Chapter 56: Bombing the Island Nation (04)

The room was filled with the sweet aroma of hot coffee.

Kishida Morimoto opened the window. The restless, sultry evening breeze stirred his neatly ironed cuffs, and the evening air carried a slight dampness. Kishida Morimoto took a deep breath, picked up the coffee from the edge of the table, and took a gentle sip.

This was a two-story wooden cabin painted with red lacquer. Looking out from the second floor, the grass-covered hills sloped gently, rolling into subtle arcs like minor sea swells. Countless identical villas were scattered harmoniously across this plain.

Viewed from above, the crescent-shaped orange twilight looked like a translucent glowing mushroom cap, and the wooden villas resembled tiny pedestals beneath the mushroom. The orange glow cascaded from top to bottom like an inverted bowl, firmly enclosing every household.

Kishida Morimoto surveyed everything with satisfaction.

The nuclear energy reactors currently discharging nuclear wastewater in the island nation were designed by the Toyoyu Natural Energy Group, which was under Kishida Morimoto's name. Kishida Morimoto himself served as the executive president and second-largest shareholder of the Toyoyu Natural Energy Group.

Long before the island nation's government publicly announced the wastewater discharge, the Toyoyu Natural Energy Group had already assembled a think tank on how to manage and prevent nuclear pollution. The think tank calculated the ocean currents, wind directions, and the total time required for water circulation on Planet B-12, ultimately determining that the Yuzhou Continent, located to the southwest of Planet B-12, would be the region least affected by nuclear pollution decades later.

On Planet B-12, Yuzhou was a continent rich in resources but barren in technology. It was arid with little rainfall, abounded in desert plants, and wild beasts roamed at night. It was hardly a suitable dwelling place for humans—unless massive capital was invested in development and transformation.

The Toyoyu Natural Energy Group had secretly purchased vast tracts of land in Yuzhou. Yuzhou was sparsely populated with many small nations, yet lax in governance and administration. Backed by the island nation's government, the Toyoyu Natural Energy Group's activities in Yuzhou proceeded without international detection, so no one in the world knew that they were secretly building the ultimate Garden of Eden for the rich.

On the surface, each household appeared to have only a two-story cottage, but beneath the cottage lay an elevator shaft thousands of meters long. This elevator shaft connected to a heavily guarded silo, and each silo contained greenhouse cultivation rooms and livestock sheds, all built strictly to the standards of a miniature ecosystem.

Each cottage served as a place for the wealthy to get some fresh air. The exterior of every cottage was shielded by as many as six layers of special transparent materials to prevent nuclear radiation contamination. Alarm devices and nuclear element filtration systems were installed between the transparent layers, ensuring that the wealthy could enjoy these last remaining natural landscapes on Earth without any worries.

Moreover, to prevent the intrusion of mutated creatures, the Toyoyu Natural Energy Group had trained a batch of ability-users. As minor pollution sources, these ability-users were not allowed to approach the Eden, but were required to station themselves one hundred kilometers outside to annihilate any life form attempting to draw near.

Now, night had fallen with a smattering of stars, and faint campfires flickered outside some of the villas, as if this were an era as peaceful as any other, and merely an ordinary night.

A complacent smile curled the corners of Kishida Morimoto's mouth.

After nuclear pollution permeated the globe, some had once attempted to drag all the leadership responsible for pushing the island nation's nuclear wastewater discharge—headed by Prime Minister Masao Kosaka—along with the Toyoyu Natural Energy Group, before the United Nations Tribunal. Those foolish masses would never know that by then, almost the entire wealthy class was safely tucked inside the Yuzhou Eden, and would never leave the island nation's government and the Toyoyu Natural Energy Group—which controlled the Eden—to die.

"Father!"

Kishida Taiichi's panicked cry suddenly echoed from downstairs: "Something's happened at the outer perimeter of Eden!"

Thousands of ability-users were stationed around the outer perimeter of Eden. Even if the perimeter were breached, the inner ring was equipped with countless laser cannons and defensive force fields. Surely it was just some blind mutated creature attempting to break in; what was there to make such a fuss about?

Kishida Morimoto sighed.

Taiichi still lacked composure. If he handed over the Toyoyu Natural Energy Group to him in the future, how could he rest easy?

A streak of blue light suddenly flashed across the sky.

The blue light raced like a shooting star, its whistling sound audible from afar. At that moment, overwhelming light-blue flames drooped down to the earth like weeping willows, bursting into layers of delicate energy waves. Those caught within it remained completely oblivious, but viewed from afar outside Eden, this aristocratic estate—which always marketed itself around a pastoral lifestyle—was swallowed by countless flames in an instant.

The flames lasted only a fleeting moment, and the explosive pressure of the blast wave vanished into the empty wilderness along with the fire.

Inside Eden, it seemed as quiet as any other day.

In reality, however, this vast expanse of land had already been silently incorporated into the domain of rules.

The primary sinners behind the island nation's nuclear wastewater discharge were Prime Minister Masao Kosaka and Kishida Morimoto, the executive president of the Toyoyu Natural Energy Group. Since Su Bai did not know which part of the Eden Kishida Morimoto was occupying, she simply decided to enclose the entire compound and search it house by house.

Eden was equipped with numerous signal-jamming devices. Only after years of investigation did Luo Yuqing and her researchers finally confirm that the island nation located in the Eastern Xiqin Ocean had long become a continent on the verge of abandonment, and the last detected locations of all the island officials responsible for this matter were near Yuzhou.

Eden was divided into four administrative districts: East, West, South, and North. Each district housed hundreds of wealthy politicians. Every rich person permitted to enter Eden held stakes in the Toyoyu Natural Energy Group to varying degrees or had contributed to the smooth discharge of nuclear wastewater into the Xiqin Ocean.

In Luo Yuqing's eyes, this was clearly a heavily guarded concentration camp for war criminals.

A deafening crash shattered the transparent protective shield enveloping Kishida Morimoto's family.

Kishida Morimoto's eyes widened. The cup in his hand slipped and crashed onto the floor, brown coffee stains splashing onto his trouser cuffs and soaking the red-and-gold-threaded carpet into a dark crimson puddle.

[Warning! Current nuclear radiation equivalent has reached Grade E, please take precautions!]

Heavy footsteps thudding up the stairs echoed from below.

Kishida Morimoto reacted quickly, opening his mouth to loudly scold Kishida Taiichi and tell him to take his younger siblings and run to the underground shelter, when a chilling hand suddenly clamped tightly around his neck.

A chill ran down Kishida Morimoto's spine.

That hand exerted gentle force, precisely pinching Kishida Morimoto's blood vessels before dragging him up from the floor.

Kishida Morimoto let out a few hoarse gasps. He felt a suffocating pain as blood pooled in his head, threatening to burst the tangled blood vessels in his brain. The scorching heat waves in the air continuously assaulted him, eroding his body bit by bit.

Right now, he was like meat roasting on an iron plate. From his face to every inch of his exposed skin, a sizzling heat rose from the iron plate.

Kishida Morimoto flailed his legs wildly in the air. After a dizzying spin, he finally locked eyes with the person standing behind him.

How should one describe those eyes?

Beneath the deep blue vault of the heavens, those eyes resembled reefs amidst boundless waves. Even as turbulent undercurrents surged and compressed the calm surface of the sea, the reefs remained steadfast, frighteningly still.

Kishida Morimoto shivered.

At that moment, Kishida Taiichi ran up the stairs.

Su Bai turned her head.

This was a man one hundred and seventy-five centimeters tall. He wore a neatly creased white shirt with black dress pants rolled up at the heels. His slender eyes drooped downward as if afflicted by myasthenia gravis, leaving only marble-sized black pupils straining with all their might to force open two slits.

Kishida Taiichi let out a scream.

He was not terrified of the strange woman who had suddenly broken into his home.

Kishida Taiichi collapsed onto the floor, kicking backward with his legs intertwined, his trembling finger pointing outside.

"Broken... broken... the protective shield is broken!"

He sat on the floor, crying out in a breakdown: "We're all going to die!!!"

***

Kishida Morimoto was awakened by a splash of water.

His hands were bound behind his back to a chair, and the water droplets clinging to his skin burned with a temperature that made him emit painful shrieks.

He was still in the original room within Eden.

Kishida Morimoto clamped his legs together and slumped forward, but amidst the immense terror of the unknown, he still couldn't help casting a hopeful glance toward the window.

The huge breach in the protective shield was still clearly visible, and the bright white moonlight poured down like water, illuminating the irregular, shattered cracks of the shield inch by inch.

Kishida Morimoto looked despairingly at the young girl before him, opening his mouth to croak hoarsely: "The thirty-second level of the silo is the control room. The backup defense shield can be activated from there."

Su Bai replied, "Unnecessary."

"How can it be unnecessary!"

Kishida Morimoto cried out in a breakdown, clearly feeling the skin on his face rotting away. Looking down, he could even clearly see his dissolving flesh sticking to his clothes.

"If the backup defense shield isn't activated, both you and I will die here!"

Kishida Morimoto glared at her with venomous hatred: "When the time comes, no one will survive!"

He seemed to think this statement held enough deterrence for Su Bai. Lowering his head, his spine twitching and trembling, his frail body erupted into wild, frantic laughter: "Looking at how young you are, there's not a trace of nuclear radiation contamination on you. Are you willing to throw away your entire life for someone like me?!"

"Too noisy."

Su Bai picked up a cup of water from the table, turned around, and said, "I told you, I don't need any protective shield."

She raised her left hand, and amidst Kishida Morimoto's terrified gaze, grey elements condensed in her palm to the size of a grain of rice.

Su Bai dropped the sphere formed of nuclear elements into the water glass.

In an instant, wisps of steam billowed from the glass, searing hot. Right before Kishida Morimoto's eyes, Su Bai casually placed her palm beneath the water glass.

A mon- monster!

Kishida Morimoto stared at her in terror.

Aura rapidly gathered in Su Bai's palm, suppressing the water-element elements that kept evaporating due to the high heat. Under the effect of the Heaven-Swallowing Ice Flame, these water elements gradually fused with the nuclear elements bit by bit.

"You..."

The calmer and more composed she was, the more Kishida Morimoto's scalp tingled.

Back then, despite immense public pressure, Kishida Morimoto had stubbornly insisted on discharging the nuclear wastewater. Countless citizens marched in protest, and armed factions even attempted to assassinate him secretly during every speech.

Was it distressing to be hated by these commoners?

No!

On the contrary, watching those people running about busily for a living, their faces weathered, their faces and necks flushed red with anger as they cursed him bitterly, Kishida Morimoto felt an endless thrill.

The thrill of being high above.

The thrill of mastering all living things.

These foolish, ignorant commoners would never know that his insistence on discharging wastewater, in defiance of all dissenting opinions, was to protect the glory of the island nation, to perpetuate the great island race, and to save the lives of these uncared-for fools!

The nuclear energy reactor simply could not be stopped now, continuously producing massive amounts of nuclear waste and nuclear heat that the island nation could no longer bear.

Who would care about the abuse and insults of insignificant ants?

Every time, Kishida Morimoto merely dusted off his cuffs, straightened his spine surrounded by his security detail, and walked past with breezy indifference.

The most ridiculous thing was that some of his supporters even existed among those ignorant masses.

Yet would Kishida Morimoto be grateful to these fools who spoke up for him?

Did these stupid people think that by merely moving their lips and saying a few nice things for him, he should rack his brains and give his all for their interests? Or did they think that by extending this effortless favor to him at this moment—merely choosing a side—they could avoid the fate of having their inferior genes eliminated?

Seeing the submissive and flattering expressions the commoners directed at him, Kishida Morimoto would always offer a perfunctory smile, at which point they would obediently bow their heads, lowering their crowns like dogs, accepting Kishida Morimoto's petting with excitement and joy.

"Well done,"

Kishida Morimoto praised: "This time, we fight for the glory of the empire!"

The commoner trembled with excitement, lips quivering as he raised his fist and declared: "Fight for the glory of the empire!"

Yet for the very first time—

Kishida Morimoto saw neither hatred nor resentment in this girl's eyes.

He could not fathom any of her emotions, nor could he predict what she would do next.

No matter how much he shouted or yelled, her emotional state remained so stable that it refused to be rippled in the slightest.

How could this be.

Kishida Morimoto's eyes turned bloodshot as he panted heavily.

Su Bai walked up to Kishida Morimoto, reached out to grip his neck, and tightened her fingers.

Kishida Morimoto's face flushed crimson as he watched helplessly as she forced the water down his throat.

Liquid with the high corrosiveness of concentrated sulfuric acid rolled down Kishida Morimoto's esophagus.

White steam puffed from his mouth like a fish cruelly thrown into a wok. His internal organs were melting away, and Kishida Morimoto wanted to scream out in agony, only to find the young girl's slender fingers gripping his throat so tightly that they blocked the flow of blood and forbade him from making even the slightest sound.

"Ugh-ugh-ugh... ugh!"

A venomous gaze like that of a viper landed on the young girl's face, but she ignored it completely.

A heat flow resembling volcanic magma washed over Kishida Morimoto's esophagus and settled in his stomach.

Large beads of sweat dripped down Kishida Morimoto's temples.

"Hush."

She placed a index finger to her lips: "Keep it down."

Then Su Bai took a step back and released her grip.

The moment the young girl let go, Kishida Morimoto let out a bloodcurdling, horrifying scream fit for a slaughtered pig. His entire body felt as though it had been pierced with countless steel blades; such intense agony caused Kishida Morimoto to thrash wildly, overturning the chair with a heavy crash as blood pooled across the floor.

The dust on the ground scraped violently against the tender, soft, and constantly shedding flesh of Kishida Morimoto's body. For a split second, Kishida Morimoto mistakenly thought his blood vessels were stuffed with filthy, rusted nails crawling with bacteria.

Yet such stark agony paradoxically brought Kishida Morimoto a bizarre sense of release from the burning torture of sulfuric acid in his stomach.

Kishida Morimoto's frantic shouting and cursing woke up Kishida Taiichi opposite him.

"Awake?"

Su Bai glanced at him and evaluated: "You're pretty slow too."

Kishida Taiichi had no time to answer her question.

Having witnessed such a bloody scene firsthand, even though he was tied to a chair, his entire body shook like a chaff-sifting sieve, causing the chair itself to vibrate.

The bloody figure rolling on the ground was still emitting painful, miserable wails.

"Don't worry,"

Su Bai said indifferently: "Your father won't die."

The white-clothed girl patted her hands, bent down, and revealed a vicious smile: "I'll return a completely intact father to you."

"What kind of person do you want?"

Su Bai asked: "Here, I've seen many different human tissue structures. You know about ability-users, right? I've seen an ability-user whose eyes occupied half her cheeks, allowing her to clearly see places thousands of miles away... Your eyes are too small, just like maggots hiding from the light. How glaringly unsightly."

Kishida Taiichi could not tell whether the liquid continuously rolling down his temples was sweat or blood.

Yet he tasted the metallic tang of rust in his mouth.

Blood splattered across her face, making the young girl's gaze look even colder. Yet while casually continuing her work, she cheerfully chatted with Kishida Taiichi: "Come to think of it, we could actually consider placing a tentacle right here. Your father has such profound research into nuclear elements; I imagine he must desperately want to become an ability-user. Truly fusing with nuclear elements, right?"

She suddenly stopped what she was doing, turned her head to look at Kishida Taiichi, and solicited his response.

"No, no, no, no..."

Kishida Taiichi suppressed his inner terror, frantically defending himself: "We were also victims. Father didn't want the world to become like this... it's just that..."

It was simply that there was no other way.

"It seems you don't like my suggestion."

Su Bai shook her head regretfully and increased the force in her hand: "But your father ought to like it..."

"I was wrong, I'm sorry."

Kishida Morimoto answered agonizingly in her grasp: "It's all my fault for wanting to protect the island nation, which led to this huge mistake. But believe me, the nuclear energy reactor truly cannot be stopped..."

"You were wrong?"

Su Bai glanced indifferently at Kishida Morimoto's eyes: "You weren't wrong. If not for you, how could I have witnessed so many wonderful human tissue structures? I never knew humans could possess three mouths and countless tentacles... You just haven't tried these things yet, but how can someone say they don't like something before trying it?"

Her tone was far too calm.

So calm that Kishida Taiichi dazedly thought she was seriously discussing human anatomy with him.

Kishida Taiichi had studied medicine; no one knew better than him that this girl was deliberately avoiding all the correct anatomical locations of organs within the human body.

Father...

Tears streamed from Kishida Taiichi's eyes, his nails piercing the skin of his palms, though this minor pain was utterly worthless compared to the sights before him today.

He was even desperately suppressing the trembling frequency of his body and his voice, terrified lest the demon notice him.

Father...

His father kept howling in her grip.

Anyway, no matter what shape she pieced him into in the end, new skin would always grow back on schedule.

"Almost forgot."

Su Bai turned her head: "Your father's favorite person should be you, right?"

Clearly performing such a terrifying act with her hands, her voice remained as cold as ever.

"Such a wonderful thing as nuclear wastewater—how could a father enjoy it all by himself?"

She walked forward step by step, and Kishida Taiichi finally lost control of his terror, letting out a shrill scream.

Behind Su Bai, two bloody eyes growing out of her hips were still staring in terror at the young girl, emitting one intermittent plea for mercy after another.

"Please..."

"Just let me die..."