"Sirin, I heard you got into another argument with the local Shenzhou officials. I already told you, you need to be more reasonable..."
Miss Fu Hua was trying her best to persuade Sirin to listen.
But Sirin wouldn't hear a word of it. She complained, "These people are truly despicable. They say they want to study geology. I ask them, what's there to study about that stuff? Can they really tell what happened hundreds of millions of years ago by looking at some rocks? Besides, as the human population grows, there will definitely be another wave of large-scale development. All this geology, all these historical artifacts, will just become obstacles to building new cities."
"I've advised them several times not to care about those mountain ridges and whatnot. What's the use? Can it make them money? Can people admire it? It's just for show. They've probably secretly sold off who knows how much of it themselves. And the stuff inside those karst caves, I've seen it with my own eyes..."
Fu Hua was suddenly alarmed and quickly stopped her. "Is that something you should be saying? You absolutely must not tell anyone! A lot of people will lose their heads!"
Sirin showed a look of disgust and said, "Don't you try to make excuses for them. I've already deeply studied Shenzhou civilization. No one's going to lose their head! The chance of even getting fined is pretty small, unless they go against a major policy or offend some leader who puts their problem on the table."
Miss Fu Hua held her head, feeling dazed, and asked, "Who on earth taught you these things?"
"Huh? Aren't all the TV dramas here in Shenzhou filmed this way?" Sirin scratched her head and explained, "I just registered an account on your local search engine and asked what I should watch to better understand the behavioral logic of your officials. Then they recommended some TV drama called 'The Ming Dynasty' something-or-other. It was a bit boring, but I remembered Noldrei's teachings and studied it seriously!"
'So that's the sound I hear from your phone every night? You shouldn't learn from TV dramas... uh, well, maybe...'
Fu Hua thought about it carefully and, for a moment, didn't know if she should refute her. After all, when it came to historical dramas in Shenzhou, they generally pursued a more realistic depiction of political struggles. It couldn't be said that Sirin was watching the wrong thing.
She tentatively asked, "Sirin, what do you think the so-called major policy direction means?"
Sirin said proudly, "Being around Noldrei, I've long since understood what a ruler is all about. The 'major policy direction' is whatever is related to the interests of the top leaders. The so-called 'table' refers to when the organization's rules are put down in writing, involving the internal public opinion of the organization. The origin of 'execution' is a bit more subtle; it usually only involves the people who sign off on it."
'She's really studied this in depth!'
Fu Hua found that Sirin had indeed learned a lot about the internal operational logic of Shenzhou's officialdom. It seemed Sirin was quite principled when it came to getting things done.
"I'm just complaining about other things. I can understand the signing, the table, all of it. But the tools they use are no good. I've repeatedly emphasized finding a group of people to use Stigma-powered Battlesuits to form the subsequent engineering team. But I've never gotten an answer on this very critical matter."
Sirin was responsible for excavating the canal, but that didn't mean no one else was responsible for maintaining it. This included reinforcing the banks on both sides, subsequent bridge construction, which sections of the route to excavate first, which confluences to bypass, the height differences, and ensuring the seawater canal didn't pollute the freshwater rivers.
All this follow-up work was to be handed over to local organizations. Sirin's only jobs were dredging and connecting the two ends.
"Of course the people here won't accept Stigma-powered Battlesuits so easily. Who in the world doesn't know about the dirty laundry within the parties of every country? They would never allow a tool that can control the will of their own internal members to exist."
Fu Hua couldn't help but chuckle just thinking about that scene. She could almost immediately see this group of people revealing their true colors.
And so, Fu Hua didn't urge these people to change. She knew that with Academy City's development speed, those who couldn't keep up would truly be eliminated.
Sirin didn't understand. She asked, "Why? Weren't the people here just bullied a hundred years ago? And they even realized that being backward means getting beaten. We're basically giving away the technology for Stigma-powered Battlesuits for free, but after these people found out... ah, they just don't use it?! They don't guide people to build better Stigma organizations?"
"Aren't they just taking the technology for free then? Academy City has already sold so many shares. I don't believe their rivals won't use these things."
Sirin didn't believe that humanity was all that moral. After Noldrei's education, Sirin had even given up the pursuit of morality. She believed she was human because she used the exact same way of perceiving the world as humans, but that didn't mean Sirin had given up her rebellion against and disgust for the human race as a whole.
A guy like Noldrei, who believed that future humanity would definitely get better and better, was the true anomaly of this era.
"Yes. So we should expect to see various small surrounding countries undergo internal changes during short-term conflict outbreaks. Then these small countries will gradually and rapidly reform and enter a new era of Stigma revolution."
Fu Hua wasn't surprised that a small ship is easy to turn around, but she believed that many uncontrollable factors would also arise.
According to the characteristics of modern industrial civilization, a certain number of Stigma organization users must be accumulated to complete this transformation. That is to say, even if the small countries turned around early, they might not be able to make up for the lessons they missed during the industrial period.
Fu Hua was more curious about why Sirin cared about these things.
She asked, "You shouldn't have cared about these things before. Why did you suddenly start complaining that their progress is too slow? Logically speaking, you should be mocking their current attitude with all your might, then waiting for a large amount of wealth to be wasted, for a bunch of people to cause irreversible consequences, and then leave gracefully."
Sirin was taken aback by Fu Hua's counter-question. She realized that she seemed to have become particularly concerned about the process of these construction projects, even hoping that the local people could catch the new civilization's train of Stigma organizations.
What had made her become like this?
Sirin was silent for a long time before she said, "Perhaps... it's a kind of hope. I hope there's a world that can accept an existence like me. You probably haven't had much contact with Noldrei. Actually, he talks more about the good parts of his world than the bad parts."
"So, I was thinking, maybe I can look forward to a better new world. At least, much better than the current situation, right?"