Chapter 85#

A-Rou carried a tray of tea and carefully walked into the gambling den.

It was called a gambling den, but it was actually just a crude “rock bun”—half above ground and half below. This was the most common type of residential architecture on Titan, designed to withstand the sand and wind to the maximum extent.

A-Rou descended a narrow stone staircase, met by a wave of crude clamor.

Inside this small rock bun, more than a dozen men were squeezed together, shouting and yelling as they threw dice.

A-Rou was nearly suffocated by the thick smell of alcohol, sweat, and various mixed strange odors. However, she was used to it, so she endured the nauseating feeling and walked to the card table.

“Why are you so slow!” A-Rou’s brother, a thin and weak minor overseer, glared at his sister, then quickly placed a cup of tea in front of a burly man at the table, smiling apologetically and fawningly: “Brother Zhou, have some tea. Tartary buckwheat tea, just roasted two days ago.”

A-Rou lowered her head and pursed her lips, then handed the remaining cups of tea one by one to the gamblers.

The last cup she placed in front of the gambler opposite Brother Zhou.

The man turned his head slightly and smiled: “Thank you.”

A-Rou blanked for a moment, then blushed slightly. Conditions in the Titan settlement were harsh, and most men and women were unkempt; she rarely saw such a good-looking man. Moreover, when this man smiled, it was particularly likable.

She couldn’t help but steal another glance at him.

The man wore a hemp shirt that was already frayed at the edges; his economic condition didn’t seem great, yet there was an indescribable feeling about him. Holding his family’s crude handmade ceramic cup, he looked like a legendary prince holding an exquisite crystal goblet.

The man seemed to sense something and looked at her again, then smiled slightly.

The light in the rock bun wasn’t very good. In this dim light, his eyes flickered with a strange dark green, carrying a soul-stirring sensation.

A-Rou didn’t dare look further and quickly lowered her head, her heart thumping wildly.

She suddenly remembered something and looked with concern at Brother Zhou opposite the man.

This man was actually gambling on “high or low” with Brother Zhou—this really wasn’t rational behavior.

Brother Zhou’s full name was Zhou Meng, a middle-level overseer under the Lord of Titan and a D-class special-type controller. He was responsible for tending to the Lord’s large collection of beast pets and deeply trusted by the Lord.

And the owner behind this gambling den was Brother Zhou.

For this good-looking man to gamble with Brother Zhou, losing would certainly be unpleasant… but winning might not necessarily lead to a good outcome either.

However, in a place like this, A-Rou had no say. She hesitated for a moment before her brother scolded her several times: “Go get back to work! What are you standing there for!” She could only leave awkwardly with her tray.

Fu Yucheng manipulated the three dice in his palm with one hand, looking with some difficulty at the three dice Brother Zhou had just thrown.

Four, five, six.

Already very high.

He pursed his lips tightly, intentionally putting on a hesitant look, then gritted his teeth and threw the dice in his hand.

The three dice spun around in the dish and slowly came to a stop.

Four, four, five.

Fu Yucheng stared blankly, an extremely disappointed expression appearing on his face.

Brother Zhou laughed loudly: “Not bad, not bad, there’s progress! Only off by a little bit.”

Fu Yucheng watched helplessly as the other gathered the chips in front of him, which weren’t many to begin with. He was so anxious that sweat broke out on his forehead, and his breathing involuntarily quickened.

Brother Zhou looked at him smilingly: “A-Cheng, another round?”

Fu Yucheng’s face flushed. He fumbled around his person awkwardly, only to find himself penniless.

He stared at the dice on the table, hardened his heart, pulled the watch off his wrist, and said through gritted teeth: “Another round!”

Brother Zhou squinted his eyes, picked up the watch to examine it closely, and then let out a light “tsk”: “A mechanical watch, and with a mica dial… not particularly valuable, but not bad either. I’ll count it as twenty transaction coins.”

In fact, that antique mica wristwatch was worth at least fifty transaction coins, but like any desperate gambler, Fu Yucheng gritted his teeth and nodded with effort: “Twenty it is.”

Brother Zhou smiled and pushed out twenty transaction coins’ worth of chips.

…

Fu Yucheng stared at the dice before him, his face looking very defeated.

Brother Zhou happily swept both the wristwatch and the chips in front of himself: “A-Cheng, that’s enough for today. Come back and play tomorrow.”

Fu Yucheng muttered: “En.”

Just then, a young man squeezed his way in hurriedly.

He looked to be at most twenty years old, tall and sturdy in build, with features that could be called delicate. On his back, he carried a heavy, worn-out guitar.

The young man glared at Fu Yucheng, his expression almost looking angry: “Yu-ge, you…”

Brother Zhou raised an eyebrow: “A-Cheng, your Ning Yue is here to catch you again.”

Fu Yucheng felt embarrassed and let out a light cough: “Xiao Yue, why are you here?”

The young man named “Ning Yue” only scanned the table once and generally understood the situation, unable to help but say angrily: “How can you, how can you come gambling again! How many times have I told you!”

Fu Yucheng rubbed his ear from the shouting: “Keep it down; my ears hurt.”

Brother Zhou laughed: “A-Cheng, you’re supposedly an older brother, yet being shouted at by this young brat Ning Yue—it’s quite a loss of face. Don’t you think?”

Fu Yucheng also seemed to feel he had lost face, his expression looking somewhat bad. He stood up without a word and turned to walk out.

Ning Yue gave Brother Zhou a fierce glare and hurriedly chased after him.

Fu Yucheng walked forward with his head down, sounding sulky, kicking randomly at the stones on the ground.

Ning Yue caught up and said angrily: “How many times have I told you that those dice of Zhou Meng’s have a trick to them! Why won’t you listen!”

Fu Yucheng said wordlessly: “I know.”

He thought to himself, Of course I know those dice have a trick—they’re just filled with mercury.

Once dice are filled with mercury, the weight distribution becomes uneven. Combined with the fluidity of mercury, if a gambler has an exquisite technique, they can almost throw any number they want at will.

And this trick was one Fu Yucheng had learned long ago back in the industrial zone, and he often relied on it to earn a bit of pocket money. If he wanted to throw “six six six,” he would never throw “six six five.”

It was just that in these few rounds with Zhou Meng, Fu Yucheng didn’t want to win.

While listening to Ning Yue’s complaints, he agreed haphazardly, while secretly calculating in his heart: he had been losing for several days, and it was about time to win a round tomorrow.

And in that round, he would cleanly and decisively drive Zhou Meng into a corner.

Ning Yue kept scolding him, and Fu Yucheng gave perfunctory answers like “En, en, en.”

This human settlement was very windy and sandy, and the sun looked very small. The landscape presented a red-brown gravel texture, with large and small rock buns scattered about. Between the rock buns, a few raggedly dressed children occasionally ran around screaming.

Unknowingly, the two had already walked through several dusty paths and arrived in front of a small rock bun.

Fu Yucheng entered the rock bun and collapsed onto the tattered sofa in the living room. He then pulled out several dice from his pocket and began playing with them casually—he had to maintain his feel for them.

“You… how can you be like this!” Ning Yue, seeing his “addiction to gambling” as impossible to break, was so angry that smoke was practically coming out of his head.

“Just playing around,” Fu Yucheng said helplessly.

Ning Yue gave him a look of “resenting that iron cannot become steel,” but having no way with him, he could only hang the guitar from his back onto the wall and turn to go into the kitchen.

Before long, he brought out two bowls of something and placed them heavily onto the wobbly small dining table.

Fu Yucheng was also a bit hungry, so he stuffed the dice in his hand into his trouser pocket, moved to the table of his own accord, and thick-facedly found a topic to talk about: “Good cooking skills.”

Ning Yue looked at him speechlessly: “Does this even count as good?”

Fu Yucheng looked down. In the shabby stainless steel bowl was only some brown coarse-grain gruel, which looked completely unappetizing. He couldn’t help but feel a bit embarrassed, but he didn’t mind it and began eating unhurriedly, licking the gruel from the corners of his lips as he ate.

Ning Yue watched him for a while, then suddenly said: “Yu-ge, don’t go gambling anymore. I know you also want to earn money, but this really isn’t the way… I sing at the bar every night; though the money I earn isn’t much, it’s enough for us to spend.”

While drinking the gruel, Fu Yucheng thought, I really am not doing it for the money.

Seeing that he was silent, Ning Yue thought he didn’t believe his words and pulled several transaction coins from his pocket, pushing them in front of Fu Yucheng: “Here, this is the money I earned from singing today; it’s enough for our expenses for the next two or three days. Don’t go gambling anymore, okay?”

Fu Yucheng said unclearly: “En.”

Ning Yue looked at him seriously, his tone very sincere: “Yu-ge, back when I offended those thugs and you saved me, I was truly grateful. I don’t mind you not working, and I don’t mind supporting you, but you can’t just keep gambling like this—it’s not a solution. You have to… think about our future.”

As he reached the end, for some reason, his voice grew smaller and smaller, until it was almost audible only to himself.

Fu Yucheng hadn’t been “educated” so seriously by someone in a long time and couldn’t help but find it both funny and annoying.

Since he couldn’t explain, he gave a perfunctory nod: “I know.”

Ning Yue looked at him for a while and said softly: “Good that you know.”

After finishing dinner, Ning Yue went to tidy the dishes, and Fu Yucheng returned to his small room.

He lay on the rust-stained single bed, looking at the rough and dim rock ceiling, and slowly sorted through the recent events.

Three months ago, when he escaped from the prison, he had discovered something unusual at the spacecraft base. Fearing for Bai Mo’s safety, he hadn’t left immediately.

He had turned on a spacecraft’s autopilot system and linked his mental power to the flight system, creating an illusion that he was on the spacecraft—it would be difficult to detect if one didn’t distinguish carefully.

Then, he hid in a nearby fortification, using the lead shielding of the fortification to hide his aura as much as possible, waiting quietly.

Events later transpired exactly as he had expected.

The base’s owner, Edmund, upon discovering Bai Mo’s arrival, thought his rebellion had been exposed and, in desperation, directly launched an attack.

After saving Bai Mo, Fu Yucheng took advantage of the extreme chaos of the scene to sneak from the fortification into a nearby private cargo ship. Before long, that cargo ship departed for the Fifth Dyson Cloud and docked at a large logistics center.

At that logistics center, Fu Yucheng stole a small long-range spacecraft and, after several transfers, arrived at Titan—the human settlement on Saturn’s moon.

This human settlement on Titan was built by the massive Fourth Fleet of the past. The descendants of the crew, in addition to their own reproduction, used the human embryos on the spacecraft to increase the population, but the number was limited after all.

Until now, the settlement only had a population of over seven hundred thousand. The development of technology was very imbalanced, and the gap between rich and poor was large. The Lord of Titan possessed massive and complex “Rock Fortresses” and armies, while the commoners could only live in “Rock Buns” that looked like tombs.

After arriving at Titan, Fu Yucheng hid the spacecraft in an abandoned waste disposal plant and then immediately began gathering information in the human settlement.

He didn’t have much time to waste; he had to be quick.

At this time in a normal cycle, the “sacrifices” in the Tower of Light would have already been sent by giant spacecraft to a certain asteroid on the edge of the solar system— “Oceanus.” This name came from the legendary abode of the Gorgon Medusa.

According to the normal speed of a spacecraft, Medusa would receive the “sacrifices” one year later.

This time, Medusa wouldn’t receive the “sacrifices” at the normal time, would certainly discover the abnormality, and would then hold humanity accountable.

After being held accountable, it might mean being penned, or being destroyed.

Humanity doesn’t have much time left—only one year.

But he couldn’t be too impatient either, as that would be counterproductive; he had to practice patience to have a chance of resolving this giant crisis.

A few days ago, Fu Yucheng was gathering information in a bar on the edge of the settlement when he happened to encounter a group of thugs extorting a young man who was a singer there.

He really couldn’t stand by and watch, so he dealt with those thugs and then thick-facedly stayed with the young man—the population on Titan wasn’t large, and a drifter would be too conspicuous; having a fixed residence made it easier to avoid notice.

The singer, named Ning Yue, was an orphan. He sang at the bar at night to earn a bit for living expenses and worked as an apprentice at a mechanical repair shop during the day, which could be considered quite diligent.

After being saved by Fu Yucheng, he took the initiative to let the other stay at his home and provided food and drink, which could be seen as very much repaying a kindness. It was just that this young man, intent on repaying kindness, was simply disgusted by Fu Yucheng’s “addiction to gambling” that he refused to change.

However, Fu Yucheng had no other way.

Although the Titan Lord’s Rock Fortress was extremely heavily guarded, logically speaking, as an S-class controller, he could have just burst into the fortress and forced the other to hand over the “Grim Reaper’s Wings.”

But in that case, the commotion would be just too large.

As his mother Rong Xu said, the consciousness of a “Type III civilization” exists independently of a physical body and can infiltrate the brains of the vast majority of humans. Back then, that was how they caused the internal rebellion in the Deep Space Fleet.

If he were to seize the “Grim Reaper’s Wings” with a great flourish, and in the event Medusa sensed the truth of the Dyson Clouds being weaponized, then everything would be over.

Therefore, all his actions had to be as low-profile as possible and must not attract attention. It would be best if he could steal that “Grim Reaper’s Wings” without anyone knowing.

After moving into Ning Yue’s house, Fu Yucheng stayed for several days, went to nearby bars and gambling dens to gather quite a lot of information, and finally devised a simple and effective plan.

Now, this plan had already partially progressed.

Tomorrow, he could begin to draw in the net.

Fu Yucheng carefully sorted through everything from beginning to end, confirming there were no omissions, before finally letting out a soft sigh of relief.

By now, the sky had gradually darkened. In the rock bun, near the ceiling, there was a small square window opening. Outside the window was pitch black, and the sound of whistling wind could be faintly heard.

Fu Yucheng blanked out for a while, and suddenly felt somewhat restless.

It had been several months since his “death”… Titan was very isolated, and almost no news of the Dyson Clouds could be gathered. He wondered how that person was doing now?