Xeno spoke through the receiver, posing a question.
"Are you Dr. Taiju?"
Li Xiang froze, instinctively wondering whether her ears were playing tricks on her.
She raised an eyebrow, reached over to turn up the audio equipment beside her a little, and spoke into the microphone. "Could you say that again?"
There was a brief pause on the other end before Xeno's voice came through again.
"Are you Dr. Taiju?"
This time, Li Xiang was certain she had heard him correctly.
He knew the exact name "Dr. Taiju" and had gone out of his way to contact them across the ocean to test her identity. There was no need to think twice-she was ten billion percent sure Gen had told him.
They absolutely could not expose Senku right now. But whether they tried an ambush or laid a trap next, they would be at a disadvantage.
After weighing the pros and cons, Li Xiang took a deep breath and deliberately made her voice deeper and rougher.
"Yeah, I'm Taiju. What do you want with us?"
On the other end, Xeno chuckled softly. He had clearly noticed that the voice did not fit his imagined Dr. Taiju.
"Oh, your voice doesn't quite match how I imagined Dr. Taiju, but rebuilding a civilization on this scale in such a short time is quite impressive."
Then Xeno changed tack.
"This time... I would like to invite you to join me in using science to seize power and rule as dictators."
"With our cutting-edge knowledge, we could control everything. That sounds like a rather good plan, doesn't it?"
A gentle breeze swept across the deck. Li Xiang held the communications switch in silence for a long while before finally letting out a quiet chuckle.
"Say, Dr. Xeno, your current thinking seems to combine Plato's