28. Silhouette In The Red [Modern Warship in a Cultivation World]

Lu Mingfe placed his utensils down, the clatter against the plate sounding immense in the sudden quiet. He looked at the three attentive faces Jenkins, O’Malley, and Jessica all connected by the shared sorrow of loss and the longing for home.

“You’ve told me of your home,” he began, his tone quiet but commanding. “I will tell you about mine. When I was younger, I was a young master of the Falling Star Sect; those days were some of the happiest that I ever experienced.” He waited for Jessica to translate, his gaze distant, seeing not the cafeteria walls but the mountain peaks of his childhood.

“But one thing changed the light of that life,” he continued. “It was a summer evening, perhaps a little too quiet. My little sister was sick, feverish, so I, along with Xiao Momo, my spirit beast, stayed by her bed until the sun went completely down.”

His eyes held a bitter, distant smile. “The next part is a blur, a canvas painted in fire and smoke. I remember holding my sick sister over my shoulders as I rushed down the mountainside while my entire sect burned above me. It was not a battle against an enemy army. It was a single, targeted, terrible act of destruction. Everything I knew, everything that meant home, was reduced to ash in one night.”

He let the silence hold the weight of the memory, then finished, his voice gaining a soft, empathetic resonance. “So believe me when I say, I know the longing for home, the deep, constant ache for a place that no longer exists, just as you all here on this ship know it.”

Seaman O’Malley, Seaman Jenkins, and Jessica looked at him with a bittersweet smile of their own as he finished his small story. They had tried to comfort him by sharing their mundanity, but he had responded with a tragedy that dwarfed their collective grief. They finished their dinner in a sober mood, the quiet camaraderie now tinged with a heavier, more complex understanding.

After the meal, Lu Mingfe immediately rose and followed Jessica out of the cafeteria. The corridor lights were dimmer here, casting long, crimson shadows from the external red moons. The silence between them felt different, not awkward, but reflective.

Jessica was walking quickly, her mind replaying his painful story, realizing how callous her earlier annoyance had been. She had seen him only as an asset, a threat, or a necessity for the ship. She hadn't seen the frightened, traumatized boy underneath the general’s token and the borrowed uniform.

She stopped suddenly and turned to face him. “Lu Mingfe,” she said, her voice soft with genuine apology. “I… I’ve been rude to you. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have treated you like an annoyance.”

Lu Mingfe simply waited as his expression was unreadable.

“You said you know what it’s like to lose everything,” she continued, speaking slowly her intent would be clear. “I want to show you something that still exists.. Our home.. Something real from Earth.”

She glanced toward her VIP Suite. “Would you… would you like to check out some photos? I have hundreds of pictures of Beijing, of my family, or the sea that O’Malley said he loved to fish. It might be… a small reminder of what we are fighting to get back to?”

His eyes, which had held the distant fire of his sect’s destruction, softened fractionally. He nodded, accepting the simple, unexpected offer of human connection.

_______

In Jessica’s VIP Suite, Lu Mingfe sat on the bedside, captivated. The laptop lay in front of him, displaying a slideshow of Earth photos.

“These items are really something,” he remarked, tapping the 'next' button and changing the image. “I do feel some sort of energy in them, but it’s not Qi. I really hope to see the insides of these devices when I can.”

“Maybe the engineering department can show you,” Jessica replied with a small smile as she stood by the circular window, looking out at the trio of alien moons. “Woah, such large lights in the cities!” Lu Mingfe was clearly astonished by the pictures of urban Earth, a stark contrast to the walled, lantern-lit ports of his world.

Jessica just watched him and the distant outside view, lost in thought. Then, in a sober daze, she blurted out, “I lied.”

Lu Mingfe immediately stopped tapping the laptop and turned toward her, confused. Jessica continued, still looking distant, but her voice was steady. “The story I told earlier about my mother and the sweets was fake. I just didn’t want to bring the mood down any further in the cafeteria, but I don’t feel right.. now that you were so honest with us.”

She stepped away from the window, the soft light illuminating her face. “I… I was abducted as a child by a gang,” Jessica confessed, her voice thick with old pain. “I never knew my real parents. I was always on the move with the other trafficked children, always running, always afraid. Until, one day, Mister Holloway arrived.”

A genuine, grateful smile broke through the soberness. “He exposed the large criminal organization that was trafficking hundreds of children and protected us all. Ever since that moment, all I ever wanted was to become a reporter just like him, to be the person who brings light to the dark places.”

Jessica looked Lu Mingfe directly in the eye, offering him a piece of her painful truth. “I don’t even remember my life before the gang, but that doesn’t mean my life was lost. It means I found a family in the people who cared for me afterward. Nothing’s ever truly lost, Lu Mingfe. If returning home is not possible, it does not mean there won’t ever be a place you can call home again.”

Lu Mingfe sat silently, absorbing her raw confession. He smiled faintly, acknowledging her honesty, but then tapped the 'next' button on the laptop, shifting the focus. A picture of the swirling, chaotic Anomaly, the portal that brought them here was on the screen now.

“Is… that?” he asked, changing the topic, his voice laced with renewed curiosity. Jessica nodded, walking toward him and sitting next to him. “Yes, that’s the Anomaly.”

Lu Mingfe nodded in thought, then clicked 'next' again. This time, a photo of the three red moons was displayed, but silhouetted brightly against the light in the sky was a clear, humanoid Silhouette.

Lu Mingfe’s eyes widened, the casual calm instantly shattering. He shot up from the bed, his voice tight with alarm.

“This…?”

“That must be the photo Mister Holloway took when we just arrived in this world,” Jessica said, confused by his reaction. “That Silhouette!” Lu Mingfe exclaimed, pointing a trembling finger at the screen. “That’s the Immortal Messenger!”