Chapter 368 - 369: Probing Reactions and Military Preparations Begin

Chapter 368: Chapter 369: Probing Reactions and Military Preparations Begin

Nax, despite his occasional bouts of mild mental illness, had a pure heart. The principles and character he adhered to were more valuable than those of many ordinary people.

As for his love of showing off... well, to be blunt, Dawn was just a huge organization of show-offs.

For someone like Nax, his mild mental condition actually helped him overcome certain mental barriers, precisely because of this purity.

As long as the facts were laid out before him, the way he established and held onto his beliefs was unexpectedly firm. In other words, it was a form of purity in his Spiritual Power.

The only unexpected thing was that he might have gone too far with his teasing—Nax had actually fainted.

Before leaving, Qin Xiaoxia thought for a moment and decided not to finish off the twenty-some remaining elderly people who were beyond saving.

With the Corpse Worm dead, the Corpse Demons lost their camouflage. They would revert to walking corpses acting on instinct, driven by a single purpose: to satisfy their hunger.

However, they weren’t zombies. They weren’t contagious, and their muscles were atrophied, leaving them very weak. As long as an ordinary person wasn’t scared stiff, they wouldn’t be in any real danger.

’It won’t be long now. I’ll just leave this for the police and the people from the 19th Division to handle. Let them get some experience.’

...

Ten minutes later, a fleet of police cars surrounded the area in front of the school.

The dark, silent environment was incredibly eerie. What was even stranger was that the first caller’s report had mysteriously vanished from the police station’s records, including the call recording.

Although other emergency calls came in later, they were all from surrounding pedestrians or residents who had heard gunshots.

Over twenty police officers cautiously searched the area, eventually discovering a half-human, half-insect monster at the edge of an alley.

Even though it was motionless, the sight of it was still deeply unsettling.

Faced with this situation, they didn’t approach recklessly. Instead, they reported it to their superiors. In the end, they covered the insectoid monster’s corpse with a steel-wire net, preparing to drag it away.

As for the elderly people, they looked terrifying but still had heartbeats and were breathing. It was only later, when the doctors arrived and began to move them...

The seniors, who had appeared to be unconscious, were seemingly stimulated by the movement and began to wake up one after another.

Then, just like a scene out of a horror movie, they sat bolt upright and started biting the medical staff around them.

One or two doing this would have been manageable, but with over twenty of them acting this way, it was like a scene from a zombie movie.

The gunshots and commotion continued for a while before the elderly people, who had become Corpse Demons, were finally put to rest. All that remained were the six or seven medical personnel who had been bitten, trembling in fear.

They were terrified they would turn into the walking dead themselves.

The unrest only subsided after it was determined there was no transmissible virus. Ironically, the most seriously injured person was a doctor who had been accidentally shot in the leg by a panicked police officer.

...

When Dr. Rini’s televised debate first aired, it merely sparked some resonance and contemplation among viewers.

But like a butterfly flapping its wings, its spread across the internet began to climb, and its reach was no longer confined to a single region.

The program, originally in the entertainment sphere, began to be interpreted more deeply by a wider audience.

This wasn’t just due to curious onlookers; it also involved guidance from the various governments of the World Alliance.

Just as the debate’s central thesis suggested, suddenly announcing the end of the world would create too great of a shock and lead to an unpredictable transitional period.

Using fringe programs, filler-heavy literary works, and hypothetical topics in interviews, they could introduce the idea in an entertaining, buzzworthy way, while still maintaining a degree of seriousness by having it discussed by professional authorities.

In this way, they could test the public’s reaction and, at the same time, indirectly and gently reveal certain things. The goal wasn’t a direct explanation, but simply to spark some speculation.

It could be said that most people—whether they harbored anxieties about the apocalypse, scoffed at the idea, believed it wholeheartedly, or had no reaction at all—had been more or less exposed to this type of information in a relatively complete form.

At the very least, there was a relatively high degree of consensus on certain mainstream viewpoints.

In a massive military camp deep within a desolate region of Northwest Hua Country, a translated version of the Rini Debate was playing.

"Desolate" was a relative term, however.

For some time now, the forces of nature had been subtly influencing environmental changes across the globe.

People living in cities or other human settlements might easily overlook these changes on a day-to-day basis, especially with the clean-up work in populated areas. As a result, most people, with a few exceptions, were probably unaware of the transformations happening around them.

But being in this military camp, one could make direct comparisons.

For example, this once-desolate land had been little better than the Gobi desert just over a year ago. But now, even though the vegetation wasn’t exactly lush, green was the dominant color as far as the eye could see.

Wild grass, cacti, and even small trees—both desert and non-desert plants—could be found here.

On a quiet night, in a corner of the camp’s training grounds, the Chinese-dubbed debate video ended on the massive projection screen.

The soldiers below remained quiet, but the exchange of glances between familiar comrades and their inner thoughts did not cease.

Naturally, the inevitable murmur of hushed conversations arose, but the officers didn’t stop them, nor did they offer any explanation.

About two minutes later, an officer standing beside the screen finally held a microphone to a loudspeaker and roared.

"QUIET!!"

The soldiers below instinctively straightened their backs, sat up, shut their mouths, and stared forward.

However, no officer came forward to give a speech. Instead, the next video began to play.