Hawkins's Romance

Several days later, the Black Knife continued sailing toward Vitalia Island.

Hawkins did not intend to stray too far from Black Market Island. He mainly planned to wander around Vitalia's southern coast before returning to Black Market Island. The round trip would take roughly a month.

During this month, he had several things to accomplish.

First, he needed to divide up the space within Eternal Space and completely separate Yazhong Island, lest someone court death by running onto Yazhong Island and playing themselves to death.

Second, he needed to teach Mark and the others modern knowledge. This world was simply too backward; they had not even known how to use toilets until he taught them.

Third, he needed to continue modifying the Black Knife. Although it had now switched to bioenergy, its hull was still extremely crude, and many functions had yet to be realized, leaving plenty of room for improvement.

Once those three tasks were complete, if Jabus happened to appear on Vitalia Island's southern coast, Hawkins would not mind taking care of Jabus along the way.

However, the odds of that were rather low, so he had not included it in his plans. He could only play it by ear when the time came.

[I Love My Family Group]

Mark: "Captain, multiplication is too hard. Can't we learn something else?"

Sitting in a recliner, Hawkins looked at the chat group and typed: "Weren't you very interested in electromagnetism? If you want to reach my level, you'll need immense computational ability, so you cannot avoid learning mathematics well."

Mark: "Then I choose to give up."

Arthur: "I choose to give up too. Captain, can I just not learn it? I feel like my brain hurts."

Ai Miye: "Hawkins, I don't think I want to be a combatant, so can I skip mathematics too? It's too hard."

Next, everyone else chimed in to say that not learning mathematics was no big deal. Hawkins felt rather helpless, but when he remembered how resistant he himself had been to mathematics as a child, he could not help laughing at himself.

He typed: "If you truly don't want to learn, then don't. You'll have a very, very long time ahead of you anyway. Perhaps one day, you'll want to learn."

Mark: "I guarantee that day will never come. I swear."

Jennie: "Mathematics is actually quite interesting. It can solve many problems."

Mark: "Really? Then I'll try studying harder."

Ai Miye: "Mark, aren't you slapping your own face a little too fast?"

Mark: "Qiao Si, what do you mean by that? We're all making a living under the captain. What schemes could I possibly have? What schemes would I dare have?"

Hawkins: "You're lusting after Jennie's body..."

Mark: "Captain!!!"

Arthur: "Oh!!!"

Ai Miye: "Oh!!!"

Victor: "Oh!!!"

Jason: "Oh!!!"

Stallone: "Oh!!!"

Schwarzenegger: "Oh!!!"

Qiao Si: "..."

Jennie: "..."

Inside Jennie's room, Qiao Si looked at the red-faced Jennie and could not help asking, "Miss, what do you think of Mark?"

"I don't know. I don't like him," Jennie replied awkwardly.

Qiao Si froze, then asked, "Miss, didn't you say you had someone you liked? Who do you like?"

Qiao Si immediately guessed, "Could it be the captain? The captain really is handsome and elegant, and he is powerful and unfathomable. Yet his personality is gentle and easygoing. If one could become the captain's wife, that truly would be a woman's best destination."

"No, not the captain. Although the captain is wonderful, he is so wonderful that people do not dare like him," Jennie quickly denied.

Qiao Si frowned. "Then who do you like? Arthur? How could it be that little brat? Don't tell me it's really Victor? You have no chance with him. He only likes Avril, and sooner or later, he will revive Avril."

"Not Victor. I already told you, it's not Victor. And Arthur is only thirteen. How could I possibly be with him?" Jennie snapped.

Qiao Si looked utterly baffled. She stared at Jennie in confusion. "Then who is it? It can't be those even younger little brats, can it?"

"No!" Jennie hurriedly denied it.

Qiao Si could no longer guess, because there were only so many people in Eternal Space. It could not possibly be...

Wait!

What if Jennie had already liked someone back on Vitalia Island?

Qiao Si looked at Jennie and asked, "Miss, could it be someone you have known for a long time?"

"Mm, I've known her for a long time." Jennie's gaze flickered as she answered shyly.

Qiao Si suddenly understood. "So that's how it is. Then who is it? Which young master?"

"Hmph, I'm not telling you!"

Jennie covered her face. No matter how Qiao Si questioned her afterward, she refused to say a word.

Within Eternal Space, the Black Knife sailed through a storm.

Because Eternal Space came first and the modified Black Knife came afterward, the Black Knife inside Eternal Space was still an ordinary sailing ship, reliant on the most primitive wind power.

"Arthur, hurry and furl the sails! Jason, Stallone, get inside the cabin now! If you fall into the sea and drown, I don't have extra lives to revive you!" Mark roared from the cockpit.

Mark actually felt that learning this stuff was useless. The Black Knife in the real world had already become a monster ship, so there was no need to worry about such things at all.

Yet Hawkins believed that more skills never weighed one down, so he still required them to learn these things. If they ever needed them in the future, they would not be left scrambling like headless flies.

"Sigh, it's all the captain's fault for talking too much. Now Jennie won't even speak to me."

After everyone left the cockpit, Mark looked at the waves ahead and sighed softly.

In the past, he and Jennie had gotten along fairly well in the chat group. Mainly because he had licked boots hard enough, Jennie had been willing to talk to him.

But ever since Hawkins exposed his feelings, Jennie seemed to be avoiding suspicion—or perhaps she did not want to give him the wrong signal. Now she would not speak to him at all. Even if he took the initiative to @Jennie, she would only toss out a perfunctory reply.

His heart was exhausted. Loving someone was so hard.

Mark turned the wheel and looked at the huge whirlpool that suddenly appeared ahead. He even wanted to steer the ship straight into it.

Luckily, Arthur came in at that moment, snapping him back to his senses. He hurriedly turned the ship away.

"Brother Mark, what happened to you just now?" Arthur asked in surprise.

Mark shook his head. "Nothing. I was just distracted. Arthur, do you have someone you like?"

Mark asked in surprise, "Who is it? Ai Miye?"

"How did you know?" Arthur bristled, shocked.

Mark sighed. "I was just guessing. But what do you like about Ai Miye?"

In his eyes, Ai Miye was too young, and she was thin as a bean sprout from head to toe. He truly could not see what was so good about her.

"Then what does Brother Mark like about Sister Jennie?" Arthur asked.

Mark froze, then began seriously considering it. What exactly did he like about Jennie?

It seemed Jennie really did not have many good points. She was timid, and whenever something happened, she only knew how to cry. She had even stabbed Qiao Si once, which counted as betraying the person closest to her.

What was good about a woman like that?

"Could it be that I really am just like the captain said, simply lusting after Jennie's body?"

Mark was somewhat lost, but if he truly had to stop liking Jennie, then the moment he thought of her collagen-filled face, he felt that he could not do it.

When one liked someone, one often did not care about the other person's flaws.

Beauty lay in the eye of the beholder. That was probably what it meant.

Yet time would ultimately grind away that illusion. When life gradually returned to dullness and firewood, rice, oil, and salt became the theme of daily life, those flaws would reveal themselves one by one. In the end, they would either muddle through together or split apart with a single clap.

Because the storm was extremely dangerous, Hawkins did not want Mark and the others to die inside Eternal Space and waste a revival opportunity for nothing. Thus, Mother had actually been keeping an eye on the Black Knife the entire time.

It had been a not particularly successful marriage. Two young people had believed love could generate electricity, light fires, and withstand the torrent of reality, but in the end, they were defeated by all kinds of trivial matters.

Finally, his wife proposed divorce, and he silently signed the divorce agreement.

Afterward, he remained single for a long time, until he met an adorable young girl at the age of 306.

Perhaps because he lusted after her young body, he and she fell in love. With his abundant life experience and a savings account in the nine figures, he charmed her until she was utterly besotted.

Unfortunately, the two never entered the hall of marriage.

That was because the young girl's great-grandmother turned out to be Hawkins's former classmate. She recognized Hawkins and revealed the truth that he was an old man over three hundred years old.

Technology had already become highly advanced by then, and there were many ways to extend one's life. After her initial shock, the young girl still insisted on being with him, but every one of her relatives opposed it.

Although human lifespans had already been greatly extended at the time, many ideas had not changed as a result. An old husband with a young wife was still something many people could not accept.

In the end, that young woman compromised after receiving a large inheritance from her great-grandmother.

And Hawkins could only leave the stage in desolation.

Because of this, Hawkins did not date again for several hundred years, until World War III erupted.

Under the laws of the time, modified humans like him, whose lives had been extended through technology, belonged to the category subject to compulsory conscription. Thus, he enlisted.

The root cause of World War III was overpopulation.

Because technology had drastically extended human lifespans, Earth's various resources had become increasingly strained. Therefore, humanity needed a war to balance all its contradictions.

Many of Hawkins's old friends died in World War III. Instead, he met a female nurse on the battlefield, and amid an era of flying gunfire and raging flames, the two played out a passionate, life-and-death romance.

However, they likewise never entered the hall of marriage.

During a major battle, the nurse was struck by an electromagnetic cannon and died without even scraps left behind. Only then did Hawkins learn that this nurse was even older than he was and had once had five husbands.

After the war, he personally watched the nurse's densely packed descendants come to collect her ashes. That sight shook him deeply.

With a sigh, Hawkins withdrew his thoughts and continued separating Yazhong Island's space. Yet inwardly, he could not help feeling that he truly was getting old. Ever since gaining a body, he had become increasingly fond of recalling things from the past.