“Doctor, you don’t need to tell us the rest. Just tell us the result.” Ye Tianxie took a step forward, brows drawn in.

The doctor glanced at Zuo Pojun and shook her head. “Her illness cannot be cured. Not by any means at all.”

Ran Chenxin had heard that result any number of times since she was a child, but hearing it again turned her face white all the same.

“What do you mean, cannot be cured! Isn’t a hospital the place that treats illness and saves people?!” Zuo Pojun’s face went dark, and he roared it low.

“I’m sorry, Young Master Zuo. That she has lived to this day is already unbelievable. There is truly nothing we can do beyond using the life-sustaining equipment to draw her life out as long as we can. As for curing her… it isn’t just us. Anywhere in the world… there is no hospital and no doctor who can do it.”

“What is that supposed to mean!” Zuo Pojun’s eyes went round. He put out a hand, took the doctor by the collar, hauled her straight up off the floor, and said it with real viciousness in him.

“Let her go. It isn’t her fault.” Ye Tianxie waved a hand. Only then did Zuo Pojun let out a cold snort and set the doctor down. She coughed dryly for a long while before the color came back into her face, and even then she was not frightened into leaving. Everyone in Jinghua knows Young Master Zuo’s temper perfectly well. When she came here today to state this result, she had foreseen exactly the scene that had just taken place.

“Chenxin, don’t worry. There’ll be a way. Chenxue is that strong — how could she be knocked down so easily? Didn’t plenty of doctors once say she wouldn’t live to ten? And she’s thirteen now.” Ye Tianxie patted Chenxin’s shoulder lightly and comforted her.

“Planet Lyle… Planet Lyle.” Ran Chenxin murmured it, then reached out and caught hold of Ye Tianxie’s hand, and looked at him with a plea in her eyes past anything words could carry. She had heard this same result far too many times. Nothing in the doctor’s conclusion had surprised her. What was wrong with Chenxue, and how far her body had already failed — who could know it better than the sister who was with her morning and night?

Planet Lyle… the last hope, which she had come across by chance, and the name that had surfaced in her head countless times a day ever since. The television had said that Planet Lyle’s medicine was five hundred years ahead of Earth’s, and that it could cure a great number of terminal illnesses that could not be cured here. That report had become the last life-saving straw in her despair, the last shaft of hope.

Only, the fare for the round trip alone came to… one billion.

“Planet Lyle?” Ye Tianxie was blank for a moment. The name gave him a dim sense of familiarity, as if he had heard it somewhere before.

He had happened across the reports about the interstellar service back then, but he had paid them no attention at all. Even now, all he felt was that the name rang faintly.

Zuo Pojun saw the question on Ye Tianxie’s face and explained it carefully.

“Planet Lyle is in the north of the galaxy. It’s only a tenth the size of our Earth, but it has extraordinarily rich resources and highly advanced technology. Seventy years ago it sent a signal to Earth on its own initiative and let us know it was there… and over the years since, the two sides have gone on exchanging messages by electromagnetic wave, on and off. Seventeen years ago the first group of Lyle people set foot on our Earth, and in the same year they took a group of us back to Planet Lyle with them… After they returned, the recordings they brought caused an enormous stir worldwide, and it was from that point on that the interstellar service formally got under way, with Planet Lyle’s enthusiastic help.”

“And set beside Planet Lyle’s technology, its medicine is further ahead still. The Lyle people live in conditions much like Earth’s, and that medicine gives them an average lifespan of three hundred years, with a youth that lasts a full century. What’s more, the Lyle people all die of old age when their span runs out — hardly anyone dies of an illness. Because there is next to nothing there they cannot cure. Earth’s most terrible diseases — AIDS, cancer — can all be solved perfectly there. And this is no exaggeration. From the recordings that were brought back from Planet Lyle in those days, their medicine is advanced enough that they have worked out how to perfectly repair a limb or an organ, and even how to regrow one. With little sister Chenxue’s condition as it is now… her body’s functions may have run dry, but as long as there is one breath left in her, on Planet Lyle her body can be perfectly repaired, and before very long she would be the same as any healthy person.”

What Zuo Pojun said sounds like a tale out of the Arabian Nights. But ever since the first group of Earth people came home from Planet Lyle, these facts had been shaking the whole world, and they had raised in countless people a longing to go there — above all in those who had a terminal illness and did not want to die. It was chiefly that longing that drove the interstellar service into motion. It has already passed its trial stage, and preparations for the final stage of the launch have begun… in about a year’s time.

What Zuo Pojun said was a great deal more detailed than the television report, and it made the shaft of hope in Ran Chenxin burn higher. She tightened both hands and bit down hard on her lip, and after a hard hesitation she said it to Ye Tianxie after all. “Big Brother… Xietian, I’ve always known how serious Xue’er’s illness is. The only thing that can save her is this last method, going to Planet Lyle… Could I — could I borrow one billion from you? I’ll pay it back, I’ll pay back every bit of it… If it can save Xue’er, I’ll spend my whole life repaying you…”

Foolish as she might be, she had to know by now how far from ordinary Ye Tianxie’s position was. Those two words, Young Master Zuo, had told her in her shock who Zuo Pojun was. In Jinghua, who else could be called that, and be met like this by Huaxia First Military District General Hospital? And a man like that plainly did whatever Ye Tianxie told him… He would certainly have the power to take Chenxue to Planet Lyle.

Ye Tianxie patted her shoulder, shook his head gently under her tear-blurred gaze, and said with a smile, “Chenxin, you have it wrong. It isn’t you who should be repaying me… it’s me who should be repaying the two of you. My life was picked up out of the snow by your father. Without Uncle Ran, there would be no such person as me now. You are his daughters, so anything I do for you is what I ought to be doing… If Planet Lyle is the only thing that can save Chenxue, then I will certainly go. Set your mind at rest, all right?”

He reached out and gently wiped the tears off her face. Repaying a kindness was one reason. Beyond that, he himself had no wish at all to watch Chenxue truly lose her life. He wanted to know more about this girl. He wanted, still more, for her to feel the warmest sunlight there is.

From the first moment he saw her he had believed she was a small angel who did not belong to this world… She ought to be looked after and doted on by fate, not thrown away by it.

Zuo Pojun clenched his fist and nodded hard. “If Second Brother says so… then no problem! When the time comes, I’ll get Chenxue onto the very first interstellar flight to Planet Lyle… Or how about we all go together, then? Fourth Brother, you must want to go too.”

Murong Qiushui twisted his mouth to one side but said nothing.

“Thank you, Big Brother Zuo… thank you.” Every bit of gratitude she had was in her voice.

The woman doctor started to speak, stopped herself, and in the end said it anyway. “Young Master Zuo, and the rest of you… what I am about to say will be very cruel, and you will certainly be angry, but as a doctor I have to say it… I have heard about Planet Lyle too. The first interstellar flight there cannot open for at least another year… and the patient cannot possibly hold on for another year.”

“You… what do you mean by that.” Zuo Pojun flared up on the instant. Ye Tianxie put a hand out fast to block him and said, his face level, “Doctor, tell me honestly. As she is now, how long can she hold on at the most?”

The woman doctor looked at these people, each one more remarkable in bearing than the last, each one of higher standing than the last, and at how deeply worried they all were, and something complicated came over her face. Slowly, she held up three fingers.

“Three months?” Ye Tianxie’s heart tightened. If she had only three months left, then this last shaft of hope would come to nothing too…

“No… three days.” The woman doctor spoke the three merciless words slowly, in a voice with nothing left in it but helplessness.

Chenxin’s body swayed and her face went bloodless in an instant, and if Ye Tianxie had not caught her she would have gone down on the ground. “How can it be like this… No, it can’t be like this… Doctor, think of something, you have to think of something.”

At those three merciless words, Ran Chenxin was struck so hard she very nearly lost control of herself. She caught hold of the doctor’s arm, and those soft, weak hands closed hard enough in her agitation to drive the nails into the woman’s flesh.

Zuo Pojun was about to lose his temper again when Murong Qiushui pulled him back and said in a low voice, “You dead fat man. Would it kill you to keep your mouth shut?”

Three days… What a merciless fact that is. Those three words shattered more than the last hope Chenxin and Chenxue had. They struck hard at the sea of his heart as well, and he felt the sting of it deep down. He could not accept it — that he had only just met the girl with the diamond eyes and the diamond heart, and she would be leaving right away… leaving forever.

“Is there no room at all to turn this around?” he asked, looking into the doctor’s eyes.

“None… Within the bounds of Earth, there cannot be. All I can say is… I’m sorry.” The woman doctor gave a bitter smile.

Ye Tianxie shut his eyes and let out a long sigh. Something seemed to be blocking his chest, pressing down until he could hardly draw breath. He put a hand on Chenxin’s shoulder and comforted her softly. “Chenxin, don’t cry… Have you forgotten? Back then the doctors said she would die before she was ten too, and strong as she is, Chenxue has held on all the way to now and has never been beaten. She could be strong enough to live more than three years past the date those doctors set for her death. So now she can certainly be strong enough to hold on until we get to Planet Lyle. Be strong… be strong along with Chenxue, and believe that she can do it. All right?”

Chenxin was weeping past the point of speech.

The woman doctor had turned to leave, and her steps checked. “Sir, there are some things I have to say… With the illness as far along as it is, that she has lived until now is a remarkable miracle, and my colleagues and I have all been marveling at how strong that girl is… But from her physical and mental responses as they are now, we have found that she is very calm about her own condition… There is no sign at all of her resisting, or struggling to wake… It looks more like a girl with nothing left holding her here, waiting for death with perfect composure… A state like that will speed the arrival of death by a great deal. Three days is the most hopeful case…”

(End of Chapter 275)