Beyond the Zenith

Back home, his mother used to dry and roast pumpkin seeds as a snack. It had been a long time since Han Qingyu had some, and he had missed the taste.

It was also dinner time. As the Refusers had summoned him before he could get any food, he was starving and desperately needed something to tide him over.

Before he knew it, he’d become exactly the type of impatient person he’d just been thinking about, chewing the shells along with the seeds. Tu Zi sat there carefully cracking them open one by one, watching as Han Qingyu scooped up five, six, seven, eight at a time and tossed them into his mouth.

It didn’t take long for Han Qingyu’s pile to nearly vanish.

Tu Zi glanced at his pitiful pile and silently pushed his own over. Then, digging around in his coat pocket for a while, he managed to fish out one more tiny handful.

Only just noticing his ravenous behavior, Han Qingyu glanced down at the table, then back up at Tu Zi with a sheepish expression. “Sorry about that, Baldy. I was just really hungry.”[1]

“It’s fine. It’s just that, um... My name is Tu Zi.”

“Oh, sorry, I can’t help it. It’s a hometown accent thing,” Han Qingyu explained with an awkward laugh. “How about we just treat that as a friendly inside joke? You brainiacs aren’t like us front-liners. If we’re not careful, we could lose our heads. If you’re not careful, you lose your hair.”

Tu Zi let out a shy but irrepressible laugh, nodding as he made an amused sound of agreement. “Mm.”

The plump older man sitting beside them genuinely suffered from severe hair loss and was doing his best to stay patient. Inwardly, he told himself that this was likely a deliberate distraction, designed to appear casual to derail the inquiry.

“Speaking of which, do the older folks in your family have this problem? Hair loss?” Han Qingyu asked Tu Zi.

Even though Tu Zi said he was only a little younger, Han Qingyu couldn’t help feeling like he was talking to a younger brother, both visually and instinctively.

“I... don’t really know,” Tu Zi said. “I’ve never met my grandpa.”

It seemed the old man had already passed, and early too. Platitudes sat on the tip of Han Qingyu’s tongue.

“He went to prison when he was fourteen,” Tu Zi continued.

Han Qingyu blinked. “Then how were you born?”

“Oh, my grandpa fell in love and got married in prison, where they had my dad,” Tu Zi explained, tone surprisingly lighthearted. “Then my dad went to prison when he was thirteen, and then—”

“Got it. Fell in love, got married, and had you. In prison.”

“Mhm.”

By this point, Han Qingyu was already conjuring up images of what this so-called “prison” looked like. It was probably more like a carefree living and breeding facility for dangerous geniuses.

He thought about it for a moment and said to Tu Zi with genuine feeling, “It can’t have been easy for you, right? Nineteen years old and you still aren’t locked up yet.”

Tu Zi beamed and nodded. “Yep! If I still haven’t gone down the wrong path by the time I turn twenty, I’ll even be allowed to visit my grandparents and parents in their prison for a few days at a time. They won’t be afraid of them being a bad influence on me anymore.”

The two young men from the prospective tier chatted happily away, though neither was aware of this commonality between them.

After conversing about various random topics for a while, Han Qingyu asked, “What did you write down just now?”

He leaned over to look at the inquiry logbook, craning his neck at an awkward angle.

Tu Zi simply pushed the whole notebook over, showing him the single line written on it: A man who wears a silver bracelet.

“You wrote that down?! That’s not a good look, is it? What if word gets out? Won’t people think I’m, you know... girly?” Han Qingyu fretted.

“No way. Even if that applies to others... Brother Qing[2], you took down a Sharpie during your recruit period! You even destroyed that device and ran all the way back with a Glowing Blue Sharpie!” Tu Zi exclaimed enthusiastically, the term “Brother Qing” coming out perfectly naturally.

So this little scientist worships combat heroes, or maybe he just doesn’t have many friends, Han Qingyu thought.

After a moment, he asked, “By the way, doesn’t it seem a little sloppy for you Refusers to send an inexperienced kid like you to interrogate me?”

“No, no, this isn’t an interrogation,” Tu Zi said anxiously. “We don’t even have clearance to interrogate you.”

“Oh.” Han Qingyu leaned back in his chair. “Got it.”

“He’s just here to hang out. He tagged along with me,” the plump old man finally chimed in, placing the silver bracelet on the table and sliding it back to Han Qingyu.

He’d been examining it for a while now, and had come to the conclusion that it truly was just an ordinary old silver bracelet, the kind passed down through farming families. It was worn and aged, with obvious scratches from years of daily labor. The lack of patterns or decoration made it seem rather plain, and it had even lost all of its luster.

In short, if it wasn’t tucked away like a treasure and was just tossed somewhere random, a home burglar would probably walk right past it.

Han Qingyu carefully put the bracelet away. “So what you’re saying is, you intended to question me alone. Is that allowed?”

“But Little Tu is here, isn’t he?”

“I thought he just tagged along?”

“Tagging along still makes two people, doesn’t it?”

Han Qingyu didn’t know how to respond to that.

Feeling a small sense of satisfaction at winning that exchange, the pudgy old man continued, “Alright, how about you walk me through what happened that day one more time?”

Han Qingyu smiled at him. “I refuse.”

Refusing the Refusers felt absolutely wonderful, especially now that he knew they didn’t have the clearance to interrogate him.

“You—”

“You have the report, don’t you? Just read the report,” Han Qingyu cut in. “I’ve already gone through it several times with a couple different groups these past two days.”

An awkward silence filled the room.

“Actually, we’re mainly interested in the device that the Glowing Blue Sharpie installed on that mountain. The specifics of that thing,” Tu Zi explained, stepping in to defuse the awkwardness. “I’ve only ever seen that device in a blurry old photograph. I’ve never seen the real thing, let alone observed it up close like you did.”

“Oh.” Han Qingyu mulled this request over and found it hard to refuse. “The main body is made up of two parts. Outside is the spindle-shaped aircraft in its open state, like a clam with its shell spread open. In the middle is a metal object shaped like a pyramid...”

He went on describing the device in a fragmented but objective way.

“And what about your gut feeling? Can you share that?” Tu Zi asked next, his eyes eager.

“My gut feeling is that the thing might not be a signal transmitter as they say.” Han Qingyu paused briefly. “To me, it looked more like a receiver.”

“Really?! That’s great. I’ve actually held the same hypothesis for a long time.” Tu Zi shot to his feet, still small in stature, his expression full of excitement. “I even suspected that it could actually be some kind of traction device, a beacon used to open a jump corridor...”

Tu Zi rambled on and on with an explanation that went way beyond Han Qingyu’s senior high education level.

After finishing his lengthy scientific monologue, Tu Zi added, “I based my reasoning on their flight patterns, as well as how their sound waves propagate. Brother Qing, you—”

“I just thought it looked like the satellite dish back in my village, the one for picking up TV signals,” Han Qingyu cut him off without mercy, not wanting to continue this trampling of his knowledge and intellect.

“Oh... I see.” Tu Zi deflated and sank back into his chair.

The atmosphere turned awkward again. Han Qingyu’s earlier explanations were all recorded.

After a moment, Tu Zi looked up with an awkward smile. “Brother Qing, would you mind getting your source energy integration level retested when the source energy field opens next year? The truth is, we’re having some trouble making sense of your actual combat ability after reviewing the incident report.”

Han Qingyu looked momentarily lost and didn’t answer right away.

“Of course, it’s not mandatory. You can refuse. This is purely the Refusers’ curiosity,” Tu Zi quickly added.

Even the plump old man beside him showed no intention of forcing him.

After all, they were all afraid of the Only Witness Legion’s legion commander, Chen Bu’e. They were already going around him to investigate someone he had personally looked into. Questioning a decision he had already made was already asking for trouble. Going one step further and trying to force the issue would be toying with disaster.

“Do you Refusers handle this kind of thing too? Besides refusing Sharpies?” Han Qingyu asked.

“Yeah. It’s a responsibility that somehow got tacked on over the past thirty or forty years. Probably because the nickname ‘Refusers’ got taken the wrong way, so now we also handle refusing enemies from within.” Tu Zi gestured to the pudgy old man. “This is Section Chief Ji from the Refusers’ Internal Investigation Division.”

Tu Zi paused there, smiled timidly, and reached over to Han Qingyu’s sleeve. With a bit of effort, he plucked off a tiny object that was the same color as a pumpkin seed.

“I have a natural sensitivity to frequency and vibration,” he explained, “and I was using equipment to assist me too. Your heartbeat was so steady throughout this entire process... it was like a living corpse.”

1. Tu Zi (涂紫) is pronounced tú zǐ, but Han Qingyu said tū zǐ, which means Bald Guy. ☜

2. He actually calls him 青子哥 (qīng zǐ gē), combining the nickname Little Qing with Elder Brother. Basically, he’s calling him Elder Brother Little Qing, which conveys both familiarity and a sense of respect. That’s a mouthful in English, though, so we decided to just stick to Brother Qing. ☜