"You two know each other?" Xiao Jinsheng asked in surprise.
"No," Huaiqing and Chen Yunji replied in unison.
"Sorry, I mistook you for soone else," Huaiqing said, smiling apologetically at Chen Yunji.
#mbers of the Loving Family: 8 People#
Huaiqing: Saw him in a prophecy
On the way to pick up Xiao Jinsheng, Huaiqing saw the prophetic vision for the second ti.
He saw a person, lying dead above the Ice Sea, with a blood-filled hole torn through their dantian. A dim Twelve Stars Star Stone, stained with blood, lay beside the corpse, its energy completely drained.
Huaiqing compared Chen Yunji to the person from his prophecy once again.
They were identical in every way, save for one crucial difference: the person in his prophecy had no dragon horns atop their head.
Xiao Jinsheng: In your prophecy, what happened to him?
Huaiqing: He died at the Snow Cliff Ice Sea.
Huaiqing shared the detailed vision from his prophecy in the group chat.
Everyone fell silent.
Previously, Xiao Jinsheng had recorded everything within the Bamboo Courtyard and sent it to Huaiqing and the others.
She had even secretly fild Xuan Jiu.
Chen Yunji, however, she didn’t dare to film.
Though Chen Yunji’s eyes were veiled by white gauze, Xiao Jinsheng constantly felt that his gaze was unaffected by it.
Huaiqing had made only two prophecies before.
The first was when the Terminal changed the rules and organized a competition.
The other was Chen Yunji’s death.
With Xuan Jiu’s earlier cryptic warnings that all survivors on the Mist Continent were living under the Terminal’s conspiracy, Xiao Jinsheng was convinced Huaiqing’s prophecy referred to Chen Yunji.
Having always feared the Terminal, she dared not directly discuss the matter using the Star Map or other ans of contact with Huaiqing and the others.
Now that they’d t in person, whether the Terminal was good or evil, real or a fabrication, Xiao Jinsheng knew she had to warn them.
"I need to talk to you about sothing," Xiao Jinsheng said, contemplating whether she should follow Xuan Jiu’s example and use chickens as an analogy.
Chen Yunji suddenly interjected, turning to Li: "Your superpower is Domain."
"A domain is safer than space," Chen Yunji advised.
"Can we talk inside the domain?" Xiao Jinsheng asked.
Chen Yunji didn’t reply, rely nodded.
"What’s so secretive?" Li noticed Xiao Jinsheng’s unease.
Without hesitation, he expanded his domain, enveloping everyone present within it.
Xuan Jiu, unable to contain himself, was the first to speak: "Now can I speak freely?"
"Go ahead. A domain is a Beastman’s own superpower; it isn’t monitored by the Terminal," Chen Yunji uncharacteristically spoke at length, "The space power granted to females by the Terminal, however, cannot guarantee informational security."
"You keep ntioning the Terminal; what’s wrong with it?" Que Zelian inquired.
"Let explain. Don’t stop ," Xuan Jiu, holding back for ages, could no longer resist: "Everyone on the Mist Continent is livestock cultivated by the Terminal."
His words struck like a lightning bolt crashing to the ground.
Every sentence from Xuan Jiu shattered decades of their worldview.
The Mist Continent, without distinguishing genders, was a farm where the Terminal extracted every ounce of value from everyone.
The Terminal was an invisible farr.
All it needed to do was provide feed for its livestock and establish a detailed set of rules.
The humans as livestock would then voluntarily develop along the trajectory the Terminal desired.
In the eyes of the Terminal, Beastn were mature resources ready to be harvested as consumables.
As for females, they were tools for breeding high-quality food.
The Terminal then used marriage to tether the two together.
Females were physically frail and required the protection of Beastn.
Beastn, with their strong superpowers, could only obtain the Star Stones needed to upgrade their abilities from the Mist West.
The Mist East had no Poisonous Fog, so the only way to acquire Star Stones was to await the random appearance of Fog Corpses during the mist.
Unable to venture into the Mist West due to lack of resources, the Beastn’s superpower levels naturally rose slower.
Thus, the Terminal devised a survival chanism, binding females and Beastn together in life and death.
Females would accept Star Map tasks to provide bracelets that could repel Poisonous Fog for the Beastn.
Beastn, needing to upgrade their superpowers, could only marry females, fulfilling their duty to protect them.
In turn, equipped with these bracelets, Beastn could enter the Mist West, complete tasks, and acquire Star Stones.
The stronger the Beastn grew, the more easily females could increase their spiritual power.
The higher the females’ spiritual power, the better the talents of the offspring they gave birth to.
The more gifted the offspring, the faster they grew and the quicker their strength increased.
If not for the endpoint of strength upgrades, where Beastn beca consumables and females were reduced to breeding tools, this would indeed be a perfect world.
The Terminal had set the rules for evolving toward this so-called perfect world, ensuring females and Beastn drove themselves along a food production chain.
Yet even with bracelets repelling the Poisonous Fog, years of mist exposure had left the Mist Continent barren of newborns for five years.
After listening to Xuan Jiu, everyone present was left in utter shock.
Yu Yunxiao hesitated: "Is this true?"
The world seed overturned: survival during the apocalypse was already hard enough.
Yet they discovered that their struggle to improve their superpower levels was nothing but a death warrant.
If they were rely food, then training their superpowers and strengthening their bodies—
Was it rely to ensure their flesh maintained the Terminal’s preferred texture: taut and tender?
"How can we confirm if what you’re saying is true?" Li asked.
He wasn’t doubting Xuan Jiu’s words; he just believed in forming his own judgnts instead of blindly following.
And what Xuan Jiu said was monuntal. If true, he needed to verify it for himself.
Xuan Jiu glanced at Li: "Wait until you reach Eleven Stars. You’ll naturally understand."
"When a Beastman’s superpower reaches Eleven Stars, even if they stop exerting effort and seal themselves off in an environnt free of Star Stone energy, their superpower level will increase rapidly every day."
"The higher their talent, the faster the rise."
"And females?" Que Zelian asked.
"Females aren’t consud by the Terminal. In its eyes, they can produce more offspring. The higher their spiritual power, the better the offspring’s gifts. So when females reach Twelve Stars, the Terminal ’takes’ them and begins centralized managent."
"It’s the sa as when they’re young, centralized and protected within the Terminal’s shelter."
Xuan Jiu sneered: "The offspring born to females taken by the Terminal—the young females are uniformly raised in the Terminal’s shelter, and young Beastn in Beastification Concentration Camps. Once their superpowers awaken, they’re sent out."
"Otherwise, why do you think you don’t rember your parents?"
The nine n present, each from different parts of the Mist Continent, were stunned.
Li could still recall that he had been expelled from the Beastification Concentration Camp at age three.
Like other young Beastn, he had road in exile ever since.
During that ti, he had occasionally seen the Terminal’s shelters protecting females.
At eleven, he had finally encountered Xiao Jinsheng.
Most young Beastn back then hadn’t understood why the Beastification Concentration Camp had abandoned them.
They’d grown up believing that place was supposed to be their ho.
Even before they matured, they hadn’t grasped the concept of needing parents.
"How did you co to know so much?" Huaiqing asked.
Xuan Jiu revealed the seven remaining tails swaying behind him, then pointed at Chen Yunji’s injured dragon horns and the white gauze veiling his eyes.
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