and downloads content for transmission before continuing to the next destination. It's like a train, except the passengers are various private messages and official documents.

Because each jump requires a period of time for ship inspection and maintenance, crew shifts, and other procedures, it is normal for the journey from the starting planet to the final destination to take several weeks or even months, and sometimes there may be delays.

To transmit messages quickly, one-to-one warp-in ships are necessary, which is precisely the emergency channel that Chi Jiang mentioned. These emergency channels are very expensive to maintain, so they are used to transmit extremely important information, such as major military and defense matters, important decisions, and classified documents.

Lin Zhuo's identity was enough to call upon a dedicated communication spaceship to serve him, even if it was just to send an enlistment application to the Orbital Assault Force command.

Not to mention such mundane matters, even if he suddenly wanted to eat a specialty pastry produced on a cultural and tourism planet tens of millions of light-years away, he could send a message and have it delivered through emergency channels.

While strolling around, Lin Zhuo ventured into the market to select ingredients. Like other customers who had the leisure to cook at home, he pushed his cart, laden with vegetables and meat, to the self-checkout counter. He didn't have many work points to buy all the meat and vegetables, but after scanning the product codes at the counter, the machine immediately displayed a payment completion screen.

Whatever he wants, from fruits and vegetables to pots and pans, to firearms and ammunition, and even air vehicles, tanks, and fighter jets, he can take it all.

He can take whatever he wants, kill whoever he wants, it doesn't matter, there won't be any repercussions, because he is a level 10 classified person recognized by Chijiang.

Carrying large bags of groceries, he arrived at Qixing Community, his hometown. The elderly neighbors, seeing his impressive haul, praised Xiao Lin, saying he was doing well. Being able to afford all this meant he had earned a lot of work points, further demonstrating his strong work ethic and significant contribution to society—something truly honorable.

Lin Zhuo couldn't accept these praises without feeling guilty, so he could only brush them off and quickly went home.

There was no one in the house during the day; everyone was busy with work or school.

Lin Zhuo went into the kitchen to tidy up. To cook a good meal, you have to prepare the ingredients in advance. The meat must be marinated thoroughly, the vegetables must be chopped evenly, the soup must be cooked to the right temperature, and the rice grains for cooking must be soaked first.

He first learned his cooking skills in a high school hobby class, and later in college, he also had a special cooking training course. Being good at cooking is a fine tradition of the People's Liberation Army.

Now that he has returned from his training in the dungeon, Lin Zhuo has also learned a lot of recipes from the martial arts world, and his cooking skills have improved dramatically. Even the master chefs in the community canteen can't compete with him.

Having martial arts skills is definitely helpful in daily life. A single palm strike can loosen even the firmest meat. Thick bones can be easily twisted and broken. Dense fish bones are forced out of the body by true energy. The mud and sand in shellfish are also swept away by the delicate force. Dried goods that need to be soaked for a long time, after being imbued with divine energy, absorb the essence of heaven and earth and quickly absorb the moisture.

In the world of "Cangcheng", the head chefs of the top ten famous restaurants are all martial artists, and there's a reason for that. The dishes made by Qigong masters have an extraordinary color, aroma, and taste.

After finishing all the preparations, it was still early. Lin Zhuo looked around the kitchen with some satisfaction. The ingredients, which were sorted and processed in the pots and pans, were like a group of excellent soldiers lined up in the most orderly formation, ready to rush to the battlefield at any time. They would be cooked in water and fire to make a sumptuous feast, which his parents and younger siblings praised.

Having enjoyed the scenery enough, I was about to go back to my bedroom to meditate for a while when I suddenly received a voice call from Chijiang.

"Hello, Comrade Lin Zhuo, I hope I haven't disturbed your work. Your package will arrive in one minute."

"What is it?"

"You can check it yourself."

A special encrypted cargo drone hovered outside the bedroom balcony. Lin Zhuo scanned his palm print and iris before opening the container, which contained a silver briefcase.

I sat down at my desk and carefully opened the box. Inside, on the soft inner cushion, lay a small humanoid robot doll, not much bigger than the palm of my hand. Its white nano-skin was as smooth as rice grains. It had a round head, a fat and bloated body, short hands and feet, and tiny, bean-sized, cone-shaped fingers at the ends.

"Do you like my gift?" Akae asked softly.

"Is this an emotional support toy for children?" Lin Zhuo paused for a moment. "I had one when I was a kid. But it's broken now."

"I know you've kept that damaged emotional companion robot, the Childlike Type III." This one is custom-made; its body is mostly composed of nano-microrobots, and you'll find it integrates many functions waiting to be explored. Its computing unit is also custom-made, capable of handling all the critical data for an ancient urban management intelligence like mine.

Lin Zhuo took the robot out and discovered that there was another compartment in the suitcase. He picked up the soft padding on the surface and found ten silver metal cubes the size of eggs underneath.

"Did you see the metal blocks in the interlayer? These are spare computing chips, each containing a qualified artificial intelligence agent."

Lin Zhuo carefully examined the cube cores, then suddenly asked, "You're not one of them, are you?"

"Ah ha." After being caught red-handed, Chi Jiang casually admitted, "There's a copy of me in the second-to-last core in the first row. When you leave Emerald Planet, if you need my help, install it into the Childlike Ten-type machine, or any compatible device."

"You gave yourself to me as a gift?" Lin Zhuo suddenly felt that he had already finished saying goodbye to Hongshui City, and only the farewell to the old friends in the city was left.

"That is indeed the case. How could I bear to let you leave your hometown alone? Comrade Lin Zhuo, I will follow you to the ends of the stars, and I want to witness with my own eyes you fulfill humanity's supreme mission."