Chapter 736: Chapter 509: Ridiculous Clown
Upon hearing Mu Fan’s words, the room fell silent, and Shentu Yunxiao, who had been exuding confidence, also quieted down.
He had not expected that the other party would mock him so elegantly and comprehensively.
He was angry, but as he fumed, he ended up laughing.
Shentu Yunxiao looked at Mu Fan, clapping and laughing as he said,
“Brilliant speech. You might be skilled, but in the end, you are just a flower that grew in a greenhouse. Academic life has granted you knowledge and eloquence, but it cannot provide you with the bloody truths. The universe isn’t as vast as you think. I don’t know what you relied on to come here, perhaps thinking it would add a splendid stroke to your life’s resume, but I must say, you are naively charming. Alarmist talk won’t attract much attention here; instead, it’s just a matter of mockery…”
After finishing, Shentu Yunxiao spread his hands, showing a polite smile to his friends.
“Hahaha, all for catching the eye.”
“I could boast too; after all, the world you see is just so big, I can completely say that since Zeg is so terrifying, there must be something even more fearsome that could destroy Zeg, right? And without even using Mecha and warships.”
“This joke is so cold, flesh and blood killing Zeg, Zeg killing Mecha, and then your final conclusion is that someone can actually defeat Mecha with their bare hands.”
Laughter broke out again.
However, compared to the group laughing heartily, Lu Qingxue’s icy gaze watched them, then turned to look at Mu Fan.
According to her understanding, once Mu Fan spoke, he never did so aimlessly, but she didn’t know what he could possibly say.
Mu Fan quietly watched the crowd’s reaction, and upon seeing Lu Qingxue’s calm gaze, he nodded slightly.
Their communication didn’t require much verbal exchange; sometimes a gesture was enough to convey their message.
Shentu Yunxiao stood out from his laughing companions and some watching guests, and began to speak,
“I don’t want to say much else, I just want to ask, have you, a gifted student from who knows which academy, ever seen Zeg? Or are you merely judging based on your subjective speculations?”
“Half a meter, two meters, four meters… Even if you can imagine these bugs, do you really think they pose a threat to the Galaxy Federation standing in this universe? Let’s not talk about anything else, our Shentu family’s private troops alone are enough to wipe out the bugs on a planet. I agree with what you said because I think you are like the turkey living on the farm. I ask you, have you… seen Zeg?”
You, have you seen Zeg?
As this question lingered, the area fell into a rare silence.
Indeed, how could a civilian student possibly encounter this foreign species that only appears on the edges of the Federation?
Mu Fan looked down, “I haven’t just seen them; I’ve killed many Zegs.”
“…”
An eerie silence followed.
“Hahaha, these creatures have just appeared in the Federation and now someone claims to have killed many of them. Aren’t you graduating this year? Isn’t it embarrassing for a student to say such a thing, or are you saying you’ve piloted Mecha to slaughter Zeg? In some obscure Battle Net game perhaps?”
Suddenly, among the group of youths, someone spoke up, Mu Fan vaguely remembered his name was Colin.
Mu Fan calmly raised his head, his eyes fixing on Colin.
“Zeg and humans, that’s two species fighting for survival rights. What we see now is just the tip of the iceberg; the truly high-level Zegs are indeed a headache for humanity.”
His quiet words explained some things plainly but didn’t garner attention because such stereotypical phrases could be spoken by anyone.
However, Mu Fan’s next sentence finally caused Colin’s smile to falter.
“And the Zeg’s hierarchy is very clear. Once the most basic beetles are found, there must be a Commander-like existence in that community. So what that redhead mentioned earlier about the Colonial Star… there are higher-level Zegs.”
“Alarmist!”
“Pure fantasy.”
Amidst the surrounding noise, Shentu Yunxiao burst out those words, then looked down at Mu Fan, his tone finally becoming cold.
“In the end, your words still lack strong evidence!”
Mu Fan swept a glance around, then looked at Shentu Yunxiao, softly uttering a series of words:
“Beetle, Guard, Tiger Worm, Jet Tiger Insect, Cliff Worm, Lurker…”
With each term spoken, the color drained further from Shentu Yunxiao’s face.
Even when words like Cliff Worm and Lurker were mentioned later, his eyes already showed terror.
“Do you still understand these terms?”
Mu Fan asked softly while the rest were still confused, but seeing Shentu Yunxiao’s reaction, they were deeply shocked.
Could it be that this civilian youth was telling the truth?
“How do you know these terms, including… the ones later?” Shentu Yunxiao asked heavily, as even he hadn’t heard of the last few terms.
Cliff Worm, Lurker.
These were not recorded in the Shentu family’s archives.
“How come I did not know?” Mu Fan calmly retorted, his demeanor light and breezy, showing none of the previous groveling.
On the contrary, Mu Fan now had a captivating sharpness about him.
That was the golden glow that shone through after shedding all superficiality!
“It just shows one thing, actually.”
“What thing?” Shentu Yunxiao’s eyes tightly fixed on Mu Fan, he asked word by word.
“What you’ve seen, what you’ve come to understand, is merely that.”
Mu Fan’s voice fell, and a wave of shocked and surprised gazes turned toward him!
It turned out they had been playing foolish clowns in front of a true scholar all along.
And Qingxue, observing Mu Fan quietly from the side, her eyes flickered with an unusual brilliance.
A thick fog seemed to envelop Mu Fan once more.
He actually held the urgently needed information by the family!
“Even if you know, would these insects really pose a threat to the Federation?” Shentu Yunxiao was utterly unwilling to accept it, as in his mind, he could never associate these ugly creatures with a significant threat.
“I do not know.”
Mu Fan spoke indifferently, his statement startling.
“All I know is, once these creatures appear in normal society, the threat they pose to human society will be unimaginably large, but whether they can be effectively contained now, that I do not know.”
“Once they appear, it would be a fight for survival between two species!”
With those words, Mu Fan felt a silent sense of crisis in his heart.
Because what he had learned on Planet 131 was that these insects only appeared in sparsely populated areas, known to few.
But now, some families were starting to collect data on these Zeg, what did that indicate?
It indicated that the real locations of these Zeg were more numerous than imagined.
If it hadn’t been for the Fighter Instructor Mohandas mentioning it before, he couldn’t even begin to imagine the terrifying destructive power of these creatures.
Neither servile nor haughty, he spoke with orderly comings and goings, and only now did Shentu Yunxiao realize he had misjudged.
After glancing once more at the icy Qingxue beside him, he then stared deeply at Mu Fan, expressionlessly saying,
“I’ve learned something.”
Mu Fan smiled faintly, his language bereft of any self-deprecating modesty.
“You’re welcome.”
Just then, the young man in the suit, Colin, looked at Shentu Yunxiao seeking confirmation.
“Yunxiao?”
“Let’s go.”
Shentu Yunxiao coldly pushed through the crowd, about to head back.
Today’s plans had been utterly disrupted by this inexplicable boy, much to his irritation.
Especially when he noticed the crowd looking at him as if watching a clown, his heart filled with both hatred and anger.
Parting the crowd with his hands, he led the way out, but just as he was about to push through the last barrier of people, his hands felt like they had hit a wall, the solidity stinging his wrists.
“Wow, some interesting things have happened here, as always the weak can only blabber, hahaha.”
The undaunted laughter rang in Shentu Yunxiao’s ears, painfully loud.
*****
PS: I went to the hospital at 11 PM last night, felt unbearable halfway there, couldn’t even stand when I arrived, had to find a wheelchair through my wife, what pain…
Blood tests confirmed food poisoning, leading to acute gastroenteritis, was delirious from all the vomiting and diarrhea, received IV fluids until 7 AM today.
I’m still low-grade feverish and have diarrhea, didn’t go to work, have been lying at home all day.
This is written by the old man finally able to crawl out of bed this evening, guaranteeing to complete today’s two updates of 5000 words, please be patient.
(The second update yesterday had the last section as a draft, which I accidentally copied in the chaos, has now been deleted and corrected in this chapter.)