Does he have to make a prophecy about such a trivial matter? Is this old man treating this so-called Prophetic Art as something passively activated all the time?
So has he seen through all of my secrets, even my future?
"No, the Great Prophecy Art isn't that mysterious. It just calculates the most probable future based on all known information. Using your world's science, it can be explained as a diluted Laplace's Demon." The Great Sage seemed to know Xue Dili's inner thoughts and directly explained.
Laplace's Demon... Xue Dili knew it, along with Zeno's tortoise and Schrödinger's cat, as one of the three mythical beasts of physics, put forward by the scientist Laplace to describe a being that knows all atomic trajectories.
Laplace proposed that if we can know all the trajectories of microscopic particles, then we are omniscient and omnipotent, which is Laplace's Demon.
"What else did you see?" Xue Dili asked.
"You'll cameo in that shoot, as an extra," the Great Sage said, "Then, tonight, the frequent earthquakes here might cause you some minor trouble."
...
A few hours later, Xue Dili left the beach.
The Great Sage actually guessed everything right. He did cameo as an extra in a Masked Rider shoot, involving a scene where people had to flee in panic in the background.
The director casually said something on site, and many people wanted to cameo, so he picked dozens for the shot.
Since it's just a background scene, no acting skills were needed, just a few seconds of people fleeing.
And Xue Dili was picked. The crew even acted like they found a treasure when they saw him, and gave him a business card, warmly inviting him to play a small role.
However, Xue Dili declined politely, as he was just there for fun, and becoming an actor would be a real letdown.
Besides, his Japanese skills were really poor, and he relied on translation software for communication, a move which made the old man in the Consciousness Space click his tongue.
"Are you happy?" the Great Sage asked.
"Yeah, a lot of people used to say it would be a waste for me not to act with my looks. Now I've finally acted once, even if just as a minor background cast, it fulfills a childhood dream." Xue Dili replied, "As for staying to play a small role, forget it, I'm planning to see a concert."
Xue Dili is a very content person.
"By the way, old man, you said the earthquake would cause me some minor trouble, will there be any loss of life?"
"No."
"Then it's fine, let's go home." Xue Dili smiled, not probing further, as knowing the future would actually be less fun.
The same train headed toward the city.
It was already late, the sunset casting a long shadow of the train.
Aboard the train, he seemed to spot a familiar figure, the same JK he encountered earlier that afternoon on this train.
This time, she smiled at Xue Dili, and he nodded back slightly.
There were no further actions; such an aura in Neon would immediately identify Xue Dili as a foreigner, which was not surprising.
In the Consciousness Space, the Great Sage continued working on something unknown. He seemed to have gained more inspiration and started chanting in languages that Xue Dili couldn't understand, like a coder.
The last time he did this was when he built a system for Xue Dili.
"Alright, I've loaded the language translation module for you." The old thing patted the framework and told Xue Dili, "In the future, you'll be facing different language issues, and since you're bad at learning languages, let's just give you an entire translation module."
Xue Dili: "..."
"Oh right, I've loaded 38 languages from your world, and there's an upgrade function. As long as you collect over 300 basic characters of any language, it can automatically parse that language." The Great Sage seemed to think it was a trivial matter.
With the foster father's support, the son was determined to follow the foster father's efforts fearlessly.
He immediately started using the feature, sneaking a glance at the distant JK, noticing she was reading a love manual, and upon returning to the original webpage, saw she was searching "how to make a handsome stranger fall in love with me."
Tsk... high school girl...
The train slowly moved into the Zhishan Tunnel.
Xue Dili's phone received a pinned message again, from the National Meteorological Agency, notifying that Sakurajima volcano had further activity, suspected to be entering a period of frequent activity, advising everyone to be prepared for frequent earthquake safety measures.
It's Neon, not having hundreds of earthquakes a year would be abnormal. Xue Dili was about to close the page when he suddenly remembered what the Great Sage had said before.
The earthquake will cause you some minor trouble.
"Buzz!"
The ground started shaking, the train swayed left and right instantly, waking everyone on board.
What terrified them more was that they were currently in a tunnel!
"Crack!"
The train derailed, crashing into the tunnel wall.
The tunnel collapsed, with a large amount of debris falling, causing the train to flip and crash against the tunnel wall...
...
"Pff... Is this what you call minor trouble?" Xue Dili spat out the dust from his mouth, struggling to climb out from the distorted window.
Nearby, the cries of children, comforting voices of women, and numerous pleas for help could be heard.
He turned on his phone, no signal, and more despairingly, the earthquake seemed far from over, with dust and cement continuously falling in the sparse space within the tunnel.
The most despairing thing was that the tunnel entrance was blocked, they were completely trapped inside now.
The phone's light became the only source of light in the darkness.
"Ah ah..." Not far away, a man was clutching his abdomen, groaning in pain; even with the faint light, one could see a shard embedded in his belly.
Not just here, there were only about a dozen people on the train, but countless cries for help echoed in his ears.
"Old man, when will we be rescued?" Xue Dili immediately asked the invincible DoraAa Sage, feeling that he was about to become a slacker from the old man's strange abilities over the past two days.
"Weren't you opposed to prophecy before?" the Great Sage retorted, "Didn't you say, 'A future set in stone is too boring'?"
"Ahem... so fragrant!" Xue Dili immediately smiled, using the phrase "so fragrant" to express his feelings.
No choice, only after an incident do you realize the allure of Prophetic Art.
At this moment, the world was like a giant Wang Jingze, Xue Dili immediately discarded his little remaining dignity.
"In 9 days, the rescue team will break through the rubble and rescue 9 survivors," the Great Sage said directly.
"9 days? Is the Neon rescue team pigs?" Xue Dili immediately looked aghast at the Great Sage, who was still fiddling with the system.
Previously, he heard it was just minor trouble, so he didn't pay it much attention, but now he only wanted to say: "You call this minor trouble?"
"Aftershocks will continue for 2 days, the rescue team won't dare act rashly, then for the next three days, they'll act timidly, and on the sixth day, a device will fail, dragging it to the 9th day." The Great Sage revealed the future he saw bit by bit.
"Because it's a landslide, the pile of rubble in front of you is 34 meters long and gradually collapsing, if you try to break it forcefully..." The Great Sage paused, adding, "It will most likely collapse completely, burying the already limited space you have."
Just as Xue Dili was pondering, suddenly, a voice and light appeared.
"I'm a student of East Medical University, here's my student ID, please don't panic everyone, I'll attend to the most severely injured first!" Suddenly, a voice and phone light appeared in the tunnel.
Xue Dili turned to look and found it was the JK who was searching for love manuals. He misjudged, turns out she wasn't a high schooler, but a college girl.