Chapter 521: Chapter 516: No Wonder Ye Xingyan Said Man Proposes, Heaven Disposes
Ye Xingyan paused.
Ji Ning seemed to see through him, "These people sponsored Qi Shixiao, and they sponsored you too, right?"
"Commander, they’re just businessmen, they don’t involve themselves in power struggles." Ye Xingyan feared Ji Ning might overturn their tables, so he explained.
"Not involved? So naive..." Ji Ning looked at Ye Xingyan with displeasure, "A group only caring for profits would not involve themselves in power struggles? Publicly flying the banner of doing business while secretly doing things like digging up ancestors’ graves. Stirring wars across continents to profit from disasters? Fewer such businessmen would be better, don’t you think?"
Ye Xingyan remained silent for a long time, Ji Ning looked at the tumultuous waves outside and said calmly, "I think before going to Beizhou, doing something meaningful would be better."
Ye Xingyan: ...
***
[Zero]as a powerful Smart Brain, with Ji Ning’s assistance, breached several continental Smart Brain systems, successfully inflicting massive economic losses on some of the world’s wealthiest families.
Their wealth diminished by more than half, yet these families had no idea who was behind it.
Qi Shixiao looked at the latest financial report and had a vague sense of foreboding.
He felt this might be related to the newly elevated Commander with supreme Smart Brain authority.
Soon after, these families with evaporating assets were exposed in various scandals, continuously trending on social media, providing global citizens with entertainment for a month.
They had no choice but to declare bankruptcy, liquidate family assets, and keep a low profile.
During this period, the Qi Family and other families from the Hua Continent were also exposed for abusing public office, violating Huazhou Alliance laws, and had massive assets seized.
Qi Shixiao was quietly taken away for investigation, and his associated enterprises and international capital were included on the Huazhou investigation list.
The Qi Family had no choice but to seek help from the Lin Family.
They even tried to use Lin Yuanyang’s connections to reach that Commander.
Lin Yuanyang naturally refused to contact Ji Ning, even turning away his long-unseen grandparents.
The matter of his mother’s death due to the Qi Family was a permanent thorn in his heart, never to be erased.
At this time, Ji Ning was already deep in the Beizhou continent, in a secretly constructed research base.
On the massive meteorological screen, over a certain area of the Nanling Pollution Zone, a massive spinning cloud cluster appeared, as if it were a typhoon making landfall.
No wonder Ye Xingyan said human plans can’t compete with divine plans.
Such bizarre extreme weather, how can one not suspect something wrong with that area?
After Ji Ning had [Zero] connect to Beizhou’s Smart Brain program, he discovered it was a space research center before the chaos, preserving abundant cosmic data proving the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations.
Ji Ning was shocked, the more he looked, the more his brows furrowed.
The duration of the preserved data could not be faked, and [Zero] also retrieved detailed operation logs of the database system, with no time modification records.
So all this information was true, not Ye Xingyan’s wild imagination.
"If this intercepted information from 200 years ago is real, then there is currently an advanced civilization fleet targeting our planet. I suspect the locator is in Region 318217." Ye Xingyan said seriously to Ji Ning, placing a piece of top-secret information in front of him.
"And this document, it records in detail that the abnormality in the Nanling area already appeared before the chaos."
The content Ye Xingyan showed Ji Ning was incomplete, only the first half was readable, the second half was burned for unknown reasons.
But it recorded in detail how a plant research expedition team discovered an unknown virus deep in a forest in Nanling, with half the team infected. At first, they only experienced numbness in the torso, thinking they were bitten by some unknown poisonous insects, and injected themselves with some anti-venom serum.
But the effect was not good, as members’ limbs became increasingly stiff, even their thoughts became rigid.
They had to seek help from the outside world, and while waiting for rescue, someone in the team suddenly stopped breathing. The researchers merely wrapped the body in a layer of plastic sheet.
Unexpectedly, that same night, the colleague they thought was dead actually sat up, scaring everyone.
When someone went to check, they found the colleague, like a zombie, climbing up from the ground with closed eyes, stiffly heading in a certain direction, just like the undead in movies.
Everyone was frightened, attacking the corpse with anything handy.
But the corpse didn’t feel pain, only knowing to walk forward.
It wasn’t until a researcher suggested using fire that they completely turned the corpse to ash.
They collected the ashes, intending to take them back.
But then another colleague suddenly stopped breathing.
Afraid of a repeat incident, they cremated the dead colleague early and collected the ashes again.
In an attempt to study why these colleagues suddenly turned into living dead, they collected nearby soil and other environmental samples before boarding the plane to study.
But without waiting for their research, all these people suddenly died and turned into living dead, being studied by others.
And these materials were written by those studying them.
Through testing of the bodies, ashes, and environmental samples, the researchers discovered that an unknown spore, upon invading the human body, releases a virus that rapidly reproduces using the body as a carrier, deceiving the immune system to attack the body’s healthy organs, causing death. But the virus doesn’t die; it quickly alters the body’s structure to move as if alive again.
This was the form of the first-generation mutant undead at the onset of the chaos.
Ji Ning had long thought these mutant undead were caused by radiation and pollution from weapons of mass destruction, unaware that they existed before the chaos.
To study these miraculous spores, these researchers moved their lab into the depths of Nanling, cultivating spores with different bodies.
Observing which spores grow better, but before they could draw conclusions, the chaos arrived.
Hot weapons destroyed everything, including the experimental subjects in the lab.
Since then, no one knew about the spores’ condition.
Ye Xingyan said, "This time, the records of the materials indicate that some critical information from before the chaos was burned. It looks like intentional burning, unlike damage from hot weapons. So I suspect that before the chaos, some major discoveries were made on these spores, yet for some reasons, the lab results and materials had to be destroyed."
Ji Ning looked at the somewhat unclear pictures on the materials, and memories long sealed began to surface—
"Anning, while you were asleep, a girl asked me to give this to you, saying it would protect you to grow up safely. You have pierced ears, so wear them." The old professor, full of affection, handed her what seemed to be an ordinary earring.
She had just turned six at the time.
Her parents, following family tradition, had pierced her ears on her birthday, but before the blood on her earlobes dried, a bomb exploded above her village.
Her parents died immediately trying to save her.
She was knocked unconscious by the blast, and when she awoke, the Ji Family Village was in ruins.
She seemed to be the only survivor.
To survive, she had to scavenge for food and water beneath the village’s ruins, only to find under a heavy stone slab the old chieftain with his last breath.
With effort, he handed her the tattered family genealogy of the Ji Family that no one cared to look at.
He uttered his last words, "Take it, live on..."
