Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
Translated by XephiZ
Edited by Aelryinth
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“Brother Mo Fan, isn’t that a little inappropriate?” Xinxia blushed instantly. She could feel the people around staring at them occasionally.
“It’s fine, I don’t feel tired.”
Mo Fan was carrying Xinxia in her arms and walking casually through the school. Somehow, Mo Fan seemed natural and carefree, while Xinxia had to dig her head into Mo Fan’s arms so people would not recognize her.
They finally found a deserted corner. The bench had plenty of space, but Mo Fan insisted she sit on his lap, claiming the bench was too cold for her.
Xinxia had been paying the price for being too obedient to Mo Fan since a long time ago. She could not find any words to rebuke Mo Fan’s illogical reasons.
“The city has changed so much,” Xinxia said in a worried tone.
Their homeland’s situation was quite worrying. Xinxia had already done everything she could to send disciples of the Parthenon Temple to China. She had even established branches of the Parthenon Temple in the five Headquarters Cities.
Unfortunately, they did not have enough Healers to treat the injured. After all, it was a disastrous war!
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“Did we already lose the coastal cities?” Mo Fan asked her
“Mm, we have a serious problem,” Xinxia plucked a frozen leaf off a nearby tree and continued, “The weather has been like this since the people along the coast started moving inland. It has been snowing even in summer. It’s snowing even in the subtropical cities, like Guangdong.”
The temperatures along the coast were supposed to be fairly constant throughout all the seasons. Even a city like Dalian in the north was warmer than other cities inland because of its geographical location.
The further a city was from the sea, the greater the change of temperature. The coastal areas barely got any snow since the temperatures were not low enough.
However, the whole country had entered a strange cold season. Even the coasts, from Hainan to Qinhuangdao, were starting to get snow.
The inland cities were even worse if the coastal areas were already snowing. Mo Fan had noticed a lot of frozen ponds and lakes when he passed Dongting Lake.
Cold weather was worse than hot weather. Crops would not survive if the land was covered in snow. It would also severely impact transportation, thus slowing down the migration of the people from the coastal cities. A huge snowfall was enough to cripple the roads, the railways, and even seal off crucial routes to and from certain cities in the mountains.
Mo Fan had been gone for a year. A lot had changed to the coasts in that time.
Many cities and towns had disappeared. Only five cities and regions were available for human activities now. They were the five Headquarters Cities!
Even though the five Headquarters Cities had more space and bigger safe zones than other cities, the space for human activities had reduced significantly compared to what it was before.
Migrating inland was a better way to counter the sea monsters’ invasion. People had started to abandon the coasts, but the cold weather had taken the country by surprise!
A lot of vegetation in the mountains, forests, and valleys had died from the extreme weather. Greenery had reduced by seventy percent. The inland regions and the west were just as inhabitable as the coasts.
To the east was the sea, where the sea monsters were invading from like a red tide. They had devoured most of the coasts, leaving only five Headquarters Cities that were stranded like islands.
The west of China was facing harsh weather. The forests were covered in snow, while the rivers had frozen. There was a serious shortage of food and water. The crippled transportation system had only made things worse. The cities to the west were already struggling to look after themselves. How were they going to take care of the migrants from the coasts?
People used to believe China had a lot of land available. Even if their cities were taken by the sea monsters, they could just move inland and preserve their strength until they were ready for a counterattack.
But now, the people had found themselves in a pinch, caught between the natural disaster and the invasion of the sea monsters. Everything was different when Mo Fan returned.
It felt like the era of human cities had already passed. They were greeted by an Apocalypse, being castigated by the sea and ice.
Mo Fan had been gone for a year. He did not expect to return to such a different world.
However, Mo Fan knew it was the reality of the current situation.
The battles in the past were only the sea monsters’ moves to sound out the humans’ response. A real clash had yet to occur. The real fighting had obviously begun, and humans had lost miserably, without a doubt.
Their biggest problem was not to beat the sea monsters. It was how they were going to survive!
“Every country in the Pacific Ocean is in the same situation as our country,” Xinxia informed him.
Mo Fan was struggling to calm down. He wondered if everything had happened all of a sudden, or he had been gone for too long. He was having trouble adapting to the situation.
“Is everyone alright?” Mo Fan asked. That was his biggest concern.
“Mm, for now. They are doing their best, too,” Xinxia reassured him.
“Xinxia, you must know something about the direction the world is heading from your role as a Saintess. Are the sea monsters really unstoppable? What’s causing the cold weather that is sealing off the people’s escape?” Mo Fan asked her.
Mo Fan rarely asked Xinxia about her domain, but he could not turn a blind eye anymore after learning the current situation of the world.
She had to know something about the truth as a Saintess of the Parthenon Temple.
Many truths were kept hidden from the general public. What the public knew and the truths that the people at the apex of society knew were often completely different.
“I don’t know much about the sea monsters, but there’s only one thing that can cause the temperature across the world to lower at this scale: the South Pole Emperor,” Xinxia declared.
The South Pole Emperor!
He was the reason why the sea level had risen. The sea monsters were able to invade human cities blatantly because the South Pole Emperor had melted the icebergs that were initially blocking the sea monsters’ paths.
The South Pole Emperor had now chilled the entire world to further compress human territory.
Not a single drop of the blood that was shed so far had leaked out between the gaps of his claws, but he was responsible for so many deaths!
Most importantly, the human leaders already knew what was going to happen, yet they were still busy fighting among themselves!
“Shao Zheng was forced to resign,” Xinxia went on coolly.
Mo Fan dropped his jaw, lost for words.
Chairman Shao Zheng was an impressive man. Any leader would be helpless to stop such a disaster. In contrast, Chairman Shao Zheng was the one who had proposed to the Magic Association ot set up a defensive perimeter along the coastline before anything happened.
Chairman Shao Zheng deserved all the credit when China had sustained the lowest casualties after the invasion of the sea monsters began.
And yet, he was forced to resign?!
Were the authorities of their homeland no longer united?
“Brother Mo Fan…” Xinxia felt lost too.
She had once considered whether she should continue to compete in the election. She had to make a lot of sacrifices in order to win the election.
However, she realized she could not give up after seeing her homeland’s state.
Compared to the Goddess of the Parthenon Temple, a Saintess did not have a lot of say and power.
Even if she could not change what had already happened, she could at least minimize the suffering!