Chapter 630: First Encounter
Diana’s words were definitely very shocking, but Xiao Lin did not believe it immediately. He rubbed his temples, asking, “I don’t think you look anything like you’re over a century old!”
Diana acted angry. “You know it’s impolite to speculate on a woman’s age!”
Xiao Lin shrugged. He did not think that the woman would really be angry as he continued, “I’m just saying it as it is. The Tunguska explosion should have happened at the start of the twentieth century. It must have been over a hundred years ago! Are you sure you were born then?”
Diana blinked before saying amusedly, “Of course I wasn’t born yet, but my grandmother was one of the witnesses. She received a special invitation to the academy because of that. My mother was accepted into the academy due to my grandmother, and I received the same. So, I had not lied at all, that incident shaped my current family!”
So, she was a third generation colonist!
The earliest academies all had at least over two hundred years of history, and the initial colonists obviously slowly started to have their own progenies. However, because everyone’s life spans had slowly started to increase after coming to the New World, both marriage and childbirth had been pushed back. Furthermore, since many of them had dreams of pursuing polyamorous relationships in the New World, a lot of them would not end starting families with someone from Earth, so colonists did not tend to procreate with each other that often.
Keeping count, Diana should be the first one that Xiao Lin knew about.
Xiao Lin’s curiosity was piqued again. Of course, he was mostly interested in what Diana had said about the Tunguska explosion. Since she brought it up herself, it meant she had no intentions of hiding it.
After a brief introduction, Xiao Lin found out that Diana’s grandmother was one of the eyewitnesses to the event back then. After the explosion, the Russian academy immediately sent in their people to handle the aftermath. Thanks to the special nature of the event, they could not let too many people know of it.
Xiao Lin had some understanding of the event thanks to the memory crystal, but he had no way of knowing what actually happened back then. However, Diana never went into detail regarding the cause of the explosion.
Back then, Voyna Akademiya gathered all the eyewitnesses, and they were faced with two choices. Due to the secrecy of the matter, they could either kill everyone there or wipe their memories. However, memory wiping had its flaws, and there was no way of guaranteeing that they would not suddenly recall the event.
Those from the academy leaned more on the first choice, but later on, an accident caused them to dispel that notion. Among the eyewitnesses, they noticed some changes, and the change was extremely quick and hard to explain.
“Changes?” Xiao Lin could not help but interrupt at that point, as he asked suspiciously, “Hold on, are you telling me something from a novel? After encountering a mysterious radiation, they started to undergo strange changes. Why does that feel like an apocalyptic novel?”
Diana rolled her eyes at him. “Are you mocking my Mandarin? Fine, let me change it. Among the eyewitnesses, a portion of them seemed to go through an awakening.”
Looking at Xiao Lin’s confused expression, Diana added, “To put it in an even simpler way, a portion of them seemed to be developing talents. That’s right, my grandmother and the others turned into talent holders! To this day, it’s the only record of people developing talents! After that, just as I said, talent holders mean a lot to the academy, so my grandmother was specially accepted.”
“Unbelievable!” Xiao Lin was also very shocked. Just like Diana said, talent holder’s were called G.o.d’s Chosen in the New World, which meant that talents were traits that one had to be born with, so he never expected that there would be those that developed them later on.
“So your mother, and yourself, are all talent holders?”
“That’s right.”
“Your luck is really good. You’re a natural born talent holder, and come from a family of talent holders as well.” Xiao Lin knew very well that a family like that would definitely have a lot of power in the Russian academy, so that woman would definitely not have a simple background, and her skill would not be low either.
“So, regarding Tunguska, what do you want to know from me?” Diana intentionally avoided the topic of her own family as she asked with a smile.
“I want to go to the site of Tunguska, and even though it’s not hard to get a visa for this kind of thing, I know what Tunguska means to Voyna Akademiya, so without your guidance, I don’t think I can find the true ruins with my status.” Xiao Lin finally mentioned his main goal for the night.
“You want to go to the ruins of Tunguska? Are you someone who is well-versed in history?”
“You can treat it as my personal interest.”
“If it’s just for the purposes of sightseeing, there’s no big issue.” Diana seemed a little hesitant.
“Leave me your contact info so we can talk about it in the future.” Xiao Lin quickly gave her his own number. Of course, it was his phone number from Earth. Trying to communicate between academies was something very difficult.
Diana followed Xiao Lin’s gaze and looked back in realization. Behind her, a few Russian men were walking toward them, so Xiao Lin obviously did not want anyone to know about it. She had wanted to reject him, but her eyes suddenly looked up in thought. As she pursed her lips with a fake smile, she then gave him her own number.
The two Russian men talked to Diana with puzzled expressions. Since it was in Russian, Xiao Lin did not understand, but the looks they directed at him were not very friendly, so Xiao Lin did not interject. Regardless, he had already exchanged contact numbers with Diana. Of course, he was not sure if she would help him, but it was still a good start, considering Voyna Akademiya was completely foreign to him.
Xiao Lin was just about to leave when a coa.r.s.e-looking man grabbed onto him, probably after having too much vodka. His tone was slurred and drunken. “Hey! Little guy, what’s your name?”
He was speaking in English, and it was on the simple side, so Xiao Lin could understand. However, Xiao Lin was not happy with his tone, so Xiao Lin pretended not to hear it as he walked out of the banquet hall. He had been planning on leaving, since he was unlikely to get any news that he wanted by staying.
“@#!#[email protected]#” The man talked in an even more rapid tone, probably in Russian. Even though Xiao Lin did not understand the meaning, he guessed that the man was asking him to stay put.
Xiao Lin would obviously not listen to a drunken man, so he quickened his pace.
The next instant, Xiao Lin felt a fierce battle intent closing in. He immediately activated Ruin, and unleashed a very strong punch behind him. Since it was sudden, he did not hold back with the punch, and he unleashed his sword aura with that attack.