Volume 3, Chapter 50 – Threads

After searching three safe houses and learning that Dr. Evan was very likely scheming toward the Jing River, Bai Xiang gave up traveling along the ground, rose back into the air, and fled northeast.

She deliberately didn’t fly too high, just enough that the sharper, relatively stronger demonic beasts could sense her. Drawn to her, they mindlessly massed together, chasing her along the ground. Every so often she would drop in altitude and butcher a swathe of them.

The weaker demonic beasts, she didn’t bother to clean up. Even if they were headed straight in the direction of Maozhou, Bai Xiang had no intention of stopping them.

The reason was simple: she couldn’t babysit Maozhou forever.

With the number of demonic beasts breaking past the million mark, even her stamina and recovery weren’t enough. No matter how many she slaughtered in advance, it was meaningless. The moment she failed to hold the line, that huge beast tide—gathered together precisely because they were homing in on her—would surge toward Maozhou.

Compared to a place that had always been peaceful suddenly being thrown into a panic by such a threat, Bai Xiang felt it was better to let some of the easier ones through and use them as practice targets.

Xiang Xian might not be able to go all out, but there were still Guo Rongzhi and Song Ruhua, two experts of the Core realm; add in Kong An, whom she’d accidentally reeled in, and the large quantities of weaponry shipped in from Chilong, and they shouldn’t be stopped by this level of trouble.

Compared to that, Bai Xiang cared far more about what exactly Dr. Evan wanted to do.

Her current guess was that he actually wasn’t from the Ruffen Federation at all, but from “Ernido Island,” the disaster-stricken island described in the newspapers.

The island had been described as having suffered a once-in-a-century storm disaster, which was most likely a fabricated lie—because of that line: “We swear to reclaim justice and fairness, and let the ancient rules once more wash clean this filthy world”… The words were clearly full of deep resentment and iron resolve.

Only a vengeance-seeker—and one who, from the depths of their heart, believed what they were doing was sacred and rightfully theirs—would carve such words.

So the “storm disaster” was probably false. The heavy casualties among the island’s residents had to be for another reason.

Dr. Evan was currently making trouble inside Great Yu, but Bai Xiang didn’t believe his enemies were Great Yu.

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This country was, at its core, still feudal and fundamentally uninterested in many developments in the outside world. If not for the sudden resurgence of the “Blood Sea” years ago, they probably wouldn’t even have bothered modernizing their military.

According to the fragmentary geographical information in the reports, Ernido Island lay to the southeast of the Ruffen Federation, with a vast ocean between it and Great Yu. There was no way the latter had crossed that distance to carry out a massacre—they had neither the opportunity nor the motive.

But the Ruffen Federation was a different story.

Bai Xiang had inherited Elend’s memories. This Augu war-soldier had been awarded a lieutenant’s rank for her excellent performance on several missions, and her combat rating had reached B-grade. All of that had earned her extra freedom: unlocking certain information, expanding her horizons—and saving up vacation days each year to secretly return to the surface and spend a few days on leave as an ordinary civilian.

So Elend wasn’t some potted plant raised in a greenhouse in space. She’d experienced life in the Federation and possessed basic common-sense knowledge.

In that knowledge were several things very worth connecting, including cases similar to “Qingyun Pharmaceuticals” secretly feeding addictive drugs to residents, as well as blatant drug abuse and human experimentation.

All medicines had to go through biological trials, and if a drug was intended for humans, there had to be human trials as well. There was nothing inherently blameworthy about that. The problem was that, in conventional understanding, such trials required both the consent of the test subjects and legal approval—the subjects had to be volunteers, signing a series of complex contracts to ensure that, if an accident occurred, they could receive massive compensation.

The Ruffen Federation had an awful record in this area. Major corporations they backed had once concealed information to cut costs, directly selling untested experimental drugs to the public.

Even when their misconduct eventually came to light and sparked protests and boycotts, very few of the main culprits were punished. Through shell companies and shuffling legal identities, they easily slipped out of responsibility, while the patients whose bodies had been warped by the side effects of the new drugs were left in unending pain, trapped in day-after-day appeals and lawsuits that, in all probability, would never resolve in their favor.

Such bottomless operations only highlighted a bottomless government. If Bai Xiang were the one passing judgment, she would, with a perfectly clear conscience, assume that these people had committed even worse atrocities—atrocities that simply hadn’t been exposed yet.

Such as using the people on Ernido Island for human experimentation.

And it wouldn’t be without precedent. Ruffen’s two neighbors, the Sami Federation and the Elai Federation, had both been exposed for ruining island communities out at sea—not just for human experiments, but also for testing all kinds of banned weaponry.

The radiation from nuclear tests had long since polluted the surrounding waters, and reporters had even photographed creatures in those seas resembling “great sea serpents.”

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Putting all of this together, the most likely target of Dr. Evan’s revenge was these Federation nations. He had come to Great Yu precisely to escape their control and surveillance.

And here, he could freely explore ancient mysteries and try to borrow that power to complete his revenge.

Naturally, Bai Xiang tied this plan to the ancient demon “Shiling.” If she assumed that Dr. Evan’s core aim was vengeance against the Federation, then all of his current research had to be geared toward resurrecting the ancient demon “Shiling.”

Only this demon beast, said in legend to possess heaven-piercing might, had the power to help him overturn the entire Federation.

Even if his plan didn’t succeed, as long as he revealed at the final moment that he was actually from Ruffen, and exposed information on how the Federation nations were researching Augu particles in space, the Great Yu court would surely erupt in fury. He could use that to spark conflict between the two great empires—and in that case, “Great Yu” would replace “Shiling” as the weapon he wielded.

Every step had evidence to support it, and the chain of reasoning was sound. Bai Xiang felt that probability worked exactly like this. But there was one thing she couldn’t figure out—the hardest step of all: how had Dr. Evan concealed his origins on Ernido Island and joined “Laidi Life” as a Ruffen citizen?①

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①: Laidi Life. Full name “Laidi Life Sciences Group.” Backed by substantial state capital from countries including the Sami Federation and the Ruffen Federation, it also has investment from many nobles of Great Yu—even princes of the blood. It is a transnational behemoth that spans continents and states. Evidence indicates that the overseas support Yao Qingyuan received came from a tech company under this group. Hannah Kinlis and Bruce Evan are both employees of this corporation.

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A refugee from an experimental island simply did not have that level of infiltration ability.

Even if, taking the most generous view, “Laidi Life” was full of idiots who did no background checks on their employees, how would a “half-savage” from an experimental island ever come up with the idea of using an ancient demon?

Bai Xiang’s first thought was of Hannah.

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Dr. Evan and Hannah had been teammates for a while, both competing and cooperating. It was possible he had been inspired by Hannah’s research into ancient demons.

But Bai Xiang quickly rejected that possibility.

Because there wasn’t enough time.

Dr. Evan had begun gathering information even before he came to Great Yu to join the support plan for Yao Qingyuan. Before that, he hadn’t known Hannah.

“There’s only one possibility.”

Connecting that to the bizarre fact that the information Dr. Evan had amassed on “Shiling” was even more detailed than what the Yuming archives contained, Bai Xiang arrived at a one-sided conclusion.

“Someone is helping him.”

“And those people also want to resurrect ‘Shiling’.”

Was it the divine-vein demons?

Bai Xiang had never planned on hiding the discovery of the divine-vein demons, because the threat they posed was truly terrifying. She had authorized Han Yuanfeng to spread the news, yet, strangely, it hadn’t stirred up even the smallest ripple.

The lack of follow-up reports could be explained as an attempt to keep the news from spreading, but the fact that Qianyu Palace had shown no response at all—that was abnormal.

Unless they had already known such things existed.

They had prepared countermeasures against them, at least enough to keep Yujing and the Northern Border from being infiltrated.

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If she were a divine-vein demon, she would definitely opt for “studying abroad” as well.

Compared to the environment inside Great Yu, where powerful experts were everywhere, the technology-focused Federation nations were much easier to blend into. Ordinary people couldn’t exactly go around getting x-rayed every day; it would be extremely easy for them to stay hidden there.

Could it be that the divine-vein demons—or forces controlled by them—had helped Bruce Evan change his identity and infiltrate Laidi Life?

Indeed, they, too, would have a motive to resurrect the ancient demon…

Thinking of how anything tainted by the Blood Sea’s mist gained a “grotesque to the point of monstrous” regenerative ability, Bai Xiang gently smoothed her brows, finally straightening out all the threads.

Bzzz bzzz——

Her phone vibrated.

The incoming number was unfamiliar. Bai Xiang paused for a moment, then chose to answer.

“Five Divine Fetus immortals have entered the Jing River region.”

A hoarse male voice came from the other end.

“They’ve come to smooth over all the trouble.”

“And that includes you—you’re trouble too.”