Xyrin Empire

At a roadside stall smoky with spicy hotpot, two Imperial Leaders bent over, munching with oil dripping from their mouths, Sandora had already piled half a meter high in front of her. She threatened that if they didn't hurry up and get the rest of the hotpot done and serve it, she'd eat the plates. We all believed she'd do it, Cu Chulainn believed it even more. So the poor Gunman could only shed bitter tears, open all eight gates, with his meridians fully connected, wishing he had three heads and six arms to deal with his pile of tools. As for Heroic Spirit Emiya, Sasaki, and the others, they pushed their stalls and escaped the moment Her Majesty Queen started dining, vanishing like the wind, as if chased by a hundred eighty city patrol officers.

For Cu Chulainn, engaging in the food industry under the Queen's nose might be his biggest mistake. If he could return whole today, I reckon he'd end up with lifelong cramps every time he sees cooked food and spend the rest of his life living off sashimi.

"Thirty more plates, every variety!" Sandora didn't care; she's the Queen. All she needed was a full stomach, so while she was eliminating food with an astounding speed with an elegance completely unmatched, she kept urging for more dishes.

Cu Chulainn started tearing up and was ready to give up on the spot, expressing that if worse came to worst, Her Majesty could just eat him instead. On Earth, the only things that could supply Sandora food in real-time were two entities: one was the omnipotent Anwina, the other was the all-inclusive Nature — but Cu Chulainn was merely a Heroic Spirit. The art of spicy hotpot was still just his amateur hobby while teaching Fighting Skills to Misakas; how could he possibly supply enough!

Seeing his unlucky plight, I had to show him a shortcut, leaned over, and whispered, "Just keep serving, as long as there are enough ingredients, Sandora doesn't care about the taste."

Not just indifferent, Sandora would've eaten a periodic table if she's asked; does she know salty or bland? The ring of teeth marks on the household cabinets — could it be said that stainless steel is fresh and reliable?

Cu Chulainn is not foolish, and he immediately understood my suggestion. So from then on, he started serving Sandora raw vegetables and meat. As expected, Her Majesty remained elated and oblivious, without noticing the change in the food's taste.

Whenever this kind of situation arises, I feel guilty towards Sandora, feeling that I'm bullying her because everyone in the household shares a harmless habit. Whenever we encounter leftovers or things we dislike during meals, we end up giving them all to Sandora sometimes even watermelon rinds and eggshells. Anwina often cooks while Sandora loiters in the kitchen, using eggshells, onion peels, potato sprouts, even disposable plastic bags as appetizers. Ever since she moved in, the kitchen no longer needs a trash bin — the last trash bin in the kitchen was secretly eaten by her late night. She usually handles nearly half of our household's similar waste, directly causing the six stray cats who lived nearby scrounging off trash bins to end up dejectedly moving to another street, battling with local stray cats for days.

It also caused Mercury Lamp to initially mistake Sandora as a pushover when she came to our home, thinking that we were bullying her into eating trash…

Well, misunderstandings are inevitable upon first meetings, but ever since Mercury Lamp discovered her little comb was eaten by Sandora, she no longer thinks that way and profoundly realized that Sandora might have the highest living standards of this eccentric household: After all, even though we feed her trash, we also fed her with a big LCD TV worth over ten thousand dollars, right? Have you ever seen anyone indulge in dessert that is a direct follow-up of a sixty-four-inch LCD followed by two iPhone 4s?

"Eat slower; no one's going to snatch it from you."

I cleared my throat twice, urging Sandora to pay some attention to her image, but this reminder was mostly pointless because Sandora had an excellent image while eating — aside from the speed, she behaved as gracefully as a Princess in every aspect besides speed.

A casually dressed Medusa sat across the table with a helpless expression, staring at me with big eyes against small, trying several times to speak but interrupted each time. Until Sandora's eating pace slowed slightly, I glanced up at her, she shrugged helplessly: "Boss, do you have time to listen to me now?"

"I've been listening all along, try this," I cheerfully handed a pile of fish balls and vegetables to the purple-haired elder sister opposite, teaching her how to eat them. "But there's nothing to worry about; is it a big deal to me?"

Medusa puffed her cheeks and, imitating Sandora and me, slid the items from the bamboo stick with chopsticks onto the dish, stirring them a bit, after putting them into her mouth, she revealed an astonished expression. Apparently, the somewhat aloof and slightly bourgeois Medusa had never tasted spicy hotpot before, clearly not the type who dared to fish for mermaids in Fairy Lake wearing oversized shorts like Cu Chulainn and Red A.

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But this doesn't stop a Medusa with princess-like temperament from being conquered by spicy hot pot, especially since the latter has already conquered a real Queen.

"But if they really go up there, won't there be trouble?" Medusa asked with a sense of duty, frowning, "They're landing on the moon in two days."

I grabbed a skewer of oily beef meatballs, gazing up at the sky, where behind the clear expanse was the immense, mysterious curved surface of the Mother Star. Two seconds later, Gaia, possibly noticing my gaze, controlled the lights on the Mother Star to form a "smiley face" pattern for me.

I sighed silently, looking down, it seemed Gaia was starting to learn bad things.

Medusa has been sitting here for ten minutes mainly to report some intel on alien suppression around the world and one frustrating piece of news: firstly, monsters and demons across the globe have been successfully suppressed, and in just over twenty hours, the ghost energy concentration in the Earth-Moon System will drop to safe levels, then they'll be perfectly fine. This incident stirred up the Dark World and even had a certain impact on ordinary people. Supernatural events and so-called "miracles" have popped up worldwide, but all were kept within what public opinion could handle. The heroic spirits and Central Channel Ten have contributed greatly. As for the unsettling news: the United States and Russia are planning another moon landing together, with pilots already chosen.

And what's more surprising is that their spaceship will launch in two days.

"Everyone has a trump card, and for them, organizing a moon landing within days doesn't even require one," Sandora spoke to me with a mouth full of greasy food yet maintaining a serious expression, "In peacetime, it might take a long time to plan and prepare for a moon landing, but if needed, sending people to the moon is merely a longer distance space flight for Earthlings. They took a small step on the moon back in 1969. Thirty years later, it's not possible that they've made no progress, is it? Human moon exploration in recent years has only slowed down, not stalled their space technology."

"That's true," I said, reaching out to wipe Sandora's mouth. After wiping, I casually fed the napkin to her, "Who doesn't have something up their sleeve? Didn't Bubbles say they found a manned Mars landing capsule being assembled somewhere in the States? They should have a usable lunar spacecraft too."

"Wrong, they don't," Sandora shook her head, "I just checked the information links. None of the countries involved in this moon landing plan have a manned lunar spacecraft ready for immediate use. Humans have the potential, but it's also limited. They could only temporarily repurpose a spaceship intended for another space mission to forcibly send a machine to the moon. As for manned missions, it's not possible. That requires a lot of preparation time for humans—the upcoming landing is just an unmanned probe mission, and even this probe has only a fifty percent chance of successfully landing because current human space technologies are still constrained by 'window periods.' These couple of days are not opportune times for lunar exploration. Medusa, your intel is slightly off. Manned landing was vetoed by them in a meeting just six minutes ago because sending astronauts on a near-certain one-way trip would cause a public outcry."

At that moment, I felt a bit strange: on the other side of Earth, the people who wield the most influence on this planet were sitting in the Parliament Building, nervously discussing an urgent lunar exploration activity that could alter human history. Meanwhile, on this side of Earth, a young couple was sitting at a spicy hot pot stand, discussing the same thing in real-time. More intriguingly, strictly speaking, the latter's "spicy hot pot meeting" held more significance than the former.

"Why are they suddenly keen on a moon landing? What were they doing a few days ago?"

I spread my hands, showing my bewilderment towards the upper echelons of Earth's nations. After the lunar impact, I assumed humans would eventually succumb to curiosity and choose to visit the moon to find out what happened, but I didn't expect them to choose such a critical moment when everything seemed calm…

"That's just how it is with the politics of low-level civilizations," Sandora seemed knowledgeable, nodding as she spoke, "Two days of mutual bickering, two days of intense arguing, the last two days of neither backing down, and then taking five minutes to reach a conclusion. After the lunar impact, every country in the world had a proposal to land on the moon to check things out, but no one dared to act first unilaterally, until now when they had no choice but to make a decision. Only then did a few countries prepare to jointly explore the moon, dragging out until now to finally produce a definite plan—and they were probably pressured into making a quick, decisive move by the alien observational data."

I was taken aback, "Observational data?"

"The ghost energy readings between Earth and the Moon system," Sandora nodded, "Humans don't understand what this energy is, but at least they can observe it. Over these days, ghost energy radiation in the Earth-Moon system is sharply declining and will drop to a level within twenty hours that will no longer affect anything on Earth. Within a maximum of six days, it will completely disappear. Human scientists couldn't sit still under these circumstances, and those keen-sensed politicians aren't fools either. Nobody wants to watch a potential opportunity to change human history slip away through inaction during meetings—even though nobody knows exactly what this opportunity is. Anyway, they've brought out quite a few unpublished treasures, which are enough for them to launch a reusable probe to the moon without any pre-preparation."

"But hasn't research involving ghost energy (what Earth's scientists refer to as 'zero' energy) already been banned by governments in all countries?"

"Prohibiting the research on Ghost Energy is because this energy's attributes might overthrow the foundation of current human physics, but even if we don't research it, can't we at least figure out where the energy comes from?"

Having eaten and drunk to her fill, Sandora started talking more, as if she was fully revived, looking like an optimistic and carefree girl. I knew this was because the current situation was nothing serious in her eyes, and of course, it was the same for me. However, even if it wasn't a big deal, we couldn't just ignore it, so I connected spiritually with a few people at home, called out on the public channel, and instantly the whole family of idlers logged on.

"Ah Jun, Ah Jun, what's fun around here?" The first to shout was, of course, Qianqian. She knew I went to Shadow City to check the Voyage Log, so she was eager to know if there was another chance to stir up trouble in Otherworlds.

"Not much, several countries want to land on the Moon, and they're launching the spaceship in two days…"

Lilina immediately burst out, "Oh, oh, oh! Boss, just wait, it's time for Lilina to shine. I'll take down the spaceship for you… Ah! Big Sister, I was wrong!"

The spiritual connection was in chaos; the whole family of idlers was excited to finally have something that piqued their interest. Moreover, following Lilina's decision to take down the spaceship, the Divine Clan's Tiaozi Five immediately joined in and proposed many constructive ideas, like using Lin's shield to smash it down, pulling it down with a rope, fanning it down with wings, or ramming it down head-on with Yelsen's face…

Anyway, as soon as the topic opened up, it immediately focused on how to mess with the spaceship scheduled to launch in two months.

I had to shout loudly to quiet them down and immediately dismissed Lilina's second plan to "blow the ship down with a fart," then let Visca respond.

In the current situation, Visca was undoubtedly the person concerned the most, after all, a human probe was about to land on her head, even though the probe was nothing more than a speck of dust compared to Visca's other body.

"What do you think about Earthlings throwing stones at your head?"

Afraid of missing out on any chaos, Lilina said sarcastically in the spectator channel, sounding as if she was eager to convince Visca to destroy the world immediately.

Visca pondered for a few seconds. I was really worried she would decide to fire a shot from the moon to take down the Earthlings' spacecraft. Given this little girl's crazy nature, it wasn't impossible.

But surprisingly, Visca thought for a while and then leisurely said, "Whatever, I've already filled those three impact craters."

Everyone was instantly shocked within the spiritual connection.

Lilina was the craziest, naturally, she was also the loudest in such situations. On the spot, she shouted, "Hey, hey, hey, are you kidding me! Humans are going to land on the moon, that's like throwing a small stone on you for no reason and throwing a bunch of inexplicable living trash on you, can you tolerate it? At this time, you should flatten the world with a Helium Flash illuminating the horizon as your true homecoming!"

Having said this, Lilina let out another shrill scream, apparently, Big Sister had once again used family discipline.

Visca was completely unmoved by Lilina's incitement; no one knew what was going on in her mind, but through the spiritual connection, I seemed to see a slightly confused expression on that little girl's face. She thought for a long time, then dumbly said, "Let them do the Moon exploration, anyway, they have several satellites spinning around me all the time, I'm used to it, and I find it quite fun…"

When Visca said it was quite fun, she obviously paused for a moment, as if looking for words to describe the situation, then resolutely said, "It's like playing with ants, watching them crawl around exploring the grass—oh right brother, I found an ant hole at the door!"

Having heard that, I understood, yet my heart chilled a little.

Visca could tolerate humans launching probes at the moon, could tolerate a bunch of satellites flying in front of her "self," and could even tolerate humans leaving all kinds of strange instruments on the lunar surface, not because of generosity, but because she didn't consider Earthlings to be human at all.

When humans launched probes at the moon, Visca treated it with a playful attitude, as if playing with ants!

Even though I had long known that this little madman was particularly callous, and knew she had no guilty conscience about matters like racial extermination, this was the first time we experienced it so directly.

"Correcting Visca's worldview seems like a long way to go."

Sandora murmured to me in a low voice on the encrypted channel, "She lacks the moral compass that a Xyrin Apostle should have in this regard. A civilized race exploring the universe, even clumsily, should still be admirable, and that girl seems to have none of such thoughts."

Sandora was right, but no one could blame Visca for it, after all, during the time when the child most needed to shape her Xyrin Apostle worldview, she was being chased by her own kind.

Visca expressed no objection to humans about to explore the Moon, even though the reason for having no objection wasn't particularly inspiring, at least I didn't have to worry about the Moon probes, launched with difficulty in emergency cooperation by countries around the world, being taken down as a spur-of-the-moment prank by our family of troublemakers. On the contrary, both Big Sister and Sandora simultaneously showed concern for this special human space action, specifically they unexpectedly started watching the news together…

The Moon exploration plan was broadcast on the news the next morning, and it was aired simultaneously by major mainstream media worldwide. The countries capable of launching to outer space finally united this time to get something done, so leaders of the participating countries spared no effort in describing it as a milestone turning point for humanity, which was "We are on the verge of lifting the veil on whether humans are alone in the universe." But I think they are trying to lift Visca's veil…

Some sharp-eyed people naturally discovered lots of hidden truths. The easiest to think of is that some countries were indeed keeping their space capabilities under wraps. To launch a lunar probe in two days without any preparation (even counting from the day after the lunar impact, there'd only be seven or eight days of preparation), this was beyond what the general public knows about current human spaceflight levels. Clearly, someone was hiding something, but now nobody cared about these matters; the energy radiation in outer space was diminishing every minute, already reduced by sixty percent, hardly causing interference to any artificial satellites anymore, only detectable with precise instruments showing that this energy was still slowly radiating outward centered on the Moon. No one knew what hit the moon, but even fewer wanted to miss this chance to find out, scientists said there might be a celestial body with tremendous energy on the far side of the Moon, but now this celestial body was transforming into an ordinary rock. If you don't want to expose your space prowess? Sure, just don't cry when someone returns from the dark side of the moon with technology advanced enough to leap a thousand years ahead.

Though countries have banned direct research on this energy that blatantly violates physical commonsense, exploring the source of the energy emission is an unavoidable and most innate human impulse, namely curiosity and the desire to explore.

Thus, as time progressed, the most time-critical space mission in human history named "Dark Side of the Moon" finally unfolded right on schedule. (To be continued. If you like this work, please come to Qidian (qidian.com) to vote for recommendations and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation.)