The heavy cavalry landed on the open ground of the courtyard, and the base vehicle sputtered to a halt beside it.
Jiang Ye flipped open the car door and jumped out, casting a satisfied glance at his newly purchased vehicle. It was sleek and beautiful, having flown all the way from Binhai City without even a speck of dust.
He turned and walked towards the villa. After only two steps, he stopped again.
In the dark hot spring, a pale figure lay on its back, long hair spread out. The figure tilted its head and gazed at him. Sophia was soaking in the hot spring again.
Jiang Ye had a sudden idea and walked over to sit by the edge of the spring.
"I'd like to ask you for a favor," he said.
Sophia straightened up and stood from the hot spring. Her skin was so pale, and the surroundings so dark, she looked like a ghost rising from the night.
"I have a lover on Jiedian Star. The distance is too great, and I can't get there or communicate with her," Jiang Ye said, clasping his hands together earnestly. "You are a smuggling merchant group with vast connections. Is there any way for me to communicate with her?"
Sophia shook her head. "Jiedian Star is a military stronghold, with hundreds of thousands of troops stationed there. Our business doesn't dare to expand in that direction."
Jiang Ye was greatly disappointed. He scratched his head and asked again, "Do you know of any way I can contact my lover?"
"A star station would suffice. You can take a spaceship to find her," Sophia said.
"Star stations cost billions, and they require a colony development index of ten thousand points. We're not even at five thousand points yet," Jiang Ye said with a dejected expression, sighing. "It seems like a distant dream!"
"Have you been to Jiedian Star? How did you get there?" Sophia asked.
"I went once, on a rocket provided by the military." Jiang Ye's eyes suddenly lit up. "Are there any interstellar travel companies that can take me to Jiedian Star for a short visit?"
"You can take a rocket from a tourism company to go to other places. But Jiedian Star is under military martial law, and tourist spacecraft and rockets are forbidden to land. So, you can't just buy a rocket ticket to go there," Sophia shook her head again. "Even if you build a star station in the future, you'll need to go through extremely tedious procedures before flying to Jiedian Star. Flying directly there will result in you being blown up outside the atmosphere."
Jiang Ye fell into despair.
It seemed there was only one path: reach ten thousand development index points and build a star station.
He took out his phone to check the rankings.
[Jiang Ye Autonomous Region / Development Index 4267 / Rank 8639]
From four thousand two hundred points to ten thousand points, how long would it take?
Half a year? A year? Or even two to three years?
"Don't be sad. Yours is just a fixed-term sentence, while I'm serving a life sentence. My husband fell into a black hole," Sophia said, then sank back into the hot water, floating like a corpse. "My remaining life will be spent missing him."
Jiang Ye was surprised. "Don't you have dermatophobia..."
He regretted speaking as soon as the words left his mouth. It was her private matter, how could he pry?
But Sophia didn't seem to mind. She said faintly, "That's right, I have dermatophobia. I also feel very uncomfortable when I have physical contact with him. But precisely because of this, it brings about a strong feeling of fear, disgust, stimulation, and excitement, which causes me to convulse, gag, or even faint. He saw me faint twice and then refused to touch me again. He said seeing me tremble and gag gave him the illusion that he was killing me. But I would beg him to touch me, and then faint. This feeling is very complex and pathological. You probably wouldn't understand."
"I can understand a little bit," Jiang Ye nodded. "Ultimately, you still love him, which is why you are willing to endure negative emotions to interact with him."
"That's right," Sophia smiled, which was rare.
"Medicine is very advanced now; even severed limbs can be printed. Can't dermatophobia be treated?" Jiang Ye thought of another point.
"Bodily ailments are easy to treat, but heart ailments are difficult to cure," Sophia sighed.
"This is a kind of... psychological illness?"
"That's right. I think I know why I got this illness. Are you interested in hearing about it?"
"Of course," Jiang Ye was already a thousand times curious.
"One afternoon when I was eight years old, my father, carrying a long hunting rifle, shot and killed my mother right in front of me. Then, my father, with his rough hands, grabbed my neck and pushed me into a corner. The second before he fired, I crouched down, and the bullet whizzed past my head. While he was reloading, I escaped the house, went upstairs, and hid under a small bed on the top floor."
"My father came up looking for me, shouting 'Sophia!' The barrel of his smoking rifle was almost dragging on the ground. I was too scared to make a sound, and through the gap under the bed, I watched his furry white feet and the gun barrel walk back and forth. After a while, he couldn't find me, so he put the gun to his own mouth and pulled the trigger."
"When I grew up, I fell in love with a married man. That man was very gentle, completely different from my irritable father, and gave me a fatherly warmth. At the time, I didn't know he was married; I thought he was single. One day, I was walking on the street and saw him enter a residential building, so I followed and knocked on the door. I entered his house and saw his wife. The three of us stared at each other, and the situation quickly became clear."
"His wife was a violent woman, an alcoholic, and she beat him every day. We started arguing, and halfway through the argument, his wife suddenly pulled out a handgun and shot him in the head.
"I was stunned. His wife grabbed me by the neck, pushed me into a corner, and shot me in the left chest. I fell to the ground. She went back inside, shot and killed her crying son, and then shot herself. The entire family of three perished. I survived because my heart was in a different position than normal people, on the right side, commonly known as a mirror-image person."
"Twice, I was grabbed by the neck, pushed into a corner, and then shot. After my gunshot wound healed and I was discharged from the hospital, I discovered that my neck was extremely sensitive. Anyone touching it would make me scream in terror. Later, it wasn't just my neck; as long as I had skin contact with someone, I would instinctively feel fear, disgust, and an indescribable discomfort."
After Sophia finished speaking, she sank back into the hot spring, floating comfortably.
Jiang Ye's mouth had been open for a long time, and he was completely unaware.
He felt a chill run down his spine, not because of the appalling story, but because of Sophia's extreme calmness as she recounted it, as if she were talking about someone else's story.
"I'm very sorry," Jiang Ye stood up. "After hearing your experience, I'm even more determined to push for gun control policies."
Sophia remained silent, her eyes closed as she enjoyed the warm water, but she raised her hand and gave him a thumbs-up.
Two days later, more than ten giant spacecraft descended upon Binhai City and the hot spring area, taking away all members of Sophia's merchant group.
"See you again," Sophia said softly, looking back at Jiang Ye before boarding the ship.
Jiang Ye was stunned. He thought the merchant group would leave and not return, so why would she say "see you again"?
Before he could ask, the tail door of the ship closed. The ground-shattering roar gradually intensified, and the ships launched one by one, quickly disappearing into the rain clouds.
Jiang Ye immediately took out his phone to check the rankings. Fortunately, although all the merchant group members had left, the development index had not dropped.