"If I told you I was God," the woman suddenly asked, "would you believe ?"
The boy's eyes went wide, staring intently at the woman atop the ruins with a playful smile. For a mont, he felt as if his mind ca to a halt...
"You little brat! I tell you to worship the Bodhisattva, and you run off here for what?!" The scolding of a middle-aged woman snapped the boy out of his stupor, making him shiver as a chilling sensation crept from his tailbone up his spine to his neck, followed by a hot, stinging slap on his body.
The boy trembled, but instead of imdiately looking at his angry mother, he turned his head towards the top of the ruins—the woman had disappeared sohow, as if she had never been there.
As if, everything had been just a hallucination for the boy.
Faintly, the boy felt as if sothing was missing inside him... yet he couldn't quite say what it was.
"Still in a daze! Still in a daze!" The middle-aged woman grew even angrier seeing the boy's dumbfounded look, grabbing hold of his collar and knocking his head several tis, "You only know how to play outside! Do you have any idea how hard it is for to raise you all on my own? If you don't pray to Bodhisattva and your dad dies in the ergency room, then what will we do? I'm asking you, what will we do?!"
The middle-aged woman cried and scolded the boy, but the boy seed utterly unresponsive, staring foolishly at the ruins.
"Co here!" Exhausted from scolding, the middle-aged woman pulled the boy over, forcing him to kneel before the copper statue of Bodhisattva, "Hurry! Kowtow to Bodhisattva, tell him you're ignorant and won't be like this again, ask Bodhisattva not to bla our family! Hurry!"
The boy hesitated for a few seconds, then slowly bowed down and kowtowed to the statue.
However, a little girl nearby noticed his odd behavior, walked up to the middle-aged woman, tugged at her sleeve and whispered, "Mom... I feel like brother lost his soul... It's so strange."
"What's so strange about that? He's just pretending because he's scared I'll hit him!" The middle-aged woman said dismissively, and after seeing the boy finish three kowtows, she was satisfied, packed the copper statue of Bodhisattva with a relatively clean cloth, and respectfully placed it in the bag she brought.
...
...
A week later.
Tianfu City, construction site of the integrated training base.
The underground palace that Sun Hang's group discovered had been completely sealed off. The number of troops stationed near the site had tripled, and on top of the large pit, the workers who returned had built a "temporary research center" using modular building materials.
Sun Hang was sitting in the office on the second floor of the research center, crossing his legs, leisurely enjoying the newly installed heating while waiting for Ye Jiu to report on the information compiled from various sources.
This task shouldn't have been Ye Jiu's responsibility, but at Sun Hang's deliberate request, Ye Jiu had no choice but to walk into his office carrying a pile of docunts.
"You bastard!" Ye Jiu slamd the pile of docunts onto the desk, "Doing this on purpose, aren't you?"
"Exactly." Sun Hang nodded with a smile, "Don't you always fight and kill? I thought I'd let you do so desk work for a change."
"Do you have any idea how busy I am? Even if you temporarily solve my manpower shortage, I still have heaps of things to handle every day, okay?" Ye Jiu complained with disdain, "Unlike you, a slacker doing nothing all day, surrounded by a bunch of lovely won... Tsk, people compare and it drives crazy!"
"Among this 'bunch of lovely won' you ntioned, it includes your sister Ye Xuan." Sun Hang teased, "Aren't you afraid of accidentally becoming my brother-in-law?"
"Oh please, I know Xuan'Er's character, she would never like soone as carefree as you." Ye Jiu waved dismissively, "I'm very assured when it cos to her."
"Then what kind of n does your sister like?" Sun Hang sat up and asked seriously, "Tell so I can learn, and then find a chance to win over your Ye Family's precious daughter."
"Haha, compared to n, she likes power more." Ye Jiu gave Sun Hang the middle finger, "I even suspect she was born the wrong gender."
"Alright, stop joking around." Sun Hang stood up and walked to the window, taking a look at the construction site that had resud operations, he said, "I called you over mainly to discuss recruitnt matters, so details need to be talked through."
"And how do you explain these?" Ye Jiu angrily slapped the pile of docunts on the table, "You even specifically ordered them to be printed on paper... I think you're deliberately wasting my precious ti!"
"Just a casual effort." Sun Hang said, "Besides, isn't paper safer?"
"Safe my ass!" Ye Jiu said, "A chip the size of a fingernail can store everything, insisting on printing tens of thousands of pages, you're severely wasting resources!"
"Let's discuss the main issue, report on this compiled information, so we can discuss recruitnt matters." Sun Hang said.
"..." Ye Jiu glared at Sun Hang, then walked behind the desk, sat in Sun Hang's chair, and spoke, "As for Val Juedra, although no criminal records can be found in Xiazhou, he's definitely a notorious figure in France and Sicily."
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