Mardis

John's spirits had been down lately and showed no sign of improving. In the past few days, aside from drinking a few sips of water and eating a few compressed biscuits to stave off hunger, he had hardly done anything. He never forgot Feng Yi's last request; the legion commander wanted to go to a very distant place.

As a national hero, Feng Yi's existence was indeed too special; for this reason, John had never even considered transporting Feng Yi to the Capital Planet.

He just wanted to spend more time with his old comrade, although Xiu Yi had put Feng Yi's body into the Space Crystal immediately to prevent the complete death of his flesh and brain cells. But as time passed excessively, cells have a shelf life, and it's feared that in another few decades or centuries even if not dead, they would die. Despite this, John decided to set out.

It wasn't until he heard that the Capital Planet was coming to claim the person that he made up his mind to fulfill the Legion Commander's lifelong wish.

It was a small shuttle, with only him aboard. John did not notify Hugo, Apophis, or even Wolf Head Powder Keg about this matter, because Feng Yi had only entrusted the matter to him.

Not until the shuttle departed from the distant star system and came to an obscure flight path immeasurably far away, did John, with the greatest determination and courage, open the cryo chamber to see the lifelike body of the legion commander, and once again, tears involuntarily streamed down his face.

He had thought about his future plans, possibly retiring to return to his hometown and not be the Blazing Flame Legion Commander anymore. John loved this collective, but this place was also filled with endless contemplation, and he had to shoulder the responsibility. It was his persistent reminder to himself, how much he wished he could show him that he was now truly the Blazing Flame Legion Commander, and provide Feng Yi with a more comprehensive explanation, allowing Feng Yi to depart without any lingering concern...

John had never hated himself as much as he did now. If he had taken up the position then, maybe he would feel somewhat better—why, why! Why had he never considered the legion commander's painstaking efforts?

On this journey, John talked to Feng Yi in a half-muttering way, about the past, the present, and the future. Some words were just blather, some were words of anger, but more heartfelt words were his explanations to Feng Yi.

As he talked, at some unknown moment, John suddenly thought of drinking, recalling those days when brothers ate meat and drank heartily, life was beautiful. Thus, John, who hadn't had much to eat for days, went through a bout of heavy drinking, and afterward, stumbled drunkenly in front of the cryo chamber...

He stood there for who knows how long, then with force, pushed the less than four-meter perpetual cryo chamber out of the corridor and toward the eternally resting other side.

This was the place where the Blazing Flame Legion had their robust beginnings. Wolf Head and Powder Keg, along with the space pirates, used to fight each other incessantly, and it was here that they were trapped by the Blazing Flame Legion with nowhere to escape and eventually became part of the legion.

Wolf Head once said that this VK4402 coordinate area connects to a space of physical forms difficult to understand, where everything you see and hear becomes extremely sensitive, or rather, clarified. When you plummet into it, it's like suddenly having a dream, where everything around you becomes unreal, yet your senses are countless times more real than usual. You can hear any sound that enters your ears, and you can see everything behind objects, even see through human organs, including the clothes you're wearing, the warship you're riding in, all becoming transparent. This also brings potentially immense hazards, like you can't clearly discern how far away a seemingly distant unit of distance actually is from you—perhaps it's just a few steps away, or it could be an insurmountable distance, forever unreachable.

From that moment, the legion commander would talk to him about wanting to come here for a good visit after the war ended. Indeed, he awaited that day, but no one expected that when the day arrived, it would turn into an eternal farewell.

"Old buddy, take care!"

John left behind just those five words, with no more goodbyes.

The departing cryo chamber continually vanished from John's sight. He looked down at his hands, calloused and rough, then suddenly picked up a laser and continuously pulled the trigger into the open space above, as if he was performing the ultimate tribute.

"Ahhh..."

John roared until he was hoarse, laser beams annihilating the void, as if only in this way could he temporarily mask the emotions in his heart—until his voice was hoarse, the energy in the gun was exhausted, and he finally collapsed in the launching corridor...

Upon his return, John found that everything inside and outside the legion felt cold and desolate, as if a beautiful and tranquil glacial lake's shores could not rouse any emotional ripples in one's heart. Yes, no matter how severe the pandemic could become, it would be difficult to spread wantonly in such a sparsely populated area as Mardis.

Indeed, the pandemic had reached a very serious state. On inland planets, some people were quarantined, homeless; others had spent all their money, came to the official Relief Center just to get a bite to eat. In this extraordinary period, filled with anxious hearts, traffic routes and air services had already been halted for days, and sealed-off areas had become so deserted it was hard to find pedestrians on the streets. And if there were the occasional one or two, they were also hurriedly wearing thick gas masks, moving as swiftly as the wind.

Furthermore, with food supply shortages and industries shrinking severely, bankruptcies were widespread, and the unemployment rate had broken through the lowest historical limits of human history in recent centuries.

The rice and wheat flour, vegetables and meat that we usually eat had risen in price to many times their original value, yet still showed a trend of being in short supply, with everything being snatched up. In remote suburban areas, even if you had money, it would be very difficult to buy food.

To this day, the government had already issued two living subsidies to the people, calculated at fifty thousand G coins per person, a single subsidy amounting to ten trillion. If this continued, it's possible the national treasury couldn't hold up, not to mention that this was after excluding the expenses for water, electricity, transport, and trade imports.

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