Chapter 660: with translation of chapter title

NO. 29: Do you always pick mountains like this for your volcanic surveys?

August 24th, a day called "Chushu" in the solar terms of Eastflame.

In the name of this ancient solar term, "chu" means "cessation" or "stop".

"Chushu" is also called the "final heat" of the "three heats" of scorching hot weather, meaning the unbearable high temperature has come to an end.

Although it's still hot, the overall temperature shows a downward trend; Aomo's biggest feeling about this is that there are noticeably more horse girls on the training field, to the point of needing to add extra phases to the track due to "crowding".

"Trainer Lin Dun, you're here this early too?" someone greeted him, who was looking down, a colleague also wearing a horseshoe-shaped badge.

Along the track fences, in the spectator stands, and on the high viewing platforms, the trainers who frequented these places also increased in number, to the point that he would also be greeted.

Gazing at the female colleague who was merely known in passing but with whom he'd never actually interacted, Aomo's mind flashed with guesses—she had come upon hearing his name, was of an enthusiastic nature, and observed Jidong-style etiquette—yet he still gave her a slight nod in response, then pointed to the floating device beside him.

"Ah, sorry sorry, I didn't notice I was disturbing..."

That colleague realized something, apologizing repeatedly as she left.

This also left Aomo with a somewhat helpless expression as he watched her go.

It was clear the other party's misunderstanding was fairly serious; the depth of her bow suggested she thought she'd stumbled upon some major matter, but in fact……

"Should we temporarily disconnect? Mr. Linton, your side seems to have a bit of a situation?"

With the anti-peeping private mode enabled, making it accessible only to designated units, the remote projector continued to faithfully feed back the mountain forest scenery from thousands of kilometers away……

——and likewise composing that scene was the survey team.

Aomo was merely acting as a camera; first-person mountain climbing super dream experience (x), an immersive mountain climbing AR construction.

The mechanical device provided by the other party faithfully reproduces the other party's on-site environment with excellent material lighting; this is the "developed communication function of this world" that Miss Naumann mentioned in her letter.

Corresponding to this device, there is also another floating unit located at the other end of the geological survey team.

It likewise faithfully reproduces the audiovisual scene scanned here, simulating a virtual image of Aomo within the team.

Because that side is on the move, to avoid visual interference with operations, in Miss Adel's perspective, Aomo's appearance here is merely a half-body image with a small part of the training field background.

Such a small range also excludes the trainer colleague who had previously been beside Aomo.

Furthermore, to reduce interference, they selected a noise-reduction setting, which directly caused that trainer's greeting to be treated as "noise" and filtered out.

Aomo also understood this, after all, it was for the convenience of the survey team to monitor their own equipment and personal safety.

Because of the direct destruction and indirect ecological damage caused by the early "Heaven-Fallen Starship", the later Holy Terra Federation passed a dozen or so environmental regulation agreements, which also included the artificial intervention, cultivation, and protection of large numbers of flora and fauna——

——and now it has proliferated to the point of being ubiquitous.

Thus, it necessitates periodically hiring hunters to exterminate them.

Kill, protect, then kill again.

Humanity's performance under such policies is always a cycle, easily veering into extremes, only gaining some lessons after making many mistakes.

Then those lessons fade over decades, giving rise to various problems.

Yet among humanity there are no shortage of bold summarizers.

There are works like the "Taiping Fengtu Ji", as well as sociological treatises tracing the development of human society.

The ultimate effect of such books on humanity is not to create true paragons, but rather that people increasingly accept the highest decisions being made by strong artificial intelligence.

This may be an utter sorrow: the masses acknowledge their own flaws and ultimately accept the rule of their creator, as if cutting off the possibility of evolution.

But some believe that human imperfection is natural law, and using tools to achieve "perfection" has been the essence of survival from ancient times to the present.

They emphasize that even the Heart of Terra is merely a man-made tool serving humanity, which is nothing to lament; if one speaks of evolution, the Ascendants and Cyber Ascendants that emerge each year are precisely the true evolution in line with human society.

Aomo neither comments on this nor intends to take a side.

Because he knows the variability of human hearts, he prefers the saying from a certain book: every era has its own waves.

And in this era, people are more often not fighting the outside world, but struggling with the self projected outward.

Such internal drain also creates more consciousness conflicts and breeds more negative energy.

Hidden in the human heart, even extending to the land, mountains, and the internet, it causes all kinds of anomalies.

That anomaly may even persist for years, or even tens of years, or decades.

Such heavy accumulation is not always the so-called foundation; it can also be a super pile of filth, turning minor troubles into regional disasters.

Negative energy is just such a thing.

It is the greatest energy produced by the human heart, to the extent that practitioners of related cultivation who are Ascendants have, in the past century, rapidly become the fastest-growing faction.

Once called "heretical cultivators", "demons", or "disasters", they indeed often have uncontrolled patients, but many more are trying to cleanse their faction's stigma and join the official ranks.

But even with such a steadily expanding "employment" outlook, one would expect competition among peers to intensify, driving resources toward exhaustion—yet cultivation resources remain more than enough to be used up.

This is the negative energy born of today's population base, granting them an experience package labeled "confidence".

"What? You ask why confidence is in quotes?"

Because these Ascendants who cultivate with resentment and malicious intent also dislike excess negative energy.

Rather, their cultivation process has long been tied to work; many "heretical" Ascendants, upon joining government agencies, must repeatedly go on missions.

Those are all cases caused by negative energy.

Suppress, annihilate, consume—however you handle it, the sole requirement is that you handle it, and each day there are dozens of such cases assigned—Damn it! Do I really need that many!?

Basically every urban area of the Terra Federation has an officially equipped special handling squad, but even so they are often insufficient—otherwise Aomo would have encountered a genuine professional team back when he was in Bai Shan.

At the very least, when fighting, it should be like triggering a plot kill: a squad of uniformed officials bursts forth, wielding various effects unlike proper techniques, charging forward in unison to strike down and dispose of the negative-energy monsters transformed from evil god power.

Such official teams may be especially spirited or especially lackluster, just like the three men and women standing beside the survey team before Aomo's eyes.

One's eyelids are always twitching as if fighting, another constantly mutters something under his breath, and a third buries himself in a handheld game the whole time, basically relying on sensation to climb the mountain.

Their only common point is that they neither look at Aomo's image nor pay much heed to the survey team's occasional remarks.

The eight-person geological survey team, together with the three locally dispatched official assistance and security units, makes this inspection clearly official in nature, and Aomo also couldn't be bothered to look into matters like "the Rodia Company actually linking up with the Eastflame city administrators".

As a consultant for academic cooperation, fulfilling the contract via remote assistance, the consultant's main body remains at Central Tresen training horse girls, and from time to time he must glance at the training conditions on the field, so there's no need to think about unrelated matters.

"No need, just a casual greeting. By the way, do you all have any plans to rest? Based on my half-hour observation, this forest seems larger than I expected, and the instrument readings are not optimistic either."

His only concern at the moment was that the forest looked both wet and hot, completely unlike what he had heard.

The East Flame solar term called "Limit of Heat" seemed to bring little sense of cooling to those like Miss Nau Man in the East Flame forest.

Watching a group of relatively young-looking men and women struggling through the mountains, and then seeing himself standing where the training field's temperature control reaches, he felt a twinge of the sentiment that it's easy to talk while standing without hurting one's waist.

Moreover, when he looked down and saw the equally sweaty chestnut‑red‑haired horse girl and brown‑haired horse girl, this feeling gained a few more layers.

But he never said it out loud; instead, he watched the two horse girls, whose routes differed, briefly cross in the inner and outer lanes before instantly separating, then turned his head to look at their timing.

Meipu Bohang and Aimu Zhiji, the two horse girls scheduled for all‑day training, had plenty of "parallel" time.

In terms of their respective race stages, they were also much closer to the just‑starting Chazuo and Suzi, but Aomo did not bring Bohang forward to make an actual parallel proposal, so those two horse girls each ran their own.

The trainer simply grabbed two stopwatches for himself.

He also happened to listen to the part‑time boss chatting casually:

"It's indeed abnormal; this place should be covered in white snow… but you don't need to worry about temperature and humidity—everyone's clothing has built‑in temperature control, and they all have long‑journey experience. Right now the inspection process has barely begun, so Mr. Lin Dun, you can relax and not worry too much about our side."

Moreover, the boss's colleague said: "Exactly, Trainer Lin Dun, we can call you when we're ready—just focus on training! I'll be waiting to cheer for your girls when they compete at the Saichang."

Similar teasing came and went, the atmosphere remained lively, and even the three official assistants turned their heads to take a few glances.

Perhaps it was his own investigation, or perhaps it was an introduction by the investigation team's leader, Miss Nau Man, but the team members preferred to call him "Trainer Lin Dun" rather than "advisor," giving off the air of an insider.

Perhaps they really are just young people, as they appear…

Aomo did not doubt the high likelihood of Hermès appearing among the young crowd, but Miss Nau Man's team composition was obviously more complex.

He had previously looked through everyone's official files; aside from Miss Nau Man, they were all local researchers, coming from many different districts, and even their races were not uniform—elves, werewolves, Vanton star‑people, mixed‑blood sirens, and three humans.

Yes, in this investigation team, humans were even a minority.

Aomo couldn't easily say whether these people's official data were true; at least the Vanton star‑people's listed age of 642 and the elves' listed age of 527 both fall within the youthful age range, and as for the werewolf and mixed‑blood siren, their ages are just like those of young humans like him…

Let's just assume it's true, for now.

Aomo didn't really want to be seen as someone who likes to be suspicious, even though he indeed tends to be suspicious; the squad he doubts has already been formed for nearly half a year and has even carried out over a dozen joint missions as a scientific research team.

Out of this doubt, he still decided to continue observing, not heeding advice to turn off the instruments.

Moreover, after all, aside from the scientific research team itself, their research and chosen site make it hard to put one's mind at ease.

There is the Divine Mountain, the Great August Mountain; the East Flame people have many names for it, and it has long been regarded by East Flame geomancy as the ancestral dragon vein, and even more so by locals as a sacred, inviolable holy site.

That is Long White Mountain.

The previously mentioned active volcano, whose size far surpasses that of White Mountain.