Chapter 152: Old Man Sun's Salvation Plan

As things stood, both the Galan Society and the Supernatural Disaster Bureau felt they had come out on top.

Xu Yuan had found the true headquarters. As long as he uprooted the organization, his strategic goal of conquering the city was within reach.

But for Old Man Sun, the sole key to tonight was Xu Yuan. If Xu Yuan wasn't eliminated, destroying the Galan Society a thousand times over would be meaningless. The Divine Tree would simply continue to produce new Fierce Ghost ability users.

As long as Xu Yuan showed up and was killed, the game would be over.

Whatever the outcome tonight, for better or worse.

With the meeting of Xu Yuan and Old Man Sun—the two ultimate ceilings of combat power—everything was about to be settled.

Gao Tian was losing his patience. "Senior Sun," he urged. "Xu Yuan has already set out. You can head to the headquarters now, too.

"If you get there early, maybe a lot fewer people will die."

On the other end of the mobile phone, Old Man Sun simply took a drag of his cigarette. "Do you think," he said slowly, "having come this far, with so many already dead in Shanghai City, that I would care about a mere five hundred people at the headquarters?

"They made their peace the day they joined the Supernatural Disaster Bureau. To give everything for human civilization, even if they are used as pawns or cast aside as sacrifices—they have no regrets.

"Xu Yuan is incredibly cunning. Before descending on the headquarters, he will definitely have scouted out who is hiding inside.

"If I head over early and Xu Yuan senses even the slightest hint, he will retreat immediately. Even if it's just a one-percent chance, I absolutely cannot take that risk.

"He must be allowed to kill. Let him believe it's not a trap, and that the Supernatural Disaster Bureau's final batch of elites has truly been one hundred percent destroyed by him.

"This is the blood sacrifice I offer, and my sincerity."

Old Man Sun's ruthlessness and viciousness were truly spine-chilling to hear.

Every human life, including his own, was merely part of a calculation. Old Man Sun was an absolute rationalist. To achieve his grand final objective, he didn't care how much infamy he bore or how heavy the moral shackles became.

He lived only for victory.

Gao Tian had chosen to stand with Old Man Sun, yet he still felt as if he were looking at a venomous snake when faced with these values.

Perhaps this was the only way to defeat Xu Yuan.

By becoming even more ruthless than Xu Yuan, even more like a ghost.

"Gao Tian, you must remember," Old Man Sun said.

"Only the victors, those who survive, are qualified to face the judgment and interrogation of history.

"The dead, those who lose everything, do not even have the right to be judged.

"Many years from now, future generations will naturally make an objective judgment on our merits and sins.

"Because tonight, the winner in Shanghai City is our human faction."

On the other end of the mobile phone, Old Man Sun checked the time.

Yes, Xu Yuan should have arrived at the true headquarters and begun his sweep.

Minister Xie, Ai Ning, and everyone in that underground facility would be dragged out one by one and killed.

Minister Xie had known from the very beginning. The moment Ai Ning was sent into the basement and appeared in his Study, the countdown on his life had begun.

Yet he still meticulously completed all his work just like usual, awaiting the arrival of the King of All Ghosts, Xu Yuan.

Minister Xie had plenty of time to escape. Given his status and connections, if he hadn't wanted to execute this plan, no one would have had the authority to force him.

But a performance had to be convincing. If a minister-level figure didn't die, how could the calculating Xu Yuan be convinced of his own success?

Within the Galan Society, there were loyalists like Ghost Cave and Ghost Infant who could risk their lives for their organization's victory. Did righteous humans have less integrity than ghosts?

In the final few minutes, Gao Tian truly couldn't hold back anymore. He asked, "Senior—"

"I'm still here," Old Man Sun replied.

"There are three minutes left. If you have a question, ask it quickly."

"Has the Supernatural Disaster Bureau—have you—ever considered the future of humanity?" Gao Tian asked.

"With the supernatural revival, the number of ghosts globally is only going to increase, eventually swallowing human civilization entirely.

"This is a predetermined tide. No country or organization on Earth can reverse this trend.

"Even someone as strong as you couldn't possibly fight so many Fierce Ghosts at once, right?"

Not to mention, how many more years could the eighty-nine-year-old human Old Man Sun even live?

"Have the higher-ups of the Supernatural Disaster Bureau ever considered how to solve a future like this?" Gao Tian pressed.

"Or is it just about surviving day by day? As long as the Earth isn't destroyed today, we pretend nothing is happening. Just wait until the day the world ends?"

Although Gao Tian did not side with the Galan Society, he fully understood Xu Yuan's radical salvation plan.

Compared to the Supernatural Disaster Bureau, which merely patched things up and delayed their inevitable doom, Xu Yuan was the one who actually wanted to solve the problem.

You couldn't just beat Xu Yuan to death and pretend nothing had happened in this world, acting as if life could go on as normal.

Taking it one day at a time.

Wouldn't that just mean failing to solve the problem, and instead killing the person who raised it?

On the mobile phone, Old Man Sun was clearly just smoking a cigarette. The few seconds spent waiting for an answer felt like a year to Gao Tian.

Until the next second, when the old man's voice rang out again.

Only this time, it sounded much older and slower. "To tell the truth, I didn't really want to answer this question directly.

"But knowing your personality, if I don't give you a proper explanation, I'm afraid you won't let it go."

"It's not that I can't be sacrificed or deceived," Gao Tian said. "I can even become a discarded part of the plan.

"But I want to know if what I've been fighting for all this time actually has meaning.

"I want to know if it's worth so many people dying in Shanghai City tonight."

Old Man Sun sighed. "I originally wanted to say, trust in the wisdom of future generations.

"Each generation has its own mission. Our generation prevented the entirety of Xia Country from falling into a Ghost Nation. Our mission is already over. The stage ahead belongs to you young people.

"You, Ye Jiu—the new generation of youth. You have already far surpassed what I was at your age. You must believe in yourselves. It's not impossible that you might forge a brand-new path."

"I'm afraid that answer isn't very satisfying," Gao Tian replied.

Leaving it to the wisdom of future generations?

How was that any different from saying nothing at all?

The old man on the other end of the line sighed. "Regarding the future of humanity, the world's ghost hunters and the top leaders of various countries have had many discussions and proposed several backup plans.

"The Ark Project.

"Launching massive manned interstellar arks into the starry void, carrying one hundred thousand Earth elites along with complete databases of Earth's biological genes, technology, and cultural heritage. They would continue the survival of human civilization on a new planet in the vast universe.

"This faction believes that Earth has already become a breeding ground for Fierce Ghosts, that there is no need to save it, and that it can be completely abandoned.

"The Permafrost Project.

"The Russian delegation planned to use three thousand artificial satellites to build a global refrigeration network, dropping the surface temperature to minus one hundred degrees Celsius, turning the entire world into a supersized Siberia. Experiments have proven that in a state of extreme freezing, the Killing Rules and active ranges of eighty percent of Fierce Ghosts would be heavily restricted.

"If this plan was adopted, whether the Fierce Ghosts would be restricted or not is unknown, but according to estimates, two-thirds of the existing Earth population would die.

"The Calamity Suppression Project.

"Fierce Ghosts are repelled by waves of a specific frequency. Of course, merely using ordinary resonance cannot achieve the effect of driving ghosts away.

"It requires simultaneous resonance on a scale of millions.

"Scientists from Xia Country proposed a concept based on ancient immortal texts: erecting an aerial matrix built from millions of carbon nanotube pillars, with each pillar resonating on the exact same frequency. This would turn the entire world into a massive ghost-suppression array.

"This project currently has the highest relative feasibility. However, establishing a system of suppression pillars to cover the entire world would take a conservative estimate of twenty-five years."

"These are just the relatively decent ones. The plans proposed by some witch doctors and shamans in Africa haven't even been backed up in the archives of the Global Ghost Hunter Association."

To be honest, ghost hunters from all countries had indeed proposed many wildly imaginative salvation plans. But most of them had zero feasibility, or the feasibility was far too low and the negative consequences too great.

Even for the most probable Calamity Suppression Project, setting aside whether the final array could truly suppress ninety-nine percent of the Fierce Ghosts worldwide...

Even if this supersized array could be created, it would take twenty-five years. There wasn't enough time.

The end of humanity would arrive in just twenty years.

Rather ironically, Xu Yuan's Ghost Nation Project was actually considered quite rational among this chaotic mess.

Having to pick from this pile of plans was like asking Gao Tian to choose between eating shit-flavored chocolate, chocolate-flavored shit, or shit-flavored shit.

"Are there really no plans with higher feasibility than these?" Gao Tian asked, unwilling to accept it.

Old Man Sun replied, "There is one other plan that is simpler, more direct, and more brutal.

"That is, in the future, someone stronger than Xu Yuan, and stronger than me, appears.

"When an S-Level Fierce Ghost appears in this world, they imprison it. If a hundred appear, they imprison a hundred.

"Violence is the meta-rule of all rules. As long as your fists are hard enough, you don't need to consider any rules at all. Your will becomes the rule."

Gao Tian knew that Old Man Sun was once again pinning his hopes on their next generation.

This was the true salvation plan in Old Man Sun's eyes.

He was a man who stood at the Peak of Martial Arts. For his entire life, he had relied on a single staff to suppress half an era.

From his perspective, suppressing Fierce Ghosts wasn't difficult. As long as a younger successor stronger than him appeared later to continue the suppression, it was entirely feasible.

There was no need to think up salvation plans. All that flashy nonsense was just a waste of time.

But would such a person truly appear in the future?

Even if they did, what would happen when that upgraded Old Man Sun reached the end of his lifespan and died? Would a third Old Man Sun emerge after that?

"No matter what," Old Man Sun said, "even if the future is unclear and we encounter countless difficulties, we have never once considered letting a ghost rule this planet as emperor—having all living humans bow at its feet, surviving like pet animals just to draw out our last breaths.

"Once today's matters are concluded, I'll teach you how to beat up ghosts. It's very simple.

"Time's up. It's time to move.

"Tonight's war is coming to a close."