bioinnovel Chapter 450 The Last Day!
Chapter 450 The Last Day!
The pork ribs were stewed for an hour and a half.
Zhang Yan stood in the kitchen, skimming off the foam with a spoon and turning the heat down to reduce the sauce.
The clay pot was bubbling away, and the aroma of soy sauce filled the living room.
Nie Qingcheng leaned against the kitchen door frame, arms crossed, watching his back.
She was wearing a black silk nightgown, her hair was casually tied back, and she was wearing fluffy slippers.
The ring on the left ring finger, engraved with the character "衍" on the inner circle, reflected the warm light from the kitchen.
"You've been standing right under my nose for three minutes." Zhang Yan said without turning his head.
"I'll watch you cook." Nie Qingcheng's voice was very soft. "Is that not allowed?"
"Okay." Zhang Yan turned off the stove, turned around, and said, "It's just that your slippers are on the wrong feet."
Nie Qingcheng glanced down.
You definitely wore them inside out.
"It was intentional." She said without changing her expression.
Zhang Yan didn't expose her.
He brought the casserole to the dining table, then went back to the kitchen and brought out two cold dishes and a bowl of white rice.
Nie Qingcheng sat down, picked up her chopsticks, and put a piece of pork rib into her mouth.
After chewing a couple of times, his gaze softened.
"Your hands aren't shaking anymore," she said.
Zhang Yan glanced at his right hand.
The slight trembling that had been present since returning from Antarctica has disappeared.
The primal energy injected by the Wind Spirit Beast not only helped him defeat the memetic attack, but also repaired the nerve damage caused by the consciousness backflow.
"Hmm," he said.
"So you can play the piano now." Nie Qingcheng's tone was not a question.
Zhang Yan put down his chopsticks.
After finishing his meal, he walked to the grand piano in the corner of the living room, opened the lid, and sat down.
Nie Qingcheng didn't come along.
After clearing the table, washing the dishes, and wiping the stove, she slowly walked into the living room and sat down on the sofa.
Zhang Yan's fingers landed on the piano keys.
As the first note faded, Nie Qingcheng leaned back against the sofa armrest.
He wasn't playing any famous piece, just a simple melody, like a stream flowing over stones, without any ups and downs, without any technique, just a clean tone spreading out one after another.
Nie Qingcheng closed her eyes.
She was not asleep.
Her breathing was shallow, her eyelashes trembled occasionally, and her fingers unconsciously twirled the ring on her ring finger.
Zhang Yan played for about fifteen minutes.
After the last note faded away, the living room was quiet for a few seconds.
"I've booked a hotel." Nie Qingcheng's voice came from the sofa, slightly nasal.
Which one?
"That place by Lake Toya, with its open-air hot spring offering views of the snow-capped mountains, the one you mentioned wanting to go to last time."
"What about the room type?"
"Lake View Suite"
Nie Qingcheng opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling. "A big bed."
Zhang Yan closed the piano lid. "Okay."
"And there's a ramen shop."
Nie Qingcheng sat up, picked up her phone from the coffee table, opened a page, and handed it to him. "This place makes handmade noodles, and the wait is two hours. Are you willing to wait?"
"I'll wait if you're willing to."
Nie Qingcheng glanced at him and put her phone away.
"Then let's line up," she said. "You can't run away anyway."
The two went to bed very early that night.
Nie Qingcheng buried her head in Zhang Yan's neck, her right hand clutching the hem of his clothes, as if in a silent way of asserting her dominance.
Zhang Yan didn't move.
He listened to her breathing gradually become deeper and longer, and after about twenty minutes, when he was sure she was asleep, he gently raised his hand to look at the system projection on his wrist.
Twenty-nine days and fourteen hours.
The efficiency data of the six gates all fluctuated within the normal range, and the delay field operated stably.
But at the very bottom of the data, a constantly beating red dot flashes on and off rhythmically like a heart.
That's an energy monitoring signal from the direction of Proxima Centauri.
Over the past 72 hours, the background energy in that direction has been rising.
It doesn't rise evenly, but rather in a step-like manner.
It jumps up a level every twelve hours, like something is being compressed, forged, and condensed.
The energy level of the giant of light that Zhang Yan previously defeated on the lunar surface is no longer assessable.
What is currently coalescing in the direction of Proxima Centauri is even stronger than that giant of light.
The analysis report Qin Xiao sent in the afternoon used a very restrained word: "collapse."
The cluster collapses something near Proxima Centauri, concentrating all the energy into one point.
Zhang Yan didn't know what that point would eventually become.
But he knew that thing was coming for Earth and would arrive before the thirty-day countdown reached zero.
He turned off the projector and put his hand back.
Nie Qingcheng turned over, her hand sliding from the hem of his clothes to his waist, and she pressed herself against him.
He mumbled something indistinctly.
Zhang Yan turned his head and moved a little closer.
"Don't go."
She said those two words.
Zhang Yan took her hand.
"I'm not leaving."
The following days were peaceful.
Zhang Yan gets up at six o'clock every morning, goes downstairs to cook noodles, and eats breakfast with Nie Qingcheng.
In the morning, I repaired the damaged modules of the Chaos Mech in the underground laboratory. In the afternoon, I processed the monitoring data sent by Qin Xiao and Guan Xing. In the evening, I went to the supermarket to buy groceries and cooked dinner.
Nie Qingcheng never asked about the progress.
She would simply lean back on the sofa every night, holding a tablet and looking at travel guides for Lake Toya, occasionally reading out the names of one or two attractions.
"This ranch offers alpaca feeding, would you like to go?"
"go."
"There's also a glass art museum by the sea."
"Can."
"We've arranged for a hot spring on the last day, then we'll go straight to the airport. I've sent the itinerary to your phone, please take a look."
Zhang Yan took the phone and carefully went through the five-day itinerary.
The schedule is very full, with three or four attractions every day, interspersed with two dessert shops and a seafood market.
"Do you have the stamina to walk this far?" Zhang Yan asked.
"Carry me on your back." Nie Qingcheng didn't even lift her head.
Day 27.
Qin Xiao came to the villa, bringing a few bottles of wine. The three of them sat in the living room for a while.
Qin Xiao did not mention anything about the countdown.
He talked for ten minutes about his newly bought SUV, and then spent five minutes complaining about how terrible the food in the military canteen was.
He stood at the door for a few seconds as he left.
"Brother Yan."
"Um."
"Keep the wine, we'll open it when you get back."
Zhang Yan nodded.
On the twenty-fifth day, the stargazer sent an encrypted message.
The energy condensed in the direction of Proxima Centauri has reached a value she has never seen before in any historical record.
All the modeling of community behavior conducted by Guantiange over the past three hundred years has failed to explain this level of energy concentration.
She added a sentence at the end of the message: "They are angry because of the pain."
Zhang Yan deleted that message.
Day 21.
The Chaos Mech has been repaired and all modules have been restored to full capacity.
Zhang Yan sat in the lab for a long time, with a holographic projection in front of him showing the real-time status diagram of a network.
The six light spots operate stably in the 3D model, the time difference of the delay field is compressed almost perfectly, and the countdown of the self-sustaining mode counts down one frame at a time.
If we can just hold on for another thirty days, it will all be over.
But the community won't let him get through this easily.
Fourth day.
2:17 a.m.
The moment Zhang Yan opened his eyes from his sleep, all the world's sky-observing anchors simultaneously emitted a piercing cracking sound.
This is not a system notification. This is not a warning signal.
It's a sound at the physical level.
Startled awake, Nie Qingcheng's first reaction was to roll over and grab Zhang Yan's arm.
Zhang Yan was already looking at the system panel.
The efficiency data of the Six Paths Gate was fluctuating wildly, and microcracks appeared in the physical base of the Sky-Gazing Anchor.
It was not caused by a memetic attack, but by some external force that crossed physical distances from an extremely far distance and acted directly on the molecular structure of the base.
Qin Xiao's phone rang.
"Brother Yan, the collapse signal from the Proxima Centauri direction has stopped."
Zhang Yan's fingers tightened.
"When did it stop?"
"Seven seconds ago, at the same time as the sound of the Sky-Gazing Anchor shattering."
The cessation of collapse signifies the completion of condensation.
The community has finished preparing what they had been working on for thirty days.
"It's heading straight for Earth," Zhang Yan said.