Chapter 85: Establishing the Security Department

Lu Yu took a day off at home, with nothing to occupy him, yet he found the rare luxury of real rest.

At first, he had meant to go to the library that day and bury himself in books. It also occurred to him that he had not seen Shi Zixuan and Qin Xiaomian in quite some time.

For a while, he had been coding away at the company, while the two women had been diligently studying business and economics at school, not even returning home on weekends.

To be honest, Lu Yu did miss them a little.

So he gave up the thought of the library and decided to take it easy for now, going to the school first to see Shi Zixuan and Qin Xiaomian.

Since they had gone back to school, he had not yet gone to visit them.

Qin Xiaomian had already complained about it several times on the messaging app.

Whenever he thought of Qin Xiaomian, he thought of her impetuousness, her silly delight, the way she could always make a person feel lighthearted and happy.

Lu Yu could not help but laugh softly.

...

After getting dressed, Lu Yu drove to the University of Finance and Economics.

He parked near the campus and did not message the two women first. Instead, he went straight through the gates.

Along the way, students passed back and forth in lively streams, full of vigor and youthful energy.

That bold freshness of youth also touched Lu Yu, giving him the faint feeling of returning to his own school days.

Two boys, chatting and laughing, brushed past him with a birthday cake in hand.

Lu Yu paused. Only then did he remember that Qin Xiaomian’s birthday was just a few days away, and that he had once promised to spend time alone with her.

That girl was remarkably patient; she had not even reminded him yet.

Lu Yu wandered around the campus and lingered for quite a while in front of the library.

He had originally thought that perhaps he might run into the two women by chance.

As it turned out, he was thinking too much.

The campus was so large and the crowds so thick that the odds of stumbling upon them at random were pitifully small.

...

In the end, Lu Yu took a photo of the Thinking Man statue in front of the library and sent it to Qin Xiaomian.

Whether she was in class or not, he did not know, but for quite some time there was no reply on the messaging app.

Lu Yu sat by a small fountain, listlessly waiting while sizing up the young women passing by with books in their arms.

He recalled what Chen Xiaofei had once said: their looks were merely decent, but they made up for it with youth and vitality.

That bastard had gone off to Hengdian now. Who knew whether he was really there to learn the workings of film production, or just off to have fun?

As he was lost in random thoughts, he suddenly heard a familiar voice call out, "Uncle!"

Lu Yu turned and saw that Qin Xiaomian had already let go of Shi Zixuan’s arm and was flying toward him like a homeward bird.

Qin Xiaomian tipped her face up. "Why are you here?"

Lu Yu smiled and ruffled her hair. "I came to check whether someone’s been secretly feeding you."

Qin Xiaomian lifted her chin proudly. "Hmph, of course. There are plenty of people trying to curry favor with me!"

Lu Yu made a show of sighing. "Sigh. In this day and age, do people even leave the house with their eyes open?"

Qin Xiaomian glared at him, opening her mouth as if to bite.

Lu Yu had no choice but to hold her firmly with one arm to keep her from wriggling around.

Muffled against his chest, Qin Xiaomian growled, "Let go of me. I’ll bite you to death."

Watching the two of them fool around, Shi Zixuan stood off to the side with a smile in her eyes.

...

After a while of laughing and teasing, Lu Yu accompanied the two women for a stroll and asked about their recent studies.

Qin Xiaomian talked nonstop, reciting almost every book title she had read lately, looking as if she wanted to brag about the contents as well, all in hopes of praise.

Shi Zixuan, as always, remained composed, adding a few words here and there.

Lu Yu had wanted to take them to a movie, but they said they still had class later and there was not enough time.

So he had no choice but to give up on the idea.

After seeing them near their classroom, Lu Yu was just about to turn and leave when Qin Xiaomian, not caring in the least, dragged him into the classroom and insisted that he sit through one of her lectures with her.

She even said that if he did not accompany her to class once, her student life would be incomplete.

Amused by her reasoning, Lu Yu nodded and took a seat.

...

After a lecture on introductory economics, Lu Yu and Shi Zixuan studied with real attention.

Qin Xiaomian, on the other hand, had been lying on the desk the whole time, grinning foolishly at Lu Yu; anyone could tell she had not absorbed a single word.

After class, Lu Yu lectured her a little, but she did not mind at all.

He ate with the two women in the cafeteria, and only then did he leave the University of Finance and Economics.

Before going, he told Qin Xiaomian to arrange her time properly and decide where she wanted to go for her birthday.

Qin Xiaomian smiled until her eyes narrowed and nodded again and again.

On the drive back, Lu Yu glanced at the time and saw that it was nearly two o’clock. Too early to call it late, too late to call it early; there was not enough time to do anything proper, so he simply drove to the house near the Shu Music University.

Ever since Qianqian and Zhang Kexin had left, Lu Yu had hardly stayed there at all.

Using a housekeeping app, he contacted a cleaning company and asked them to send someone over at once.

The company was nearby, and before long several cleaners arrived and began working.

...

Lu Yu lay back in a rocking chair beside the small beach, gazing at the fish swimming beneath the glass-reinforced floor, and for a moment his thoughts drifted far away.

It was as though he were thinking of everything and yet of nothing at all.

More than anything, it was simply dazing out.

Lu Yu did not know how others were, but he himself often needed a little solitude.

Just like now: even idling in a trance could bring a sense of peace and quiet to his heart.

He once read a book by Jia Pingwa, who said that truly lonely people never speak of loneliness, and that the weak are always the ones who live in crowds, which is why there are so many ordinary mortals in the world.

Lu Yu rather disagreed. In truth, everyone’s deepest heart is lonely; it has nothing necessarily to do with being strong or weak.

He felt that Zhou Guoping’s more philosophical words made more sense:

Loneliness is mankind’s fate, rooted in this fact:
each of us is a fleeting and accidental presence in this world, born from nothing and destined to return to nothing.
No person, no matter, can alter this destiny.

You travel through the years with your family, your friends, your acquaintances, and the people of your generation. You see them grow and age around you.

And you too are growing and aging. So many moments in your life, so many joys and sorrows, belong only to you, and you alone bear the marks that time carves into your soul.

...

The more sensitive a person is, the softer his heart, the more keenly he tends to perceive his own poverty of spirit, and thus the stronger his sense of loneliness.

Whether Lu Yu was sensitive, he did not know.

Whether his heart was soft, he also did not know.

He only knew that from the moment he obtained the scientific and technological data, he had been destined for loneliness.

Because from that point on, there were many things he could not tell anyone, many emotions he could only endure himself, with no one to confide in.

And human beings all need to speak their hearts and release what weighs on them.

They all long to be understood, to be recognized.

Having obtained that technological data, he became the most different, the most unique one of all.

Being different often means standing apart, incompatible with the crowd.

And yet he still possessed, just like ordinary people, the need for warmth from the human world.

That enormous contradiction often left Lu Yu at a loss.

...

Lost in thought, time passed without his noticing.

By the time the housekeeping staff had finished cleaning and left, Lu Yu finally came back to himself.

He walked once around the house, paused for a while in front of the little loft where Qianqian had lived, and then turned off the lights and went downstairs.

Driving back to the neighborhood near Niuwang Temple, he parked the car and bought two portions of Chongqing-style small noodles outside the complex, deliberately adding an extra serving of greens.

Why Chongqing noodles are so delicious is hard to explain; anyone who has tasted them should understand deeply.

He ate the two bowls until faint beads of sweat appeared on his forehead.

After paying by scanning the code, he took a short walk inside the complex before going upstairs and back home.

On the sofa in the living room, he browsed news and various social apps on his phone.

Nothing much was worth mentioning.

After resting enough, he changed clothes and went running.

...

Lu Yu felt that his physical condition was now much better than before.

It was not especially obvious yet, but he could feel it.

Sometimes he even thought about combining that medicine with other beneficial ingredients and launching a new health drink.

But every time, it remained only a thought.

Setting aside the fact that the drug content was low and one would have to keep drinking such a beverage for a long time to see results, once that substance was detected, the consequences would be impossible to predict.

At present, the population of Blue Star was growing rapidly, while environmental problems were becoming more and more severe.

Not only was pollution intensifying, but desertification was also worsening, cultivable land shrinking, food supplies growing tight, fresh water dwindling, the greenhouse effect intensifying, and all kinds of geological disasters occurring frequently.

Some radical voices on the internet even clamored for a war, one that would effectively control the population of Blue Star.

If this drug were exposed as well, with its effects of delaying aging and strengthening the body, it would mean increased resistance to disease and, inevitably, a longer average human lifespan.

Then all the problems mentioned above would become more acute and more magnified.

Though in essence it would be a contribution to humankind, it would also trigger unnecessary unrest, and many contradictions would become even sharper.

So many things in this world are like that, so helplessly; even good things may turn into bad ones.

...

After his run, he washed up, went into the study, opened his computer, and checked his email, reading the work reports sent by several companies.

Deng Qiang was still busy. Although contracts had been signed and teams dispatched to begin preliminary construction, he still needed to go and see things for himself.

The company for Pink and White Cosmetics was also proceeding according to plan, organizing production and selling products normally, with nothing unusual happening.

As for Yunhan Technology, Ge Yuncong was leading the team in the company, improving modules and plug-ins and testing the main software. For now, no technical difficulties had arisen.

And on the Nebula Beyond the River side, Liu Shichang had already posted recruitment notices for plant and biological researchers. He had also gone to the veterans’ placement office to recruit some discharged soldiers to take responsibility for Lu Yu’s security.

Lu Yu thought it over and replied to Liu Shichang, telling him to hire at least twenty people, all of them of the highest caliber, with pay not being a problem.

He also needed to find two capable people to lead the security team.

According to Lu Yu’s plan, four people would make one group. Three groups would rotate around him, while two groups assigned to his parents would be enough as well.

He had no intention of looking for an existing security company. No matter how professional they claimed to be, they would always be outsiders in the end.

It would be better to build his own security department, expand it later, train regularly, and offer sufficiently good pay. No matter what, that would be more reassuring than a security company’s people.

Naturally, they would all be ex-servicemen.

Nothing else mattered; they were dependable.

...