Chapter 700: The price of the future...
Am I going to benefit from agreeing to do you a favor? Bai Zemin"s expression became a little strange as he looked at the queen of the weaver ants with peculiar eyes.
Usually, when one person did a favor for another, the only one who benefited was the one receiving the favor and not the person doing the favor. For example, Bai Zemin could still remember how he had once lent money to a cla.s.smate who had forgotten his wallet to save the guy from going without food for the whole day and although the money was returned to Bai Zemin the next day he had not really benefited from it.
Bai Zemin really wanted to say to the queen of the weaver ants, "You think this daddy hasn"t seen enough in this life?"
But he just took a deep breath and instead said in a curious voice:
"Oh? I wonder what favor you need, Queen s.h.i.+ Lin."
The queen of the weaver ants looked at Bai Zemin in silence. She did not respond immediately and instead watched him carefully, taking her time as if instead of having less than thirty minutes of time remaining she had an eternity ahead of her.
Bai Zemin felt it was a bit strange but he said nothing and simply remained standing while keeping his gaze fixed on the queen of the weaver ants. He was not worried about receiving a sudden spiritual attack as he had the pendant he obtained several months ago, which protected him against three spiritual attacks every 24 hours. However, Bai Zemin was still on guard against the two existences in front of him.
Although everything had been comfortable so far, Bai Zemin was only willing to put his hands on fire for a few existences and the two existences in front of him were definitely not part of them.
After about five minutes or so of awkward silence, the queen of the weaver ants finally opened her mouth and said in a weak voice, "Let me ask you.... What is your aspiration?"
"My aspiration?" Bai Zemin jumped in surprise not only because of the sudden question but because of how weird it was.
"Your aspiration." s.h.i.+ Lin nodded, her voice growing softer and softer as she slowly said, "What is your goal. In this new world, it doesn"t matter if you were a student in the past or if you were an employee of some fast food restaurant, now that all living things can evolve, I"m sure your past goals have also changed along with the world, haven"t they?"
Bai Zemin"s mouth opened slightly and thousands of memories and thoughts flashed in his mind all in one go.
Around a little over three months ago, Bai Zemin"s goal was to graduate from college while working full time to pay for his studies. After that, he also had a new goal set for his future, which was to get a job in a hospital, laboratory, or health care company. Once that second goal was completed, the third and final goal of Bai Zemin and his life was to help the family that raised him while at the same time trying to form a new one of his own.
Although Bai Zemin was not sure that he would ever be able to find a good wife to marry and have children with, the him of just over three months ago had been willing to try. At the end of the day, he also wanted to have children someday and give his parents grandchildren.
However, those three goals largely summed up the future and what would have been the life of the existence known as Bai Zemin; three goals for which he had been fighting hard but which were now nothing more than things of the past. Those three goals that were practically his reason for existence, in just a little over three months, had become nothing more than smoke and with each pa.s.sing second they were more and more scattered and driven away by the strong blasts of wind that blew this new world into which he had been dragged just like everyone else.
"It is truly ironic." Bai Zemin chuckled and for a brief moment completely relaxed his guard as he remembered the past that despite not really being that far back in time seemed as distant as if eons had pa.s.sed. "Who would have thought... Who would have thought that a young student like me, with such simple and normal goals for life... would one day aspire to become not the president of China but the king of a new dynasty."
s.h.i.+ Lin said nothing, she just listened to Bai Zemin until he finished speaking. When she noticed that he was looking back into her eyes with his attention on her, the queen of the weaver ants asked with a faint smile, "And after you become king of China? What will you do after that?"
Bai Zemin was taken by surprise once again. He definitely did not expect the queen of the weaver ants to push beyond that.
"Queen s.h.i.+ Lin, don"t joke." Bai Zemin said with a smile. "Becoming king is the dream of any male regardless of race, but that"s a hard dream to fight tooth and claw for a long time. Who knows, it could be years before I achieve my goal or maybe I will never achieve it in my entire life."
s.h.i.+ Lin looked at the young man in front of her for about a minute, silently and without saying anything. After looking at those eyes as black as night for about a minute as if she could see his very soul, she said without changing her expression, "Bai Zemin.... In theory, I was supposed to have at least 600 years of life remaining, 600 years which were shortened to 100 after I did something you will soon understand. However, do you know why I now only have less than 25 minutes of life left?"
Bai Zemin looked at her blankly and after a moment had no choice but to shake his head. How was he supposed to know such a thing?
"All of us queens have two natural skills that we are born with unless the previous queen makes modifications to the nurturing process of the next queen. One of those skills is the ability to control the colony for the most part, as well as the ability to retain small fragments of memories from the previous generation. As for the second skill, it usually depends on the fate and apt.i.tude of each queen." s.h.i.+ Lin explained with a faint smile.
But her next words were something Bai Zemin did not expect to hear.
"My natural skill is called Clairvoyance.... And just as its name suggests, it allows me to see the future up to a year ahead."
Bai Zemin sucked in a breath of cold air and his heart trembled in shock as his brain processed what the queen of the weaver ants had just said.
Clairvoyance! The ability to see the future and even a year ahead at that!
My G.o.d! With that kind of skill shouldn"t the ant in front of him be an invincible existence? Bai Zemin couldn"t understand how an existence capable of seeing a year into the future could ever lose; even if she couldn"t win there was definitely no chance of defeating her!
Even Lilith gasped in surprise as she looked at the weaver ant in front of her. Such a skill was simply insane! Even though she knew of the existence of similar skills, the skills Lilith had heard of only allowed its user to see at most a few seconds into the future but definitely did not extend to a minute not to mention a whole year!
s.h.i.+ Lin smiled kindly as she saw the surprised expression that had frozen on Bai Zemin"s face. She explained, "Of course, to activate such a strong skill I first have to satisfy a certain requirement and the skill has 2 months of cooldown time."
Two months of cooldown time? Even if it was 10 months it would still be an extremely terrifying skill!
But s.h.i.+ Lin"s next words made Bai Zemin finally understand what she meant by "certain requirement" and the reason why she was on the verge of death.
"In exchange for using Clairvoyance, the requirement to activate the skill is to pay 1 year of my total life expectancy... 1 year for 1 year, sounds fair don"t you think?"
Uh? Bai Zemin frowned tightly and a flash of confusion crossed his eyes.
"Queen s.h.i.+ Lin, you just said that even after you did something that I will soon come to understand your life expectancy should be 100 years..... Why then...?"
s.h.i.+ Lin continued to smile kindly as she quietly explained, "To use Clairvoyance, I need to have a goal in my mind first. For example, if I want to know my future for the next year then I need to focus on myself in order to see it. Additionally, if I try to see the future of something beyond myself then I will have to pay a certain price as a consequence.... For example, I cannot see the future of this world unless I am willing to pay the price for it."
Bai Zemin again frowned and Lilith subconsciously sighed in relief.
Although Clairvoyance was undoubtedly a powerful skill, it clearly had several limitations. It was not a skill that could be used lightly and it also needed to know at least something involving the future that the user wished to see. In addition, there also seemed to be more hidden secrets that did not favor the user but made it pay in return for showing it what it wished to see.
Suddenly, a thought crossed his mind and Bai Zemin"s expression changed slightly as he looked at the queen of the weaver ants.
s.h.i.+ Lin smiled as she saw the change in Bai Zemin"s expression. She nodded as if she knew what he was thinking and said in a melodious voice, "I tried to see your future earlier, I was going to use that to kill you later on."
"Hey!" Bai Zemin couldn"t help but call out.
"Hehehe..." s.h.i.+ Lin let out a giggle causing her upper body to tremble tentatively. She kept the same expression as before as she pointed out in a weak but playful voice, "What? Are you forgetting that you and I were enemies? I of course intended to kill you."
Bai Zemin"s eyelid trembled several times, and even though in his heart he knew that what the weaver ant in front of him said was true, for some reason he felt the urge to go punch her face.... Who would feel happy after hearing that someone was planning to kill them after learning about their future?!
"But..." s.h.i.+ Lin paused and the smile on her lips receded a bit as her voice turned a bit more serious, "Something I didn"t expect happened during the activation of Clairvoyance with you as the target."
"In exchange for seeing your future 1 year ahead with the intention of modifying it to my will, instead of losing 1 year of life expectancy.... I lost a century."
Bai Zemin and Lilith"s expressions also turned serious as they looked at the queen of weaver ants waiting for her next words.
s.h.i.+ Lin did not continue immediately. Just like before and as if she had all the time in the world at her disposal, she observed Bai Zemin calmly before saying in a curious voice, "Bai Zemin, the future I saw is really interesting. I must say that the price I had to pay was worth it."
"Was worth it..." Bai Zemin lowered his head and muttered those words with a complicated expression on his face.
The queen of the weaver ants had paid with all the life she had left to see the future of another existence, she was going to die in less than thirty minutes.... But in her eyes, the price she paid was worth it?
Bai Zemin could not understand that kind of train of thought. Life should be the most precious and valuable treasure of all, he could not understand how s.h.i.+ Lin could act so calm, composed, and even happy despite knowing that she was about to die knowing that the cause was the person she was now treating so kindly.
"You have a really hard future ahead of you.... Even though I only got to see one year of your future life, the amount of blood I saw still makes me shudder." s.h.i.+ Lin sighed and looked at Bai Zemin with complicated eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with emotions that he couldn"t understand at that moment.
"But, it"s thanks to that future I saw that I realized that my previous investment of 500 years was completely worth it."
s.h.i.+ Lin smiled. Then, she said words that Bai Zemin would only understand several months later:
"I have decided to bet everything, until the last of my records on you... and I believe you will not disappoint me."
It would also be many months later when Bai Zemin would realize that in reality, he was not doing a favor to s.h.i.+ Lin.... It was she who was doing a favor for him.
To a magnitude that he could only be grateful for until the end of times.