Chapter 33: The World's Turning Point
That evening, Qin Xiaoxia and Doudou returned to Huang Jiutian's apartment on their own. The poor overtime slaves had originally planned to finish work at eleven.
But a sudden phone call from the boss and chief engineer left the design department with no choice but to work through the night.
The preliminary proposal, originally due the day after tomorrow, was now due tomorrow afternoon.
Even an outsider like Qin Xiaoxia could tell that the boss and chief engineer of Huang Jiutian's company must have just attended some meeting and called as soon as it ended.
This kind of race against time usually only happened during bidding. For it to happen in the early stages of construction design could only mean that the project's importance and urgency had reached considerable heights.
As the manager of Huang Jiutian's design department put it, "The higher-ups asking about this seem to rank even higher than we imagined!"
Neither Doudou nor Qin Xiaoxia dared to guarantee anymore that the "dam" of world power was holding firm.
His own crossing might still be attributed to the wonders of wish power, but how could they explain the Dread Marsh and the Faceless Yin Ghost?
Once could be an accident. What about twice?
And how could they be sure there hadn't been a third or fourth time somewhere he and Doudou knew nothing about?
Qin Xiaoxia didn't know when all of this had begun, but it couldn't have been very long ago. A year or two at most, perhaps even just a few months.
He had reached this conclusion based on the following points.
First, the timing of the projects currently assigned to the various construction firms where Huang Jiutian and his classmates worked;
Second, the three "invasions by otherworldly species" he had encountered, including Doudou;
And third, a feeling.
Ever since his magic had awakened, especially after what Qin Xiaoxia considered his "elvenization," there had always been an indescribable sense of mutual connection between him and the "environment."
Of course, Doudou had told Qin Xiaoxia that the transformation his body underwent in the hospital was definitely not "elvenization," or at least not any known form of it. But aside from keeping that detail in mind, it didn't stop Qin Xiaoxia from borrowing the name for his condition.
Fundamentally speaking, although his physical structure seemed unchanged, Qin Xiaoxia could no longer be considered human-or rather, he had transcended ordinary humanity.
He could now often sense exchanges of information arising between his soul, body, and magic on one side and unconventional aspects of the world on the other.
"Ah..."
Qin Xiaoxia couldn't help sighing.
He wasn't someone with an extraordinary sense of justice. Becoming evil's sworn enemy like Superman was absolutely not in his vocabulary.
But Qin Xiaoxia wasn't cold-blooded, either.
In the end, he simply couldn't pretend nothing was happening while watching the world slip, step by step, into some unknown state.
Especially when the outcome might very well be a genuine end of the world.
And Qin Xiaoxia had a feeling.
This end of the world wouldn't be the so-called "nuclear apocalypse," "ice age," "age of pollution," or any of the other things people used to bring up so often.
At most, those would spell the end of humanity. The world itself wouldn't give a damn.
Even if humanity went extinct, the world would still be the world. After tens of thousands of years, or perhaps just a few centuries or millennia, something like Smurf cockroach people might appear.
But this change in the world was different.
The entire world was already in some special state, as though it were about to face a momentous upheaval.
Qin Xiaoxia hardly dared imagine what that might bring.
"I wonder how much the various leaders of our great humanity know right now, and how much they've prepared?"
"If all they're doing is building a few 'defensive works'... that won't be enough..."
Lying on Huang Jiutian's bed, Qin Xiaoxia raised his hand, looking somewhat dazed.
In the center of his palm was a deeply branded mark of "Dawn."
The Dawn Association.
It had been founded in Europe during the early Middle Ages.
In that age of ignorant people and a world steeped in darkness, its members had seized a "business opportunity."
It was an organization that traveled around swindling wealthy merchants, nobles, and even royalty under the guise of reclusive masters and wizardry.
At one point, it had grown so large that even its own members were astonished.
Yet for such an organization of swindlers, its membership requirements were extremely strict.
One of its ironclad rules was-loyalty.
And so, as a restraint, all full members had their palms branded.
As Qin Xiaoxia understood it:
With this brand, if you betrayed the association, you wouldn't escape even if you fled to the ends of the earth.
Even if you were ruthless enough to cut off your own hand, you would only have a chance of getting away.
After all, for a "super-swindler" syndicate like Dawn to endure for hundreds of years and more, its members' intelligence and the number of talented people within its ranks had to be beyond imagination.
Of course, the brand also carried another, thoroughly brazen meaning.
If the association truly encountered a force it couldn't resist, then everyone would go down together!
But after the Renaissance, people gradually began to emerge from ignorance, and the elites of the upper classes grew increasingly shrewd.
"Business went bad," and naturally, the association slowly declined.
But nostalgic people existed everywhere, and skilled individuals often survived better than others. The association didn't simply disappear. Instead, it kept shifting its field of operations, generally "migrating" in inverse proportion to a population's degree of "enlightenment."
By the present day, the Dawn Association existed in name only. Its last-generation administrator, Qin Xiaoxia, was merely a way for Old Qin to hold on to a cherished memory.
"At least the association won't die out in my hands!"
That had been one of Old Qin's few final remarks.
Over the centuries, Dawn had left footprints all across the world. In some places, it had even left behind impressively grand "historical sites."
And thanks to humanity's age-old sense of shame, along with the publicity spread by ignorant busybodies and clueless admirers, what little historical assessment Dawn received was actually a mixture of praise and criticism.
Qin Xiaoxia remembered a senior student telling him this back in college.
"If you can make every teacher forget you, then you've succeeded as a student coasting leisurely toward graduation!"
A variation on that statement would serve just as well to sum up Dawn now.
"For something that should have been infamous, getting history to 'almost forget' it and blurring people's understanding of what it was could certainly be called a success for Dawn!"
Although Su Su's behavior that day had troubled Qin Xiaoxia quite a bit at one point,
It had also given him some inspiration.
Perhaps, deep down, everyone branded with "Dawn" was a lunatic.
Of course, being a lunatic didn't mean being an idiot. Even if he acted, he would have to do so with clear information in hand.
Beside him, Doudou watched Qin Xiaoxia alternate between muttering to himself and bowing his head in thought.
His mental state kept shifting, and the magic around Qin Xiaoxia rose and fell with it, stirring waves of barely perceptible resonance with the surrounding environment.
As always, this sensation filled Doudou with an inexplicable dread and raised goose bumps all over him.
Quietly, he hugged the "dirty beer bottle," walked over to Huang Jiutian's computer, and turned it on to browse the internet.
Oh, incidentally, Qin Xiaoxia had said that Doudou was fully responsible for the beer bottle. If anything happened before they got home, Doudou would have to clean up the mess himself.
So many readers are familiar faces from before. It's a really nice feeling.