Chapter 854: Chapter 854

"We can’t yet confirm if it’s a relic."

Li Cheng looked towards Rudel, and gently shook his head.

If it were a relic, a high-density dwarf planet with a diameter exceeding a thousand kilometers, arriving directly in the Main World would shatter the entire gravitational balance of the Earth-Moon system, even without discussing the divine entities behind it. At that time, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and even Earth-Moon collisions, as secondary disasters, would most likely lead directly to world destruction.

Clearly, everyone was aware of this.

The atmosphere in the entire meeting room was somewhat oppressive.

Jie An looked up at He Ao and asked in a softened voice, "What’s the relation of this thing in the sky to the Blood Day?"

This was something Li Cheng had mentioned, it was He Ao who reminded him to look at the sky.

Nuodel also looked up towards He Ao.

He Ao said calmly, looking at them both.

Both of them paused for a moment.

He Ao’s gaze then moved to Li Cheng.

"The enormous ’transparent sphere’ in the sky, although translucent, fundamentally, it’s highly similar to the ’Moon’—still a massive ’light-blocking object’,"

Li Cheng turned on the projector on the meeting table, inserted a USB drive into the computer, and a simple slide page showing the relative positions of the Sun, Moon, and another planet was projected onto the wall,

"Our Earth and the Moon are approximately one four hundredth of the distance from the Sun, and the diameter of the Moon is also about one four hundredth that of the Sun, so the Sun and Moon appear roughly 0.5 degrees in size in our field of view,

"This is why the Sun and Moon ’appear about the same size’ in our field of view.

"When the Moon is between the planet and the Sun, those in the shadowed area can see the ’Moon’ perfectly cover the ’Sun,’ creating an eclipse.

"Of course, since the relative distances between these three celestial bodies are not constant, the sizes in the view of the Sun and Moon are not exactly the same, so actually various scenarios can occur, but that’s outside the scope of our discussion today,"

Li Cheng switched to the next slide, still a diagram of three celestial bodies, only replacing the Moon with a blood-red, semi-transparent planet,

"In a sense, the ’transparent planet’ currently hanging over our heads is a small ’Moon’,

"Its diameter is about one 3.5th that of the Moon, and its distance from Earth is also about one 3.5th that of the Moon; its angle of view is also about 0.5 degrees, this object, if tangible, would appear as big as the Moon and Sun in our field of view."

Jie An began to react, as he looked at that slide, "So, this planet above us now is ’blocking’ the sunlight? Is ’Blood Day’ essentially this transparent planet?"

"In strict terms, it hasn’t completely blocked the sunlight,"

Li Cheng nodded, speaking slowly,

"Sunlight still passes ’through’ this transparent planet, only to undergo some sort of change afterward, lengthening the overall wavelength, shifting light towards red, casting it onto Earth with a predominant blood-red color, other colors of light haven’t disappeared, just less proportionally.

"This is similar to the red Sun we see in the morning, where red light being more diffractive makes it better at traversing the atmosphere at a lower angle, causing the sunlight that reaches the ground to be richer in red, making the Sun appear red.

"Of course, fundamentally it’s still different, the transparent planet achieves this effect by ’changing’ the other lights in the solar spectrum to red, and the proportion of red light is much higher than that of the morning sunlight."

At this moment, Li Cheng glanced at the slightly bewildered Rudel and Jie An, and gently coughed, explaining, "This transparent planet acts as a huge ’lens’; as long as one looks at the Sun under this lens, it appears red, and besides, the sunlight undergoes some kind of extraordinary transformation after passing through this ’lens’."

"So Blood Day isn’t the transparent planet itself?"

Jie An began to catch on, "but the ’Sun’ we see through the planet?"

Science, but not entirely science.

He Ao watched the slide behind Li Cheng.

He had already seen these documents, and the main content of this slide was also quickly organized by him and Li Cheng on the way here.

"However, our biggest problem right now might not be confined to just within the range covered by Blood Day,"

Saying this, Li Cheng glanced at He Ao.

He Ao naturally walked up to the Projection and took over Li Cheng’s position, switching the slide. This part was his discovery, or rather his "speculation," during his discussion with Li Cheng.

The slide behind him transformed into a diagram of three connected planets, with the largest one on top labeled as the Sun, the smallest one in the middle labeled as the Transparent Planet, and the one at the bottom labeled as Earth.

He glanced at the audience below, his hand resting on the Transparent Planet, and quickly said,

"From the introduction we just saw, this Transparent Planet does not turn all the light that passes through it ’blood red,’

"The space telescopes in low Earth orbit that captured the ’Starlight’ passing through this Transparent Planet showed no change in color, other than a dimming in brightness and a slight shift in position."

While he spoke, the audience unconsciously glanced at the telescope photos printed on the table.

He Ao left a moment for the audience to digest this information, then switched the slide.

The new slide showed two tangent lines on either side, tangent to both the Sun and the Transparent Planet. These lines intersected with the Earth, forming an overall trapezoidal shape that was larger at the top and smaller at the bottom.

He Ao continued, his hand resting on the intersection with Earth,

"According to the principles of a solar eclipse, when a satellite completely blocks sunlight, the shadow it casts on the ground is called the umbra. Normally, during a solar eclipse, anyone within the umbra would see a total solar eclipse.

"In our current situation, for those in the ’Transparent Planet’s’ umbra, all sunlight that reaches them has passed through the Transparent Planet, displaying the ’Blood Sun,’"

He Ao cut out a map and roughly drew a circle on it,

"Since the planet’s surface is curved, this shadow isn’t a perfect circle. It covers an area of about 150,000 square kilometers at its widest point, about 200 kilometers wide,

"This is the ’Blood Sun’ coverage area we saw, roughly covering the entirety of the western part of the Yika Republic and a small part of northern Rudel,

"Based on the data we have gathered, these regions are mostly large plains with high population density, among the most densely populated in the Western Lands."

He Ao looked at Rudel.

Rudel nodded, his expression somewhat troubled, "Including the floating population, there are about 60 million people in this area."

Sixty million people — even if evacuation were to be considered, it couldn’t possibly be done in a short period.

Given the current situation, the Blood Sun in the sky wasn’t likely to give them much time.

They were even unable to tally how many people had disappeared so far.

"But this may not be the worst part,"

He Ao shook his head and switched to the next slide.

In this slide, there were still two tangential lines extending from the ’Sun,’ but this time they did not directly tangent with the ’Transparent Planet’ but intersected first before touching the Transparent Planet and continuing down to Earth.

He Ao traced over the points where these tangent lines intersected with Earth,

"This entire area, aside from the umbra, everything else is called the ’penumbra.’ In the case of an eclipse, those in the penumbra will see a partial eclipse.

"However, in this particular incident, those in the ’penumbra’ saw no ’partial Blood Sun,’ meaning the Transparent Planet did not significantly alter the ’sunlight’ in these penumbra regions,

"We do not yet know how it does this, possibly by some Extraordinary Power."

Saying this, he paused and looked at the audience, continuing, "But those in the penumbra regions bathed in ’normal sunlight’ might not be unaffected by the Blood Sun’s Extraordinary Powers."

"According to intelligence from the Research Institute,"

He Ao glanced at Li Cheng and continued, "People departing from the Blood Day Area are still receiving ’calls,’ just at a lower frequency and intensity than those within the Blood Day Area itself."

Rudel unconsciously turned his head towards Li Cheng.

As an elder of the World Tree, the main Extraordinary Organization in the Western Lands, how come he was unaware of this news while the Research Institute already knew?

He Ao paused the presentation to give Li Cheng time to explain.

Li Cheng covered his mouth and lightly coughed, "Our manager in Rudel just happened to be investigating in the northern city of Enke, which is right within the Blood Day enveloped area."

At this, Rudel seemed to remember that Rudel was indeed under the ’custody’ of the Research Institute.

At that moment, Jie An also raised his head and looked towards Rudel, "Haven’t your people organized a relocation of personnel?"

Rudel remained silent for a moment.

In fact, before he came here, his subordinates hadn’t even figured out what the Blood Day was, nor understood its impact.

It wasn’t until right before the meeting started that they, under the notification of a researcher named Song Xiao from the Research Institute, realized that the people answering the calls might disappear.

Seeing his reaction, everyone quickly understood.

Everyone was already aware of the chaotic organizational structure of the World Tree, so they did not continue to press Rudel any further.

Rudel subconsciously covered his old face, feeling that his team, under his management for decades, was not as effective as the young man who had just taken over Rodan for a few days.

However, He Ao did not give Rudel time to feel ’embarrassed’, after acknowledging this problem, he looked at the people present and continued,

"To be still affected by extraordinary powers despite leaving the Blood Day Area, there are two possibilities. One is obviously that these extraordinary powers followed those who left the Blood Day Area, continuing to affect them,

"Another possibility," he paused, switching to the next slide, a huge map of the Western Lands was projected on the wall, "the ’normal sunlight’ in those penumbral regions has also been mixed with the extraordinary powers of the transparent planet, it’s just that it temporarily has no effect on those not illuminated by the Blood Day.

"So, the range covered by this event might ’expand’," he turned back to glance at the map behind him, "due to its characteristics, the penumbral regions will have a larger diameter than the diameter of the transparent planet. As per current estimates, the penumbra of this transparent planet at least covers an area with a radius centered around Mote City, the capital of the Yika Republic,"

He turned back and drew a huge, nearly circular line on the map.

"A region spanning over a thousand kilometers in diameter."

The entire conference room held its breath.

Even Li Cheng, who was already aware of this theory, slightly held his breath.

At this moment, everyone had no other thoughts, watching the land and sea that He Ao had just ’circled’.

This enormous circle had encapsulated a third of the land of the Western Lands, including most of its major cities, most of its fertile farmlands, most of its industrial areas, and most of its population.

Rudel opened his mouth, shaking, "There are seven hundred million people there."

Not to mention evacuating, it would take a lot of time to even notify all these people.

"According to the news from the Central Earth Aviation Administration,"

He Ao slowly said, "the transparent planet is constantly adjusting its position to ensure that its shadow can cover most of these areas most of the time. The good news is that so far only the Blood Day Area has experienced large-scale extraordinary events,

"But if we let the ’Blood Day’ continue to shine, not only will more people be affected, but their power will also grow stronger, and once the Evil God descends, everything will be irreversible,"

He looked around, "This time, we probably have no way to retreat."

Jie An looked at He Ao.

"This is an ’invasion’,"

He Ao placed his hands on the table, gazing at everyone, calmly said, "The best course of defense should occur outside our homeland."

The entire conference room fell into an eerie silence, the crimson glow casting on everyone’s cheeks.

"Many people have already disappeared under the Blood Day,"

In this dim silence, Rudel slowly spoke, "Is the adversary’s Advent already unstoppable?"

"Some information can’t be confirmed yet,"

He Ao gently tapped the table, continuing, "Those who disappeared might not be ’dead’. The adversary’s ’ritual’ appears to still be in the preliminary stage, but as time goes on, who knows."

The conference room fell silent once again.

"Li Cheng has that ’Angelic Tier’ weapon ready by now, right?"

Jie An suddenly spoke slowly.

The tip of Li Cheng’s Angelic Tier weapon, ’Andaville’s Spear’, had been kept in the Moonlight before Li Cheng took it, forming a complete spear.

Jie An gazed at He Ao and continued, "If several B-levels together had Angelic Tier weapons, we might be able to oppose an angel, but we still know nothing about our enemy."

At that moment, the entire sky suddenly flickered, then turned instantly dark.

Li Cheng lifted his head, looking out of the window.

The twisted Blood Day had vanished at some point, and the sky’s crimson glow had receded like a tide, leaving only the sun, completely obscured by a dark shadow, resembling an ongoing ’total solar eclipse.’

Jie An and Rudel both looked up and out of the window.

In the dim and pervasive darkness, He Ao slowly began to speak, his face calmly illuminated by the light, "For now, we’re only facing ’angels,’ but,"

He took a slight breath and continued, "Even if we have to face the power of a Divine Being, we probably have no choice."

Including Li Cheng, everyone looked at He Ao with slightly shocked gazes.

This mysterious ’Hao Yi’ seemed to have already clashed with the ’Blood Day’ in the sky without their knowledge.

This power had clearly surpassed the B-level range.

Darkness seemed to seep into the silent conference room from the window.

Jie An spoke again, "I fear our enemies are not in this starry sky."

He Ao responded, "Since that transparent planet can greatly interfere with our world, perhaps we can also peek at the scene on the other side through that planet."

"Do you want to try landing on that planet from here?"

Jie An’s eyes widened slightly, "Can the Velora directly reach it?"

"For some reasons, no."

He Ao shook his head.

Without exact coordinates, the Velora could only operate on the surface of planets, and the eleven hundred thousand kilometers altitude already exceeded the range that Velora could cover.

He Ao looked up at the sky and continued, "Human power can."

Mankind’s spacecraft in the Main World had long been capable of visiting the Moon and returning, but manned lunar landing technology was still immature.

The key issue was the inability to ensure the safety of astronauts, but that was not a big deal for B-level Transcendents.

In battles involving Angelic Tier levels, Transcendents below B-level couldn’t be much help anyway.

Silent silence echoed in the darkness.

In truth, He Ao had already made it very clear; this time was very dangerous, and no one knew what they would face.

Those sitting here already had a deeper understanding of the Extraordinary World; in such situations, the more unknowns, the higher the mortality rate.

If they stayed here, they might be able to scrape by, living a bit longer; if they participated in ’the interception,’ there was a high likelihood of truly dying on the soil of an alien planet.

Eventually, Jie An lifted his head, looked at He Ao, and slowly began, "To be honest, I really dislike Li Cheng, this old geezer, and the mess in the Western Lands has nothing to do with me, but,"

He paused, stood up, and looked at the map on the projection, "count me in."

"And this old fellow..."

Rudel also began to speak with a smile, preparing to stand up, but Jie An immediately pressed down on his shoulder.

"You’re not fit for combat."

Jie An shrugged his shoulders and said calmly.

"For the World Tree this time, let me go."

A steady voice came from outside the door.