Chapter 698 - The Night Everything Changed
That night would prove to be impossible to forget, both for those on Earth or on the New World.
The blood moon on Earth had already disappeared, and the moon had recovered to its silvery white splendor. The phenomenon that only happened once every two hundred odd years finally ended, and to normal folk, the night passed by calmly and normally. Only many years later would everyone start to understand that the night had been a turning point in history.
In another manner of speaking, the wheel of history finally started to move forward that night.
Only very few newspapers reported strange happenings, such as there being ghosts in a cemetery or some strange monsters appearing deep in the mountains, but all that news was quickly buried due to the lack of evidence.
The Earth Division had been filled with anxiety and confusion, but they quickly decided that they had to figure out a way to deal with the sudden situation. Mao Tianying had hurried to board a plane to America early in the morning. The result of interacting with the various other divisions was that they needed to hold a meeting between all the branches. The various people in charge would be in attendance. Due to Judge Academy's position, it was decided that the meeting would be in America.
When they first heard that all forms of communication had been closed off, Mao Tianying and the others had been in a state of panic. After all, they were merely ambitionless folk who had gotten used to listening to orders from the main branch. When they suddenly lost the people behind them, it was unavoidable that they would be caught off guard. Yet, after the constant calls with the other divisions, Mao Tianying's mind thought of a saying.
When the tigers leave the mountain, the monkeys become the king.
The division heads, who never had much authority, had suddenly been handed the power to determine their own lives, and possibly even the fate of the world. That anticipation even caused the ambitionless Mao Tianying to admit that he was getting a little excited.
Even though those people were considered average in skill within the various academies, or even among the weaker ones, they were only on Earth because they felt that they did not have much room to grow in the New World, and decided to live a peaceful life on Earth. However, without the constraints of the academies, their powers were still quite impressive on Earth.
Mao Tianying had a lot of thoughts on the matter while he was on the way to America. In the end, everything needed to be agreed upon by all of the academies collectively. After all, they had to first make sure that they were still stable internally.
Compared to the peacefulness on Earth, the New World was already in an uproar.
Almost at the same time as the disappearance of the blood moon, Dawn Academy's new dean used a high-level communication method to issue a war announcement to the various academies: 'In view of the long-term scheming from the Weier Union in robbing the merchant caravans of Dawn Academy, Dawn Academy has decided to launch a war against them. We hope the other academies will understand.'
The moment that announcement came out, almost every academy was stunned.
The Weier Union was a country of humans that were situated at the south of Dawn Academy. Even though the country did not have much land, it was a very commercial kingdom. No matter if it was in terms of lifestyle or spending, the locals had slowly been influenced by Earth. The locals were very intelligent when it came to business, and their early assimilation had allowed them to benefit greatly from many businesses between the academies and the New World. The royalty of the kingdom had very full coffers.
Most importantly, everyone understood, even the youngest children among the natives, that the Weier Union's ability to so boldly expand their businesses was because the kingdom's royalty had the support and protection of both the American Judge Academy and the Royal British Academy. As a price for that protection, both the academies would gain large amounts of money from Weier's royalty every year.
If the history of the colonists on the New World could be split into two parts, then the first part saw the colonists using military might to suppress and attack enemy kingdoms to obtain territories, wealth, and people. After accumulating the basic resources, and after all the academies had sizable territories, the limited population of colonists meant that wars like that no longer happened.
Furthermore, with the naturalization of citizens, and the allure of the profits that could be gained, many natives had both passively and actively seeked collaboration. So, in the recent hundred years, there were fewer and fewer military actions from the colonists, and economic control had taken its place. A portion of them had termed it bloodless colonization.
The Weier Union represented just that, but the most insulting thing was, as a border country to Dawn Academy, they should have been under Dawn Academy. However, the academy was still in the process of recovering from the war against the orcs back then, and could not do anything but watch as the Americans and the British took the opportunity to make the first move and annex the whole union. Furthermore, thanks to the collective alliance that the academies had signed, Dawn Academy could do nothing about it.
Yet now, Dawn Academy seemed to be ignoring the treaty and declaring war on the Weier Union. Everyone knew that the true target of the declaration of war was actually Judge Academy and the Royal British Academy. After all, as a country that submitted to the academies, the Weier Union had completely abandoned their military in order to appease the academies. They only had the most basic peacekeeping troops, and there was definitely no way to stop the advancement of Dawn Academy with just that alone.
If the Americans and the British did not interfere, then the Weier Union would fall eventually. The money the two academies would lose was not too important, but if such a thing happened and they ignored it, it would definitely cause a very long chain of consequences.
However, if they did not ignore it, unless Dawn Academy decided to retreat, then the three academies would be fighting each other. That would be a disastrous result, especially since the wormholes had been sealed, and the Royal British Academy's first-year students were still lost within Dawn Academy's territories thanks to the tournament. No one would believe that the two incidents were not linked.
The future of humanity, the future of the whole world, had been plunged into a state of disarray that night.
As everyone's hearts filled up with anxiety, very few of them remembered that, in that graveyard, a young girl and a few injured students were working hard trying to save their companion.
On a hospital bed, a white-haired dean looked out into the sky. He looked extremely skinny in his white patient's robe, and his pale face had no trace of blood flowing in it. At that moment, he did not look like the once majestic dean, but an old man at the end of his life. He stared at the stars for a very long time before letting out a sigh. "Whatever. I'll bet my life on this, and help you one last time. I'll consider it as returning Ivan a favor."
That night, not one person slept.