Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The hustling turmoil caused by the toads reverberated, but Zhang Lisheng, who hid in the darkness, seemed to have heard nothing.
Although his divine power had more changes now that he understood his own self more, he was still very far away from the stage of the Ancient Goddess Nuwa, who could freely create and breed intelligent creatures. Once he was distracted, at least 99% of the tens of thousands of those small ‘creations’ would immediately lose their lives and become mud.
The mud toads that scattered around jumped and crawled in the grass. Many of them even broke into the tents. However, after the initial surprise, the demonstrators turned their attention back to smoking, doing weeds, drinking, and giving long pompous speeches, except for a minority of them who had nothing to do, or who were interested in strange creatures.
“I finally found it…” At the same time as the riots subsided, Zhang Lisheng, who was sitting cross-legged, suddenly breathed a long sigh of relief. Muttering, he opened his eyes, and stood from the grass, before walking lightly to the depths of the campsite.
After passing by the iron barrels that were burning with blazing flames outside of several tents, the young man, whose skinny and haggard-looking face that had turned to give off infinite vitality after he made a breakthrough in the Grand Wizard stage and became a god, was fancied by some girls who seemed to prefer Asian guys. They chuckled at him and invited him to have a night that they wouldn’t forget.
One of the girls who had brown hair and was completely drunk even bit her lips and flirtatiously took off the thong in her short skirt, before waving it at him like a flag.
“Oh, this is really crazy! I really don’t understand if this is a carnival or a demonstration.” Zhang Lisheng naturally would not accept such an invitation. With his face taut in bewilderment, he muttered as he hastily escaped. Those girls who tried to flirt with him would either just smile disappointingly or curse under their breaths, but nobody attempted to pester him.
Just like this, after shuttling between numerous tents occupying the entire Capitol Hill and the vast land near the Washington Monument, as well as the old cars, the young man finally came to a dark, green military camp that had the size of a small villa.
This camp that looked like it was surrounded by other small and short, ordinary tents densely packed in the distance differed entirely from the others. Its vicinity of several dozens meters was empty, with two tall, sturdy men who were wearing navy green military uniforms that had no military rank and medals and battleground boots. Both were holding a one-meter-long baton that was as thick as an adult human’s arm.
When they saw Zhang Lisheng approaching the tent, one of the bearded, burly men who looked slightly childlike waved the baton in his arm and said boisterously, “Hey, buddy, this is Howard Mason’s tent. If you’re not a lackey for the White House’s politician or a federal secret agent, then it is best to take a detour. If you are, then come here and have a taste of my ‘iron stick.’”
“Howard Mason, who is that?” Zhang Lisheng calmly walked up to the bearded man, as though he was deaf, who did not hear the threat and frowned before asking.
“Y-You came to the rally without even knowing who Howard Mason is? H-He’s the first person to put forward the slogan of ‘Let’s occupy the Capitol Hill’ on the Internet!” The bearded man said fiercely, but when the young man walked up to him, he seemed to be a little flustered as he stuttered.
The bearded man’s companion was obviously unhappy with his timidity. Immediately, he bawled in a low voice, “Herks, you bastard! What rubbish are you spouting? Do you remember what Boss Mason told us? The rally’s speech will begin tomorrow, so no matter what, we cannot let any unknown person come near the tent! I really feel ashamed of you…” Just as he was about to make his move on Zhang Lisheng, the young man’s right hand immediately seized his throat as fast as lightning.
The young man threw the sturdy man who weighed over 250 pounds and had a height of over190 centimeters with just a hand, as though he was nothing but a rag doll. After releasing his grip, he dexterously kicked the baton dropped on the ground before catching it with both hands. Then, like bending down to tie his shoelace, he quickly placed the rod on the burly man’s neck and slowly tightened it.
By the time the burly man’s eyes became bloodshot like they were about to burst out of his eye sockets anytime soon, with green veins popping up on his face as though it was covered with crawling earthworms, Zhang Lisheng looked down at him and said in a low voice, “Sir, since you don’t let your companion spout nonsense, then you’d have to be the one telling me what I want to know instead. Of course, you can just keep quiet, or you can even scream and resist, but if you do, I will kill you.”
When the young man finished his sentence calmly, he released the baton, “I’ll give you ten seconds to breathe and then tell me, is there anybody who entered the tent in the last 20 minutes?”
Those who had never personally experienced it would never be able to imagine what kind of despair and horror a mortal person would experience when faced with a god who exuded his killing aura. That burly man kneeled on the ground panting slowly, unable to speak, but he shrunk his body as much as he could while trembling continuously. Several seconds later, when his voice could come out again, he mumbled incoherently, “S-Sorry… S-Sorry… S-Sir. S-Sorry…”
“Damn it, it looks like my move was too heavy, and now I’ve scared him till he crumbles,” Looking at the figure shivering with fright like a lamb at his feet, Zhang Lisheng sighed in frustration and turned his gaze back to the bearded man who had stiffened. When he was just about to open his mouth, he saw the man’s eyes rolled upwards as he suddenly fainted.
“Fainting out of fear? Ha! What a body emergency function that is inversely proportional to his guts!” The young man sighed again before kicking the bearded man’s knee joint. When he found that the man had indeed fainted completely, he sighed helplessly and could only open the curtain to walk into the tent.
There were no compartments in the spacious camp. More than ten sleeping bags scattered in the four corners and the gap between the sleeping bags were filled with empty bottles.
Amid the tent were four simple wooden desks arranged in a square shape, with seven to eight tablet computers on the table, and a pile of messy newspaper clippings and drafts.
At this time, a young man beside the wooden table was playing the gathering highlights of the anti-Vietnam war in the 1970s using a projector. With a hoarse magnetic voice, he shouted in an intense bewitching manner, “Tomorrow will be a day destined to be recorded in federal history! If the demonstrators who opposed the Vietnam War before the Washington Monument forty years ago were fighters striving for freedom and peace, then we would be the forerunners to guard the entire civilization and democracy of Earth…”
Everybody in the tent had their attention on this young man dressed in a navy green military uniform with a blue headband, who was covered like a guerrilla roaming in the deep forest in the Fourth World who toughly fought against the government forces. Nobody noticed that an uninvited guest had just come in.
Only one redheaded girl standing weakly by the side with unkempt hair and haggard, pale look suddenly seemed to have felt a jolt in her mind. Without warning, she looked at the door of the tent. When her eyes met Zhang Lisheng’s eyes, who breathed a sigh of relief, a series of complex emotions like ecstasy, embarrassment, and pain intertwined as they appeared on her face. She opened her mouth, but her words were lodged at her throat, unable to make any sound.
“Trish, Trish, Trish… No wonder you won’t let me come to see you. Look at what happened to the most beautiful and proud Catholic princess in New York now? You look completely different from before now,” Looking at the familiar face of the red-haired girl, the young man shrugged his shoulders and shook his head deliberately jokingly.
“That is because the most beautiful and proud Catholic princess has disappeared. She has now become an abominable alien, and even my entire family has been cursed. If I could have the opportunity to choose again, I would rather die than use the light stone to ‘activate’ my Atlantean bloodline…” Trish’s tears fell silently on her fair cheeks as she answered in a whisper.
Unlike her best friends Tina and Sheila, who were born in a powerful and wealthy business family, Trish was born in a strict Catholic military family in California.
Since her great-grandfather had participated in the Second World War of the last century, he was bravely promoted to the rank of Brigadier General of the Army and won the ‘National Service Secondary Medal.’ Because of this, his family gained an opportunity to enter the upper class.
After that, the girl’s grandfather, father, and uncle became professional soldiers one by one and achieved great achievements. They served as middle and senior military officers, which laid the foundation for them to become a military family.
Her ambitious father, Howick Steg, had even served in the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest decision-making body of the Army of the United States for 12 years, first as a regular intern, then a third-class secretary and then finally an executive secretary. After obtaining the lieutenant colonel military rank and the Good Conduct Medal, he chose to retire and set up a public relations company with his accumulated connections to start a political lobbying career.
After over ten years of hard work, he miraculously placed the family into the list of ‘distinguished families’ after all these time.
One could say that the cornerstone of the success of Trish’s family members lay in their naturally trusting background and connections. When their family activated the Atlantean bloodline in them and had their appearance and ability changed into almost something identical to the aliens, the unexpected ‘winter riots’ had destroyed the most important ‘wealth’ of the family in an instant.
Howick’s influence in the military and political circles fell apart in a brief period because of the hostility and distrust of the generals and politicians towards Atlantis; Trish’s political career that had just kicked off was also entirely destroyed by slogans such as ‘Traitor of Earth’ when the voters gathered and marched.
In just within a night, the girl fell into the mire from ‘The pride of Heaven.’ She who had never suffered such a significant setback became disheartened and left the Noah World. Taking unnecessary pain to prove that she was a true Earthling, she appeared in this site of this massive anti-Atlantis rally.
Actually, a realization suddenly dawned on Zhang Lisheng about the problematic situation the girl was facing right now when they were talking on the phone. However, this did not mean that he agreed to the girl’s rashness.
As the young man waved his hand, trying to present his own opinions, he suddenly heard a pleasantly surprised voice, “Lisheng, what brings you here?”
The person asking was a young woman dressed like a miscellaneous army, opposing the government armed forces in East Asia 30 to 40 years ago but was unable to hide her sexy figure, with her bright eyes revealing her enticing seducing charm. When Zhang Lisheng saw her, he asked in bewilderment instead, “Sheila, why are you here too…”
