Honkai: Man(Sludge) From Future

Ms. Fu Hua's negotiations had indeed run into trouble. Her actions, far from encouraging China to accept foreign influence, had actually generated some resistance.

Fu Hua was not someone who lacked persuasive strategy. She knew what to say and what not to say. But the officials in China were not all fools. They were keenly aware of what they needed to know and what concerned their own interests.

This led them to actively question Fu Hua about the power structure of the Academy City.

This information wasn't a secret, so Fu Hua naturally didn't withhold it.

But after receiving confirmation, the Chinese officials became cautious and conservative. They realized that the existence of the Academy City was a completely different form from any known civilization, one that completely exceeded the bounds of modern human ethics.

You couldn't say whether it was progress or collapse. Without experiencing the necessary suffering, it was difficult for people to understand the Academy City's choices.

Understanding or not, as long as they treated each other as equals, they could still have normal relations.

But the social power structure of the Academy City cast an invisible shadow over the cooperation between China and the city.

In the simple understanding of the Chinese, the Academy City's legal system completely surpassed the equality that humanity had pursued in the past. Instead, it pursued a kind of "equality of rights and responsibilities" that seemed completely unattainable.

Whether it was civil law or common law, these legal systems, based on written statutes or case precedents, balanced the law according to individual material wealth and social and political rights. But the Academy City was different. It balanced the law according to the principle of equal responsibility and authority.

With different underlying logics, the social outcomes were completely different.

If the political world outside the Academy City was like a river, then the society inside was like boiling water, erupting with unprecedented power.

The organizational structure of the Stigma directly eliminated the need for traditional political vetting. Although you could gain personal benefits within the organization, you could not deviate from the will of the Stigma that created it. It had achieved "understanding in execution, execution in understanding" in reality.

Not to mention, the Academy City combined the powerful research capabilities of both Schicksal and Anti-Entropy.

This created a terrifying outcome. If they readily accepted the Academy City's ideals, they would be easily infiltrated by the Stigma organization, and the current Chinese government would be gradually replaced. It was only thanks to Noldrei's guidance that the Stigma society hadn't gone astray and was more "civilized" than the capitalism the Qing dynasty had faced.

Although Noldrei claimed he was building a society of Gene-ism, from China's perspective, the real ruling power lay with the Stigma possessors. It should be called a society of Stigma-ism to be truly accurate.

Looking at the conditions for the birth of a Stigma possessor alone, the Chinese realized it was a very risky leap. One had to cross the threshold of creating a Stigma and possessing Stigma Battlesuit to build this new society.

In other words, it was a social transformation that could only be completed when biotechnology reached a certain level. But who held this technology?

The Academy City. China currently had no ability to exchange for this technology on equal footing. Even though there were many people with Stigmas among China's vast population, the number of human experiments needed to replicate the Stigma Battlesuit and catch up would be immense.

Schicksal had five hundred years of research history, Anti-Entropy had dug up Previous Era relics and achieved direct mechanical ascension, and the Academy City... oh, they had picked up someone from the future.

Therefore, Fu Hua's negotiations were currently at a stalemate. The canal could be dug, but should certain things from the Academy City be banned from spreading? This became a huge question that China had to face.

Not to mention, the Academy City was further implementing AI judges, which completely dumbfounded the Chinese delegation.

The Chinese officials had only one question in their minds: wasn't the Academy City worried that its AI judiciary would be controlled by others?

In fact, the Academy City's management wasn't worried about these problems. Besides having plenty of experience with AI, it was also much easier to supervise and manage the people who edited the AI than to oversee a mind-bogglingly complex judicial organization. The whole process was more about eliminating human bias in the law enforcement process.

The Academy City and China, two seemingly inverted societies, had reached cooperation in production but had fallen into an unprecedented stalemate in communication.

This was the biggest problem Fu Hua faced. She couldn't complete the work Noldrei wanted—promoting Gene-ism. She could only act as a glorified construction foreman, bringing in infrastructure projects.

After briefly meeting with Noldrei and explaining her "achievements," Fu Hua was somewhat dejected.

So, Noldrei gave Fu Hua a pack of Tsingtao beer, letting her experience the ordinary life of a Chinese person.

Fu Hua didn't refuse, chugging it down without hesitation.

A little alcohol couldn't affect her anyway.

"You don't have to be too down. The Academy City itself hasn't gotten its act together yet. It's all running on the initial momentum of Gene-ism's birth, before the internal conflicts have fully emerged."

Did Noldrei not know about these problems? He had prepared countermeasures long ago. The best outcome, of course, was to find a place that wouldn't refuse and couldn't completely make its own decisions to carry out this internal and external exchange.

Rita watched Fu Hua down the Tsingtao beer, her mouth open as if to say something, but she didn't know what to say.

Her expression changed several times before she finally bought a Budweiser, pretending to join Fu Hua.

The troubles brought by empires were almost always the same. In Noldrei's eyes, all the current nations were just emperors in disguise, and the remaining small countries were just on the path to becoming the next emperor. All the upper echelons of every country dreamed that strengthening government centralization could solve all problems.

Little did they know that the people at the bottom on both sides had long been adding the thing they despised most—urine—to the beer during the production process.

But Sirin was an exception. The little girl didn't like to drink. She just simply heated some water for herself.

"But if we fail to promote Gene-ism, the trouble that follows will only be greater," Fu Hua said. She admitted she couldn't do the kind of work Otto did. Otto could make European countries follow his path; the Overseer was a natural-born dictator.

The trouble Fu Hua spoke of was already showing signs in the Academy City. If Noldrei hadn't chosen to open up from the start, the Academy City would probably be calling itself the Divine Court of Humanity by now.

Even the gatekeepers of the Academy City's residential complexes looked down on people from Tokyo. It was even worse for people from further away.