Steampunk Era: Mad Abield

The second batch of children performed better, especially the child of the grand lady of Dimis. As the daughter of the matron, she was obviously not within the range of those who couldn’t get enough to eat. Moreover, with her innate spiritual energy talent, this child awakened her powers on the fourth day.

This is both good news and bad news.

The good news is that Malin can speak with more confidence when reporting to others about this child, and the bad news is that from the appearance of spiritual energy talent even among zombie pups, it shows that the subspace is becoming more and more closely linked with this world.

Because of this, Malin took a special trip back to Westland to instruct the Church of the Goddess of Harvest and intelligence agencies of various countries to start collecting data on the talents of children born in the last five years from villages. If there’s no mistake, the closer to the present, the more children per hundred have spiritual energy talent, and the higher their intensity.

"Actually, you don’t need to return to Westland; I already have the data here. In the past ten years, just in the New Hangzhou area, the number of children with spiritual energy talent per hundred has been increasing every year. Last year alone, it was 23.9 per hundred, already close to a quarter. Ten years ago, this number was 6.85, and fifty years ago, it was 0.79."

Sage Yu recited all the figures in one breath, then sighed: "Ordinary families are delighted to have the first transcendent seed in their family, attributing all this to good luck. However, the great families shudder because they understand there is a problem with these numbers, but none of them want to reveal this to the mortals."

Malin, of course, understood what this sage was thinking: "Yes, telling the mortals that the apocalypse is near... That’s too risky. We don’t know who among them might not withstand the pressure and turn to our enemies... But if we don’t tell them, when the time comes, the pain from facing despair will be enough to overwhelm most unprepared people."

Just like Sage Yu, Malin knew that whether to tell or not was a helpless choice, and neither option solved the problem.

"We don’t have much time left," Sage Yu said with deep helplessness.

Malin nodded and looked at the grand lady and Atai walking out of the woods: "The guests are here, smile, Sage Yu."

"I know," Sage Yu replied.

And Malin turned around and waved at the children sitting under the canopy in the distance, roasting meat with their peers.