Those who face the wall, but are in the Nascent Soul stage.

Chapter 294 The Hermes (3k)

It rained in Jupiter's Space City late at night.

Jupiter Space City is a space city connected to Ganymede by a space elevator. It links several Jupiter docks and is the main residence for the families of the Solar System Fleet crew. Various political and research institutions of the Fleet International are also based here, making it the "capital" of the Fleet International.

The weather forecast had given advance notice of the artificial rain that night. As Luo Ji and Shi Qiang walked through this space city, Luo Ji seemed a little excited. The thought that he was now 700 million kilometers away from Earth made him feel a little incredible. This was the first time he had lived in a city that was not on Earth.

The hearing for the Wallfacer Project is tomorrow. Luo Ji is going to find Hines with Shi Qiang. Fine raindrops fall to the ground under the influence of centrifugal force and patter on Luo Ji's face. The latter is oblivious and stares at the huge Jupiter in the sky with a little excitement.

Even the eye of the storm has appeared on the edge of Jupiter. Luo Ji has been patiently waiting for more than a week to see this giant eye that could fit dozens of Earths inside.

"The center of our beliefs should be just ahead. Let's go, Da Shi."

"Brother Luo, it's so late at night, isn't it inappropriate for us to disturb that young couple?"

"It's okay, he probably can't sleep right now either, maybe he's hoping I'll come to see him."

……

Belief center.

Hines' office door was ajar. Keiko Yamasugi stopped at the door and saw her husband sitting in front of his personal terminal with his back to her through the crack.

In the wife's eyes, her husband was much thinner than he had been two centuries ago, so thin that his shoulder blades were pressing against the back of his shirt, making it bulge slightly.

"Still not resting?" Keiko Yamasugi pushed open the door.

Hines turned around, his eyes behind his glasses filled with exhaustion: "The hearing is tomorrow, and I'm organizing the last batch of materials. Now, two of the three Wallfacers are cultivators, leaving only me. Tomorrow, all the firepower will definitely be focused on me. It's time for me to end all of this."

After saying that, Hines chuckled self-deprecatingly, "What about you? Didn't you say you were going to rest early today?"

"I can't sleep." She walked to the desk. "I want to talk to you."

Hines chuckled awkwardly, "What...what else is there to talk about? We have no children, and we already agreed to divorce after I step down. That's fine. In this society, where do people get married anymore? The coalition government's constitution is right; marriage is a decadent relationship. It restricts the free and full development of both men and women. In today's atomized society, it's unreasonable for me to seek emotional fulfillment from the decadent marriages of the past—"

Keiko Yamasugi interrupted Hines's pretentious clamor.

"It's about 'ideological imprints'."

Hines's face stiffened.

“Huizi…”

Keiko Yamasugi interrupted, "And there's your real plan to face the wall."

The soft light that filled the room cast shadows on his face, highlighting the deep wrinkles etched into his features. Hines remained silent for a few seconds before slowly speaking, "Keiko, you know I don't like jokes."

“I never joke, especially not with you.” Keiko Yamasugi pulled out a chair and sat down, placing her hands on her knees with a calm demeanor as if she were discussing the weather.

Hines had already reached under the table without anyone noticing, and Keiko Yamasugi's slightly sarcastic voice rang out.

"I've already replaced the battery in your stun gun. In hand-to-hand combat, you're no match for me."

Keiko Yamasugi, who was at the Innate Realm, sat in front of Hines, who was at the Acquired Realm, and said this.

Hines' face turned deathly pale. "I knew it... that's why I prepared spare batteries."

As soon as he finished speaking, the electric pistol was back in Hines's hands. The electric pistol, whose battery had been removed, had somehow been fitted with a new battery.

Keiko Yamasugi's expression remained unchanged: "You know me, and I know you too. Don't waste your energy, darling. I removed the resistor from that pistol beforehand, so it won't work even if it has power."

Hines bit his lip, his eyes bloodshot, the stun gun still pointed at Keiko Yamasugi: "I guessed it, so its trigger is just a switch, a... switch to activate the high explosives on your seat."

Keiko Yamasugi's expression finally changed, and she looked towards the door for help.

“Darling, you’re still as cautious as ever, but you’re too nervous. You’re so nervous that you can’t even tell the difference between a humanoid robot and a robot.”

Outside the door, the real Keiko Yamasugi appeared in the hallway, while the high-quality replica of Keiko Yamasugi sitting in the chair immediately went into shutdown mode.

“You’re too nervous. You can usually easily distinguish me from my doll, but not tonight.”

Fully armed Keiko Yamasugi stood outside the door, placing a robotic vacuum cleaner in her arms. The vacuum cleaner quickly pushed the chair rigged with high explosives away, while the real Keiko Yamasugi, clad in impeccable riot gear, strode in. Hines swayed, his face turning ashen, and he weakly lowered his pistol.

There were other explosives in the room, but he knew they wouldn't kill a prepared innate martial artist.

“Why did you do this?” Hines murmured.

"You already have the answer in your heart, don't you?" Keiko Yamasugi opened the high-strength visor on her helmet and sneered.

"I should have known better. Who would be my barrier-breaker? It was you. It must have been you. It really was you..."

"Yes, Wallfacer Bill Hines, I am your Wallbreaker."

Outside the window, artificial lightning ripped across the scene, and a torrential downpour began.

Time passed slowly, and apart from the sound of rain outside the window, it seemed that only the two people's faint breathing could be heard in the room.

"I thought you would at least wait until after the hearing on the Wall-Facing Plan before doing this. Why so soon? Is it because you're worried that Liu Xiu will reveal your identity during the interrogation?"

“I will not let things get out of my control. Liu Xiu’s surrender was beyond my expectations, but I was prepared for this moment. My dear, haven’t you been trying to break away from me all along? How could I bear to part with you?”

After speaking, Keiko Yamasugi swallowed hard, suppressing the trembling in her body from excitement, and said, "Wallfacer Hines, please allow me to give my final explanation of your Wallfacer plan."

Suppressing his emotions, Hines said, "Keiko! Stop! You know this is pointless. Humanity is destined to win this war. Your breaking the wall is meaningless. ETO no longer exists, and the Sophons have withdrawn from the solar system... You don't need to do this. Stop, Keiko, I beg you."

Unaffected, Keiko Yamasugi continued her narration:

"In the 20th year of the Crisis Era, at the hearing that year, you said that we should implant a 'belief in victory' into humanity through the Mind Imprinting Facility, so that we could maintain our courage in the war against the Trisolarans. I still remember the first proposition of the Mind Imprinting Facility: In the war against the invasion of the Trisolaran world, humanity will win, the enemy invading the solar system will be destroyed, and Earth's civilization will continue for generations in the universe."

"Can anyone hear our conversation right now?" Hines asked with his last hope.

"I am broadcasting live to the commanders of the three fleets. The commander of the Asian Fleet has authorized me to do so," Keiko Yamasugi said aloofly.

Hines' last hope was also dashed.

Keiko Yamasugi's words suddenly softened as she gazed tenderly at Hines. "My dear, I realized back in that room at the Bamboo Grove in Tokyo that you were a true escapist, a loser, no different from Taylor and Radiaz. You wholeheartedly believed that humanity would inevitably lose in the future war. Even after another Wallfacer, Luo Qing, had demonstrated the power to destroy a modern navy, you didn't waver in that belief. You might remember that accident: Luo Qing, due to your mistake in manipulating the thought imprint, launched an attack on the Trisolaran system... But the cultivators' attack made you see their weakness even more clearly. It took Luo Qing three whole days to travel from Earth to Jupiter, barely reaching the speed of my main fleet. This power was clearly insufficient to shake my main force—although we now recognize the reality that cultivators have the potential to grow, you didn't know this back then. And that's why you never wavered in your judgment that humanity would inevitably lose. My dear, you can hide your strategy, but your eyes can't deceive me."

Hines hung his head and remained motionless, like a dead statue.

"During Luo Qing's accident, you clearly realized something and began trying to conceal my debugging of the Mind Imprint facility. I accessed all the destroyed original logs. You probably forgot that I wrote the entire underlying system that mimics the brain, so retrieving those original logs wasn't difficult. I discovered a hidden logic: when a subject's brainwave frequency reaches a specific threshold, fixed instructions are reverse-compiled, transforming into their mirror propositions. The Mind Imprint is an extremely complex device; this reverse compilation exists only in a tiny change of positive or negative sign within hundreds of millions of lines of code. This was something neither the Mind Imprint nor the review department noticed, not even Sophon. You succeeded, my dear. You found what you truly wanted. The so-called device for enhancing human brain thinking was never your true Wallfacer Project from the beginning."

The sound of rain outside the window suddenly intensified, with raindrops pounding against the windowpane.

Keiko Yamasugi's voice, like the raindrops, was a hurried death knell.

"Let me reiterate the true content of the first principle of the Ideological Imprint."

In the war against the invasion of the Trisolaran world, humanity is destined to lose. The enemy invading the solar system will not be eliminated, and Earth's civilization will not be able to continue for eternity in the universe.

The commanders of the three fleets, who were "watching the live broadcast," fell into a deathly silence.

Just then, a familiar voice suddenly came from above.

"Dr. Hines, do you remember what Luo Qing told us? The highest rule of the Wallfacers is: Never! Admit! It! Don't be like Taylor."

"Luo Ji?" Keiko Yamasugi exclaimed in surprise.

Hines forced a smile: "I knew you were coming, and I guessed what would happen, so I invited him to be my guest in advance."

Keiko Yamasugi pressed the blast-proof alloy door in an attempt to stop Luo Ji from coming here, but he kicked the blast-proof alloy door open and brought Da Shi in.

“This is a live broadcast, all three fleets have already seen it, it’s useless.” Keiko Yamasugi was still struggling.

"So what if you saw it?" Luo Ji directly used his magic to bind Yamasugi Keiko from a distance.

"Tomorrow is the hearing, and no one is allowed to disturb my hearing with Dr. Hines, not even you, Ms. Keiko Yamasugi."

(End of this chapter)