Chapter 17
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Chapter 17: Summer Solstice Celebration
Zhu Huai didn’t say much more: “As long as you understand the situation.”
Luo Yu nodded and reached forward to pick up the recovery panel, tapping it twice. “What trouble did we encounter? Can we solve the overflow issue? The next live broadcast is the day after tomorrow.”
She opened the four broadcasts from this recovery, all of which were still in the state they were in when they were just recovered. Only the Qin Dynasty had an additional record of the last incident where the broadcast went out of control by the river. If the overflow problem couldn’t be resolved in the next two days, the second live broadcast of the Han Dynasty would happen the day after tomorrow, and it would lead to another large public embarrassment.
Zhu Huai scratched her head in frustration and sat down beside a chair. “You know the recovery panel development team and the maintenance team are independent of each other. I can only ensure the recovery won’t fail, but the loss of control problem requires testing equipment that wasn’t brought with the capsule. I tried a clumsy method for half the day, but couldn’t replicate the loss of control scenario, and I still can’t locate the problematic module.”
Luo Yu rubbed her forehead. “Is this still a ‘little trouble’? You’re being too modest. This basically means it can’t be resolved at all, right?”
But she understood that Zhu Huai was speaking the truth. The Shan Hai Jing maintenance team was mainly responsible for the control panel, power compartment, and interior and exterior maintenance of the time capsule, while the recovery screen equipment was developed by another specialized team from the Time Bureau. This team provided technical training for the maintenance team to ensure effective recovery during missions. As for other problems, they would have to wait until after their return to be sent to the recovery center for resolution, and the core technology of the recovery panel was not in Zhu Huai’s hands.
“Let me finish,” Zhu Huai waved her hand. “I came up with a solution: the moment the live broadcast starts the day after tomorrow, I’ll perform a manual module check on the panel, then forcibly shut down all broadcasting processes, letting the panel enter sleep mode. That way, the overflow should not happen again during the next live broadcast. The whole process will take only five minutes, at most ten.”
“Won’t forcibly shutting down the process cause the screen to fail?”
“It won’t. These are two separate modules; one is responsible for recovery, and the other for broadcasting. Recovery is fine now; it’s just the broadcasting that’s unstable.”
Luo Yu rested her chin in thought for a moment. “That’s one way to handle it…”
“However, once we enter sleep mode, the recovery panel won’t be accessible. We would have to go to the recovery center to unlock it.” Zhu Huai added, “If you want to see, I can back up the previous broadcasts.”
They had already done a backup for the historical broadcasts before, but Mo Chuan had taken it. They also needed to keep a copy for themselves. The three of them discussed and ultimately decided to back up the broadcast records on the recovery panel first. They would look for other solutions tomorrow. If they still couldn’t find the problematic module, they would focus on handling it tightly when the live broadcast started the day after tomorrow, ensuring that the broadcast content wouldn’t leak widely into other time spaces again.
Just as they wrapped up their discussion, a tentative knock was heard at the door. Luo Yu walked over and opened it to find the hangar robot and the engineering assistant robot each bringing trays of food and drinks.
After finishing dinner in the operation room while chatting and eating, the sky outside had nearly turned completely dark. The three of them exited the hangar together, donned their wing suits at the entrance, and without needing to take the elevator, leaped straight down from the end of the helipad, flying back to the entrance of the ninth cliff dwelling under the moonlight.
All three were tired today. Upon entering the house, Ying Zhao placed her carefully held miniature universe model on the display rack in the lounge. They didn’t chat further and headed off to their respective rooms to rest.
Once inside her suite, Luo Yu went straight to the bathroom to take a shower. The clothes here were so comfortable, likely aided by the nutritious meals and supplements, that she only remembered she was on her second day of her period when she started taking off her clothes.
Today, she had switched to a flying version of pants from the menstruation center before putting on the wing suit, but after flying back and forth all day, she had forgotten to check what the difference was between this version and her regular one.
As she removed the pants for a detailed comparison, she noticed that the lower abdomen area had an additional blood flow guide strip designed to promote absorption in weightlessness. In fact, the regular version could also provide absorption and self-cleaning during flight, but it would have a delay of nearly a minute in weightlessness. They had developed the flying version to specifically address the experience issues caused by a delay of several dozen seconds for absorption.
She gently set the pants down and turned to step into the shower, staring blankly at the moonlight reflecting off the stone wall. Thoughts surfaced once again about the difficult question she had been trying not to ponder these past few days: How did human civilization fall from the level it had thirty thousand years ago to what it became later? It was as if the entire world had been rebooted during that time.
The more she thought, the more chaotic her mind became. She washed her face forcefully under the water and took a deep breath, lowering her head.
That night, the three of them spent a peaceful evening in their respective suites in the cave villa, welcoming the seventh sunrise after their emergency landing.
However, this morning was somewhat unusual. When Luo Yu emerged from her suite, she found that the decor in the lounge had been refreshed overnight. The orange circular soft cushions were replaced with light yellow ones, and the floor color had become lighter. The color scheme of other facilities in the room was also adjusted accordingly.
Ying Zhao was the earliest to wake up; she sat on the cushions and turned to see Luo Yu come out, smiling brightly. “Sister Yu, Happy Summer Solstice!”
“Hmm?”
Ying Zhao pointed at the calendar she brought back from the menstruation center two days ago. “Today is July 1st here. This morning, the housekeeping robot told me today marks the Summer Solstice, a seasonal festival.”
Luo Yu calculated silently. The local calendar had twenty-eight days per month, which corresponded to June 19th in their world, right around the time of the summer solstice.
At that moment, the panel on the round table chimed: “A call request from Mo Chuan.”
Luo Yu approached the cushions, and Ying Zhao pressed the answering button. Soon, they saw Mo Chuan’s half-body hologram, greeting them with a gentle smile. “Happy Summer Solstice! I’ve been a bit busy these past two days and forgot to tell you in advance that there’s a festival celebration today. I’d like to invite you to join. I’ll come to the hangar to pick you up at eleven, okay?”
Luo Yu recalled that Lei Ming mentioned three engineering assistant robots would join the hangar today, so she asked about it. Mo Chuan confirmed that the robots had already arrived this morning, and they could go check them out later.
According to local customs, no one worked on the day of the Summer Solstice, but this didn’t affect the robots; they could still carry out the planned maintenance on the outer shell of the Shan Hai Jing.
Luo Yu nodded, “Alright, we’ll see you at eleven.”
After Zhu Huai got up, the three of them had breakfast and then headed to the hangar. They indeed found four engineering assistant robots already busy in the hangar, efficiently working on the repairs according to Zhu Huai’s plan, starting from the bow of the Shan Hai Jing.
Zhu Huai walked around the Shan Hai Jing and said with satisfaction, “Not bad! At this rate, I believe the outer shell can be repaired today.”
After observing the work, they went into the operation room to check the backup of the recovery panel. It had taken a whole night to complete the backup. Zhu Huai sat down and checked the deployment system again, but she still couldn’t replicate the problem. She shook her head and said, “Forget it; staying here won’t solve anything. Today, let’s embrace local customs and go out to relax a bit—it might help us think better.”
They sat for a while in the operation room when they heard the voice of the hangar robot outside. Mo Chuan had arrived.
The three of them quickly got up, greeted her, and Mo Chuan didn’t linger in the hangar. She turned and led them outside, boarding the aircraft to their destination for the day—Ruoshui.
On the way, Mo Chuan introduced them to the festival celebration. Due to the Ponsuo Tribe’s dispersed social structure, the locals seldom gathered in large numbers, even during festival days—celebrations took place in various locations.
On the summer solstice, activities occurred in the mountains and forests, as well as by the rivers and seas. They were headed to Ruoshui, a freshwater lake in the mountains, where the activities would be held on an island in the lake.
“I chose to invite you to Ruoshui because I thought you might have already explored the area around the cliff dwelling, so I wanted to take you somewhere fresh,” Mo Chuan said with a smile. “Last year, I also spent the summer solstice at Ruoshui; it’s beautiful there.”
After flying for about forty minutes, they descended from the clouds and saw the towering mountains below, encircling a blue lake—this was Ruoshui.
The aircraft slowly landed on the helipad on Heart of the Lake Island. Though there weren’t many people on the island, it was particularly lively. As soon as they stepped off the aircraft, they heard cheers coming from afar.
As Mo Chuan led them from the helipad inward, many small mechanical birds flew among the crowd, carrying baskets of snacks and drinks. When they sensed someone raising a hand, they hovered in mid-air for people to take from them.
They arrived neither too early nor too late, and shortly after, the water celebration was about to begin. Mo Chuan chose a grassy slope with a good view, and the three of them sat on the ground. Soon, a serving robot set up a small table beside them for their drinks and snacks.
Ying Zhao held a cup of drink, watching the people laughing and playing in the distance. She curiously asked, “Will the festival celebration here last for many days? Is it like holidays back home, with several days off?”
Mo Chuan shook her head. “No, the summer solstice celebration is just this one day. The other days have different entertainment activities. We rarely have a unified holiday; everyone arranges their leisure activities according to their preferences. Most people here have plenty of free time, so there’s no need for a concentrated holiday.”
They had also felt this during their stay. Here, the majority of physical labor had been fully automated. People worked only to satisfy their spiritual needs, while those without pursuits could live freely. There was minimal societal pressure from money and class, leading to a generally relaxed and leisurely lifestyle for everyone.
“That’s wonderful,” Zhu Huai sighed. “In a matriarchal society, only idle people thrive.”
At that moment, the sound of drums echoed across the lake; the celebration was starting.
A large circle of bamboo rafts, decorated with flowers, slowly approached from the opposite side of the lake. On the rafts, some people played drums, others sang, and some danced while various water birds danced around them.
The people on Heart of the Lake Island rushed to the shore, joyfully welcoming them. As the rafts got closer, people on the rafts began to toss flowers onto the shore. Many smiled and jumped into the water, trying to pull the people from the rafts onto the shore.
As Luo Yu and the others sat on a little grassy slope, someone passing by called out to them, “Come on, let’s play in the water!”
Zhu Huai, eager to join, stood up, brushed off her pants, and went with them. Since Luo Yu was still on her period and didn’t want to mingle too much, and Ying Zhao couldn’t swim, they stayed behind quietly watching the scene with Mo Chuan.
The lake was bustling with activity, petals flying everywhere as the sunlight reflected off the water’s surface, creating a dazzling spectrum of colors that enveloped both people and water birds. Not far away, the green mountains surrounded them, lush and vibrant, while heavy white clouds gently leaned against the mountains, seemingly observing the lively scene on earth.
“It’s wonderful,” Ying Zhao murmured softly.
“Indeed,” Luo Yu replied while watching the joyful people in the water. “This is how people should live.”
Mo Chuan remained silent, merely turning to glance at the two of them and taking a sip of her drink with a smile.
