Apocalyptic Forecast

Chapter 39: The City Gate and Fish Pond

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation

Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

The general impression of professors was that they were well-mannered, skinny scholars. They would otherwise have grey hair, glasses, the smell of books all over their bodies, and so on…

However, these characteristics might not necessarily describe a mountain of flesh that stood more than two meters high.

Now, this flesh mountain had flashed Ai Qing a warm smile. The oil sheen on his face shone brightly, dazzling like the sun. He kept up with the movements of his hands as he skilfully moved around the tea set that was seemingly too delicate for his thick fingers.

“Coffee or tea?”

“Coffee, I guess.” Ai Qing replied, “Without sugar.”

Soon, hot coffee was poured into a delicate cup before being placed on the plate in front of Ai Qing.

Professor turned around in his insanely large swivel chair, then opened the refrigerator next to it. From it, he took out all kinds of exquisite cakes, pudding, chocolate, macarons, fruits from Weizhou, the Roman’s thousand layered cake…

“It’s time for dinner, let’s eat together.”

He smiled while wrapping a napkin around his neck. He picked up a knife and fork and said, “I’ve been trying to lose weight recently, so I don’t eat meat at night.”

Ai Qing looked at the table full of calories and, on a rare occasion, she seemed moved. Soon, she shook her head to decline regretfully, “You will die of high cholesterol sooner or later.”

“I’ve had cerebral thrombosis a few times now.”

Professor raised his finger with a goofy laugh. He tapped the scar from an operation on his forehead. “Thanks to the Astronomical Association, the medical technology of the Inheritance Yard always allows me to continue with this hobby.”

“It’s useless even if you suck up to me. I’m just a newcomer who has only just completed the probation period.” Ai Qing took a sip of her coffee. She nodded in satisfaction.

Although she did not want to admit it, the coffee here was indeed the best in New Ocean. While she had a lot of rare coffee powders in her house, her craftsmanship paled in comparison to this guy.

“You passed the probation period? Ah, then you must be having quite a tough time—”

Professor frowned slightly. “Will the war over at the Dragon’s Triangle affect New Ocean?”

“Kind of, I guess?”

Ai Qing rapped the table as she sighed.

This was simply an accurate representation of the ‘fishes in the pond that got into trouble because of the fire at the city gate*’. (TN: A Chinese idiom that means being an unfortunate victim in something you are not involved in.)

As the world’s leading behemoth, the power of the Astronomical Association was undoubtedly tremendous. The Astronomical Association itself was the dark face of the United Nations.

Ninety years ago, in order to respond to threats beyond the border, along with the initial advocacy of the Pioneer Council, the five major and permanent members of the United Nations, including Eastern Xia, Rome, the Russian Federation, the Americas, and the First Dynasty of Egypt, jointly established the International Astronomical Association.

As the ruling body of the cultural society today replaced the “Governance Bureau” of the “Country of Utopia”, it itself was constituted of politicians of various countries and major monopolies.

Therefore, World War I was henceforth known as the war that ended all wars—

Since then, there were no more worldwide wars. However, this did not mean that war itself had disappeared. It had just moved to a place where ordinary people could no longer see it. In order to compete for the rights to speak in the Governance Bureau, had there not been proxy wars between countries in recent years?

Otherwise, why was Baghdad now in ruins?

Dozens of borders had been sunk by the four powerful natural enemies, and they all fell into the depths of hell. Moreover, the effects of its aftermath had yet to subside either.

Although inter-countries and inter-enterprises had been maintaining the existence of the Astronomical Association under the pressure from outside the border, infighting had always been inescapable…

It was like the border war of the Dragon’s Triangle this time around.

Over the years, everyone assumed that the country and the affiliated institutions in the respective border areas had the right to initiate development. However, it was called the border not only because they were on the edge of the land, but also because it was a land of sparse sovereignty.

Especially under special circumstances, when they could be moved…

Over the years, while competing for the ruins of the former Yamatai Empire, known as “the Dragon’s Triangle”, the inner representatives of Weizhou, which was the royalty of Tianjin Department, and the martial artists representing the Guojin Department’s martial family continued to fight. It was not the first time that both parties suffered great losses. The speed at which the border sovereigns changed hands was more rapid than the speed at which they changed prime ministers. As a result of the back-and-forth war, the wedge that was fixed at the border was destroyed…

Even the wedge could be destroyed!

Guys, are you joking?

In short, according to the Astronomical Association’s calculations, the Dragon’s Triangle has already begun to drift. Firstly, it drifted towards the Australian Islands. It then suddenly headed northwest…

That was right, it was drifting toward Eastern Xia.

This time, Eastern Xia would be beyond happy. The border development group, Taiqing Heavy Industry, had started rubbing their hands, waiting for this piece of meat to fall into their laps.

Then, Weizhou began to grow unhappy. However, now that the Dragon’s Triangle had drifted into international waters, who were you to be unhappy? True happiness depended on the happiness of the general public.

Moreover, with such a huge thing drifting over, you guys were busy hiding and covering it up so that no one would intervene. What if there were dangerous items inside?

The voice of Eastern Xia cracked, “Come, let me take a loo~ok!”

It was unknown whether it was developing normally or not. Regardless, the situation was bound to become tense.

What caused Ai Qing’s headache now was that if Eastern Xia really wanted to take measures against the Dragon’s Triangle, eventually, New Ocean City would become the most convenient estuary.

This was to say that more and more Ascenders would be coming here to make money, loot treasures, earn a quick buck, and mess things up.

Not only did Ai Qing had to worry about the unavoidable increase in the Ascenders’ crime rate, she also had to worry about the attraction between the borders—

‘What would happen if Yamatai’s border in the Dragon’s Triangle hit the Eastern Xia coast?’

It would be like a comet hitting the Earth!

Of course, she was not the only one worrying about it. However, she would definitely be right amongst the to-blame list. To become the official invigilator of the Astronomical Association right now was unfortunate.

This is to say that, if she was smart, to keep herself out of trouble, she had to prepare for a transfer within the next half a year.

The drifting speed of the border was not fast. However, according to current estimations, in a year’s time, there would be chaos erupting from the periphery of New Ocean.

“Have you found a good place to head to?”

Professor asked casually, “With your background, it is impossible for you not to have a solution, right?”

Ai Qing glanced at him. She said nothing.

“I’m curious, simply curious.”

Professor smiled frankly. A gust of wind blew, and she looked down and so that more than half of the dazzling desserts on the table had been devoured. Besides, he had also poured himself coffee that was filled with so much sugar that it had almost become a paste in his stomach.

He was half-full after dinner.

He wiped his mouth. After taking out a thick file from the underside of the table, he placed it in front of Ai Qing.

“This is the investigation you wanted. It contains all the present records and news about the Saviour’s Association.” Professor said, “Based on your request, I only made a basic compilation. I deleted some of the excess crap. However, there are no subjective arguments added. I believe you can handle it from here on out.”

Ai Qing had confidence in her ability to digest documents—if she was going to speculate on anything, she needed others to add their subjective views after them making some blind guesses for her.

The most important reason why she was chosen from thousands of strict candidates to become an invigilator was not only because of the apparent near-perfect score in her results. It was also because of her “intuition”, this was considered to be a rare ability in the Astronomical Association.

Yes, indeed, it was intuition.

If she were to make a wild guess without basing it on anything, she would have a 50% chance of getting it right. If this was a game of throwing dice and playing cards, she might be far inferior to those professional mathematicians.

However, only when she was facing a chaotic mess would her intuition reveal its true value.

If it was based on probability, the chances of her being correct were about 65%.

This hit-rate of 15% higher than ordinary people made her stand out during the complicated testing. She was rated as the best Grade A+ genius.

Such a talent was a perfect match for the predictive-type stigma. Even if there was no soul ascension, it was enough for people to look forward to it.

The Astronomical Association did not care about the 35% failure rate. In truth, they had enough ability to cover it up. If Ai Qing had not chosen a local position after refusing the solicitation of the Extraordinary Action Unit, the Astronomical Association would have already started her targeted training now.

Because of this, she was ridiculed as a model of ignorance by the same batch of trainees—

As an intelligence dealer, Professor knew the details and background of his client very thoroughly. Although he knew all her records from the papers, he was more curious about the things that had not been recorded.

Nevertheless, Ai Qing was extremely secretive about this. She had never disclosed anything to others.

It was in the silence that she turned the heavy pages intently. Professor did not bother to talk to her anymore. He simply flipped through a technical and difficult to decipher book whilst constantly changing the direction of his swivel chair.

Ai Qing read the documents and got the impression that this ran deeper than the water of the Saviour’s Association.

Although it looked like a swindler group in any way, there were too many suspicious points. Both the origin of that strange border relic and the Ascender who had secretly dealt with them…

Wang Hai, who had been surrendered by the accomplice, was just a temporary leader. Before him, back when the Saviour’s Association went by a different name, there were traces of other leaders’ existence.

It was true that they were secretly hiding behind the retarded development of Old Pond Town. However, underneath their shiny cover, even the Universal Compassion in many local companies had extensive involvement in other places.

This was not only in New Ocean, there were even traces of them extending to other places. They were omnipresent even in dangerous and complicated areas. If not for Red Glove’s brave initiation in taking advantage of this swindler association, who knows how long it would have taken to notice these things, particularly because they were focusing on growing amongst the lower classes in rural and remote cities.

Moreover, it seemed that they were getting support from a large organization.

Having said that, where was this help coming from?

There were too many possibilities.

Tianzhu’s Black Heaven Church? The border’s Elysium? The American Alliance of Scientific and Spiritual Associations? Or Weizhou’s tens of thousands of scoundrels from all backgrounds?

It was a pity that Wang Hai and Nao, the only 2 people who knew the details, were dead. Otherwise, Ai Qing would not need to start the investigation from scratch as if looking for a needle in a haystack.

She was not worried about Red Glove, who Huai Shi had killed, nor about Green Day, the biggest terrorist organization beyond the border.

Her power only extended to the border. Even if they wanted to make a difference in the current situation, they could not get around the Astronomical Association, which stretched across all four corners of the world.

What worried her was those from Saviour’s Association who were extracting elementium from the elderly. What were they trying to achieve? What had they created? What were they doing? What were they going to do?

Who else was working together with them?

She whole-heartedly refused the idea that Wang Hai, the good-for-nothing who only knew how to scam people of their money, could take advantage of the Universal Compassion to penetrate through the upper and middle level of New Ocean.

Just by looking at the files, she knew that the guy was destined to live his life as a lowly conman.

So, who was behind this?

Not long after, her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a phone ringing.

After she answered the phone, she lost the mood to continue her conversation.

“I’ll stop at the initial reports.” She collected the files on the table. “I will transfer the rest of the money to you, but the investigation of the Saviour’s Association must continue. Please inform me if there are any new developments.”

“Rest assured, I will.”

Professor sipped his tea while looking at her expression. “Are those corrosive mutts and Ascenders committing crimes again?”

“No, it’s worse than that.”

Ai Qing slapped the armrest of the wheelchair with a blank expression, recalling the Huai Shi’s description from the call. She could not help but sigh.

“—It’s much worse than that.”