Chapter 063, Childhood
Dad, once I grow up, can I attend the school at the eta Ursae Majoris Starfield that you speak of? I also want to be like you and become a really good doctor......"
The soft and immature voice of the child reverberated in his ears, just as vivid as if it had happened yesterday.
When he was very young, he lived with his Dad for a time in the "City of the Dead."
He can still remember the perpetual dampness in the air of the underground city. In the vast underground city, it only housed a few old people who were in the Undercurrent and the pair of father and son. His Dad would tell him about all kinds of ancient legends, the name of the eta Ursae Majoris has always been deeply marked in the bottom of his heart— because he knows that Dad had previously attended the best military medical school on the eta Ursae Majoris Star.
Snow"s favorite thing when he was a child was to listen to him tell various stories in his Dad"s arms.
Ling Feng"s voice is very gentle and the stories he tells are particularly pleasant to hear. Snow in his arms, listening to him telling all kinds of ancient legends, makes him feel that his heart is particularly at peace and happy.
He did not have any playmates in his childhood, only his Dad and a close relative.
To the little Snow, Dad is his sky, his whole world.
These serene and peaceful days lasted for nearly half a year.
This Locke Castle, known as the "City of the Dead", has been isolated from the outside world for many years. Many of the originally stored foods have already expired. In addition to the polluted air in Locke Castle, Snow is still a child and his resistance is poor. There was simply no way to continue living here for the long term. Ling Feng was helpless with lack of a better option and once again had to return to Planet Oman with his son.
Probably because of the severe twists and turns during his pregnancy, when he gave birth to Snow there was a problem with his heart that he couldn"t repair, conducting a heart transplant was necessary. Ling Feng took his son to the home of his best friend from University— Dr. Wald. Wald has an independent laboratory in Planet Oman, which suitable for Ling Feng to take care of his son.
Snow"s childhood memories are memories of running around with his Dad all over the place.
Snow and his Dad are mutually dependent for life. Plus, his health wasn"t good from a young age. At only five years old, he is very intelligent. He obeyed whatever his Dad said. Compared to the naughty children at his same age, the well-behaved Snow is simply not like a five-year-old boy.
He was far too obedient. Therefore, when Ling Feng abruptly took him to Dr. Wald"s secret laboratory and put him into a cryostasis pod to be put in a deep-freeze, he was also without a doubt, laying there extremely well-behaved and obedient. He even consoled his sad-faced Dad saying: "It"s alright Dad, I"m only going to be sleeping......"
This cryostasis pod is usually only used for patients with multiple organ failure, it can temporarily freeze the human body, it is reliant on in vitro nutrient fluid to sustain life. Snow"s heart is failing more and more with each pa.s.sing day, the frequency of his heartbeats is slowing down enough to scare him witless. It seems as if it could stop beating at any moment and he may not make it without a transplant surgery.
This was why Ling Feng so callously froze his son, extracting cells from him to begin to cultivate an organ.
This kind of extremely troublesome method for cultivating organs is the same as cloning a human. If you are not careful when cultivating organs, it may be unable to be transplanted due to various defects. Young Snow didn"t understand this. He only knew to obediently be fast asleep in the cryostasis pod and knew nothing at all about the outside world.
When Dr. Wald finally gave him the heart transplant and awakened him, the time had already quietly slipped away to be a whole five years.
When Snow woke up, he didn"t even know where he was. Long-term freezing made almost all of the muscles in his entire body atrophied, he was all skin and bones. His body was still that of a five-year-old child, but his actual age should be ten years old. It was as if he had been completely removed from these five years of his life, leaving only a blank.
He also never saw his Dad again.
According to what Dr. Ward said, a lot of things happened while he was fast asleep. General Ling Yu was expelled from the military registry. The secret of the Undercurrent Organization was exposed. The military executed a carpet search to hunt down Undercurrent members. Dad in order to seek asylum, left here for the time being. He doesn"t know where.
(TN: It"s a military technique for searching, it involves a lot of manpower and resources so it"s not commonly used. It"s when they need to trace a person (or people) but they don"t know where they are but know the general area, so they block off the area in different sections and search them all one by one in a certain order.)
Snow listened in a daze and his sluggish brain struggled to digest the grievous news that he couldn"t yet handle.
Probably because he was frozen for so long, hearing that his Dad was missing, he quickly forgot the feeling of shedding tears.
From that day on, Wald took Snow as his adopted son and told any outsiders that Snow was an orphan he had picked up after having lost both of his parents. He is five years old this year.
He secretly injected Snow with inhibitors, allowing Snow to grow up as a Beta.
However, the five-year-old child is becoming more and more silent. He does not like to make friends, does not like to talk, and his habitual sleeping position is curled up into a ball, just as he once curled up in that tiny cryostasis pod.
***
The reappearance of those words "eta Ursae Majoris Star" is like tearing open a huge crack from the bottom of Snow"s heart.
Those distant childhood memories violently surged forth in an instant like a tidal wave. The ice-cold feeling of lying in the cryostasis pod slowly crawled up the back of the spine and to his brain, all the blood throughout his body seemed to freeze.
Snow stood there stiffly and looked up at that unfamiliar man.
The man"s appearance looked very ordinary, but he has a pair of pitch-black and extremely bright eyes. Meeting his gaze, Snow"s heart can not help but faintly tremble— those eyes, the countless times they have appeared in his dreams, look so similar to that gentle and soft man in his memories.
As if to prove his suspicions, before the man left the specimen showroom, he also deliberately gave a quick look back at him.
Snow no longer hesitated, immediately stood up and said: "Teacher. I am a little uncomfortable, I am going to the bathroom."
Today"s teacher has a very good temperament, seeing Snow"s pale complexion, he hurriedly nodded and said: "Quickly go, If it"s serious then let me know, I will take you to a doctor."
Snow nodded and sped-walked out of the showroom.
When he went out, he saw that the man was waiting for him at the end of the corridor as expected.
The two looked at each other standing on the opposite ends of the long corridor, and no one opened their mouth to speak, but that familiar feeling still let them recognize each other in the very first moments.