Millennial Threat

Chenggong, Yunnan Province, China
October 3rd
23:20

The man driving the car sped through the city, the police hot on our trail, but at least when we left the district, the horde of monsters chasing us disappeared without a trace. The police girl was talking to the driver in Chinese again; I didn't know what they were saying, but since they had at least helped me escape from the station and evade Inspector Chang, it meant that at least he wasn't allied with Xian Fang. The lady cop kept looking at me, it seemed like they were discussing me, I don't blame them, I'm already weird enough, but what happened next was even weirder.

The man in the suit drove the vehicle like a true expert, but the pursuing patrols didn't give up; they managed to block our way again and again in a well-coordinated way, so that it was quite difficult to lose sight of them at any time. But then our driver unexpectedly maneuvered into a tunnel, he turned off the lights for a moment and opened the door to shout something into the tunnel; then eight more cars turned on their lights and began moving toward the tunnel exit, they were identical cars to ours, same color, same model, same license plate, almost the same man in a suit. The man shouted in Chinese and then in English for us to duck and hide, and he drove alongside them for a few meters, until finally they all took different paths, forcing the police to split up considerably, giving us the opportunity to finally lose them. But as if that wasn't enough, shortly after we entered the parking lot of another building to switch from an old car to another one that was already prepared, turned on, and with the engine running, someone else got into the other car we were coming in and started driving it in a different direction than ours. Finally, we drove a few more kilometers, now more quietly, until we reached a hiding place in another subway tunnel, a well-hidden room, a service warehouse, but it was well-maintained, the car stopped and the other two got out of the car, I followed them.

"Okay guys, I definitely have to thank you for the ride you gave me."
" I don't expect such good service, you guys are the best!"
"I just wish I knew more about who the hell I'm thanking," I said to the two strangers.

"I apologize for our premature introduction, but I had to be sure."
"Are you the girl known as Elise Valkyria?" the man in black said.

I think it was clear from earlier that they knew me when they came to rescue me, but I still had to be careful not to give more information than necessary, especially when I still don't know who they are.

"Yes, that is true, why do you ask?"

"嘿，你正在和狐狸女孩交谈，你认为你能翻译她说了什么吗？"
"而且现在你可以解释一下这里发生了什么吗？"
"这里到底发生了什么！？为什么那个女孩这么重要？"

"Sorry, but the police girl does not speak English and is also a little confused about what is going on."
"I will do my best to explain and translate."
"...."
"First of all, let me introduce myself"
"My name is Li Wei, I work for the Central Government Chairman's Office, for the Mystic Red Star Suppression Corps, also nicknamed the Anti-Magic Division, easier to understand I think."
"The policewoman is Wu Yan, a rookie police officer, an honor student who graduated from Beijing Police School."
"She was supposed to be assigned as my partner tomorrow, but there was a change of plans and an emergency situation that forced us to act after hours," the man said in both English and what I imagine was his Chinese equivalent."

"Interesting that such a team exists on behalf of the government, but not really unusual at this point."
"But may I know why they know me?"
"Why risk so much for a girl cosplaying as a slime fox girl?"
"It's just stupid."

"I have to admit that I'm wondering the same thing right now."
"However, we have a much more important mission that takes precedence over my personal opinion."
"The Mystic Red Star Suppression Corps was created in extreme secrecy by the express decree of the former General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, and continued by his successor."
"All with the sole purpose of ending the threat of Xian Fang and her influence at any cost."
"For more than twenty years, we have worked diligently towards this goal, but our enemy has always been one step ahead of us."
"Unfortunately, our greatest achievement so far has been to keep our division under wraps."
"Xian Fang is a dangerous person who never leaves anything to chance, we tried to keep track of her movements but it was almost impossible, our best efforts managed to detect that she lives somewhere in this city but nothing more."

"That is what we thought until yesterday."
"On October 3rd, at 14:30, all the channels we had marked as belonging to Xian Fang started communicating like crazy."
"The communication network showed a strong stress spike never seen before, they started to be encrypted at military category 5 level, the TianHui AI switched to counterintelligence and tracking protocol."
"It took us a while to decipher some of the communications, but we quickly realized that they all had something in common."
"They were all talking about the arrival of Elise Valkyrie in the city, following various plans on how to attack her, or closely monitoring her movements."
"But it was the part where Xian Fang was mentioned, expressing his anger at knowing who was in the city, that piqued our interest."
"If Xian Fang, the person who was not even bothered by our attempts to stop her, showed such concern for a single person who had just arrived in the country, it could only mean one thing."
"The arrival of an enemy she truly fears and may lose to."

"So this is a case of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", interesting."
"But still, you put so much trust in someone you don't even know."

"However, you have already proven yourself to be an exceptional person.... monster.... Goddess maybe? by escaping the trap at the Grand Yù Lóng Plaza Hotel."
"Still, I have to ask, was it you who set that fire?"

"Of course not!"
"Those bastards set fire to several floors below where I was, they also called in their police to finish me off while everything was burning."
"And when that didn't work, they sent those monster zombies, they tried to climb up the walls and get out of the elevator entrances."
"The situation was horrible, I had to fight to the death to get out of there, I think the only way I managed to escape was that they probably didn't expect me to escape by going to the upper floors and jumping off the roof."

"真的她没有引发酒店的火灾吗？"
"那是什么？她真的是一个女神吗？"
"我必须承认她看起来像一个由水做成的奇怪生物，她可能是来自另一个水之神的吗？"

"I'm sorry to ask this, since I work for the so-called Anti-Magic Division, I tend to overlook certain things."
"But Miss Wu Yan is asking, are you really a Goddess of Water, and why do you have business dealings that would make you an enemy of Xian Fang?"

"....."
"If it makes you feel any better, yes, I can say that I am a water goddess."
"A very small and insignificant one though, just a small goddess of a small creek, so don't expect any miracles" I lied to at least try to give them a morale boost to help me."
"As for why I have business with Xian Fang?"
"That's easy, the bitch tried to kill me several times in Japan, Korea, and even in Africa."
"She never stopped following me everywhere."
"And in all those places, she tried to steal my body and my powers, can you believe it?"
"She wants to steal my powers!"
"So I thought that if she keeps bothering me, I would be the one to take the front lines of the war to her."
"I'm here to end this shit once and for all, either I kill her or she kills me, but it ends now!"

Li Wei translated my answer to Wu Yan and they talked for quite a while, they both seemed surprised by the lie that I was a water goddess, but it served me much better than revealing that I knew Adelis or her contacts. After they both agreed, they came back to talk to me.

"Since everything is in order, Great Goddess Elise, we have come to propose a pact of mutual cooperation for both mortals and divine beings, in which..."

"Stop it, stop it!"
"I don't like people talking to me like that, I'm not as great as the title makes me sound."

"I'm just a Neet who spends her time alone at home playing video games, I work as a waitress in a coffee shop, I pay rent every month, I watch action movies at the movies, I travel economy class on the cheapest plane to travel around the world."
"Just talk to me like a normal person, it's easier and I understand a lot more than with all the fancy language."

"Yes, of course I understand"
"...."
"Sorry, as you say..."
"Since both you and we seem to have Xian Fang as our enemy, I wanted to propose on behalf of my group that we cooperate with you to face such a threat and thus both of us will benefit from it."
"On the one hand, we can't let Xian Fang get your powers and become a water goddess, just like you don't want to be assassinated by her."

"Well, that's interesting, but I still don't know anything about you and your group."
"I've already talked about my part and my position on Xian Fang, but I don't know anything about you and why you're against her as well."

Li Wei began to answer for me as well as for the policewoman about what was really going on with Xian Fang and the whole background story, a rivalry that seems to come from ancient history, one that points to them as the origin of almost all the corruption problems in all of China.

The earliest record Li Wei has of Xian Fang is as an imperial magician of the Qing dynasty in 1800, where she took on more and more power to rule, so much so that the other leaders made laws and arrangements to try to suppress the magician's influence. When this began to become a problem for her, Xian Fang herself went abroad for help, and was the one who brought Britain into the region, who wanted wide access to the Chinese market, and seeing that the mage had allied herself with a foreign power, the Qing dynasty imposed harsher punishments against her, as well as tighter control over her market and Britain's access to it, which obviously angered her even more. So, seeing their power diminishing, she allied herself with Britain, and the two devised a plan to help them create an opium distribution system throughout all of China, as well as establish opium houses to addict the entire population to opium, a substance that only Britain could supply through its plantations in British India. When the Qing Emperor realized the damage he was doing to his people, he issued decrees banning the importation and consumption of opium in China, but the British, with the help of Xian Fang, continued the opium trade illegally. The event ended in war when a large amount of illegal opium was burned in the port of Canton, Britain sent a naval fleet and declared war on the Qing Empire. British military superiority led to China's defeat in the First Opium War, and the Treaty of Nanking of 1842, which ended the conflict, granted Britain territorial concessions, trade rights, compensation, and various guarantees to Xian Fang. The Qing Emperor did not give up and devised a plan to try to turn everything back in his favor and deal with the foreign threat and Xian Fang, which culminated in a second Opium War, this time with Britain supported by France. Western forces occupied Beijing and sacked the Summer Palace in apparent defeat. The 1860 Treaty of Peking extended Western concessions and legalized opium, resulting in a total defeat for the Qing dynasty, exposing China's military weakness to the Western powers, it was the same war that created the territory of Hong Kong where Xian Fang lived for a time, long enough to earn the enmity of the British when they saw the true face of the person they were dealing with.

In 1898 there was an attempt to modernize China to counter foreign influence. However, it was suppressed by Empress Dowager Cixi, an advisor and friend of Xian Fang, who obviously had no use for such a thing. Xian Fang decided to put an end to her rival, the Qing Dynasty, and the plan was the Xinhai Revolution, which ended the 2,000-year reign of the imperial government and established the Republic of China, allowing her to return to the interior of China. What Xian Fang did not expect was that the whole country would be torn apart by the conflict she started, in a desperate attempt to maintain power she helped the Chinese Nationalist Party in their fight against the Chinese Communist Party, but during the civil war another opportunity arose for her from abroad, when Japan invaded the region and the Second World War followed, bringing a pause to the civil war she created, she thought that by allying with the invaders she would have a chance to finally get everything under control, she herself helped them gain and maintain control of the occupied territories. But what she did not expect was the Allies aid to China during the war, as well as the defeat of Japan by the Americans. When she returned to China, she saw the effects of her own hand, a place devastated by the war, the Nationalist Party of China weakened by the war and aware of Xian Fang's treachery, no longer of any use to her, so, like the traitor she always was, she presented herself as innocent to the Communist Party of China and greatly aided Mao Zedong in his struggle against her former allies, hunting each of them down, until the establishment of the People's Republic of China. But this time, Xian Fang showed a bit of intelligence and didn't make any moves until Mao Zedong's death to resume her power struggle, aiding Deng Xiaoping with his reforms, all the while she began to buy friendships and favors with her influence.

Which brings us to today, where a large portion of China's regional governors have reached their positions thanks to Xian Fang. It's easy to assume that she has influence over decisions made throughout the country or abroad. That cursed immortal magician was the origin of almost every branch of corruption in China, almost every scandal had some connection to her at some point. they even hypothesize that she herself helped the Empire develop some of their weapons, and even lent her factories for some of their production during the Continental War in exchange for some of their technology. This led to the rebuilding of Kunming City into Chenggong City with these technologies, and its centerpiece, TianHui, was part of it, a piece of both magic and technology, exclusively at Xian Fang's service, constantly monitoring the entire city for their enemies. A city full of traps created with the sole intention of defending itself against the thousands of enemies it had created in its thirst for power, a city where a large portion of its citizens were nothing more than puppets created by the cruel mage to act as her soldiers at the sound of a single command.

It is for this very reason that the very leaders, tired of Xian Fang, her cruel games, and her influence in the ever-present corruption throughout China, decided to stand up to her, thus creating the Mystic Red Star Suppression Corps. An extremely secretive organization created solely to confront her and put an end to all of this, an organization with a multitude of challenges that were difficult to overcome, where even finding recruits free of any connection to Xian Fang was a titanic task, and how the struggle of this organization led to the conversation we are having now in the secret room of the subway tunnel. I listened attentively to the story, and the policewoman showed her disbelief at this great revelation, but with a determined look of fire.

"If what you say is true, then we have a difficult mission."
"If Xian Fang can use TianHui to control the entire city, it will be impossible to catch her off guard or make her make a mistake."
"And if all or most of the residents are under her influence, they are either allies or camouflaged spider zombies...."
"Ugh, it's like being trapped in a giant spider web."
"Now, how can we find out where she lives?"
"None of you know where Lóngyán Village is, and you live around here," I said after accepting their offer of cooperation."

"Even if Xian Fang takes every precaution and hides her whereabouts from everyone, she still has to have contact with the outside world."
"It's impossible to have influence all over the world and be the biggest opium producer in the world just by being locked up in the deep jungle."
"She gets help all the time, she has followers who send her information, food, technology."
"We just have to find one and interrogate him."

"And who do you suggest?"
"I don't think a random person off the street would know where a thousand-year-old witch lives."

"It's safe to assume that important people in Chenggong know her."
"It's very likely that the mayor of Chenggong, Mr. Xu Hao, knows her personally, as well as where she lives, since this is the area he oversees."
"The entire city reconstruction project bears his name, and the entire shape of the city is due to this project."

"So kidnapping the mayor of the city, with an AI that watches us at all times, making escape almost impossible, not to mention a whole city that literally wants to devour us...."
"Sure, why not? I've been through worse."

"先方是对中国的威胁，阻止她至关重要。"
"我响应保卫我的国家并打败这一威胁的呼声。"
"我自愿加入任务，魏先生！"

"Miss Wu Yan has expressed her desire to help and has also volunteered."
"So it's decided, we'll attack the mayor's house at dawn."
"There are weapons and ammunition in that box over there, please prepare yourselves, this will be a dangerous mission," the man in the black suit said as he looked at his watch."

I was eager to finally have a plan in motion and unexpected allies, I really appreciated their help. But this would only be the beginning of this battle, there were still many questions about how to deal with this situation, TianHui was a big problem that needed to be solved to avoid having the horde against us, and most importantly, finding the cursed witch, who must have spread her magic all over the city to set up some kind of trap or shield, this would be a long battle.