Chapter 446: Chapter 446: The People in Shadow City

Returning from the expedition, the long-missed tranquility of everyday life began with a goddess who had just recovered from a minor illness and was brimming with energy, delivering a morning bite by my pillow.

In short, it was a quite lively morning.

“Ah Jun, Ah Jun! Dawn has broken! Dawn has broken! Dingdang is about to eat! We’re just waiting for you now!”

The little green girl lay on my nose, almost her entire body closing in on my face, her emerald long hair tickling the skin beside my lower eyelids, and this little thing really had no concept of being exposed, you idiot, I can see everything from this angle–well, I’ve already seen it countless times before anyway.

Ah, if only this goddess were a little taller, what a charming scene this morning would be…

While these thoughts swirled about in my head, I reached out intending to pry Dingdang, who had already started jumping around under my nose, off of me, and then…

“Achoo!!”

With a sky-shaking sneeze, Lady Goddess flew off into the distance.

That’s why I, with a head topped by messy hair, was chased down from the second floor by Dingdang.

“Well, a scumbag’s life is indeed colorful,” said Lady Priestess sitting at the dining table, seriously mutilating her tofu with a spoon while she verbally crucified me, the man who “dared to offend Divine Power,” “to think that you would not even spare the benevolent and pure Lady Goddess!”

The one eating plain rice should just shut up and eat!

“Being the boss, you should at least provide food and accommodation! And as the Chief Priestess of Lady Goddess, I do have every reason to denounce you~~”

Can this guy read minds? And stop so casually leveraging all your identities to scheme for your own benefit, damn it!

“Everyone’s full of energy, I see,” Anwina’s soft and fluffy voice came from in front of me, with a sugar content healing level of five pluses, “Master, the soup before you is Anwina’s pride and joy. Please have a taste~~”

Alright, I admit that the ghostly little maid’s expectant look is cute, but at least don’t pop your head out from the soup I’m about to eat! With a girl’s head floating in the bowl and then having a conversation with you, knowing that makes drinking the soup give me a psychological shadow!

After decisively covering Anwina’s head with a pot lid, I turned my gaze to the other side where another freeloader was present.

Some millionairess with chefs enough to form an enhanced company at home, who could feed a hundred big appetites like Miss Sandora without breaking a sweat, had now developed the habit of getting up early every day specifically to mooch off my breakfast.

Even if Anwina as a LEVEL 6 cook is amazing, that shouldn’t be the reason for you to come and sponge off food and drink, right? Your chefs at home are now crying tears over the cold stoves!

And according to Anwina, in the week before our return, Miss Lin, who had finally been released from house arrest, had mooched off meals here for a full seven days…

As if sensing my resentment, Miss Lin suddenly lifted her head, bared her teeth at me, and then continued to annihilate the assorted home-cooked dishes in front of her with a left and right barrage.

At least maintain some table manners, don’t shatter the graceful image of a fine lady in my mind, jerk. You’ve already completely destroyed that image, but it took me so much effort to rebuild my confidence in the offspring of prestigious families, all thanks to the courteous Gaia!

“So you’re saying, you guys got thoroughly duped by someone, even though the crisis with the Abyss was eventually resolved, it’s still really irritating.”

After breakfast, Miss Lin Xue, who had completely tossed aside the training of a fine lady, was indiscreetly fighting with Qianqian for the dessert while tossing over a comment that was infuriating.

Although I knew this was her unique way of showing care, I still felt like I should knock some sense into this girl’s head!

Before I could move, Lin Xue just shrugged, “You wouldn’t hit me anyway.”

I hate Prophets, especially when they don’t stay in their XX Holy Temples handing out tasks to newbies but instead freeload at your place.

“Although it’s annoying, to be honest, if you had been there, things might have gone a lot better.”

I said in frustration, and it’s the truth. Even though Lin Xue always likes to argue with me, if she had been with us, perhaps Ocam’s conspiracy wouldn’t have succeeded.

“It’s useless. That hula hoop spaceship you mentioned, being a Law Weapon, of course, it has the ability to interfere with the Mysterious system superpowers. All of the future visions I saw related to that thing were fragmented. Even if I were with you, those fragments wouldn’t have been any clearer–didn’t Qianqian’s time reversal fail to bring it back to before the outbreak?”

Lin Xue spoke casually, but it took me by surprise, “Wait, when you were grounded at home, you weren’t peeping at us the entire time, were you?!”

There was hardly any need to ask. How would she know the extent to which her powers were disrupted by the Conqueror if she hadn’t been secretly making predictions about our actions? And from the tone of her voice, filled with resentment towards her own helplessness, she wouldn’t sound so downcast if countless attempts hadn’t been futile!

“Peeping your sister!” Before I could even feel touched by the silent efforts she had put in for such a long time, she simply charged at me and gave me a karate chop, “Miss here just wanted to see if you, the beastly Emperor of the harem, had stooped so low as to include alien girls!”

Tch, you really can’t lie, can you? Could you hide that anxiety in your eyes a little better?

Amid the chaotic but nostalgically warm morning, which was spent with the unreliable Imperial High Level fooling around, perhaps because it had been a long time since anyone had been home, even Little Baobao, who always struggled to stay put in the house, unusually crawled into a room to catch up on sleep. The other few people at home also showed signs of cabin fever, cozying up in their rooms, playing temporary hermits; Pandora was no exception. Oh, maybe the latter was a special case; although she was never short on energy, when there was no battle to fight, she generally liked to find a quiet corner to go into standby mode. I could almost picture her sitting alone in her room all day, her belly “beeping” every ten minutes–a simple daily life indeed.

In contrast, Visca was much more active. As soon as breakfast was over, she went out to play with Lilina. The latter’s years of traveling experiences meant she never lacked interest in strolling through Earth’s streets. Supposedly, they planned to visit the audio-visual street in the west.

Hmm, audio-visual street. Seems like Sicaro frequents that place… could it be that the city management of K-city, who had just recovered their breath, was about to face a new round of purgatory? Those two girls never hesitate to bring even more trouble to a peaceful and quiet world.

Anyway, since everyone was too lazy to move, the only one who ended up accompanying me to inspect the construction of Shadow City was Sandora… Speaking of which, I also wanted to sleep, daydream, watch new anime, play games, eat and wait to die until Doomsday in my room! Sandora, can’t you show a little understanding for my fading otaku spirit?

“Have a little self-awareness of being a leader…” Seeing my languidness, Sandora sighed and rested her hand on her forehead, “Ah Jun, just think of it as a walk outside.”

To walk surrounded by a cohort of Armored Scorpions in a military base?

“By the way, Taville seems to never rest, huh.”

After finally breaking free from the boring “inspection,” Sandora and I aimlessly wandered through the deserted Shadow City. The city now had a day-night cycle set up just like the outside world, so the bright morning sun shone above us, clearly illuminating a slightly round black shadow in the sky above the city. That was Taville’s masterpiece from yesterday don’t think it’s some new type of sky laboratory, that black shadow is a space anomaly caused by an experimental mishap by a coffin-obsessed female researcher.

But after a night of emergency repairs, now only some unstable gravity refraction points remained, and light experienced significant attenuation near those points, making it look like there was a patch of shadows suspended there.

Considering that it was an experiment that breached the lab’s multilayered spatial barriers and tore a hole in the special sky of Shadow City, one can only imagine how dangerous Taville’s experiment must have been… It’s a good thing there aren’t many ordinary citizens here, otherwise just the public disturbance complaints alone would be enough to give Sivis a massive headache.

“Conqueror-class isn’t something that can be restored easily,” Sandora also found the workaholic female scientist troublesome, “She tries too hard; even for a Xyrin Apostle, she’s too diligent.”

“How far exactly has the technology left behind by the Fallen Apostles advanced?” I murmured to myself, “Conqueror-class, that should be the most top-tier spaceship in the Empire, second only to the Glory Battleship. If they can make one, they can make more, and what if they turn every Conqueror into an Abyss Battleship…”

“It won’t be that bad,” Sandora wasn’t too worried about that, “If they really could do it, they would have done it already. It’s not easy to integrate two opposing power systems like Abyss Energy and Xyrin Technology. Even if they manage to integrate, it wouldn’t be possible to produce them on a large scale. However, Ah Jun, your concerns are necessary; we must find ways to strengthen our forces, at the very least… let’s hope Taville’s efforts will soon bear fruit.”

“That makes sense, but I still think we should prepare a laboratory for Taville outside the Kuiper Belt as soon as possible. Shadow City does have residents now…”

No sooner had I finished speaking than a soft, languid voice sounded behind us: “Oh my? Is that Director Chen Jun and Miss Sandora–are you two on a date?”

Just great, the tension that had built up because of the topic of Fallen Apostles instantly plummeted. Silvia’s delay in reacting was devastatingly demoralizing.

“Hey, Silvia, out for a stroll… Eh?! What’s going on here?! How come you two are together?!”

I had just turned around to greet the late reactor when I saw not just any disconnected former Fallen Apostle in front of me, but a whole bunch of people who definitely shouldn’t have been with that girl!

One-Way Street and Last Order, those two were fine; after all, they’re from Academy City, and in this Shadow City ruled by the Empire, they might count as half-fellows of Silvia. Also, considering that Yifang the Lolicon probably knew of Silvia’s special status and that he would seriously remember and adhere to certain bans in this city, I wasn’t too worried about him and his pet Loli saying too much to Silvia and causing confusion.

But why is there a Misaka with them? Judging by that night vision device-like thing on her head, it’s clearly a Misaka Clone. Since when can One-Way Street stand next to Sister Misaka? Didn’t he say he would never show himself to these girls? And what about the Misaka Sisters who have recently started to develop their own sense of self? Could they really meet One-Way Street so calmly?

Sister Misaka is one thing, but standing next to Misaka is… Sylvanas?!! What on earth are you–doing?!

Why are you with Silvia? Why are you holding a half-drunk bottle of orange juice? More importantly, why do you also have a PDA in your other hand?!

After all this, my speech was even more choked with incredulity as I looked at Silvia. How could you have spent so much time in close contact with the Dark Queen, an Elf with cold deathly aura emanating from her and still so obliviously greet me? Do you even have a reflex arc?

“Oh, it’s big brother Director! Although I really wanted to call you Uncle Director, Misaka Misaka corrected her address in time and greeted with the most natural tone!”

No, your correction wasn’t timely at all.

“It’s Director brother! Haven’t seen you for such a long time; where have you been all these days? Did you encounter any trouble? You didn’t forget about us, did you? Because she was so surprised and happy to see the long-missed Director brother, Misaka 10031 asked a big bunch of questions somewhat incoherently.” The Misaka Sister wearing the night vision device followed after Last Order, still speaking in that robotic way, but surprisingly, I noticed that Misaka 10031’s face showed a subtle, anxious expression–a sign that this Misaka clone… had actually developed genuine emotions.

This was likely; in fact, as the Misaka Sister who first contacted us, 10031 was much more lively than her sisters, even though it was just an occasional extra word here and there, sometimes taking an inexplicable interest in something. For custom-personality clones, that was already a significant development.

“In that case, the Sister Misakas will soon become complete individuals indeed, congratulations are in order, truly a cause for celebration.”

“This means we need to speed up the process of normalizing the Shadow City community. Though we’ve already established many of the typical urban living and entertainment facilities, the Shadow Space is still primarily a military fortress. I’ve got to hurry and get those bored Imperial Commanders to move their homes here to add some vitality to this place… hmm, like those guys selling jade-roasted lamb skewers.”

“As for that unfortunate fellow from Sicaro, just let him stay outside and continue to cause trouble with the urban management.”

“Then there’s…”

“Don’t look at me, it was this little brat who dragged me out here, and I didn’t expect to run into her,” noticing my gaze, One-Way Street awkwardly turned his head away, “Tch, was it something they planned in advance?”

“One-Way,” I said with a sincere smile on my face and one hand clapping on the shoulder of the slim, white-haired boy, “Let me introduce you to a place, Taville’s Imperial Research Institute. Have a surgery there and start your brilliant new life as Ling Ke Baihezi!”

Because such an “Tsundere” attribute on a man is just too damned weird!

“What’s going on with you?”

Seizing the moment before One-Way Street could recover from the nonsensical remark I suddenly made, I swiftly ran over to Sylvanas, pulled her a few steps away, and whispered.

It’s all fine with the previous ones, but is it really okay for a Dead Soul from another world to appear in front of that simpleton? And isn’t the district prepared for tourists from all worlds located at the other end of the Shadow Space?

“Divine Messenger, I am lost,” Sylvanas shrugged helplessly, then lifted what appeared to be a PDA but in fact was a Xyrin Navigator in her hand, “I can read what’s on it, I just can’t find any real street signs in the city.”

That’s because you’ve walked to the other end of the city, you mechanical moron!

My inner self felt like flipping tables discovering such a disconnected side of Sylvanas, but before flipping tables there was an even more important question to ask: “So, Sylvanas, can other people from the Azeroth world use this kind of navigator?”

“Possibly… I think…” Sylvanas said uncertainly, “Jaina and I wanted to try out how to use this thing, but it suddenly said it couldn’t find Jaina’s signal just now, and I don’t know if she made it back successfully.”

I looked up at the sky, tears streaming down my face.

Jaina… have you already left the service area?

After decisively adding the creation of more humanized–or rather more foolproof–electronic devices for the natives of various worlds to my agenda, I hailed a passing transport vehicle, ordering them to take the lost Sylvanas back to the Azeroth residential area, and to broadcast a citywide order for the patrol troops to search for Jaina, who had apparently wandered out of the service area. There were only a few special places in Shadow City not covered by the navigator’s signal range; I hoped that Jaina would stay put once lost…

After saying goodbye to One-Way Street and the Sister Misakas, since Sandora and I had nothing else to do, we simply accompanied a certain slow-witted individual along the streets at a leisurely pace. Being with Silvia always had a calming effect, despite her severely slow way of thinking that left one speechless.

An Emperor of an overseas Empire, a current Imperial Emperor, and a former Emperor and Fallen Apostle, all walking together at ease, Sandora and I looked at each other and saw a gigantic “awkward” written in our eyes.

“Ah, right–” having walked for quite a while, Silvia suddenly seemed to recall something and said with a rising tone, “Mr. Chen, that beautiful white-haired girl we saw earlier had such pointy ears, how strange–just forgot to ask her name though…”

Just with that sentence, Sandora and I nearly had a fit! (To be continued. For more details, please visit www.wuxiaworld.site. More chapters are available, support the author, support genuine reading!)