Apocalypse Forecast

In the end, Amber didn’t fork out the cash.

Huai Shi was no longer Amber’s agent, so he saw no extra perks for capturing the Murderer. It was one thing to pay for a stand-in ally for her cousin, but to essentially boost her cousin’s score was a sucker’s game.

Clearly, this wealthy woman wasn’t keen on parting with her money.

After much thought, Huai Shi had to admit Amber had changed.

She was no longer the generous little sister but had become a stingy one instead.

Truly regrettable.

After a brief search of the crime scene yielded no results, Miss Huaizhi pedaled away elegantly on her bicycle, her white dress fluttering in the wind.

The breeze that blew in her face was so refreshing.

After a long, long, long time, the sun slowly began to rise.

The rising sun spread its light, inch by inch, illuminating the crime scene. In the shadows, previously empty, the outline of Banners slowly emerged.

In the sunlight, they appeared in a fleeting glimpse and then quickly dissipated again.

Only the doorways from Dreamland opened for a brief moment.

Countless mists billowed out, taking the shape of flying birds with metallic wings, soaring above the Nara Sky Dome. Before long, they blended seamlessly into the local raven flock.

In Yingzhou customs, there was no habit of capturing wild ravens. On the contrary, unlike Dongxia, ravens were considered auspicious and were treated well in urban areas, where people even fed them regularly.

So, that day, the local ravens met a group of strange visitors from afar... Speaking in an odd dialect, their calls were loud and enthusiastic during their visits.

Although they didn’t understand what ”Old Pal, double tap the 666, shout for the Holy!” meant, it seemed quite interesting. Many ravens had already started to echo the call, finding this slogan much more impressive than simple cawing!

Thanks to their formidable power and the various gifts presented to the local raven boss—plastic bottle caps, expired bento boxes from convenience stores, glass marbles, and so on—the entire Crow Flocks of Nara quickly mobilized, hospitably helping these friends from afar search for clues.

The targets: a strange Samurai; a pink Helmet; death; anomalies... and the local specialty, little yellow books.

Damn, those foreign ravens have some weird XP.

What do they want with that?

.

.

.

Through the Dream Cage, Huai Shi’s perspective was evenly focused on the Crow Flock below. He kept an eye out for any clues reported by the ravens, while also cold-heartedly confiscating the little yellow books.

Hmph, so young and already into such things. Be careful, or you won’t grow tall!

This is all to protect the mental health of the Crow Flock. They’re still young, still growing. How could they withstand this? If there’s any corrupting influence, let it come to me, the Owner of the Great Mob!

However, a sign of some development was that the Crow Flock, aside from their daily prompts for updates, was gradually able to engage in limited communication with Huai Shi.

The improvement in their intelligence level was obvious.

If it was simple work like surveillance and finding clues, leaving it to them posed no problem.

This kind of search, like finding a needle in a haystack, tested manpower and endurance the most. To get clues, one had to be patient. An entire day passed. Many little yellow books were confiscated, but there was no real progress. He could only wait slowly.

However, that evening, the unsettling maid with a Shirabyōshi mask knocked on the door again to deliver a notice.

The second Chef Demon duel was about to begin.

The contenders were Second fifth Li Jian Amber, backed by the Dongxia Genealogy, and her sixth uncle, Li Jian Zhi No, currently the manager of Guanyama Energy.

Amber’s first Chef Demon duel was highly anticipated.

What Huai Shi was even more interested in was... her representative Chef Demon, said to be a Dongxia old-timer monster of over a century old—Guo ShouQue.

Long before Huai Shi was born, this Old Guo had made a name for himself stirring trouble in Hell. Although he was said to have been severely sabotaged by his own disciple, leading to a decline in vigor and even the loss of his sense of smell, forcing him to retire from the scene, his return now was indeed intriguing.

Even with greatly diminished skills, Guo ShouQue remained one of the few powerful opponents in the current Chef Demon duels.

His opponent was a Chef Demon from Industrial Cuisine, a new culinary style that had emerged like a dark horse in recent years: Jordan Ju Zhijian.

According to the information Amber provided, this Chef Demon, who had gained considerable fame in recent years, was a mixed-race individual from Ryukyu who grew up in Detroit, America. He had trained from childhood under ’Nitrogen’ Anderson, a representative of modern-day Industrial Kitchen Demons and a Seven Star Chef, becoming an Official Chef Demon at the age of fourteen.

He could be called a rising star among the new generation of Chef Demons, and also a formidable enemy feared by many candidates.

An old-timer Chef Demon with long-unhealed wounds, and an upstart heralding the new Industrial Cuisine—the outcome of their battle instantly captured the attention of all participants.

By the time Huai Shi and Zhenxi arrived, they were in the last wave.

The other candidates and Chef Demons who had received the news earlier had already taken the advantageous spots, waiting expectantly. Arriving late, Huai Shi and Zhenxi had to sit in the back row to maintain distance from each other.

Actually, Huai Shi had originally planned to come alone, but after learning of the situation, Zhenxi insisted on joining. As a candidate for the family head selection, she couldn’t always hide behind her agent.

After much hesitation, Huai Shi nodded.

Since she’s already involved, constantly having her hide like an ostrich won’t do.

In the worst-case scenario, if they encountered any sanity-draining scenes, he would quickly cover her eyes and knock her out to prevent any lasting psychological trauma.

Miss Huaizhi’s arrival seemed to attract quite a few hostile gazes—and they weren’t concealed at all. After witnessing her take down Shenjin Qing with a glass of ice water, many had already come to regard her as a formidable opponent.

Among them, there was even no shortage of killing intent and certain, more unpleasant desires.

Huai Shi had anticipated this, however.

He had never subscribed to ’friendship first, competition second.’ If one were truly so virtuous and dedicated to proper conduct, why become a Chef Demon? Every single person who could be called a Chef Demon was, without exception, not a good sort.

Including Huai Shi himself.

Whether for gluttony, for satiation, or for some other messed-up reason, anyone who harbored such desires and dared to step into the Abyss, to delve into Hell—one could imagine with half a thought how abnormal they would be.

Even a normally harmless Negative Energy Producer like Huai Shi, when pushed, could unleash a large-scale Source Substance plague. What then of others who had long been unscrupulous?

Huai Shi met every gaze that dared to look their way, one by one.

Her eyes, brimming with countless negative Source Substances, transformed into the Abyss. As if burning with flames, they unabashedly emanated a terrifying aura, coldly implanting vast shadows into the consciousness of the offenders.

The countless curses of suffering from within the Divine Blade: Wrath and Hatred flashed by. Pure Disaster tore apart the weak pretense, baring its fangs and claws, finally bringing silence to the world.

Atop the high tower, the bell finally rang.

The Envoy from behind the curtain rose as usual, spouted some nonsense no one would pay attention to, and returned to his seat.

And Inu River’s voice rang out once more.

”Both sides, with honor and dignity, fight to determine the victor!”

The Chef Demon duel officially began!

”Heh, the young are truly to be feared,” the stooped old man in a Dongxia coat said, lifting his eyes from behind the cooking station. His wrinkled face bore a strange smile as he scrutinized his opponent. ”When I was your age, I couldn’t have achieved such things. I’m old, so old.”

”If you’re so old, why not just obediently crawl into the dustbin of history? Why make someone else go through the trouble of sweeping you away?” his opponent, the robust young man—Johnny Kujikane—retorted, looking up and openly showing his disgust at the old man’s pretense.

In a word, this young man could be described as rugged.

His physique was solid but not burly, his muscles well-developed but not exaggerated. He had sun-tanned bronze skin, large joints, calloused hands, and short, neat hair.

He wore thick, greyish-white work trousers and a white undershirt; that was all.

Like a block of iron forged by a ten-thousand-ton press, he made no attempt to hide his toughness and indifference, merely stating in a cold voice, ”The duel has begun. Don’t waste time.”

”Old folks like me tend to ramble. Don’t be so harsh, young man,” Guo ShouQue said, his eyes narrowing slightly. ”Young people who don’t know their limits always need to suffer a bit to learn respect for their elders.”

”PTUI!” Johnny turned his head and spat crudely on the ground. After wiping it away with his foot, he tilted his head back and sneered, ”Old devil, times are changing, you know? The old ways don’t work anymore! Your whole set of seniority-based shamanistic practices is long outdated! The twenty-third century is the age of industry! No, the age of humanity is the age of industry!”

”Absolute precision, absolute standards, absolute output... These are the criteria for victory!”

He raised his hand, clenched his fist, and enunciated each word, ”Old devils left behind by the times should just obediently crawl back to their shacks and cook porridge!”

That was, undeniably, an incredibly powerful and hardcore stance.

Simply standing there, for a brief, dazed moment, one could almost feel the roar and rumble of factories, imagine countless acrid dust particles forming a grey mist, rising from a forest of smokestacks, obscuring the sky, blanketing the earth.

It was the magnificent spectacle brought about by mass production, the brutal beauty inherited from industry.

This was indeed the essence of Industrial Cuisine.

Even if it was just a fleeting illusion, it was still enough to make one understand: this man was no unknown, but a formidable expert who had come here possessing absolute power and skill.

Anyone who dared to belittle or scorn him would pay the price!

To this, Guo ShouQue merely smiled, looking at him kindly, as if at a misbehaving Little Brag.

”Then, this old man shall wait and see.”