Chapter 41 They Scorn Divine Miracles

Jiayi's words triggered a brief silence.

Then, the young new member responded, "Professor Xu, do you mean that Sedge killed Whitney for the extraterrestrial solar system civilization master we suspect?"

Jiayi replied, "Yes. Everyone, combining the descriptions of Ada and the state of Earth in 2085 that I have learned over the past 72 hours with our organization's focus on the movements of Sedge and Whitney in recent years, I have formed the following hypothesis."

Xu Jiayi initiated a screen-sharing session with images and text in the virtual meeting room.

What the attendees saw first was a map of Southeast Asia.

In the region surrounded by the South China Sea, the Pacific Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, and the Indian Ocean, Xu Jiayi marked several red dots on the territories of three countries: Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

"We already know that capital heavyweights in the circle of Sedge and Whitney, deeply bound to human AI technology, have an enormous demand for energy. A consensus was reached a decade ago—traditional energy cannot satisfy the bloodthirsty maw of artificial intelligence."

"Sedge represents the nuclear energy faction and deployed nuclear power plants early on. The islands of Southeast Asia, which still have plenty of surplus land, became targets for the overseas data centers of AI giants, naturally driving a large number of nuclear power plant projects led by Sedge. Both Malaysia and Indonesia have nuclear power infrastructure projects funded by Wisdom Hidden Capital."

"At the same time, Whitney, who majored in space energy systems during college, has accumulated a vast network of scientific contacts and commercial resources in space development over the past twenty years, thus running counter to Sedge's direction. Although Whitney often seemed to hype Wisdom Hidden's nuclear power projects, whenever she faced public scrutiny, she consistently displayed a dullness and anti-intellectualism inconsistent with her professional training in physics. Some of her remarks even sounded like high-level sabotage disguised as praise for Wisdom Hidden's massive nuclear power ventures."

Xu Jiayi's pace in providing this background was unhurried. Due to the complexity of the information, she paused appropriately to allow her colleagues to interject with questions, helping them digest the details.

After making sure everyone had noted the origins of the conflict between the nuclear energy and space energy factions, Xu Jiayi continued, "However, events took an unexpected turn. From our monitoring of the Borobudur area in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, it appears that Sedge contacted the extraterrestrial solar system civilization even earlier than Whitney did. Therefore, he had to eliminate Whitney to prevent her team from discovering that extraterrestrial civilization. The state of human destruction fifty years from now described by Ada and Mr. Zhou very likely originated from the actions taken by these AI capital titans today..."

At this point, Xu Jiayi couldn't help but look out the office window at the setting sun in the west.

Six miles away from her Jurong office, on a road bathed in the same evening twilight, Hera sat in the driver's seat with Fan Zhiheng in the passenger seat.

Fan Zhiheng turned on his device and fed a half-hour, AI-generated dialogue into the wiretapping system installed in Hera's car, which was under Sedge's authorized control.

"Alright, we can talk now," Fan Zhiheng said, lifting his head to look at the lush tropical plants on both sides of the road as he spoke to Hera.

Hera listened to about two minutes of the AI-simulated conversation through her synchronized earpiece and smiled, "It sounds just like the two of us talking."

Fan Zhiheng calmly replied, "This level of voice quality could already be achieved ten years ago. Back then, it could only fool living people, and that was on the condition that the duration didn't exceed one minute; otherwise, anyone whose brain hadn't been fried by AI short videos could tell the difference. But now it's different. It can fool you, it can fool Sedge, and even more so, it can fool the wiretappers that are AIs themselves."

Hera used a verbal command to turn off the earpiece playing the simulated dialogue, sighed, and shifted into a serious frame of mind.

"Whitney was killed by Sedge. He used a new nuclear power plant proposal to lure Whitney into stealing data, and an assassin robot inside the building used venomous snakes to finish her off. Her driver had already been bought off by Sedge."

Fan Zhiheng uttered coldly, "Evil gets its deserts; this is the end Whitney deserved."

As fellow countrymen and deep cultivators in this field, Fan Zhiheng knew all too well the evil things Whitney had done to science and scientists over the past two decades.

Immediately afterward, he added, "Hera, when the time comes, whether the law recognizes you as a state's witness exempted from criminal liability or as an accomplice who must serve time, it won't change the fact that I want to marry you."

After all, for lovers who had experienced a long separation and whose souls had resonated for so long, how could they bear to spend their time discussing only the filthy and rotten affairs of the industry?

Hera gripped the steering wheel without turning her head to look at Fan Zhiheng, but the corners of her eyes and lips formed the most graceful curves.

"Let's spend our honeymoon in Borobudur, Yogyakarta," Hera said.

This was the most direct acceptance of Fan Zhiheng's proposal.

The calm and restraint in Fan Zhiheng's tone finally melted into a gentle warmth: "We will stay there for a month, a real honey-'month'. Living in the mountains, turning off all devices, with only the forest, insects, volcanoes, heaven and earth, you and me every day."

Hera laughed: "Shall we chase away the staff of the resort villa too? I don't know how to cook."

"I can do everything," Fan Zhiheng promised, patting his chest. He then opened his phone to admire the sacred site Hera had mentioned, remarking with emotion, "Borobudur is Buddhist, and Prambanan nearby is Hindu. Both places are so beautiful."

"Yes, they are the true miracles," Hera murmured.

People are so different. When Sedge went to the island of Java in Indonesia and saw these Buddhist and Hindu ruins, his gaze had been indifferent, and he arrogantly commented, "Compared to the great high-latitude civilization outside the solar system, these are like a joke."

At that moment, the past and present of the Bamiyan Buddhas flashed through Hera's mind.

Deliberate cultural cleansing does not only stem from conflicts of belief among humans themselves.

When traitors among humanity first surrender to technology and then kneel before the "Master" of an extraterrestrial civilization, that is the exact moment of the extinction of great human civilization, regardless of which belief the subspecies of civilization originates from.