Apocalypse Forecast

Today's five updates are done!

Sob, sob, I feel like I'm about to collapse, my neck is killing me... Could I trouble everyone for another subscription?

If the initial 24-hour subscriptions break three thousand tomorrow, should I try for another burst of updates? How does that sound?

Prison life was quite pleasant.

It wasn't like the dramatic prison stories one might imagine. In the rather spacious detention room, there were only two or three people. Even during exercise time, they rarely bumped into each other, making it impossible to exchange any tips on escaping.

And his friends from the Special Affairs Department took good care of him.

It seemed that after hearing about his strange tale of being able to "kill someone within ten steps without leaving a trace," they developed a peculiar kind of reverence and admiration for him. Besides, Huai Shi never put on airs when interacting with others, and most people recognized his face.

Now in prison, even though their duties prevented them from letting him escape, they generally turned a blind eye to anything not too excessive and pretended not to see.

Besides, Huai Shi was quite cooperative and didn't cause any trouble for them.

After he got his cello back and managed to reclaim his music player from the evidence room, he began a fulfilling life of listening to songs when idle, practicing his cello in the morning, and his knife skills before bed.

Looking at it this way, it seems like there's absolutely no difference from the closed training before the unified exam! Hah!

Even though he had already left school, the training life seemed to have caught up with him somehow. Life truly is full of ups and downs, unpredictable indeed.

However, on the third day of his usual practice, he heard an unexpected voice.

"Hey, buddy," the prisoner in the next cell asked, "do you play Bach?"

"Hm?" Huai Shi raised his eyebrows. "You even know about Bach?"

"What's so rare about that?" The man next door chuckled. "I did, after all, graduate from a genuine American Ivy League school. How could I not know Bach?"

"Alright then." Huai Shi nodded readily. "The Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, which one do you like?"

"It doesn't matter which one."

The young man, looking disheveled, leaned against the wall and murmured softly, "I just want to hear some sound, anything will do."

Huai Shi thought for a moment, swept the hair that had grown long and become somewhat obstructive behind his head, took up the Bow, and after a brief contemplation, started to move it across the strings.

Bach's Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, Prelude.

When Huai Shi combined his practice with meditation, his technique and the sound of the cello seemed to undergo a qualitative leap, affecting not just his playing ability but also the music's emotional power to an alarming extent.

Soon, a melody that could be called gentle began to flow from the strings, an invisible sound spreading through the air, filling every inch of this indifferent cell.

And so, everything seemed to soften. There was no edge to it, no harm.

In the morning sunlight, dust swirled in the air, and everything was as beautiful as a Dreamland.

Even the patrolling Guards stopped in their tracks, quietly listening to the cello music from the not-so-distant cells, immersed in the soft melody, a smile curling on their lips.

The brief two minutes whisked by.

What followed was a prolonged silence.

After a while, Huai Shi heard a hoarse sigh coming from the next cell.

"That was wonderful," said the young man, sounding satisfied. "Thank you."

Huai Shi hesitated for a long time before finally asking, "That... do you know that I killed your father?"

Then, he heard Qi Yuan's choking laughter.

"You don't have to worry," he said. "I knew that on the first day."

"Don't you hate me?"

"Would you believe me if I said I didn't hate you?" Qi Yuan said. "Rest assured, I hate him more than I hate you..."

"Hm?"

Qi Yuan suddenly laughed. "Do you know what it's like to live in a transparent cage, displayed like a model specimen from a young age?"

After some thought, Huai Shi couldn't help but nod. "Sounds quite enviable."

"Yeah, no worries about food or clothing, no worries about anything at all. It's practically perfect, except you can't find a place to hide from the spotlight. From childhood, even if I made the slightest mistake, Qi Wen would look at me with those eyes, as if he regretted not throwing me onto the streets to become a stray dog."

Qi Yuan scoffed coldly. "He never considered me his son. In his eyes, my very existence in this world was a mistake."

"Er, that can't be right?"

"At first, I just thought he was being strict with me, and I tried everything to prove my ability to him. That lasted until the day he told me I was the bastard son of my mother's affair."

As if narrating someone else's story, Qi Yuan's tone was almost indifferent. "He was afraid people would laugh at him for being cuckolded. After disposing of my Mother, he raised me as if nothing had happened, just like raising a dog."

"..."

Huai Shi didn't know what to say, but Qi Yuan, as if his interest was piqued, asked mockingly, "You must have seen that illegitimate son he had outside, right? The one called He Luo. You killed him too, didn't you? That was his true heir... HAHAHA, what did that old geezer's expression look like then? Wasn't it spectacular?"

"Uh, your family situation is really complicated."

"Who's to say it isn't?" Qi Yuan seemed to mutter to himself. "Every family is the same, right? There are always some unpleasant things happening."

"..."

Huai Shi did not respond.

"Actually, I should thank you. If it weren't for you, I'd surely be mad by now," Qi Yuan's voice was hoarse. "I wanted to kill him. I tried every method, every method I could think of. But I don't even know how to hold a knife. In the end, I was treated as a complete joke."

Huai Shi shook his head. "I'm sorry, I don't know what to say."

"No need to answer. I just... I just wanted to talk to someone. Sorry for disturbing you. Please continue playing the cello," Qi Yuan leaned against the wall, as if pleading softly, "Let me hear the sound of the cello."

"Okay."

The sound of the cello rose again.

After that, Qi Yuan said nothing more.

Amidst the fear, panic, and despair that had relentlessly plagued these past days, he finally slept soundly. The sound of snoring soon followed.

In prison, Huai Shi leisurely played his 'Couch Potato Happy Cello', completely unaware of how the world outside had been turned upside down.

Under Ai Qing's instigation, Director Fu, who had been stable for over a decade, might have been overly stimulated by Huai Shi. He slammed his desk and went to his superiors, forcefully pushing through the temporary control plan for Xinhai. Then, with almost no restraint, a city-wide dragnet search was launched, aiming to meticulously root out The Purified People, these lunatics, one by one.

In just a few days, the results had been impressive. The brawny members of the Suppression Troops had taken down several dens in one go. Despite some losses, they also successfully killed several Sublimators who were Ranch Owners on the spot.

This grand crackdown on crime had now finally reached its climax.

Under Ai Qing's command, through relentless pursuit and search without regard for cost, the three-day struggle had entered its final phase.

The mighty troops of Sublimators, carrying an array of weapons, had completely surrounded the Dragon Horse Building, an increasingly dilapidated, unfinished structure in the old city district—the last major stronghold the Savior Association had operated in Xinhai.

Coldly ignoring all negotiation demands proposed by the other side, Director Fu had set his heart on finishing the job in one decisive stroke. The findings of the past few days' searches had kept him from sleeping well for several nights.

Those bastards, aside from scamming the elderly out of their pensions and running unsavory cult operations, had, through parental influence, secretly extended their tentacles into the city's schools.

In two schools, even the leadership and teachers had become Believers, which nearly made Director Fu explode on the spot.

"Incompetents! You're all a bunch of incompetents! All you do is take bribes and cause trouble! You've certainly pocketed plenty of money, but all you're good for is messing things up!"

The thought of his beloved daughter unwittingly being exposed to these lunatics filled him with the urge to hang those school leaders one by one in front of the school gates.

"Negotiation? Negotiate my ass!"

Holding the phone, Director Fu was incensed by the tone on the other end. "Negotiate whether you'll all get life sentences in forced labor reform at the Border, or a collective execution in ten minutes? Facing death and still dreaming such sweet dreams—what are you fantasizing about!"

Roughly hanging up the phone, he slammed down onto a chair in the temporary frontline command post and pointed at his subordinates one by one. "Get them! Hear me? Even if you can't kill them, beat them half to death! Set up all that stuff from the warehouses. I don't care about this year's budget; I want these menaces crushed here today! Got it?!"

And so, rocket launchers, Howitzers, machine guns, and even several tanks began to deploy amid a rumbling sound.

If only he had known that the Special Affairs Department's heavy Firepower was stored in a military area outside the city, he would have regretted not casually "borrowing" a rocket launcher back then. Things wouldn't have been so tough.

Ai Qing watched everything calmly.

With Director Fu on the scene, there was no need for her to meddle with the field command, and she couldn't be bothered with such matters. As a local member of the Astronomical Society, her responsibility was not these things, but rather to monitor the entire operation and ensure this Power was used correctly for the purpose of surrounding Current Circumstances, and to sign some paperwork.

She didn't have to wait long before the vehicle's doors were pulled open. Reinforcements from afar had finally arrived for the final struggle.

One was a burly, middle-aged man with a scruffy beard, dressed in a loose military uniform. As he rolled up his sleeves, his muscular arms, covered in what looked like burn scars, bulged.

The other, however, wore rimless glasses and appeared refined, with a spotless white shirt, holding a suit jacket in his hand.

After saluting and greeting Director Fu, both men presented their Social Security Bureau credentials to Ai Qing. The taciturn, burly man remained silent, while the slender man in rimless glasses introduced them, "Miss Ai Qing, hello. We are here to assist as instructed by our superiors. This is Third Stage Sublimator Jin Mu, and I am Third Stage Sublimator Shen Yue. We are carrying a Border Relic. If it's convenient for the operation, please sign here."

As if already accustomed to dealing with Inspectors and wishing to avoid any subsequent trouble or disputes, Shen Yue directly pulled out their transfer and operation orders from a folder and handed them to Ai Qing.

"No problem at all." She took out a pen and signed her name on their operation permits, confirming the legitimacy of their upcoming actions.

With that, half of her task was complete.

The two reinforcements exchanged glances, feeling they had encountered an agreeable Inspector.

They seemed somewhat relieved.