The Greatest Amusement of This Amber Era

[In your daily interactions, you discover that A Ruan's hobbies are different from ordinary people. She prefers seasonal pastries and classical things like poetry and opera. Perhaps influenced by her, you also become interested in those exquisite snacks. Among the many pastries, you prefer those made with lotus leaves, plum blossoms, and glutinous rice... Sometimes, you add small glutinous rice balls, candied winter melon, and pine nuts to the plum blossom cakes, supplemented with more than a dozen seasonings such as fruit jam, bean paste, and chopped nuts, creating a variety of plum blossom cake styles that are exquisite in appearance and rich in taste.]

[A Ruan tries your creations and is inevitably surprised by your skill. Sometimes, she also asks you for the recipes for these pastries.]

[Time passes day by day, and in the blink of an eye, A Ruan's nineteenth birthday arrives.]

[You have been waiting for this day for a long time. Childhood sweethearts, innocent playmates, you don't know whether this affection began from the moment she rescued you from the battlefield, or whether it began to sprout from the first time you saw her.]

[But that no longer matters. At A Ruan's birthday party, you confess your feelings to her. But the result is that you get a vague answer.]

[A Ruan didn't explicitly reject you, but of course, she didn't accept you either.]

A starship stationed on Million IV Satellite.

The girl took off her sleeves, and a plain hand rested on the cold porthole.

The single-lens reflex camera reflected that beautiful face.

Although she couldn't see any expression on her face in the reflection, she felt that her heart was slightly disturbed.

She didn't know whether to attribute this to his confession or to the secretion of phenethylamine and dopamine.

With in-depth research into the essence of life, she realized that she had really neglected to understand some things.

[Your confession was not answered, but you were not discouraged. ]

[You decided to immerse yourself in the study of life sciences, strive to keep up with A Ruan's pace in the future, and then express your feelings to her again.]

[During this year of research, when you accidentally passed by a planet, you obtained a manuscript from an auction. The owner of the manuscript was Genius Society #56 member and second chairman, Ilyasalaas.]

[You've heard of the Genius Society, so you only regarded this manuscript, which was traded for 10,000 credits, as a forgery. However, in a moment of leisure, you examined the manuscript on your desk and found that the "Hyper-Sensory Remote Sensing" recorded on it seemed to be feasible.]

[In addition to work and scientific investigation, you began to study the manuscript recording "Hyper-Sensory Remote Sensing." But the genius's brain circuit was still too bizarre, and a year of research yielded no progress.]

[At twenty years old, you are still devoted to the study of life sciences, and have not given up on that manuscript.]

[At twenty-one years old, after more than two years of exploration, you seem to have found the key to "Hyper-Sensory Remote Sensing." In three months of tireless seclusion, you successfully created a degraded product of "Hyper-Sensory Remote Sensing."]

[This product was quickly tried and put into scientific investigation work. You realized that you could still communicate with other personnel in the starship during the field investigation process. Other scientists quickly realized the wonderful use of this product. With mass production, all scientists were equipped with this product, which greatly facilitated the scientific investigation work.]

[After "Hyper-Sensory Remote Sensing" was put into use and received good feedback, you decided to continue to improve it, then apply for a patent, and promote it to all star systems within the universe.]

However, this technology was accelerated due to the second major change in your life.

[At twenty-two years old, one day, a starship carrying scientific investigators entered an unknown star system. You received an alarm that the starship was attracted by a mysterious gravitational force. According to the current situation, it may be dragged into the gravitational field within a week. You tried to use "Hyper-Sensory Remote Sensing" to call for help from the outside world, but in the gravitational field, the signal was shielded.]

[After discussion, you decided to send out a detection device to observe the source of gravity and find a way to escape.]

[A day later, the detection device sent back images. When you saw those unbelievable pictures, the conference room fell into a long silence.]

In the picture, there is a planet composed of flesh and blood, or rather, it is a meatball, a monster.

The appearance of this monster is a planet with huge blood-colored pupils. It constantly wanders in the universe, attracting and devouring all the surrounding creatures, and integrating them into its own flesh and blood.

[All the scientific investigators fell into despair. Looking at their expressions, you remembered the exploration in "No Man's Land" when they witnessed the scene of the frozen monster awakening. But this time, you have nowhere to escape.]

[With almost no hesitation, you returned to your laboratory and locked yourself in it. In the eyes of everyone, this was a cowardly performance, but no one blamed you, after all, you are just a young man with a shallow age.]

[In the days that followed, all the scientists on the starship began to think about countermeasures. Some people proposed to bombard the other party with tens of thousands of tons of explosives when approaching the monster, and then use reverse thrust to escape the gravitational force, but after calculation, the success rate of this method was less than 1%.]

[Some people also proposed to supply fuel to small starboats and then drive at full speed out of the gravitational field. But after trying, they found that the small starboat had left the starship. With its mass, it would soon be dragged to the center of gravity.]

[Three days passed, and the pressure of the gravitational field became stronger and stronger, almost tearing you apart. In less than three days, all the scientific researchers on the entire starship will become the first part of that monster.]

[It was also on this night that you finally left your laboratory. In the chaotic starship, no one would pay attention to this trivial matter. You silently came to the kitchen of the starship, kneaded the dough as usual, and used sealed plum blossoms, lotus leaves, glutinous rice, and also frost sugar, to make a box of ordinary plum blossom cakes, and then wrote a letter and stuffed it into the wooden box.]

The next day.

When A Ruan opened the door of the cabin, she found the wooden box placed in front of the door.

She seemed to realize something, opened the wooden box, and saw the exquisite plum blossom cakes and the letter.

A Ruan picked up the letter, which read:

"Seeing the letter is like meeting: It's plum blossom season again, but unfortunately there is no chance to enjoy it together. I would like to dedicate this poem to the girl:

Waiting to meet a plum blossom spirit, in the faint moonlight of dusk, whispering tenderly with her.

Don't worry. —Bai Heng"

The girl's hand holding the letter began to tremble. She ran to the control room, her eyes were red, and she asked in an unprecedentedly flustered manner: "Father, mother, did you see where Bai Heng went?"

The two people who were already overwhelmed looked at each other. They had been trying to find a way to escape in the past few days and had not paid attention to the child.

After hearing A Ruan's words, they investigated the surveillance and found that Bai Heng had privately taken a starboat and left the starship last night.

The guess in A Ruan's heart was confirmed. She opened "Hyper-Sensory Remote Sensing", found Bai Heng's contact information from it, and tried to dial it.

Fortunately, the monster only shielded outward communication and did not block internal communication.

The communication device was connected, and Bai Heng's calm voice came from the other end.

"Hello."

"Bai Heng?"

"Hmm... is the plum blossom cake still to your liking? The ingredients were a little lacking, and the plum blossoms weren't freshly picked, so it might not suit your taste..."

"Is this really the time to be discussing such things!"

Bai Heng chuckled from the other end of the comm device:

"It's rare to see you so emotionally charged. I always felt that the A Ruan I once knew had turned into a block of wood, warm on the outside but cold on the inside. But seeing that you can still get angry puts my mind at ease."

"I..."

"Don't speak yet, there isn't much time."

Bai Heng interrupted her, looking towards the vaguely visible outline of the flesh orb, and slowly began to speak:

"Actually, when I was little, a fortune teller told me that I was destined to have a short life, that I wouldn't live long."

"But ironically, the people around me have been leaving one after another, ahead of me."

"Perhaps, I was originally meant to die on the battlefield... But, you pulled me back from the brink of death. In these past few years, I've seen scenery I'd never seen before, and experienced adventures I'd never had before. That's more than enough for me..."

[Communication Ended]

Bai Heng maxed out the starship's power, greatly reducing the speed at which it was heading towards the flesh orb.

In his final moments, he completed the assembly of the modified Hyper-Sensory Remote Sensing, waiting to reach the extreme limit of his distance from the monster.

"Three, two, one."

[You have activated the modified Hyper-Sensory Remote Sensing, sending your coordinates and message to the universe at maximum frequency.]

[However, even if the Hyper-Sensory Remote Sensing breaks through the gravitational field and transmits your message and coordinates to the outside world, it will not be enough for Him to hear.]

[But just as you are being devoured, you seem to see a few jester masks.]

[The Aeon Aha of Elation felt immense amusement. A Trailblazer of Preservation, on the verge of death, received a glance from Erudition, and falsely claimed to be a follower of Abundance, provoking The Hunt in front of the entire universe, attempting to use His power to destroy the ancient beast of Voracity. Hahaha, this is truly hilarious.]

[Aha helped you transmit the signal and coordinates of the Hyper-Sensory Remote Sensing to every corner of the universe. At the same time, a sentence echoed in everyone's ears.]

"I, Bai Heng, a follower of Abundance, request that Calamity-Bringer, Bow of Disaster, draw its bow!"