Awakened, although exceedingly rare, were people ordinary folks might never encounter in their entire lives.
But to the great families, whose histories often stretched back hundreds or even thousands of years, they were by no means impossible to encounter.
That was because most of the great families in this world were, in essence, forces established by various Awakened.
The reason certain great families could endure for generations was precisely because the Awakened within their families were still alive, or because new Awakened had emerged among their descendants.
Normally speaking,
as long as a great family had an Awakened among its ranks, continuing the family line was hardly a difficult matter.
The various benefits and compromises others were forced to concede alone were enough to provide the family with sufficient profits to survive for a long time!
Conversely, once a great family holding important interests lost the support of an Awakened, it would become very difficult for them to continue maintaining their position.
They would either have to relinquish the relevant core interests,
or find an external Awakened to submit to and voluntarily pay protection money.
In short,
all the great families and major forces would inevitably have dealings with various Awakened.
The Sixteen Nights Family, where the Ye Qi Three Sisters had once lived, naturally had to operate the same way to wield considerable influence in Sakura District, a prosperous area.
The reason the Sixteen Nights Family had been able to maintain its interests for so long was precisely because it had an Awakened among its ranks!
Furthermore,
based on that Awakened's existence,
when other Awakened interacted with that person through various social connections,
the members of the Sixteen Nights Family could naturally take advantage of the opportunity to come into contact with even more Awakened!
It was like a special circle.
Ordinary people could not reach it,
nor did they feel anything about it at all.
But the people involved knew every detail and were thoroughly familiar with how things worked.
While the Ye Qi Three Sisters were falling asleep one after another, somewhere in the outskirts of Tokyo City,
the area where Xi Shenlian had previously tested his powers was rather lively.
In this place, now reduced to nothing but devastation, several hundred people were conducting surveys with various pieces of equipment.
Even helicopters were sweeping the area with their searchlights, flying back and forth to inspect it.
"...Have you still not found out which Awakened did this?"
The question came from the person in charge.
"Not yet."
His assistant respectfully replied:
"An Awakened capable of doing something like this is at least at the mature stage. People like that often cannot be completely monitored. If we let our guard down for even a moment, we have no idea where they might run off to. And if they deliberately conceal their movements, it becomes even harder for us to detect them..."
Around forty hours earlier,
local residents had reported to the government that a small earthquake had occurred nearby late at night.
Originally,
the government had not paid much attention.
The earthquake had only cracked several houses, after all.
It had not even brought them down!
They could just contact the insurance company and be done with it.
But before long, the personnel following the source of the tremors discovered a problem.
They found that the vibrations had originated from a section of ground several hundred kilometers away from the residential area.
An earthquake several hundred kilometers away had cracked houses?
Could someone have been conducting a large-scale nuclear test underground here?
The personnel involved were so alarmed that they immediately reported the matter to the government departments.
After that,
the government departments successfully discovered, in the virgin forest, a surface trench more than twenty kilometers long, with both its depth and width reaching dozens or even hundreds of meters, as well as devastation everywhere that looked as though a large-scale nuclear war had taken place.
The person in charge was not surprised by his assistant's answer. His face was filled with distress:
"...Those monsters... They cause huge disturbances at the drop of a hat."
"They make us work overtime in the middle of the night to deal with all kinds of nonsense..."
His words were filled with the helplessness of being forced to work overtime.
Then,
he turned his gaze toward a distant area where dozens of people were repeatedly taking measurements.
It was a crater roughly two kilometers in diameter, with an average depth of around two hundred meters.
"Have they still not finished measuring it?"
"They've gone back and forth seven or eight times, haven't they?"
"What's there to measure repeatedly about one big crater?"
"Is there oil inside?"
Faced with this question,
the assistant was also puzzled, so he sent a message to inquire about it.
Then,
after a brief silence,
the assistant replied:
"They originally only intended to measure it once, but based on the terrain, they quickly discovered that the crater was not originally flat ground. It had been an entire mountain... So they plan to measure the data several more times to deduce the result."
"Based on the deductions available so far, the mountain was originally around four hundred to six hundred meters tall. The person who did this should have launched a horizontal attack, directly shattering the mountain, while the remaining force struck the air and dissipated without a trace. If the other party had attacked the ground directly, based on the researchers' feedback, hundreds of kilometers away, a large number of houses might have collapsed and many people might have been crushed to death..."
The leader was immediately shocked upon hearing this:
"Power of this magnitude... An Awakened at the self stage?"
"There are only a little over twenty people of that level in all of Dongying, and every one of them is under the strictest surveillance. Why would they sneak here in the middle of the night to destroy the forest?"
Although it was called surveillance,
in practice, it was more about appeasing them and restricting their movements.
The government did not want a group of people more dangerous than high-yield nuclear warheads—people capable of slaughtering surface civilization single-handedly if no one of equal strength or a super weapon stopped them—to suddenly vanish from sight or hide in the shadows.
Therefore,
once the surveillance personnel discovered that a target's movements were strange, even the prime minister would have to call immediately to ask what was happening.
"We still don't know, but the various traces at the scene and the deductions are being compiled. We should be able to see the results shortly."
"However... I feel this matter has already exceeded the scope of what we can handle."
"We should transfer authority over the matter as soon as possible."
The leader did not deny his assistant's words. Instead, he nodded in complete agreement:
"That is our only option."
"Although we don't know why that person went to the virgin forest in the middle of the night, there must have been a reason..."
"Once the deduction results are out, contact the higher-ups immediately..."
By the end,
the person in charge was also somewhat worried.
He deeply felt that he was facing some unimaginable, massive turmoil!
His mind could not help but conjure up all kinds of conspiracies...
And the person responsible for causing all this,
Xi Shenlian was lying in the presidential suite of a five-star hotel, calmly playing some shooting game.
In the game,
thanks to his vastly superior reaction speed, he was effortlessly slaughtering every other player, finding it even easier than fighting bots!
If you asked whether he felt any joy from the game,
he could only say no.
The difficulty was simply too low.
So he could not feel any sense of accomplishment at all.
But when he thought about how miserable the other players were,
he felt at least somewhat comforted~~
Thanks to reader Silent Words Wu Words for the 100 Qidian Coins! Thanks to reader Reader20210403170133667 for the 100 Qidian Coins! Thanks to Pinecone Oak Tower for the 100 Qidian Coins! Thanks to the Supreme Sect for the 100 Qidian Coins!
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