Sunny casually walked out from behind a nearby starskiff, wearing an innocent little smirk that immediately irritated Dan Heng.
There was something deeply infuriating about that expression. It wasn't even particularly smug. If anything, it was almost charming, the sort of look someone might wear after accidentally stumbling into a situation and deciding that they had every right to be there.
Dan Heng had known Sunny long enough to recognize the difference between his genuine innocence and the far more dangerous imitation of it. This was probably the latter. Yet, beneath that carefree expression, Dan Heng noticed something else when Sunny's gaze shifted toward Jingliu. His eyes sharpened.
The amusement disappeared for the briefest moment, replaced by a cold and calculating focus that made it abundantly clear he hadn't simply followed them here for entertainment. He was watching her. Measuring her. Every subtle movement, every shift in posture, every possible indication of hostile intent.
The realization made Dan Heng's annoyance diminish somewhat. Sunny might have been behaving like an idiot, but he wasn't treating Jingliu like one. He was taking her seriously. Perhaps more seriously than Dan Heng himself was capable of admitting he needed to.
Sunny eventually wandered toward the control panel Jingliu had been examining, rolling his shoulders before placing one hand against the interface. Dan Heng immediately became suspicious. He glanced between Sunny and the machine, then back toward Jingliu, whose posture remained completely relaxed, before looking right back at Sunny.
"You've never used this before, have you?"
He already knew the answer.
Sunny's fingers hovered over the controls as an enigmatic grin spread across his face.
"Nope."
Dan Heng's expression darkened. That was not reassuring.
"But..."
Sunny continued, turning his head just enough to flash him a confident look,
"There is a reason why I've been called a shack of all spades."
Jingliu tilted her head slightly. Even with her eyes concealed behind the moon-adorned blindfold, Dan Heng could somehow feel her looking at them.
"It's jack of all trades."
Sunny's grin immediately flipped upside-down.
"Why would somebody jack off all—"
Dan Heng's hand shot forward and clamped firmly over Sunny's mouth.
"Stop. Don't want to hear it."
Sunny blinked at him. For several seconds, the two simply stared at one another. Sunny's eyes conveyed genuine confusion, as if he couldn't understand why his perfectly reasonable question had been interrupted. Dan Heng's expression, meanwhile, made it abundantly clear that he had no intention of allowing this conversation to continue.
Eventually, Sunny raised a brow, shrugged, and returned his attention to the control panel. Jingliu remained silent, though Dan Heng could practically feel amusement radiating from her. That was somehow worse.
The interface itself was considerably stranger than Sunny had anticipated. He expected something relatively straightforward. A selection menu, perhaps, followed by a few manufacturing options. Instead, the screen presented him with a collection of terms that seemed more appropriate for farming than shipbuilding.
Germination. Growth. Fertilization. Nutrient distribution. Environmental conditions. Genetic development. He stared at the screen for several seconds, his expression slowly becoming one of genuine confusion.
"What the hell? Are they growing the thing?"
Dan Heng, who had approached enough to inspect the display, frowned as well, trying to remember something that was teetering at the edges of his mind.
"That's how the Xianzhou does it."
Sunny looked at him.
"We're making a ship."
"I know."
"Then why does it need to be fertilized?"
Dan Heng didn't have an answer. The Xianzhou possessed many technologies that were incomprehensible to outsiders, but this was still somewhat ridiculous. Starskiffs were living constructs, grown from specialized seeds through a process that blurred the distinction between biological cultivation and mechanical engineering.
It wasn't exactly a machine being assembled piece by piece. It was more akin to forcing an organism to rapidly mature into the shape of a vessel. The specifics were lost to him — Imbibitor Lunae had no need to learn of Starskiff production.
Sunny, however, did not possess enough patience to contemplate the philosophical implications of that fact. He simply stared at the available settings before his expression brightened.
There were sliders. That was all he needed to see. Sunny's fingers began moving. Growth rate? Maximum. Nutrient input? Maximum. Structural development? Maximum. Fertilization? Maximum. Environmental acceleration? Maximum.
Every single setting he could identify was immediately pushed toward its highest value.
Dan Heng watched in growing disbelief.
"What are you doing?"
Sunny didn't hear him. He simply continued.
"Sunny."
Nothing.
"Sunny."
A final adjustment.
"Sunny."
"What?"
"Why are you putting everything at maximum?"
Sunny glanced over his shoulder with a completely serious expression.
"Because maximum is better than minimum."
Dan Heng opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. There were no words. Somewhere deep inside, he felt his soul briefly detach from his body. Jingliu, meanwhile, remained surprisingly calm. She merely tilted her head as Sunny confidently pressed the confirmation button.
"There. Done."
Dan Heng stared at the panel. Then at Sunny. Then at Jingliu.
"You actually let him do that?"
She shrugged.
"He seemed confident."
"That's not an answer!"
She let out an unladylike snort, sarcasm dripping from her words.
"Would you like me to look for the answer deep within myself, Imbibitor Lunae? What do the kids say, nowadays? Just roll with it."
Dan Heng was very offended by those last four words. On a personal level.
The entire production facility suddenly came alive. Machinery hidden beneath the floor rumbled into motion, followed by the metallic clatter of mechanisms unfolding from the surrounding structures. Energy began flowing through conduits embedded in the walls, illuminating the previously dormant facility with pale light.
A series of machines emerged from recessed compartments, surrounding an empty section of the production line before projecting a translucent barrier around it.
Sunny stared at the newly formed structure with an expression of mild bewilderment. It looked like a cage at first, but the more he observed it, the more it resembled something else entirely. The curved energy walls enclosed the space like the shell of some enormous egg, with several mechanical arms suspended around its exterior.
"Uh..."
Sunny slowly took a step backward.
"That's probably fine."
Dan Heng turned toward him.
"Probably?"
Sunny nodded solemnly.
"Probably."
Then, without another word, he turned around and casually walked behind the nearest starskiff. Dan Heng's eyes widened.
"You're leaving?"
"I'm not leaving."
Sunny's voice came from behind the vessel.
"I'm strategically relocating."
"You're hiding."
"That's an unnecessarily hostile interpretation."
Dan Heng rubbed his forehead. He had known Sunny for long enough to realize that arguing with him would accomplish absolutely nothing. With a long sigh, he turned his attention back toward the strange transparent structure.
A small object was transported into the center of the energy field. Dan Heng's eyes narrowed as he recognized it. A starskiff seed. It was placed carefully within the center of the enclosure, whereupon the machinery surrounding it began to hum. Light poured into the chamber.
The seed trembled.
Then, slowly, it began to change.
Roots emerged first, spreading across the floor of the energy womb before sinking into channels prepared specifically for them. The shell cracked open as a pale green shoot emerged, rapidly developing into a twisting mass of organic material. Layers formed over one another, hardening and expanding as the machinery accelerated its growth.
Dan Heng watched with an expression of reluctant fascination. The process was almost beautiful. The starskiff wasn't being constructed. It was being born. Around them, rows upon rows of dormant vessels remained stored within the facility, their elegant forms resting silently beneath the artificial lights. Some were old. Some were new. All of them represented countless journeys across the stars.
Dan Heng couldn't help but wonder how many times Baiheng had flown through these docks.
...Such thoughts were annoying.
He glanced toward Jingliu. She had grown quieter. Her attention wasn't focused on the machine anymore. Instead, she was staring at the stored starskiffs with a distant expression. For someone whose eyes were hidden, her emotions were strangely easy to perceive.
"They used to call Baiheng a 'Starskiff Killer.'"
Dan Heng's expression tightened. There it was again. That name.
There was a faint smile in Jingliu's voice. Not mockery. Affection. Something much warmer.
"Not too inaccurate, considering she almost always ended up crashing. She always ended up in the worst of situations, but somehow never failed to find a way to escape with her life."
Jingliu's head tilted slightly.
"Luck is a kind of strength, in a way."
Dan Heng said nothing. The name continued to scratch against something buried within his mind. Baiheng. It was meaningless. It should have been meaningless. He had never known her. He had never spoken to her. There was no reason for her name to feel so strangely familiar, yet every time Jingliu said it, something inside him stirred. An image almost formed. A laugh. A cockpit. A battlefield. Then it vanished before he could grasp it.
"Did you recall something, Imbibitor Lunae?"
Jingliu asked. Dan Heng's jaw tightened.
"No."
The answer came more quickly this time. Jingliu's smile faded slightly. She didn't push him. At least, not immediately. Instead, she turned her attention back toward the growing starskiff. Dan Heng was grateful for that. He didn't want to remember. Or perhaps he did. That was the problem. He couldn't tell anymore.
His past was a door he had spent years keeping shut, only for everyone around him to insist on trying to force it open. Jingliu spoke of Baiheng as though she had been there. As though Dan Feng had known her. As though Dan Heng was supposed to mourn someone whose existence existed only as an empty space in his memories. He hated how his own mind betrayed him whenever her name was spoken. Most of all, he hated the faint sense of loss that accompanied it.
The production line continued onward. The translucent womb moved slowly along its rails while the starskiff within continued to grow. Its body gradually took shape, curves forming where there had previously been nothing but raw material. Mechanical appendages attached themselves to the developing hull, weaving components into the organic structure with astonishing precision.
Eventually, the process began to slow. The starskiff had reached maturity. Jingliu and Dan Heng followed the production line in silence, with Sunny — along with Sushang, who Dan Heng never noticed — trailing behind them at what could only be described as a deliberately safe distance.
Every so often, Dan Heng glanced back at where he thought Sunny would be. It was almost insulting. By the time they reached the edge of Stargazer Navalia, the final stage of the process was complete. The energy field dissolved. Steam and faintly glowing mist spilled across the platform as the newly created starskiff emerged from the production chamber. It was sleek. It was elegant. It was undeniably a starskiff.
Dan Heng stared at it.
His face slowly paled.
There was something wrong.
Very, very wrong.
The hull was too large. The wings were positioned at an unusual angle. Several sections of the exterior seemed suspiciously reinforced, while the rear propulsion system looked like it had been designed for something significantly more aggressive than civilian transportation. Dan Heng's eyes slowly traveled toward the cockpit. Then toward the weapon-like protrusions along its underside. Then toward the absurdly oversized engine.
He closed his eyes.
A vein throbbed faintly against his temple.
"That... idiot!"
From somewhere behind him came Sunny's cheerful voice.
"Hey! It works... probably."