Tang Qiuqiu thought that Wheeze’s answer was less than helpful, but if the massive vortex in front of her was any indicator, it was probably going to be a unique experience.
As the ship began moving toward the Shortcut, everyone went to their seats and activated the barrier. It was not a pleasant experience to pass through the portal without protection, and for the weaker person it might even be a fatal experience. That was why Cillin had personally activated the barrier and the artificial sleep program for Tang Qiuqiu. It was because there was a high chance she would not react well if she was awake during the crossing. By the time she came to, she was already in the Mist Bodhisattva Empire.
At first glance, it looked like nothing had changed except the vortex had disappeared. The cosmos looked the same as ever on the displays. The space fortress had appeared very close to where they had departed in the first place. No one was in the area, and there wasn’t a patrol ship to be seen anywhere.
Tang Qiuqiu could’ve believed that they were still in GAL if not for the fact that a news report spoken in a language that she had never heard before was currently being played on one of the displays. Cillin gave her a translator earpiece so she could better understand this whole new world and how its lifestyle, social system and more differed from GAL.
Czedow didn’t need a translator. Cillin and Moon had given him some language programs that contained the imperial language of the Mist Bodhisattva Empire and the dialects of some of the major planets.
Xi Mu didn’t really need his translator either. Although he could not memorize every language like Czedow, he knew the lingua franca well enough to converse with it without problem.
The first thing Wheeze did after returning to the Mist Bodhisattva Empire was to log onto Return.
The forum had just been established when they departed for GAL, so it was in a period of rapid development at the time. Today, it had become the biggest and strongest academic forum in the empire.
The login screen alone showed just how special the forum was. Two badges of authority had been plastered to the front page. One of them belonged to the imperial family, and the other the Royal Academy of Sciences. Although this was Xi Mu’s first visit ever to this galaxy, he had learned much of the Mist Bodhisattva Empire from Xi Kai long before either Czedow or Tang Qiuqiu had received the same lesson. That was why he impressed by Return more than either of them. The badges meant that the forum had the support of the imperial family, the royal families, the nobles, and even the Royal Academy of Sciences, factions that were usually opposed against one another for one reason or another. Once again, Cillin had exceeded his expectations.
It would be an exaggeration to say that every man and woman in the entire galaxy knew of Return, but a good 80% of them? Not so much. A lot of people relied on answering bounty questions on the forums to make a living after all. In fact, some commoners went from nothing to millionaire because they managed to answer the literally million-credit questions.
So many people had registered an account in Return during its period of rapid development that even the imperial family and the Royal Academy of Sciences almost couldn’t believe their eyes, although user growth had slowed down considerably as of today and trending toward stability.
When Wheeze first joined Return, everyone knew each other to an extent because the userbase wasn’t that big yet. Today, many people had forgotten the ID “Whebeze”, and on the rare occasion it was mentioned it would quickly be buried under an avalanche of messages and threads. It was because the new users did not recognize the infamous ID, and those who did pretended they didn’t see or hear it. After all, why would they want anything to do with the headache-inducing ID? The “retirement” of Whebeze came as a massive relief to many veterans, and the tsunami of users that came after made it fairly easy to pretend they never existed.
On a related note, the Arena—the virtual platform where people went on stage to debate one another about all things, which resulted in many theories that were thought to be rock solid to be debunked—had become so popular that it was practically a lifestyle these days. It had become a habit for the scholars, media or your random person to spectate the Arena just for the heck of it.
The Arena was already pretty popular when Wheeze had announced its temporary departure, but today the spectator count were hundreds, no, thousands of times greater than what it used to be. Not only that, the virtual platform was both aesthetically and functionally much better than before. It was clear that the imperial family and the members of the Royal Academy of Sciences valued it greatly.
A fierce debate was currently taking place at the Arena, and countless experts and well-known authorities were commenting about it from the sidelines. It seemed like today was going to be just another day on the virtual platform when suddenly, an ID that hadn’t been seen for a long time suddenly lit up. After the debate came to an end, and a rest period was announced before the next debate, a loud voice suddenly cut through the air—
“YOUR GRANDADDY’S BACK, BITCHES!”
To be fair, a lot of self-proclaimed experts declared more or less the same thing back when the Arena was first created, but that was in the past. Today, only a handful of people would have the temerity and achievement to call themselves the “granddaddy” of anything, much less shout it for everyone to hear in the public. It was why everyone temporarily stopped what they were doing to check out the newcomer. Did an old-timer show up to humiliate their opponents again? they thought to themselves. It was then they noticed that the person who made the cocky statement was level zero.
Someone immediately hollered, “Who the fuck do you think you are, you level 0 noob?” It was answered by a chorus of agreements and hoots. However, it didn’t take long for some people to notice that some of the veterans had fallen into utter silence for some reason. When one of them finally revealed Whebeze’s glorious past, the forum became abuzz with excitement once more.
At the space fortress, sitting in front of a microcomputer, Wheeze’s shook its whiskers in displeasure while complaining, “Since when did Return have a level thingy? Meow dangit! I can’t believe they didn’t count all the debates I’ve won when the forum was initially founded!”
When a participant first wins a debate in the Arena, they would unlock an Overlord badge. The system then tallies their number of participation, victories, losses and other statistics and reflects them as levels and ranks on their Overlord badge. Unfortunately for Wheeze, this ranking system was established after it had left the Mist Bodhisattva Empire with Cillin. Naturally, its badge was level zero even though it had won many debates in the past.
It wasn’t long before Moon logged onto the forum after Wheeze had made its grand return. Sigma, Czedow and Xi Mu had also registered their own accounts. An exceptional amount of people blacked out from sheer rage that day.
Tang Qiuqiu did not understand a thing Wheeze and the rest of her companions did on Return, but she was fine with it. She had never gone to school, and she had no intentions of attending one ever. Shrugging, she left everyone behind and went to the training room to practice with the Purgatory Thunder Snake Cillin gave her.
Their first destination was Xi Kai’s electronic planet. Xi Kai, Xi Mu, Moon and Sigma all boarded the planet because they had their own things to do.
Sigma had been especially sad when he discovered that his long lost brother, Chip had been transformed into the monstrous shape he was. Xi Kai wisely left the Origin robots to their own devices not only because he didn’t want to cause an awkward situation, but because he didn’t want to tempt Moon to give him an accident.
Sigma’s dream was finally fulfilled after a thousand years, but there were only three of them now. Worse, Moon was the only one out of his four brothers who came through unscathed, and that made the robot very, very sad. The blue strips on his faceplate flowed downward like tears as he clung to one of Chip’s cables.
“How long are you going to cry, Sigma? You haven’t changed at all,” Chip said in an affectionate voice while wrapping a cable around his brother. He then looked at Moon and said, “You don’t have to be so sad. Not all is lost. Come, let me show you something.”
The four Origin robots were catching up with each other, so it did not look like they would be leaving the planet anytime soon. Xi Mu would also be staying to find out how more about the Gen Family. That was why Cillin took Tang Qiuqiu, Czedow and a certain gray cat who was having way too much fun destroying people on the forum to their next destination on a spaceplane.
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There was nothing Cillin needed to do for Black Viper despite his prolonged absence. Guan Feng did mention that the leader didn’t need to do anything unless a major incident had occurred, and he definitely didn’t feel like managing the organization’s weirdos right now.
Cillin’s next destination after Xi Kai’s electronic planet was the capital. He was sure his surrogate parent would appreciate hearing about Angenia and Gensheng as soon as possible.
The spaceplane Xi Kai had provided him didn’t have any noble marking or special code on its hull. It simply wasen’t necessary. After Cillin had entered some additional information into the computer, the spaceplane could to travel nearly any corner of the galaxy without meeting any resistance.
Tang Qiuqiu knew little about the Mist Bodhisattva Empire. She was both surprised and curious that there could be a galaxy that was a united empire instead of the mixed bag of factions that was GAL. That wasn’t to say that her impression of the empire was completely positive though. She was unhappy with the noble system in general, and she was especially unhappy with the snobbish nobles who carried themselves around like they were the king of the galaxy. In her opinion, all heads were equal within her scope, so these nobles really should keep their head down unless they wanted to lose it.
There were a lot of patrol fleets and guards protecting the capital star region as a matter of course. Generally speaking, anyone who wished to enter the star region must use certain entry points to enter the star region unless they wished to be blasted into smithereens. Of course, there were also exclusive entry points where only some special nobles got to use; one of which Cillin was using right now. This particular entry point belonged to the Fuji’s royal family and was accessible only to those who were connected to the Gen Family.
The large majority of starships and spaceplanes that used this entry point had the royal family’s symbol stamped on their hull, so Cillin’s small and unmarked spaceplane stood out among the many huge and gorgeous-looking space vessels to say the least. There was no way the patrol fleet could’ve missed them even if they tried.
“Who are those people?”
“That has to be a commoner’s spaceplane, right?”
“Hey guards! What’s up with that ship?”
All the nobles who saw Cillin’s spaceplane started complaining boisterously. They were all ashamed to share passage with an unmarked, “poor” looking spaceplane.
To their surprise, not only did the patrol fleet not attempt to stop Cillin’s spaceplane, they purposely opened up a path so they could pass through unhindered. Some of them even ordered their servants to move their vessels get in front of Cillin’s spaceplane in a childish attempt to obstruct their path. However, they didn’t go far before the patrol fleet got in their way.
At this point, the smart ones realized that Cillin and co. could not be as ordinary as they seemed and quickly restrained themselves. However, the brainless ones continued to broadcast their annoyance to the patrol fleet’s captain and threatened to get him removed from his post.
The captain didn't bother to reply to any of these messages as a matter of course. In fact, he hoped that these idiots would be foolish enough to bring their complaints to someone with the authority to kick their stupid asses. How stupid would you have to be to stop a spaceplane with an access code that was issued by the current and previous king themselves?
Cillin flew past the flamboyant vessels and headed straight for Genya’s planet.
A record was logged in the system every time an access code issued by the Fuji King was used, and each access code corresponded to a specific person only. That was why Genya was notified of Cillin’s return not long after the access code was used. The old man had sprung to his feet immediately after hearing the news, but he forced himself to stay put because he knew that him taking any action would only bring undue attention to Cillin. He could not sit still though, so he vent his impatience by walking circles around the courtyard again and again.
A while later, he looked up at the sky for the umpteenth time and finally saw what he was hoping to see: Cillin’s spaceplane. Now that the young man was here though, his impatience immediately transformed into apprehension instead. He had been waiting this whole time to hear about Angenia and his family at GAL, but he was also terrified that the news Cillin brought back would confirm his worst fears. His feelings were conflicted to say the least.
There was an airstrip close to the courtyard, and it was manned by people whom Genya could trust. They quickly cleared out the airstrip and got ready to receive Cillin after receiving a notice from Genya.
Genya’s aides knew Cillin very well at this point. It was also why they were surprised that the young man hadn’t visited Genya for a long time. They didn’t say anything about it though. For starters, who were they to criticize Cillin’s actions? There wasn’t a single notable figure in the Gen Family who didn’t know about Cillin and Genya’s relationship, and they all treated him he was Genya’s own son and the prince of the Gen Family. Two, Cillin was pretty famous these days. It was understandable that a galaxy famous person would have a less-than-predictable schedule.
Czedow and Tang Qiuqiu were unfamiliar faces, and according to standard protocol they should’ve been screened before they were allowed into the residence. However, they skipped this step because Genya had given them special permission.
Tang Qiuqiu could not help but goggle at the artificial sea as she and Czedow followed Cillin into the courtyard. Although Cillin had already told her about it, she still couldn’t quite believe that it was man made. It was that impressive.
The first thing Wheeze did after entering the courtyard was to let out a high-pitched howl. Just a few seconds later, a thick column of water jetted into the air, and a colossal figure appeared on the surface before the water column had fully subsided yet. It swam toward the seashore at top speed while responding with a howl that was quite similar to the gray cat’s.
All the guards in the area broke into smiles. Blueskin was depressed recently because Cillin and Wheeze had been gone longer than expected. It was worth it though. Everyone could see how happy it was at their return.
“I miss you so much, Blueskin!”
Wheeze ran all the way to the edge of the water, leaped into the air and, whoosh! Spread its wings before taking to the sky. The guards standing just outside the courtyard were speechless when they saw this.
Holy shit balls! Since when did this cat know how to fly?
Blueskin had been really sad because Cillin and Wheeze hadn’t visited it for a very long time. In fact, it was to the point where its appetite was affected, and the amount of fishes in the artificial sea skyrocketed as a result. Things were different now. It was so happy that that it even stood on its tail, swam backward in circles, and made “ow ow” noises exactly like Wheeze had taught it to.
Everyone here was used to this sight already, but Tang Qiuqiu wasn’t one of them. When Blueskin had made its entry, she had been awed by its size and formidable appearance. Now though, her eyes were twitching uncontrollably, and she was barely restraining the impulse to smack the big guy with her rifle.
This isn’t a sea beast! This is the shrunken version of an alien seal!