Countdown 18:00:00.
At six o’clock in the morning, it was the forest of skyscrapers in a large snowstorm outside the window, while inside the house there was the sound of firewood crackling.
It didn’t actually start snowing outside but was the white noise sleep mode enabled by ONE.
Knock knock knock. There was a knock on the door. Qing Chen sat up from the bed and wanted to open the door.
However, when he walked out of the bedroom, he saw Li Shutong sitting on the sofa with a smile on his face, “I’ll go open the door.”
Qing Chen didn’t know when his master would come back. He didn’t notice anything last night.
Li Shutong opened the door and saw Yangyang standing a bit shyly outside the door, “Good morning, I’m here to find Qing Chen.”
“He just woke up. Do you want anything?” Li Shutong asked with a smile.
“Oh, I just want to ask him to go to the protest together. Would you like to come as well?” Yangyang asked.
Li Shutong smiled. He turned around and asked, “Xiao Chen, your classmate is asking you to go to the protest with her.”
“I’m not going,” Qing Chen said from his room, “I still have to go to the boxing club to watch the matches today.”
“Okay,” Yangyang nodded, “Then I will go with Zheng Yi. If you or Qing Chen changed your mind you can come anytime. We will start from Yunshan Square and head all the way to the city center. Don’t worry, this is a legally registered event.”
“Sure,” Li Shutong smiled and watched Yangyang and Zheng Yi leave before closing the door.
Qing Chen came out of the bedroom and said calmly, “By living here, she probably wanted to use her force field ability to check if we would remain in the Luoshen Building right before she leaves.”
After all, with a demigod like Li Shutong sitting in Prison 18, who would dare to do anything?
“ONE, did they actually leave?” Li Shutong asked.
“Yes, they have boarded the Route 22 light rail train heading for Yunshan Square,” ONE replied.
Li Shutong turned back to Qing Chen and said with a smile, “Then she should have voluntarily given up monitoring us for now. After all, if she really wants to monitor us, she should stay here in the Luoshen Building all day. Perhaps she did want to serve Spades at first, but likely not now.”
Qing Chen thought and said, “Yeah, it’s possible.”
Li Shutong smiled, “Let’s get going too. So many organizations and forces have come together to put up this big show today. The main characters definitely can’t miss out on all this.”
The master and the disciple changed into clean white sportswear, each put on a cap and walked outside the building.
Li Shutong stood in the glass elevator, quietly admiring everything in front of him.
…
In the suspended Yunshang Square, there were dense crowds of protesters, with red protest symbols painted on their faces.
Thousands of students were shuttled among the crowd. They spontaneously organized and distributed small flags and banners filled with slogans.
The small flag looked very cheap. It is made by hand by the students day and night, so they could save some money on costs.
They have poor-quality glue left on their hands, but their faces were full of enthusiastic smiles.
When the students distributed the small flags, they encouraged each other, “Change the world!”
“Change the world!”
Although they themselves may not have figured out how to change the world, the crowd rushed towards the upper three districts.
Dozens of reporters on the side of the road live broadcasted this grand protest, while the representatives of the parade faced the media frankly and expressed their requests.
A student representative looked at the camera and said, “This is a legal protest. The number of people attending, our request, and routes have all been reported. We promised that we will never use violence and resist those who want to!”
As protesters, they want to ensure that the protest will not turn bad in the end.
A floating car flew over the protesters. Qing Chen sat in the car and looked down silently.
Li Shutong suddenly asked, “What do you think of this kind of student protest?”
Qing Chen said, “This world cannot be changed through protests. The consortium’s control over this world is far more terrifying than they imagined.”
“That’s right,” Li Shutong said with a smile, “on the day the parade was reported for approval, although the federal authorities approved the request, the Li Corporation has already started to look for the small businessman who sponsored this event. That sponsor was from us, and that night, I arranged for him to leave the Federation, never to return again.”
The war for power began silently, without the students even noticing.
Qing Chen looked at Li Shutong in astonishment. He didn’t expect that his master would be sponsoring this protest, and that must also be why his master had been so busy recently.
Li Shutong said with a smile, “I didn’t do much. I just can’t bear to look at them fighting alone without support. At least, we can’t let these children starve during this protest.”
“Master, this will be very dangerous,” Qing Chen said.
Li Shutong said, “When other groups and forces were looking for, arresting, and executing time travelers. I chatted a lot with those time travelers as well, such as the history of your world.”
“Why are you bringing this up now?” Qing Chen was puzzled.
“Your teacher isn’t someone who knows everything. So, there’s nothing wrong for me to listen and learn,” Li Shutong said, “I have been cultivating and training for most of my life. Then, I happen to be messing around with many like-minded friends who ended up dying one after the other while pursuing our dreams. In fact, I’m just a fighter, Xiao Chen, so I don’t have such lofty ideals. I just don’t want those friends to die in vain. I want to use the rest of my life to accomplish the goals they felt so passionate for.”
Qing Chen looked at Li Shutong in a daze, feeling like he was approaching a side of his master that he hadn’t seen before.
He asked, “Which period of history did you talk about with the time travelers?”
“The period when the new world was born,” Li Shutong said with a smile, “I asked them to bring me a flash drive. I read a lot of documents during my time, but my favorite is still the process of establishing the new nation. In that period of time, so many warriors have fallen before the first light of dawn.”
Frankly, the technology of the Inner World was much more advanced than that of the Outer World, so many people thought that there was to be nothing that the Inner World could benefit from.
But those people were wrong. The brilliance of ideologies and philosophies would not be diminished even in a more technologically advanced world.
“Teacher,” Qing Chen repeated softly, “this will be very dangerous.”
Li Shutong continued, “Many time travelers admired them, but in fact, your ancestors are more worthy of admiration than everyone imagined. Of course, you know from the perspective of later generations that this new nation would be born, and you will win the war in the end, but those ancestors of yours who fought didn’t know.”
“When they said ‘we will win the final victory’, they were not so sure either. They just wanted to give themselves courage. Your ancestors didn’t even know at that time whether their sacrifices could be exchanged for victory. They didn’t even know if their sacrifices were truly meaningful, but they persisted. Your ancestors, with apprehension and fear, stepped forward hoping that the long night would turn to dawn. This was a firm belief.”
Qing Chen remained silent. Not looking at history with the assumptions of today was the correct view of history.
He always knew that those ancestors were heroes but still underestimated their greatness.
“Don’t think about it too much,” Li Shutong said with a cheerful smile, “I always feel a little strange. Why are you so patient? Knowing that I have the Forbidden Items ACE-002 and ACE-005, you still never asked where they are, what they are, and how to use them.”
Qing Chen said sincerely, “Master, you will tell me all those when it’s the right time.”
“How boring,” Li Shutong sighed. “Usually disciples request for items. That way as a master, I can have a sense of accomplishment. If you don’t ask for anything, it makes me feel very useless.”
“Then master, please give me ACE-005.”
Li Shutong smiled and said, “I have already given it to you.”
