Chapter 1387: Hidden Clouds and Ruoshui

Hidden Clouds and Ruoshui

For the next twenty minutes, Yang Xiao detailed his encounters since leaving Shennongjia.

From traveling to Suzhou to find Su Zhiwei, to awakening his powers for the first time, to battling those assassins, to later meeting Lu Xun, rescuing Chu Changqing, resisting the Calamity wave and the nuclear strike in Wushan, and finally the upheaval in Tongzhou...

Yang Xiao essentially recounted everything he could, only omitting some inside details about the nuclear strike in Tongzhou. He also didn't mention annihilating the entire Seventh Fleet at sea. After all, that would be too shocking for the current Nine Monarchs, and besides, the subsequent events had nothing to do with the Gray World.

After listening to Yang Xiao's narration, everyone present, aside from Chen Ling, Su Zhiwei, and Lu Xun, was dumbfounded.

"No... wait a minute." Ji Xuan stared at Yang Xiao in disbelief.

"Dr. Yang, are you making up stories to mess with us? Assassins, emperors, Divine Path Possessors... and those 'Calamities'—why haven't I encountered any of these things you're talking about??"

"I haven't encountered them either." Dr. Qi immediately followed up. "It feels like Dr. Yang and we are completely in two different worlds."

"I've indeed heard something about Bureau 749 in the past... but I don't know anything about the rest."

Chen Ling remained silent throughout. One had to understand that Yang Xiao had almost always been acting alongside him. With the blessing of the Imperial Fate, it would be difficultnotto encounter these things... To others, his experiences would naturally seem beyond imagination.

"It's true," Lu Xun proactively spoke up. "I can testify for him."

"Me too." Su Zhiwei also nodded.

After Yang Xiao, it was Su Zhiwei's turn. Her experiences largely overlapped with Yang Xiao's, so she didn't speak for too long. After her was Lu Xun.

The stories of the three mutually corroborated each other, presenting a complete, bizarre, and fantastical world before the eyes of the other Nine Monarchs.

After the few of them finished speaking, according to the seating order, it was Dr. Qi's turn.

Dr. Qi hesitated for a moment before letting out a soft sigh:

"Compared to yours, my encounters are practically nothing... There's really not much to tell."

"After returning from Shennongjia, I've been continuing my research on Chaos Meteorology. Recently, I came up with a very interesting direction. I call it 'Atmospheric Sculpting,' which is essentially the precise, artificial sculpting of atmospheric values through chaos theory, fluid dynamics, and climate models. However, the difficulty of this topic lies in..."

"Dr. Qi," Lu Xun interrupted him somewhat helplessly. "We don't understand any of what you're saying..."

"Oh, oh, oh, my apologies, I went off-topic." Dr. Qi smiled apologetically.

"Anyway... during that time, some strange things started happening to me... The atmospheric values I wrote on the blackboard before going to bed would become reality when I woke up the next day."

"At first, I thought it was a coincidence. After all, during the initial stages of building the model, I naturally used the meteorological data of my city from the past twenty years as a reference. But later, I realized something was wrong... Typhoons, hailstorms, and even thunderstorms—all kinds of extreme weather that shouldn't appear in this season—came one after another as if they had gone mad. It wasn't until the government approached me to inquire about related matters that I realized something was amiss."

"You guys have no idea. The model I was researching that day involved reducing the ozone layer's thickness by eighty-five percent... If the values I wrote down that day truly became reality, radiation storms would sweep across the entire city, and hundreds of thousands of people would die as a result... Even the ecological chain itself would suffer irreversible damage."

"To be honest, it terrified me... I didn't understand what exactly was happening to my body. But soon, people from the government found me, saying it was because I came into contact with that Red Star, and they wanted to take me away for research and testing."

"Maybe it's because I've watched too many TV shows on related subjects, but I was truly somewhat terrified of human research. So, I secretly found an opportunity and slipped away... Later, I ran into Dr. Wen. He had also run away from his research institute, and we've been staying together for the past few days."

Dr. Qi's gaze turned to Dr. Wen beside him.

"Dr. Wen, why don't you tell them what happened next?"

Everyone's gaze turned to Dr. Wen. The latter nodded slightly, and his very first sentence almost made the others' jaws drop:

"After returning from Shennongjia, my life didn't change much either... until the fourth day, when I stopped a disaster that would have exterminated hundreds of thousands of lives."

"???"

Lu Xun spoke in astonishment, "What did you say?"

Dr. Wen continued unhurriedly,

"On that day, I saw the news on TV. The thickness of the ozone layer in the neighboring city had suddenly been reduced by 85% due to unknown reasons. Acute photokeratitis caused a massive number of citizens to go blind, resulting in tens of thousands of simultaneous car accidents. At the same time, most people outdoors went into shock due to ultraviolet burns. Coupled with the outbreak of car accidents, the death toll exceeded a hundred thousand within three hours."

"Communications and electronic equipment were paralyzed en masse, and elevators broke down. Because most modern office buildings use glass curtain walls, they almost entirely became massive ovens after the ozone layer was depleted. The mortality rate of indoor personnel exceeded 93%, even surpassing the outdoor death toll."

"Furthermore, the ultraviolet rays stimulated chlorine disinfection byproducts, generating lethal chemical compounds. Along with the toxic smog produced by road asphalt under the irradiation, the death toll continued to rise..."

"Not long after I saw the news, I was taken away by government personnel. They claimed that the disaster in the neighboring city was caused by Dr. Qi's ability losing control, so they had to forcibly mandate the control of all personnel who participated in the Red Star Exploration."

"They locked me in a massive laboratory in the suburbs and injected me with some unknown potions... Perhaps due to the potions, my abilities were gradually stimulated. Later, while my consciousness was blurry, a part of my mind seemed to become entangled with the past. I don't know how to describe that feeling... but it seemed like I could intervene in the 'past' in a different sense?"

"I tried to entangle my consciousness with the consciousness of the government personnel, transmitting a portion of the information regarding the disaster in the neighboring city. By the time my consciousness regained clarity, I had already left the laboratory and returned to my own research institute..."

"At the time, I didn't quite understand what had happened. But when I checked the news, all events regarding the meteorological disaster in the neighboring city had vanished, as if nothing had ever happened... Yet, time had remained at the normal time."

"Later, I thought about it. It must have been my Conscious Entanglement that reset that segment of history, altering the fate of a city. After realizing all of this, I immediately went to the neighboring city to find Dr. Qi..."