Age of Cosmic Exploration
chapter-261

Chapter 261: Funeral and Departure

The news of the Hope leaving was soon spread to the public after being announced at the House of Representatives.

The discussion at the house lasted for more than an hour, and it involved many different facets, like the first contact with an alien civilization, the first war with an alien civilization, the loss and gain from that war, the many heroes that had lost their lives for humanity, the peace talks, and much more. Yao Yuan used self-criticism and plans for the future to end the discussion.

"…Before I wrap everything up, I have to confess something before the entirety of the Hope. I, Yao Yuan, the captain of this ship, have made a horrible decision when it came to contact with this space civilization. Even though the war ended up with us victorious, it still doesn’t take away from my bad decision."

Yao Yuan continued openly on stage, "As a space civilization that has a lower technological level than the space merchants, and to be totally honest, most of the space civilizations, our main target shouldn’t be swindling the people we come in contact with but rather try our best to keep humanity alive. I shouldn’t have tried to bet our survival on some benefits. In retrospect, I realize how stupid it was, because we cannot afford to commit to such a bet! We might have won this time, and we might win next time or even a few hundred times after that, but if we lose once, then it will be over for mankind. I’m sorry, I was so blinded by the benefits that I almost caused the extinction of humanity. I will remember this lesson in my heart and have this mistake recorded in our history books so that my mistake will not repeat itself! Here, I would like to offer my sincerest apology."

With that, Yao Yuan bowed deeply at the crowd gathered before the stage. A camera was rolling. The image would be sent across the Hope.

Several seconds later, Yao Yuan straightened himself. He continued, "However, I will not resign, as suggested by a few representatives, and hand my power over to the majority. That is impossible because from the information that we’ve gathered, the danger in the cosmos is far greater than we previously imagined. The rule is the survival of the fittest, and mankind is still too weak. We need to persevere together towards the same goal and not fight for individual power and instill disagreement among the people. With that in mind, the following five individuals will be fired from the House of Representatives and not allowed to take any more public positions as long as they may live: Philip, Aretota, Johnson…"

The five representatives who were named first gave looks of disbelief before turning ashen grey. They looked around them, trying to elicit aid from their ‘allies,’ but what they received were gazes of condescension. Eventually, they hung their heads in shame and despair.

Since the peace talks began, a strange rumor started to appear on the Hope, saying that the war had only started due to Yao Yuan’s failure to lead and make correct decisions, causing huge danger to humanity as a whole. Eventually, the rumor reached a point where it hoped for Yao Yuan to voluntarily resign from his position as captain of the ship.

This rumor appeared when Speaker Matt was away from the Hope to join in the negotiations. The voices of the rumor kept increasing, but Yao Yuan made no move, causing some of the representatives to believe he was an idiot when it came to politics, and thus they aligned themselves with the rumor spreaders. This added to the uproar around the Hope.

In truth, about ten days ago, Speaker Matt had already known about these views that were circulating the public. Some of the politicians in the negotiations also critiqued Yao Yuan, and Matt only smiled. This was what he said: "Our mission here is not to create internal conflict but to get the best deals we can out of this negotiation… And to your point, it is not that our captain doesn’t know the political game, but rather he doesn’t want to play it. This is how a clever man acts. You newbies are too inexperienced to tell the difference between a real politician and a lousy lobbyist."

Through the negotiations, Yao Yuan received a landslide victory on behalf of humanity. A whole set of 4th revolution technology to complement the incomplete technological tree taken from the junkyard civilization, four technologies from the 5th revolution, unlimited information about the great cosmos, space navigational charts, star maps, information on note-worthy space civilizations, space languages, and much more.

With these victories, Yao Yuan quenched the plotting against him once and for all and the five representatives who were found to have led the plotting were fired from their positions. In other words, their political lives were over.

The punishment might seem "harsh," but this was the difference between a politician and a lobbyist. A lobbyist might sway the political opinion using someone’s unfortunate misstep, but a politician will prove his mettle using his actions and not words. Matt was present when Yao Yuan made this decision. He knew Yao Yuan had garnered another victory. A hero who fought for the safety of mankind on the battlefield shouldn’t be dragged down by a few lobbyists who only looked out for themselves. Therefore, if Yao Yuan couldn’t handle this on his own, Matt was going to step in, but that didn’t seem to be necessary, because Yao Yuan handled the crisis better than he could possibly imagine.

After the discussion, the Hope was set to conduct another space warp about 10 days later. The ten days would be used to further delineate the authenticity of the information and dealing with the aftermath of the war, like the funerals of those who had passed away. On this issue, Yao Yuan suggested a large-scale worship ritual that would be held on the space merchants’ mother ship.

Other than the usual celestial burial, another ritual with heavy Chinese cultural influence was going to be held as well. It was to appease the spirit of the many people whose lives were lost in the war. Some said this was only a show, others claimed it was to raise military morale. Either way, it was undeniable that Yao Yuan had poured a lot of effort into preparing this ritual.

The fatality rate for this war was too high. After calculations, the Black Star Troopers were left with 118 people, meaning 30 plus troopers had died! About one-fourth of the Defense Unit, or 600 plus soldiers, had perished! There was less of a fatality rate in the civilians, but they too had suffered a loss of about 200 people.

Other than that, Ying from the Black Star Unit had died. This was the person other than Yao Yuan and Guang Zhen that could lead the army. Ying’s prowess and carefulness at many times could be said to be greater than Guang Zhen and only slightly below Yao Yuan. He was also the most powerful Seeker on the Hope…

However, Yao Yuan didn’t receive his soul. Perhaps it was due to the long distance or too much time having passed, because Yao Yuan only felt fourteen new fireballs representing the Survivors around his sun-like soul. He didn’t feel Ying’s presence.

No matter what, the ritual had to happen.

Five days from the departure of the Hope, the ritual began. It was attended by 1,500 Defense Unit soldiers, all the Black Star Troopers, 500 civilian representatives, 100 plus from house of representatives, and 200 from the three bodies. The group entered the mother ship and used cenotaphs to welcome the lost souls of the human heroes back to their home. The event was solemn. The honor guards led the way, the Black Star Troopers carried the cenotaphs, and the Defense Unit shot their guns in honor of the lost men and women.

At the end of the ritual, Xi Kong, who followed along, suddenly sang an old song. The lyrics and melody had a retro feel to it. Many people had a hard time understanding what she was singing; they could only vaguely make out a few words…

"Soul return home, soul return home…"

But the lives of the heroes had been lost, so from whence would they return?

This song by the Hope’s strongest Anima seemed to pierce the barrier of time and space and reverberated into everyone’s souls. Not only those present had started to weep, the people on the Hope too started crying. Almost everyone on the Hope was standing by the window, watching the ritual from afar, waiting for their friends and families to return…

Even Yao Yuan felt himself tearing up. Ying, how can you leave your teammates just like this?

Death can come at any moment in a job like ours, but…

Brother, if there is a next lifetime, we shall fight alongside each other again!

Right then, Yao Yuan felt a change within him. He immediately used his Anima power to enter the dark recesses of his own soul. What he saw surprised him. Unknown to himself, his soul was surrounded by an additional ten extremely weak fireballs of souls. The fireballs were like candles in the wind. They could be blown out at any minute, but thankfully, the flame of his soul seemed to bring warmth to them, aiding them in their recovery. However, one of the brightest among the ten gave a sense of familiarity to Yao Yuan, a feeling of pride and aloofness combined with fragility and indescribable affection…

At the same time, in the deepest reaches of the mother ship, a giant big-brained alien whose brain was at least double the size of the normal big-brained alien looked at its subordinates and said, "Level two soul web user and a legendary immortal. This is a leadership quality even civilizations that have broken through level 9 would want… Record everything…

"And then sell all the information, sell all the information we have on this race called human beings. Trade with level 3, 4, or even the rare 5 civilizations, then our race can finally become a level 3 civilization…"

All of this was happening behind Yao Yuan’s back…

Five days after the ritual, the Hope warped again, disappearing completely from the empty space…