The Imperial Marshal’s Darling at the Tip of His Heart - Chapter 32

Yun Shu struggled to wake from the deep coma and the drug-maintained chaos. His consciousness was like reefs exposed after a receding tide, slowly and sluggishly perceiving the outside world.

The first thing to return was the omnipresent pain: the familiar friction of crystals in his lungs, the burning sensation in his nerve endings, and that extreme exhaustion deep within his body after being completely hollowed out. Then came the sense of hearing: the rhythmic but cold ticking of the monitor, the microscopic hum of the IV pump, and his own heavy, labored breathing.

He slowly opened his eyes. It took a moment for his vision to focus. He saw a pure white ceiling and cold instrument screens. The air was thick with the mixed scent of disinfectant and specific medications. It was still that same cage on the Imperial starship.

He tried to move his fingers, but the effort only brought a wave of muscular weakness and caused the parameters on the monitor to fluctuate slightly. He gave up and simply lay still, conserving every bit of insignificant strength. He felt the encroaching erosion of the Crystal-Erosion Disease that followed him like a shadow, along with a dull, tearing ache deep in his brain, a remnant of the forced cracking of the Omega data.

He was still alive. The price was heavy, but he was alive.

Moreover, his chaotic thoughts gradually cleared as he remembered the final scenes before falling unconscious: the violent data streams, the agonizing pain, Ling Yao’s cold commands, and that fleeting glimpse of fragmented information regarding the Sector VII crisis in Tartarus and the Imperial high command’s cold resolution.

His heart sank slightly.

The sliding door opened soundlessly, interrupting his thoughts. Ling Yao walked in. He still wore that ink-black uniform symbolizing power and coldness. His pace was steady and his presence overbearing. He seemed to have just come down from the bridge, and his brow still carried a trace of the severity that came from handling massive affairs.

However, when his gaze landed on Yun Shu, the usual sharpness that treated people as objects seemed to have softened slightly. It was replaced by a deeper, difficult-to-decode inquiry. He did not speak immediately. He simply walked to the bedside, his gaze sweeping over the data on the monitor, which remained far from optimistic.

Yun Shu could feel Ling Yao’s gaze like a physical weight, passing over his pale face, the fragile veins in his neck, and his chest, which showed almost no rise or fall beneath the thin blanket.

“It seems the Empire’s medical technology is not so incompetent that it cannot even keep one patient alive,” Ling Yao finally spoke. His voice was its usual cold and hard self, devoid of emotion, but it seemed to lack some of its previous malice.

Yun Shu moved his eyelashes ever so slightly as a response. He truly had no strength for a larger reaction; even opening his mouth felt difficult.

Ling Yao did not seem to expect an answer. He pulled over the only metal chair by the bed and sat down. This action itself surprised Yun Shu. Ling Yao rarely sat in his presence, and even more rarely did he look at him at eye level. Usually, he issued commands from a position of towering height.

“The Tartarus data,” Ling Yao’s gaze returned to Yun Shu’s face. His tone was as flat as if he were discussing the weather, but the content was heart-stopping. “It confirmed your judgment and validated the findings from Wuyin Star. The constraint field in Sector VII is indeed on the verge of collapse. Furthermore, a Side Door has likely appeared that non-Imperial forces are attempting to connect to.”

He paused, observing Yun Shu’s reaction. Yun Shu simply listened quietly. There was no ripple in his eyes, as if he had long expected this.

“The Empire’s response is a maximum-level blockade and a purification contingency plan,” Ling Yao continued. It was impossible to tell from his voice whether he agreed or disagreed. “It seems that when faced with a threat that cannot be understood or controlled, the Empire’s choice is always simple and direct.”

There seemed to be an extremely faint, almost imperceptible trace of mockery in these words. Was it directed at the Imperial high command? Yun Shu could not be certain.

The cabin fell into a brief silence, broken only by the sound of the equipment. Ling Yao leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees with his hands interlaced. It was a posture that was slightly oppressive, yet it seemed to prepare for a dialogue that was somewhat equal.

“I looked at some of your records,” he suddenly changed the subject, his gaze sharpening. “Your parents both died of Crystal-Erosion Disease.”

It was not a question, but a statement. A cold statement that tore open an old scar.

Yun Shu’s body stiffened almost imperceptibly. The familiar stinging in his lungs seemed to intensify abruptly, causing him to let out a very soft, suppressed gasp for air. He closed his eyes and turned his head away, appearing to avoid that overly direct gaze.

Ling Yao did not press him. He simply waited patiently. That patience in itself revealed something unusual.

After a long while, so long that Ling Yao almost thought he would not respond, Yun Shu finally turned his head back very slowly and opened his eyes. Deep in his eyes was a bottomless exhaustion and a deeply hidden pain.

“Yes,” he uttered a single, nearly inaudible sound, his voice incredibly raspy.

“So, you are doing all of this for them?” Ling Yao pressed. His tone remained flat, yet he was pushing for an answer.

Yun Shu remained silent for even longer. This time, his gaze did not flicker. Instead, it landed vacantly on a point in the air, as if he were looking through the cold metal walls of the cabin to that ravaged land on the other side of the vast sea of stars.

“Not entirely,” he finally spoke. His voice was weak but a bit clearer, each word seemingly squeezed out from a depleted abyss. “They are only one out of billions.”

He paused as if gathering strength, or perhaps suppressing something.

“In Xilan, Crystal-Erosion Disease is not just a word on a medical record. It is not a statistical figure.” His voice carried a slow, heavy rhythm, as if every word was soaked in blood and tears. “It is the coughing that no longer rings out from next door every morning. It is the silhouette on the street that suddenly freezes and is slowly covered in blue crystals. It is the hospitals piled high with silent statues that no one has time to process. It is the barren farmland. It is the city energy failing. It is the dead silence of a night without the sound of children’s laughter.”

He spoke slowly, without excessive emotional flair, simply stating broken images. But it was this near-numb calmness that revealed a deeper, desperate sorrow.

“Have you ever seen an entire planet slowly dying?” He suddenly raised his eyes to look at Ling Yao. In those clear yet weary eyes, a physical sort of pain was reflected clearly for the first time. “Breathing air filled with despair. Watching everything familiar grow cold, rigid, and turn into lifeless crystals.”

His breathing became rapid, triggering a violent fit of coughing. His body curled up uncontrollably, and the monitor triggered an alarm again. He bit his lower lip hard, holding back the metallic taste in his throat as fine beads of cold sweat broke out on his forehead.

Ling Yao just watched. He watched the thin shoulders trembling in pain. He watched the fragile joints protruding beneath the pale skin. He watched that overburdened back that seemed to carry the weight of an entire planet.

The Imperial Marshal’s brow furrowed almost imperceptibly. He had seen countless deaths and destructions: wars, rebellions, planet-scale conflicts. He considered his heart to be made of stone. But those were usually intense, explosive events accompanied by conquest and resistance.

What Yun Shu described was a slow, silent extinction that seeped into every corner, a suffocating disappearance. It was the process of an entire civilization slowly sinking into a frozen sea while powerless to struggle. It was entirely different from the cruelty he was familiar with.

He imagined those images: silent cities, people swallowed by blue crystals frozen in their final living moments, barren lands, the tragedy of depleted resources. These were originally just words and blurred pictures in intelligence reports, but now, because of a few words from the person before him, they became exceptionally vivid and concrete.

He found that he could not even immediately think of an effective military means to deal with such a disaster. The Empire’s powerful armed forces seemed pale and clumsy in the face of this silent, internal erosion.

Yun Shu finally caught his breath and slumped back exhausted. His face was even more transparent than before, looking as if he might dissipate at any moment. He closed his eyes and spoke no more, as if those few short sentences had exhausted all the energy he had managed to gather.

A longer silence fell over the cell. Ling Yao did not speak again either. He maintained his previous sitting posture, his interlaced fingers tightening slightly. He said nothing. There was no mockery, no questioning, and no comments regarding the superiority of the Empire or the weakness of Xilan.

There was only silence. It was a silence different from any previous calculation, weighing, or interrogation. He looked at the person on the bed who seemed to have fallen into a slumber again, his gaze deep.

After a long time, he stood up slowly. The legs of the chair made a slight sound as they scraped against the floor. He walked to the door and paused for a moment, but he did not look back.

“The medical team will adjust your medication to ease your pain.”

He finally left only those words. His voice betrayed no emotion, but it seemed slightly deeper than usual. The sliding door closed soundlessly behind him, locking all the silence and unspoken thoughts inside that pure white cell.

Ling Yao stood under the cold lights of the corridor outside, rarely not leaving immediately. He turned his head slightly, as if he could feel the faint yet tenacious breath of life through the thick metal door.