Chapter 225 World Emergency Protection Mechanism

Xia Xinyan shut Xia Jincang outside and returned to the living room, staring at Monika for a moment. “Did you bring us some answers?”

Monika had mentioned that their situation was quite special, needing to consult her superiors before confirming whether or not she could provide useful information. Regardless, she would get in touch with them.

To this end, Monika specifically added Xia Xinyan as a system friend.

During this time, Xia Xinyan had tried multiple times to contact Monika through this system, but not once was she successful. According to Tianji, the system was forcibly activated for her by Monika; Tianji’s own system didn’t have this feature, making it kind of a gray area. Even within the system, it was outside Tianji’s control, so Tianji couldn’t help her at all.

—Actually, even if it was under Tianji’s control, she probably wouldn’t help. Xia Xinyan still remembered how Tianji had tried to buy her off in that dungeon with point tasks.

In other words, that friend system was a one-way communicator; only Monika could contact her, but she couldn’t harass Monika.

And ever since that dungeon until now, nearly a month had passed. Xia Xinyan initially thought Monika would no longer contact her, but to her surprise, this girl was quite sincere.

“Well, yeah,” Monika casually sprawled on the sofa, as if she was in her own home. “You guys have a bit of a complicated situation. Even the boss had to ask her boss before getting back to me… Um, how should I put it, it’s quite interesting.”

After a pause, she crossed her legs. “You can ask me anything now. I’ll answer whatever I can.”

“Okay, first question, who are you?” Xia Xinyan sat down in front of her.

Monika immediately showed a hint of shyness. “Monika, eighteen years old, car, house, and money to spare. Interested?”

“……”

Xia Xinyan couldn’t help but show her tail.

“Ahem, just kidding, just kidding.” Upon seeing the glint of her tail blade, Monika hurriedly retracted her light-heartedness. “One has to have a sense of humor, right?”

“But it’s not funny.”

“Maybe you have a high threshold for humor.”

“……”

Ling Mo also sat down beside Xia Xinyan, seriously stating, “We’re not in the mood for jokes. Can you talk business?”

“……OK.” Monika pouted in slight boredom. “I’m an investigator for the Spacetime Singularity Investigation Bureau. You can think of me as a local cop—my area of responsibility is this place. Most of the time, I handle small matters—though I really didn’t expect my area to include such a place; it must have been blocked out.”

Xia Xinyan maintained a calm expression. “Can you speak human language?”

“……”

Monika remained silent for a moment, then stated seriously, “If I explain things to you too complicatedly, you probably won’t understand, so let me put it simply—what the Spacetime Singularity Investigation Bureau mainly handles are anomalies that shouldn’t appear in a world’s normal development flow, like a group of sword-flying cultivators in an interstellar civilization.”

“Strictly speaking, your world is also a type we should handle. However, for some reason, the bureau didn’t notice the anomalies in this world right away. By the time I discovered things here, the issues had become so significant that the bureau couldn’t handle them anymore; more powerful entities are needed.”

“But this world has already been isolated. According to upper management, it’s treated as a testing area. When I came here, I learned that the so-called ‘Realm of Divine Presence’ should be the testing version of the world emergency protection mechanism.”

“As for you two… you’re carrying new-generation investigator test terminals. As long as this test passes, these terminals should be issued to the investigators.”

“Alright, I’m done. Any questions?”

Xia Xinyan: “……”

There were so many questions she almost didn’t know where to start.

After pondering for a moment, she ultimately chose the biggest entry point. “Our world… is a testing area?”

“Yep.”

“Then who decides to treat this world as a testing area? God?”

“You can understand it that way.”

Ling Mo was quite surprised. “Shouldn’t God be saving worlds with problems?”

“Right? Did they not save this world?” Monika countered.

“Did they save us?” Ling Mo was even more surprised.

“World Emergency Protection Mechanism.” Monika paused, explaining, “You might not comprehend this yet, but this world has had a World Emergency Protection Mechanism from the very beginning, and it has already successfully activated and protected you once—I’m not sure what disaster befell your world, but without this thing, you would have died long ago.”

Xia Xinyan still couldn’t wrap her head around it. “Then why…”

“You’re wondering why the world is still worsening?” Monika raised an eyebrow. “A person with a cold takes medicine and still needs to rest for a few days—World Emergency Protection Mechanisms only help you withstand the major impacts; the subsequent effects are still for you to eliminate, and it’s currently guiding you to do just that.”

After a pause, she continued, “So the state of your world right now is an excellent observation sample, allowing us to determine the capabilities of this protection mechanism, which is exactly why this world has been marked as a testing area. It also allows us to test out the new terminal on you. Such good samples are hard to find.”

Xia Xinyan found it somewhat amusing. “So they still treat this world as an experimental sample? What you’re saying really sounds like a joke.”

“But I’m not joking this time.” Monika shook her head. “I used to think that God would always protect us, but only after becoming an investigator did I realize that even God has limits. If we constantly relied on God to solve world crises, they’d be dead tired by now. Humanity is fundamentally moving toward a path of technological automation; similarly, God would also look for ways to slack off, right? That’s why all these automatic protection mechanisms came about.”

After a brief pause, she added, “It’s not that God doesn’t want to take care of you. If the protection mechanism fails to eliminate the issues in the world, they wouldn’t just sit idly by. But at least for now, the protection mechanism is functioning quite well. If you all put in some effort, it shouldn’t be a problem, right? This protection mechanism might lead to significant changes in your world, but as long as it verifies its effectiveness, the contributions of this world are huge—though you might not want this contribution, sometimes… someone has to sacrifice a little, right?”