Tier classifications
Shen Heng nodded, then looked at Wei Leyang with some confusion.
"Who's Old Li?"
"Old Li handles our logistics!" Wei Leyang explained.
"Wait, the bureau has elderly people too? Can elderly people kill Calamity Beasts?" Shen Heng asked.
"Old Li's wife and Dahuang risked their lives to hold it off, and they finally managed to kill the Calamity Beast!" Wei Leyang explained, his voice unconsciously dropping. "Although the Calamity Beast died in the end, Old Li's wife passed away too. It took a desperate effort to save Old Li's life!"
"Whine..." Dahuang whined softly, seemingly remembering his former mistress.
Shen Heng nodded in sympathy, looking at Dahuang. "Then doesn't Dahuang live with that old man-um, Old Li?"
"He does, but Old Li's getting on in years and has a little trouble walking Dahuang. So whenever he comes in for his daytime shift, he brings him to our team and asks us to help walk him if we have time!" Wei Leyang explained.
The two began waiting at the front desk.
"By the way, your ability is Thread Control? Sounds pretty good!" Shen Heng struck up a casual conversation to avoid an awkward silence.
"Heh... you bet!"
Wei Leyang unconsciously straightened his back.
"I'm not bragging, but nobody on the team has an ability with more uses or more practical applications than mine!"
"With Thread Control, I could swing all over the city just like that foreign Spider-Man!"
"But that's way too low-class. Thread Control is clearly a ranged attack ability. I should be a mage. Why would I fight up close?"
"Once I get a little stronger, I'll be able to fight entirely at range through my threads!"
"Directing the battle from my command tent, securing victory a thousand miles away-that's what suits my status as a behind-the-scenes big shot!"
"Then I'll oust the captain and take over his position myself. Everything will be perfect!"
"..."
Shen Heng fell silent. He suddenly realized that perhaps he wasn't very good at conversation.
Just then, a shout rang out. Someone was calling him.
"Shen Heng!"
Shen Heng turned toward the voice and saw Wang Hai standing by the stairs, waving him over.
Shen Heng breathed a sigh of relief. He could finally leave.
He turned to Wei Leyang and said, "They're calling me over there. I'll head over!"
"Ah, all right. We'd only just started talking. I was hoping we could chat a little longer!" Wei Leyang nodded with some regret.
There's really no need... Shen Heng silently added to himself, then turned and walked toward Wang Hai.
"You seem a little out of sorts?" Wang Hai glanced at Shen Heng's face.
Shen Heng fell silent for a moment, Han Ling's comments about those abilities yesterday involuntarily surfacing in his mind.
He hesitated, then said, "Yeah, I didn't sleep well last night!"
Wang Hai nodded, not giving it much thought.
After all, after more than a decade of normal life, being suddenly told that the world wasn't what you thought it was would naturally lead to insomnia.
Wang Hai said, "Since you've decided to join the Supervision Bureau, I'll start by telling you about the current situation with the overlap between the two worlds."
"Over the past ten years, Calamity Beasts have been projecting over more and more frequently, and they've been getting stronger too."
"At the very beginning, there were only a handful of Calamity Beast incidents worldwide in an entire year. Now, even here in Linhai City, we encounter two or three a month."
"And that rate is still increasing. Last year, we only encountered one a month, occasionally two. This year, even though March isn't over yet, we've already encountered seven."
"In other words, it's now settled at two a month, occasionally three!"
"That number may rise rapidly in the future. That's also why I told you things might become increasingly dangerous!"
"Mm!" Shen Heng nodded in understanding.
"You don't seem surprised?" Wang Hai glanced at Shen Heng.
"I thought it might be something like this yesterday!" Shen Heng replied.
"Could you deduce all this from the information you had?" Wang Hai looked at Shen Heng with a trace of scrutiny.
"Not in that much detail, but I could roughly deduce that the two worlds were slowly overlapping!" Shen Heng replied.
"What clues led you to that conclusion?" Wang Hai asked.
"The lack of any related news, the possibility that things would become increasingly dangerous, asking me to keep it secret..." Shen Heng listed his clues.
After a moment's thought, Wang Hai nodded and said approvingly:
"So we were the ones who leaked the information after all. Though, since you'd already awakened, we weren't trying to keep it secret from you anyway. Still, you're much cleverer than I imagined!"
"This hardly counts as clever. Plenty of people could figure it out if they were willing to think." Shen Heng shook his head.
"That may be true, but a lot of people these days aren't even willing to use their brains!" Wang Hai said.
Shen Heng didn't dwell on the matter, instead asking, "Then how strong are the strongest humans and the strongest invading Calamity Beasts right now?"
"That brings us to the classification of strength!"
Wang Hai's expression turned serious as he explained:
"Based on their research into Origin Power, humans, and Calamity Beasts, headquarters has inferred that the realms should be divided into tiers zero through nine."
"Tier zero means ordinary people or those who've just awakened, while tier nine is the limit for carbon-based life-forms. In theory, carbon-based life-forms cannot break through that limit!"
"And it's very simple to determine which tier you're in. You just look at the Origin Power stored in your body. The more Origin Power your body stores, the higher your tier naturally is!"
"Only Origin Power, not physical attributes?" Shen Heng asked.
"No, that is measuring physical attributes!" Wang Hai replied.
"Didn't you just say you only looked at..."
Shen Heng stopped halfway through. Seemingly realizing something, he turned to Wang Hai for confirmation:
"Physical attributes directly determine how much Origin Power the body can store?"
"Exactly!" Wang Hai replied.
Shen Heng nodded thoughtfully, then asked again:
"Then what tier are the strongest humans and Calamity Beasts right now?"
Wang Hai replied, "The strongest people in our country are currently tier five. There are five of them: two in the Capital, one in Chang'an, one in Shenzhen, and one in Magic City. As for the strongest Calamity Beast, it was a Qilin Ice Lizard that appeared on the plateau the year before last. It was also tier five!"
"The strongest Calamity Beast already appeared the year before last?" Shen Heng repeated.
"Yes!" Wang Hai nodded. "And the overlap between the two worlds is constantly deepening. The later a Calamity Beast appears, the stronger it may be. Going forward, we could receive news of a tier-six Calamity Beast appearing somewhere at any moment! It might even appear right here!"
Shen Heng took a deep breath and slowly nodded.
As they talked, the two had reached an office on the third floor. Wang Hai opened the door and led Shen Heng inside.
It was a spacious office, with a sofa and coffee table on the right and a reddish-brown desk on the left. A computer monitor and several folders sat on the desk, with a large cabinet behind it. Besides these, several potted green plants stood beneath the window.
The two went over to the desk and sat down. Wang Hai took a contract that had already been prepared out of a drawer and handed it over.
"Read through this contract first and see if there are any issues."