Chapter 382: Peace Negotiations
Upon hearing this reply, Bai Mo said no more. Through information interference and mental interference, he possessed numerous ways to "influence" others without leaving a trace, let alone when dealing with monsters from a foreign world whose heritage was far more ancient than Earth's.
"Is there anything else anyone wants to say?"
After a prolonged silence, it was Bai Mo who finally broke the deadlock. He scanned the circle before him, finding almost everyone uniformly emitting a grey aura of despondency.
His words had dealt a considerable blow to these individuals. Their trump cards, which they had been hesitating to reveal, had been shockingly laid bare—perhaps even better than they themselves knew.
The unknown was the most terrifying thing. Unsure of how much the other party truly understood, they couldn't tell if all their struggles were in vain, or if there was merely a suspicion of an empty fort strategy to deceive them.
Bai Mo's previous actions had also made it clear: any hostile move would instantly be met with killing intent, but conversely, choosing to surrender presented a strong chance of survival.
Compared to the matter of life and death, five years of re-education through labor were not entirely unacceptable... Each person present was a long-lived species with an expected lifespan of several centuries; a mere five years was but a fleeting moment.
However, it was clear that not everyone was willing to compromise. Half a minute later, Wei Wu Ya, along with a man and a woman behind him, stepped forward.
"Do you object?" Bai Mo's piercing gaze, devoid of any emotion, swept over them.
After two seconds that felt like an eternity, Wei Wu Ya forcibly calmed himself down and pulled out a scroll of parchment covered in strange patterns.
"Sign this parchment. Let the three of us leave now, and do not pursue us in any form hereafter, otherwise..." He felt that every word he uttered at that moment required immense courage, but he still persevered, then projected an image using a Spirit Art.
On the screen were two unconscious young women. Beside them were four foreigners whose power was far from trivial, guarding them closely with extreme vigilance. Any sudden move, and they would be killed instantly.
Wei Wu Ya had never realized that speaking loudly in front of someone could actually make him break out in a cold sweat.
"Is this meaningful?" Bai Mo carefully scrutinized the parchment before him for several seconds, scanning it more than ten times from an atomic level, then uttered that sentence. Strangely, however, he was speaking while looking at the names the three had already signed on the parchment, completely ignoring the three living people standing beside him.
As for the image displayed by the Spirit Art, he merely glanced at it and looked away.
"Still too young, truly, to do something so foolish." Liu Zhen, standing behind, communicated with the people beside him using mental waves.
"What he can think of, we've long since considered. Kidnapping itself isn't the problem, but he actually handed Hua Taishan's granddaughter over to foreigners."
"There are too many influential figures in this world who owe him a great debt of gratitude. Even if they really did manage to escape by sheer luck, Edward Teach, who benefited greatly at the time, or Chen Bo alone, could make it impossible for them to escape, leaving them utterly nowhere to go. It wouldn't even be Bai Mo's turn to act."
In their view, Hua Taishan, before his death back then, had used his life to exchange for the method of advancement, and told everyone on the battlefield at that time without reservation, which amounted to indirectly making them all owe a profound favor. And this favor had naturally transferred to Hua Qing.
That group involved more than half of the world's current powerhouses, and many of those present had actually benefited from his favor.
Even if only a third of them still remembered that favor, that would still be the enmity of over thirty Five-Tiers or even Six-Tiers. Even if the three could escape today's calamity through kidnapping and extortion, they would likely not survive more than a few days.
"As long as you don't want to live your life under the condemnation of your conscience, you have to ac-ac-ac... accept my terms. Don't think I don't know that he entrusted Hua Qing to your care before he died!" Wei Wu Ya's brain had already begun to malfunction, and he was even speaking a little incoherently.
"Yes! Let us leave this place! Sign your name on the parchment, otherwise they will vanish from this world forever!" The woman behind him also chimed in.
"I just don't want to be anyone's dog! I painstakingly cultivated for freedom! Power! Power and strength unfettered by any suppression! Your damn Destiny System, isn't it just meant to enslave all of us?!" Wei Wu Ya screamed hoarsely, both to embolden himself and to elicit a resonance from the others.
However, the onlookers were clearly different from these three. They had all passed the age of adventuring with fiery passion. Years of political struggles had taught the once-youngsters like Chen Bo and Yun Jie to strategize before moving, and they had acquired a good deal of the cynical veteran's aura. Of course, to put it less kindly, it could also be called compromise.
Those who hadn't learned to compromise either actively left the center of power to wander about, like Ye Zi, or were dispatched to some remote location, similarly far from the center of power.
As for those who were originally seasoned politicians, they understood even more deeply the true meaning of "Leave the green hills, no fear of no firewood."
Of the five individuals in the Huaxia Youth Alliance nicknamed the "Five Emperors," Zhao Fei Yan had already been killed, and the young man who previously used the Sky Dragon Blazing Flame had also been killed. The remaining three were precisely the ones who had stepped forward now.
After hearing Wei Wu Ya's accusations, Bai Mo's heart remained utterly unperturbed. He believed that others actually held similar thoughts, but had chosen silence after witnessing the absolute disparity in strength.
Bai Mo was very clear about what he was doing. He was, by his own power, in a manner that almost entirely twisted human nature, changing the very laws governing the operation of society. It was only natural to receive such vitriol, akin to a death-defying remonstrance.
As for someone utterly self-centered, no matter how much the useless rabble squirmed, it wouldn't influence his thoughts in the slightest. Useless rabble would always remain useless rabble, only capable of spouting empty words, and when it came to actual work, each was more useless than the last. Otherwise, they wouldn't have committed such a ridiculously hateful act of kidnapping Hua Qing.
"Even until your deaths, you're still just dogs, or rather, worse than dogs—just toys that can be casually discarded... Do I need to drag you out, Disciple of the Crimson World? I can smell that rusty scent of yours, symbolizing resistance, from across the Pacific Ocean." Bai Mo said, looking at Wei Wu Ya's face with a gaze of pity.
"Are you truly unwilling to sign this truce agreement?" Wei Wu Ya, whose face had suddenly and eerily become flushed with a crimson glow, asked in a mechanical tone utterly different from before.
The four characters "Disciple of the Crimson World" instantly made the onlookers instinctively distance themselves from the three individuals before them, and simultaneously prepared their defenses.
"Have you misunderstood something? Right now, it's just me crushing the three of you."
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