[Like a wild pigeon descending,]
[unintentionally stirring my heart.]
[Herta Love Poem No. 2]
[Leaving Herta, you were light as a swallow,]
[dancing tap dance upon Abundance's skin.]
[You made my heart tremble along with you,]
[you made the Stellaron clump together, blocking the stellar railways.]
[Herta Love Poem No. 3]
[Besides giant rings and starlight, the galaxy held another woman.]
[She carried my questions. Their deadline was my lifetime.]
[The answer fell upon the fragile edge of a black hole.]
[Her eyes were the sigh of clouds,]
[and loneliness wrote my name in blue.]
[Rocky Martinez]
Herta here referred to the name of the Space Station. This love poem Rocky had written for Leslie made everyone cringe.
"My god, this is way too intense!"
"Is this the sour stench of love? It's overflowing!"
"He really wrote quite a few love poems. They seem to get better with every one!"
"Not bad, instant knockout!"
"I wonder how Leslie would react if she saw these love poems!"
"She'd probably be very happy. My childhood sweetheart wife told me herself that she was so excited at night that she couldn't sleep!"
"Alright, alright, we get it—you have a childhood sweetheart wife! cries"
"Damn, my past self scoffed at this. My current self is analyzing every word!"
After a bit of fiddling around, they found a replacement part in the story and repaired the Galactic Wave Repeater. The machine made a startup sound.
[No wave signals currently being transmitted have been detected. If needed, please select a past Signal Translation Record to view.]
A searchable time range appeared among the options. Lao Mu clicked one of the periods and began reviewing it slowly.
[Signal Translation Record: Amber Era 2157, Months 40–43] [Leslie, System Hour 06:32:17] [Hello, Rocky!] [Leslie, System Hour 06:33:29] [This is my first time witnessing a Divine Descent... I used to stay cooped up in the Space Station all the time, never realizing that what one learns from books is always shallow.] [Leslie, System Hour 06:33:39] [Ah, the repeater signal is about to end... I feel like I said a lot of nonsense. Sorry.] [Leslie, System Hour 06:34:48] [You should work hard too, and strive to get out there and see the stars soon, just like that senior Ace you admire.] [Signal Translation Record: Amber Era 2157, Months 48–51] [Leslie, System Hour 04:25:32] [Rocky! Do you know what I'm experiencing right now?!] [Leslie, System Hour 04:26:22] [As far as my eyes can see, there are dazzling cosmic flashes and gamma-ray afterglows everywhere.] [Leslie, System Hour 04:26:58] [It's such a once-in-a-lifetime sight, but the crew member who said they'd come with me got scared and ran off early... Sigh, it would've been so nice if you were here.] [Leslie, System Hour 04:27:39] [So don't be mad anymore, okay?]
It looked like Leslie and Rocky's ordinary conversations. It was just that the distance between star domains was too great, so their signals needed to be received and translated together. One person would say a whole lot first, then the other would reply point by point.
It had to be said that Rocky and Leslie truly had plenty to talk about, from Leslie's circumstances after arriving in the Abundance Star Domain, to how to use the Star-Gazing Drill, to her later experience with a Stellar Quake.
It was clear that they cared about each other, though they also had their little frictions. They really did seem mutually attracted, so Rocky boldly confessed during their final communication.
[What I mean is... if possible, I want to stay by your side forever.] [Do you understand what I mean?]
But Leslie never appeared again in the subsequent records, and the Barrage immediately erupted!
"ohhhhhh!"
"Ahhh! makes some kind of piercing noise"
"So sweet! Seeing how they care for each other every day makes me believe in love again!"
"The great Rocky Martinez has officially launched his offensive! He is writing an immortal tale of pure love!"
"Hurry, hurry, hurry! I want to see their wedding right now!"
"Ah, why?! Why didn't Leslie reply after that?!"
"Did something happen to Leslie? Don't pull this kind of plot, come on!"
"If the production team dares to do this, I'm mailing them blades!"
"Wait, there should be a Rocky and Leslie at Herta Space Station in real life too, right? Somebody with bigger balls go ask!"
"It's the middle of the night. The Space Station's probably off work too!"
Everyone stared anxiously at the unanswered confession, wishing they could accept it for Leslie right away. But for now, they could only continue through the story obediently.
When Lao Mu checked the final message record, he had expected it to be empty as before. Yet Leslie's reply appeared in the story!
Leslie: [You silly Rocky, of course I understand what you mean. As for my answer...]
Just as Leslie's response was about to appear, when Lao Mu and the viewers were eagerly awaiting it, a line of text appeared in the story instead.
[This record has been damaged.]
The climax came to an abrupt halt.
"Damn it! Damn it!"
"Xianzhou profanity!"
"Come on, why did the record disappear at the critical moment?!"
"Ahhh, I can't take this anymore!"
"My heart was in my throat, and you pull this on me!"
"Could this be the writer's sick sense of humor?!"
"She said yes, right? She definitely said yes, right?!"
"Look at what Leslie called him, it's in the bag! Everything's in the bag! We're champions!"
"Being in love feels so good~ Watching their story~ makes me believe in love again~"
The Truth or a Lie
Seeing that the record had been damaged, the viewers had no way of learning what happened next. They could only head to the Surveillance Room first to find out who had destroyed the message record.
They checked the corresponding area of the Space Station according to the time records and, sure enough, found something suspicious!
The surveillance footage from the empty storage room showed a blurry figure doing something at the console.
Judging by his silhouette, it was clearly the old man Bernard!
When they saw that Bernard had actually destroyed the records, the Barrage exploded in anger!
"That's Bernard, right?!"
"Damn, this old man secretly tampered with it!"
"Breaking up lovebirds, huh? Does this old man have nothing better to do?"
"There must be some reason, but he still can't interfere with someone else's happiness!"
"Exactly! This old man is awful!"
"Go confront him and ask what he's up to! If he doesn't give us a proper reason, I'm calling a Galactic ride over there right now!"
When they found Bernard and questioned him, he initially pretended not to know anything. It was only after they mentioned the surveillance footage that he finally relented.
Bernard: [Sigh! You little brats really make people worry themselves sick! I damaged the record for Rocky's own good! Because of Leslie, he spends all day neglecting his studies... That alone would be one thing. Not to mention that you people don't understand the situation at all. Leslie, she...]
They had initially been disgusted by Bernard's talk about doing it for someone else's good, but when it seemed there really was some hidden reason behind it, the Barrage was instantly dumbfounded.
"Huh? There really is a reason?"
"Sounds like something happened on Leslie's end. Don't scare me like this!"
"Did Leslie reject him?"
"Impossible! Absolutely impossible!"
"If this pair can't make it, I'll never believe in love again!"
"If the production team really dares to stab me with this, I'm taking you down with me!"
Watching the three choices in the story, Lao Mu selected the first one, "She agreed?", wanting to see the result of the confession first.
Bernard: [Yes. She accepted Rocky's confession.]
Although they had gotten the answer they wanted, the Barrage couldn't bring themselves to be happy.
"Leslie really accepted! But what exactly happened?"
"Imperial Bow, bless them! I'm willing to trade my roommate's fifty years of being single for them to be together!"
"Roommate: Aminos!"
"Wait, does the Imperial Bow bless this kind of thing too?"
"Of course! Haven't you seen The Hunt chasing Abundance every day? That's love!"
"Damn, there's a Construct Historian!"
Bernard revealed the outcome of Rocky's confession in the story, but then continued.
[But they cannot be together. If you think I was the one who interfered, then you're wrong! Little brat, don't act clever.]
Bernard: [They cannot be together... They can never be together. Do you know why? No, you don't. Very few people understand what a Stellar Quake truly is...]
At that moment, the viewers' hearts were seized by the twists in the story, until Bernard began explaining.
Bernard: [If proper protection is in place, a Stellar Quake will not physically harm people. However, the gravitational collapse caused by a Stellar Quake drastically alters the curvature of spacetime in the affected star domain.]
Bernard: [For example, the time in Leslie's star domain was once a straight line like ours. Now, gravity has compressed it into an enormous canyon. Clearly, a curve is always longer than a straight line. Therefore, when the curve of time in her star domain is converted to our straight timeline, it will span several times the length.]
[Do you know what that means?]
"What does that mean? What is this old man even saying? I don't understand any of it!"
"He's saying the flow of time in Leslie's star domain has changed?"
"What do you mean, the flow of time?"
The viewers were clearly still completely confused, but Lao Mu had already reacted and roughly guessed what was happening.
Because of the Stellar Quake, the time curve in Leslie's star domain had begun to slow down.
While one normal System Hour passed, perhaps only ten minutes would pass in Leslie's star domain!
And this time difference would gradually increase. A message Leslie spent a few minutes writing might take a month, a year, or even ten years before Rocky received it!