Monster Dismantling Company

Chapter 63 Great Purification

The unusual event on the Yangtze River attracted everyone's attention. The lightning that shot straight into the sky was visible even from hundreds of kilometers away.

At the epicenter of the blue lightning, everyone saw the surface of the Yangtze River for the first time in a long time. The miasma that had been lingering over the river had been dispelled as a result.

For some, however, this blue lightning held an even more special significance—

Master Wang immediately looked towards the Xin'an Prefecture Defense Army and Commander Xia, who were not far away.

Their gazes burned brighter than the others', for they had seen this blue lightning before.

"It's... Azure Lightning! It's that Azure Lightning!"

Commander Xia, however, turned his gaze to Master Wang beside him in shock.

Li Lin disappeared. Qing Lei appeared.

Since the two events never occurred simultaneously, he had reason to suspect that Li Lin was involved. Furthermore, he did indeed know some inside information...

Master Wang met his gaze and looked over.

The aftershocks of the explosion parted the dark clouds, allowing sunlight to filter through and fall between the two figures. In the long-awaited sunshine, their gazes locked in a fierce confrontation. But as the clouds closed, the sunlight vanished, and their faces returned to their somber hues.

"What do you know?" he finally asked Master Wang.

His memory of that bolt of blue lightning was etched into his very being. It was that very bolt of lightning that shot from the crack in the earth into the sky that directly catalyzed the splitting of the monster [Birch Tree]. In an instant, a tsunami of miasma engulfed the entire city, destroying tens of thousands of square kilometers of habitable land from humanity's precious territory.

The current Xin'an Prefecture is built entirely within the cracks of miasma-ridden wasteland. Li Lin had visited it during his journey; the entire city was not built using technology found on Earth, but rather sealed off like a lunar colony.

Although such a fully enclosed militarized city was expensive to build, the coalition government was determined to reclaim the lost territory. While the miasma in that land was not yet fully settled, the Sinan Prefecture Defense Force was investigating the site of the atomic bomb day and night.

Just like the current campaign against Raize, once the investigation is complete, the United Government will issue the war order for the "Great Purification," mobilizing a large army across the entire territory to conquer it and level the remaining filth on that land with overwhelming force.

However, even for the coalition government, implementing the "Great Purification" requires planning. The flame of purifying the land comes not only from strong will but also from substantial military spending. Military spending itself is limited, but each city feels it has a greater need for purification. Therefore, the specific plan must compete among numerous proposals and investigation reports submitted by various cities.

The clearer the objective, the more feasible the plan, and the more complete the investigation report, the easier it will be to capture the "major cleanup".

Xin'an Prefecture's biggest goal now is to achieve a major cleanup, so as to reclaim its homeland once and for all.

Despite submitting reports every year, Sinan Province's plans were never approved – while the pollution in Sinan Province hadn't yet solidified, the investigation into its sources had made virtually no progress. The "Conquest of Raize" project, the number one major undertaking for dredging the Grand Canal, was also scheduled for the year. Sinan Province couldn't compete with it, but it still had a chance to compete for the next opportunity.

If they keep delaying this year until next year, and then the year after that, and if the pollution in Xin'an State becomes entrenched in a few years, their report probably won't even make it to the coalition government's meeting table.

Running a completely enclosed city like Sinanju is incredibly expensive. If all hope of reclaiming the lost territory is lost, the entire city may face the crisis of being abandoned. Its name, along with the land itself, will be completely swallowed up by miasma.

"You should know what I mean," Commander Xia said, looking at him.

Master Wang looked straight ahead: "I don't understand what you mean."

"Then I'll be frank—" Commander Xia looked around and took a few steps closer to Master Wang, "That bolt of blue lightning, is it related to your family's Li Lin?"

Master Wang still didn't look at him: "No comment."

"I only need you to answer yes or no."

My answer remains "no comment."

"Listen," he said, taking two more steps closer. "I want to explain the importance of this. Would you like a more serious explanation, or a more lighthearted one?"

Master Wang remained expressionless: "That's your problem."

"Okay, let me put it more vividly—my home, the neighborhood where I lived as a child, is now buried in a 50-meter-thick mountain of poop. On a clear day, you can occasionally see the rooftops, but on cloudy or rainy days, you can't see anything at all. The Zhong Kui co-branded limited edition console that my dad bought me when I was a kid is still sitting at home. My dad keeps telling me every now and then what things we still have at home that we haven't taken out yet, thinking that we have to go back there before we die."

You call this "lively"?!

"I'm already being quite lively by talking to you about some specific things. But I also have some less lively ones. For example, we can calculate that in the 39 years since the establishment of the coalition government, the 'Great Purification' has only been launched 41 times—in principle, once a year, with additional slots only added in emergencies. The plan to retake Xin'an Prefecture is still far from being realized, and the livelihoods of our millions of canal workers depend on it. If we really push them too far, it's hard to say what they might do."

Master Wang finally looked at him: "Even if you say that, I still have nothing to say. Although I am Li Lin's guardian, I will not make decisions for him. On that basis, I would like to give you some advice from a friend's perspective—don't mess with him, the consequences of messing with him are terrifying."

"So what if I said this wasn't a request, nor a threat, but a deal? Or that I felt he would profit even more?"

"What do you mean?"

Commander Xia said in a deep voice, "Our investigations over the years haven't been entirely fruitless. There's some news that I think Li Lin might be interested in..."

As the two talked, the void in the sky gradually returned to normal. The surging clouds blocked the last rays of sunlight from shining down.

In the instant the clouds closed, one could vaguely see that on the other side of the clouds, at the top of the sky, an even deeper void was also closing—the edges of the void were bands of light dancing like the aurora borealis, and the area blasted open revealed a corner of the starry sky. However, just like the clouds, the void also gradually closed under the surging of the bands of light, once again separating the heavens from the earth.

Everything was as if nothing had happened.

...

A moment later, Li Lin regained consciousness from his brief dizziness. Another version of himself stood before him, but it was not a human face.