Xyrin Empire
Chapter 725 Being Idle Occasionally is Pretty Good

Chapter 725: Chapter 725 Being Idle Occasionally is Pretty Good

On a clear winter morning, the sunshine was bright, a rare good weather—referring to the world outside.

It seemed like it was going to snow outside these past few days, perpetually gloomy, but not a single ice pellet had materialized even after forty-eight hours. Lin Xue’s predictions were once again correct; the weather station was fooled by the atmosphere layer again.

Shadow City didn’t have harsh winters. Every day the weather was created artificially based on several templates chosen by the votes of all residents and then filtered through the "optimal weather solution" crafted by a mother for her child. Most of the time, the world inside was warmly pleasant and sunny, occasionally announcing in advance special days of snow or rain—not for ecological balance but to lessen the monotony of always having fine weather and to add a touch of romance. A city shaped by advanced technology harbors many wondrous living habits and behaviors of the residents that outsiders find hard to understand. For instance, Shadow City had formed many factions concerning daily weather, with members being permanent residents from various worlds who had obtained Indra Empire’s honorary citizenship. Boasting ample free time, they started creating activities like forming the "Snow Party," "Rain Party," "Sunny Day Party", and "Cloud Party," bustling daily with voting and promotional activities to gain more public support for their weather preferences. According to statistics, most members of the "Snow Party" were Shadow City citizens under sixteen, like the Misakas, who loved playing in the snow and cherished a pure romantic sentiment. Members of the "Rain Party" were mainly between seventeen and twenty-five—they were busy dating and needed to create some romantic moments. The "Sunny Day Party" was currently the majority faction in the Shadow City weather council, occupying most seats, and included members from all age groups, fully encompassing the elderly—because they suffered from rheumatism. The "Cloud Party" was a new faction, mostly consisting of teenagers poisoned by romantic literature, pursuing gothic tones of the real world with cloudy skies, gothic churches, evening gowns, and nights—a setting that intoxicated the Cloud Party members. However, since they held so few seats, this faction was considering other means to fulfill their ambitions, such as renting houses in the Dark Zone. Sylvanas thought her spring had finally come...

Certainly, other than these major factions, the weather council had many other enthusiasts, such as the "Lightning Party" established by Misaka’s Electric Shock Department, the "Typhoon Party" and "Hail Party" setup by Crow Man, the recently banned "2012 Party," and the "Pie Party," covertly supported by Sandora but currently only consisting of Youyouzi. Then, there were Boli Lingmeng and Golden Shining who jointly started the "Gold Coin Party." The saying goes, a big forest has all kinds of birds, and a crowded place has wishes for all kinds of things to fall from the sky—the spectacle could only appear in a place like Shadow City.

These past few days, nothing significant occurred within Shadow City. The Macro World was peaceful, the Void Space in perfect order. Initially, we thought the fall of Atlantis was manipulated by a Fallen Apostle, but according to intelligence alerts from the Time-Space Administration, the movements of the Fallen Apostles had recently subsided. It seems their consecutive failed clashes with us and the increasingly stringent searches by the Divine Race in the Void had made them choose to act low-profile for the time being. The fall of Atlantis could only be attributed to the excessive obsession from the era of Visca—which was quite embarrassing for the one-eyed cat of height one meter two, but it was good news for us. The dormancy of the Fallen Apostles meant a stable environment, allowing various military bolstering and research projects urgently needing time to progress swiftly. The Imperial Base hidden within the Kuiper Belt space folds was already saturated. We were establishing new production bases in a few extragalactic systems, and the Pan-Galactic Civilization Community also completed the empire’s realignment, now becoming a "Regular Militia" troop as potent as the New Eden Federation. Taville was overcoming some technical challenges involving the decomposition and reverse-engineering of the bioengineering and superpower technologies preserved from Atlantis. The respectable research fanatic confidently assured, once these two technologies transformed into practical strength, the powers of Qianqian, Big Sister, and Lin Xue would increase significantly.

It has been mentioned before that the research center studied the superpowers of Qianqian and the others more than once, gaining a preliminary understanding of the principles behind these miraculous abilities. However, considering the short time, turning theory into productive force was extremely challenging. Currently, besides the Energy Raiders developed based on my abilities that had entered the practical application stage, and the experimental time avoidance devices manufactured based on Qianqian’s theories of microsecond differences, the technicians had virtually no achievements in other application areas. This persistently annoyed Taville, who never admitted defeat in the research field. The technological supplement from Atlantis brought a dawn for our researchers: under the terrifying pressure from Visca back then, the scientific team that shaped the civilization of Atlantis had desperately researched superpowers. They possessed a deeper understanding of powers derived from spirit and soul, perfectly filling the wide gaps in Taville’s research projects. She was already fantasizing about when she could develop mass-produced time assault soldiers, curse warriors, and prophet soldiers capable of tactical predictions at the frontline. She had even designed military emblems for these three types of soldiers: sliding-lid coffins, flip-lid coffins, and straight-lid coffins...

Well, of course, that’s just the fond wish of some coffin-obsessed research fanatic. It seems utterly impossible to mass produce warriors equipped with such heaven-defying superpowers at the moment. What I expect is some new equipment that utilizes superpowers, similar to an Energy Raider. It’s been proven that these unreasonable things, once incorporated into conventional arms, have amazing potential. A single Energy Raider could turn all energy-attacking warships into scrap metal; a time avoidance system could even make the Sniper Star Cannon a mere decoration. I can’t even imagine how terrifying a Curse Beacon would be if it were developed, one with trajectory prediction, capable of erasing an enemy’s evasion time and bringing disaster upon the target regardless of their defenses—Bingdisi even boldly stated that if she had such a thing, she would dare to smash the Father God’s window in the dead of night—although I think that female hooligan could do that without such a device.

Aside from the new round of scientific research activities in Taville, which brought explosions, and more explosions, another change in Shadow City has been the influx of curious demons scurrying everywhere; these are the new residents who migrated from Fantasy Country.

As compensation for the catastrophic ecological damage caused by Atlantis, we opened the World Gate to the Fantasy Country and gave them relatively lax immigration checks to ensure that the homeless demons could find a place to live here. Initially, I thought only the residents of Demon Mountain would move here, since many demons are like animals, fond of their own nests, and rarely leave their territory unless necessary. However, the environment of Avalon and the wonders of Shadow City unexpectedly attracted them, and not only did all the demons from Demon Mountain relocate, but many from other regions also applied to live in Avalon and Shadow City, suddenly filling up the immigration quota I had allocated to them.

Of course, Shadow City couldn’t truly open up completely to them; the number of immigrants allowed from Fantasy Country was limited. Many demons who were late could only sigh in envy at Avalon’s welfare housing, but we still welcome them to stay here as tourists for short periods.

Since they aren’t considered a clan of the Empire, the demons couldn’t obtain an independent administrative region in Shadow City, not even management rights over the settlement towns in Avalon. However, the carefree demons couldn’t care less about this; they were merely fascinated by the novelty of the outside world—Ling Meng and several agents from the Heroic Spirit Travel Agency have seen their businesses boom so much that they have almost forgotten what their actual jobs are.

With the carnival over, work on the Dimension Hub Square has become much quieter. Yukari Yakumo temporarily having no tasks, collaborated with her own shikigami and opened a shop in Shadow City. Of course, Yukari Yakumo herself is a hands-off manager, mostly sleeping in the back. The store only has two employees, Yakumo Lan and Cheng Miao. I once visited that little shop, and to this day, I still have psychological shadows—the clothing store stocked things like fox fur scarves and fox fur hats, and I simply couldn’t imagine where they came from.

Then there are a few more minor matters, just household stuff.

Du Dao Kazuko finally finished her leave to visit her family and returned home to continue her "Maid Training." She’s currently learning from Anwina how to hide two Uzi submachine guns and twenty-two plasma hand grenades inside a maid costume. But honestly, we all think this is just a whim of a girl. Even though she’s determined, I’ve recently started thinking about enrolling her directly at the Imperial Military Academy since she’s only of high school age. And considering we already have a ghost maid at home, adding an underage maid—Miss Lin has almost ranted me to death lately.

I seem to remember hearing someone mention recently that Du Dao couldn’t restrain her desire for destruction—maybe Anwina teaching her to unleash Eight Sword Flashes with a shovel triggered this violent gene of Senior Bao X. Anyway, she started tackling the safety of her neighborhood and got into serious conflicts with local hooligans. A credible case is from yesterday afternoon when she went out to buy groceries, and the next morning, the newspaper reported that several nearby habitual thieves were found unconscious near the supermarket’s dustbin, each one noticeably fatter and with a verse of poetry carved into their backs. I recall that when Du Dao returned, her hairpin was missing, and she’s been studying Chinese classical literature lately...

I hope she finds her true self on the path of eradicating evil, even if she has to fight people every day instead of striving to become the world’s second best maid. God forbid, Anwina has started muttering about adding "Crawling in and out of the TV twenty times per minute" to the maid curriculum—do you think that’s something a living person could learn?

Another matter involves Dingdang. Our great Life Goddess finally remembered that she governs several worlds, so she enthusiastically decided to handle some official business the night before last. However, this praiseworthy act of duty seemed to have unwanted consequences, as Dingdang ended up crying and locking herself in the cupboard for three hours. When Sandra went to the kitchen to snack, she almost dipped the poor thing in sweet bean sauce and ate it. After asking Lilina, I roughly understood the cause—it seems a mass prayer had caused trouble when a group of students prayed to God hoping not to fail their final exams. Our Lady Goddess, who has failed hundreds of times, was extremely distressed by this, yet it wasn’t enough to make the usually happy-go-lucky Dingdang cry like that. What truly broke her was that, despite her best efforts to guide the praying students through their exams, the result was that one hundred thirty-eight people failed.

Failing one hundred thirty-eight times in one go set a new record, and our Goddess felt she could no longer show her face.

Finally, something somewhat relates to Qianqian: I never expected that Qianqian and I would breakthrough the last layer of our relationship under such ridiculous circumstances—though, considering Qianqian’s usual style, it was actually normal. What I didn’t anticipate was how tumultuous my imagined spring would be. Even newlyweds have their honeymoons, so why is it so hard for Qianqian and me to have some time alone? The Mercury Lamp complains that someone always moves her box around at night, Dingdang has nearly chewed my bedside table into a bird’s nest, Alaya wonders why his Spirit Sea is completely sealed at night, Little Qijing hasn’t reacted much, but Big Sister’s ambiguous smile puts enormous pressure on me. Plus, with recent addition of the even more power-draining Lilina, the girl whispers "big pervert" at just the right volume every time we meet, leaving me no choice but to resign to my fate... Ah, raising a child before marriage truly is a trap, and what a trap it is.

In a small suburban park, this is a place I’ve been coming to a lot recently. It started with occasionally finding Little Bubbles lost here, and now, intrigued by Qijing, I also end up here every other day to kill some time.

"But, in the dead of winter, I guess it’s just the two of us silly enough to freeze in the park?"

I muttered to myself, leaning on the park bench, observing the stark, empty surroundings.

"Correction, it’s only you, the idiot, freezing here. This miss was just passing by and saw you freaking out here, so I came over to check on you out of concern," Lin Xue retorted, turning her face away unkindly.

Bumping into Lin Xue here was a pure coincidence. I hadn’t seen her coming over to mooch food at my house for the past couple of days, and I didn’t expect to find her in such a remote place. With nothing else to do, I sat down to chat: as the miss said, chatting in the park with minus five-degree winds, without superhuman vitality, really is foolish.

"It seems that this child has already gotten used to running around outside." Lin Xue seemed lost in thought for a while before lowering her head to watch the little girl running around the bench and muttered to herself.

Since the first time she bravely ventured into the outside world, Little Qijing’s soul strength had been continuously growing. Now, as she ran around outside like this, she looked almost indistinguishable from a normal girl, except that her size and proportions were a few circles smaller.

Her originally translucent body had gained substance, and if you didn’t observe closely, you could hardly imagine that this cute little girl was just an illusory shadow.

"Honestly, I don’t even know what this child usually thinks about. She randomly takes interest in things outside, so I have to seize these opportunities to expose her to new things." I smiled and reached out my hand. Little Qijing, who was picking up fallen leaves nearby, immediately ran over and stuffed a handful of leaves into my palm: "Huff-huff—leaves!"

In terms of the talent for speaking, Little Qijing was much better than Little Baobao, and that she had managed control over physical objects with her spiritual body in such a short time really speaks volumes about inheriting the excellent "genes" from me and Alaya, doesn’t it?

"Father’s favorite," Lin Xue muttered, "What would you do if she became interested in the Sun?"

I was stunned, "How did you know? I just returned from the Corona Layer yesterday morning—this girl thought the Sun was an egg yolk and insisted that I make another Sun in the sky with an egg yolk."

Miss Lin was terrified at that moment.

And a few seconds later, I suddenly realized something: she didn’t know these things, so had this girl not been using her abilities to watch our moves these past two days?

"Speaking of which, aren’t you the goddess of spying," I coughed twice, muttering, "I thought my usual movements were all within your grasp."

Unexpectedly, Lin Xue suddenly gritted her teeth and pinched my arm forcefully: "Tch, what’s there to see. Watching you, this big pervert with Qianqian... Ah?"

The comeback I was ready with was suddenly stifled, and I awkwardly scratched my hair and smiled foolishly. I had almost forgotten about that. If anyone knew first about the breakthrough in my relationship with Qianqian, it was definitely this all-seeing Demi Immortal girl before me. She even knew before I did. Thinking back to the fireworks event when Lin Xue suddenly became sullen, too bad I didn’t know what was going on at the time. Thinking about it now, her not coming over for meals for several days might have been her sulking alone at home.

I really am a dull guy, not only did I initially fail to sense Lin Xue’s affection, but now I’ve even forgotten about the problems caused by this girl’s abilities?

"No need to apologize," Lin Xue said before I could speak, leaning into me and burying her head in my chest, "That would actually make me angry. It was all destined anyway. I’m just a bit frustrated."

"Not angry?"

"Tch, I pinch!"

"Ah—"

"Now I’m not angry."

Her mouth said she wasn’t angry, but I know full well that the Miss before me is not someone of such a forgiving nature; what should I say now? Resigned, or planning to slowly settle scores later? Considering her past actions to overturn destiny with prolonged S behaviors, I’m inclined to think the latter.

"Dinner at my place tonight?"

"Of course, the chefs were frightened by my sudden presence at home these past few days. Better to mooch off you."

Did your constant wandering finally lead to you being disowned at home?

I inwardly sneered at that thought. Seeing Lin Xue finally showing her usual mischievous smile, I relaxed again, leaning back on the park bench, gently embracing the girl next to me, and leisurely exclaimed, "It’s nice to relax..."

"Yes, it’s nice to relax occasionally," Lin Xue giggled, "But Wood, it’s ’we’ who are relaxing."

"Eh?"

"You have things to do again..."

"No way!" (To be continued. If you like this work, please visit qidian.com to vote and support me. Your support is my greatest motivation.)