Like a child who had only just learned to speak, Marty imitated him slowly and carefully. "Don't copy you?"
His face gradually contorted, and he laughed through his tears.
Yes, that was something the Marshal would say.
Back then, full of questions, Marty had asked him why he did not eat.
The Marshal had replied, "For a long-life species, this is nothing."
Then he had told Marty earnestly, "Don't copy me."
The Marshal did not want his subordinates to imitate his terrible eating habits. What about death, then?
How could the Marshal accept his subordinates dying alongside him? How could he bear it?
Marty clutched his tie clip in one hand and raised the other to touch his neck.
For the first time, he felt an urge to go against the Marshal's wishes.
Marty thought it over, then lowered his hand.
At least, not now.
The Marshal... would certainly want his heir to have a happy birthday.
He had to wait until after the Thanksgiving Festival, at least.
Just as the Marshal had deliberately punished Guan Liang and ordered the Galaxy Rangers to withdraw to the Xianzhou, he did not want his choices to drag others down with him. He wanted to minimize the impact of his departure as much as possible.
Marty took a deep breath and picked up his Jade Abacus.
The Marshal had thought everything through so thoroughly. He could not leave his colleagues with a mess to clean up, either.
First, Marty needed to conceal the truth of the Marshal's departure from everyone else.
Second, he needed to dispose of the planet whose civilization had long since died out, the one that exposed the essence of the universe, to keep more people from learning about it.
Those two tasks could not have been easier for Marty.