Chapter 195 - Sol Three Hundred and Twenty-Four, Desert, Loneliness, Shit-Stirring Stick (1/2)

Chapter 195: Sol Three Hundred and Twenty-Four, Desert, Loneliness, Shit-Stirring Stick

The girl took off her helmet and her short, black hair floated up.

She extended her index finger and gently tapped a compressed biscuit crumb. The latter slowly moved back under the nudge, colliding with a second piece of biscuit.

The second spun and hit a third piece.

Six pieces of biscuit lined up like dominoes. Each biscuit would hit the biscuit after it after every connection as kinetic energy kept passing through them. However, the biscuits were ultimately items that were nonuniform and easy to crumble. Unable to move regularly like Newton’s cradle, they soon scattered and flew in different directions.

Mai Dong breathed out a white fog as she reached out to stop them.

The Crystal’s temperature was very cold at around –4°C. This was when it faced the Sun and had the sunlight hit upon the walls. When the space station went behind Mars, its temperature would drop further, reaching its lowest just before sunrise at a low –10°C.

Currently, the only thing that could maintain Mai Dong’s temperature was the IVA suit she was wearing. It used the Crystal’s backup batteries as a power source. The data wire that connected the IVA suit to the core module also doubled as a power line.

The suit’s heating mechanism would raise the temperature to 25°C. Last night, Mai Dong had curled inside it to sleep, wearing her helmet with the visor down. The suit practically isolated her from the outside and had rather effective thermal insulation. However, she had no choice but to remove the visor during meal times. The pressure in the Crystal was normal, and the emergency oxygen system was providing oxygen to the IVA suit as well as the Crystal.

Mai Dong shot a glance at the emergency oxygen system’s remaining levels and pressure gauge. Inside the heavy metal cylinder, the alkali metal perchlorate salt was stably being decomposed and releasing oxygen. The latter could at most work for 380 hours, a full sixteen sols.

Having enough oxygen was truly a blessing. It could have been worse.

It had been three sols since the space station had faced destruction.

There were another eight sols before Tianzhou 37 arrived.

On Mars, Tang Yue and Tomcat were continuing their feces-stirring work.

If there was any more pressing work that required their attention, they wouldn’t be sitting inside the garage stirring feces. But at this moment, there was really nothing more important on Kunlun Station. This didn’t mean that stirring feces was important, but once the man and cat lost every means to interfere in the space station, all they could do was wait for news from the space station while stirring feces. Even if they were like a cat on hot bricks, all they could do was sit in the garage, mixing and flattening the feces.

If there was even a slim possibility, no matter how tiny, to raise the altitude of the United Space Station by a millimeter, Tomcat and Tang Yue would have put in all their efforts and more.

But now, the fact that they could only stir feces implied how helpless they were.

With nowhere to vent his anger, Tang Yue began venting it on the feces in the container. The feces were decimated as they suffered heavy pounding to the point of being squashed.

“Brother Tang.” Tomcat pressed his shoulders, speaking sternly in principle. “Why do you need to take it out on the feces. They are innocent.”

Tomcat’s voice was slowly and deep.

“What has this got to do with you? Who are you to them?” Tang Yue questioned coldly.

Tomcat said firmly, “Their guardian.”

“What nonsense. These feces were produced by me. When and how did you become their guardian?” Tang Yue got into a blade-drawing stance as he slowly pulled out a rolling pin from the bucket. He slowly got up and held his hands to his back, standing there sternly like a proud piece of bamboo that faced the tempest.

Opposite him, Tomcat took out a sh*t-stirring stick from the bucket beside it. There was a sharp glint in its eyes.

A breeze passed through the area between the two of them, stirring up fine yellow dust.

Stick.

Wooden stick.

Cylindrical wooden stick.

Desert Smoke Stick.

“The sword crossed 30,000 li,” Tang Yue said.

“The blade freezes nineteen lands,” Tomcat replied.