"Today is your sixth day in this Shadow World."
"Though you have achieved modest results, you are not happy. News has arrived that our neighbor, the Kingdom of Briss, is suffering defeat after defeat."
"You know you can hesitate no longer."
Boss Cat spoke to Lanqi while curiously pawing at a music box, which played a tune steeped in suspense.
The string melody, lingering one moment and frenetic the next, carried a sense of anxious urgency. Its labyrinthine cadence sounded like a lone soul dancing in the mire, searching for light in the pitch-black night.
Inside Lanqi's Hersalem residence, it was late at night.
He sat alone behind an antique wooden desk, surrounded by dense stacks of books.
Spread out before him were numerous magical engineering instruments. What caught Boss Cat's eye most was a Nixie tube clock, its tubes glowing with a saturated orange-red radiance that illuminated the numerals like flowing magma, lending the dim room an air of profound mystery.
The faint hum of the timer echoed in the quiet room, serving as an unrelenting reminder of the passage of time.
"It really is time for me to leave Hersalem."
The desk lamp cast an angled glow across Lanqi's face. His expression was solemn and his eyes bright, his gaze seemingly piercing straight through the snowy plains to the north.
These past few days, the Horning Empire had not only launched a frontal assault on the neighboring Kingdom of Briss, but intelligence also revealed that its covert operative units had begun infiltrating Fukelo Kingdom and Edis Kingdom to the east and west.
Yet Lanqi could have guessed as much on his own.
Though the northern snowy plains—the Land of Eternal Night, shrouded in perpetual darkness throughout the year—had never been a historic strategic chokepoint, it was a paradise for the Blood Clan.
Because the nights there were so long and the sun scarcely ever rose, they could completely bypass their singular weakness.
Once the Blood Clan breached either the eastern or western flank and took the Land of Eternal Night, launching a pincer attack against the Polant Empire from the north and south, it would be an absolute catastrophe.
By now, the Land of Eternal Night was likely far more perilous than ever before. No one could say for sure whether Blood Clan vanguards had already slipped inside.
Fortunately, the Blood Clan Progenitors had long been monitored by the Demon Realm. If an eighth-tier marquess or higher Progenitor moved north, it would surely provoke an immediate response from the demon race.
One clause of the North-South Treaty between the Blood Clan and the demon race stipulated that the Blood Clan could not cross the Land of Eternal Night without authorization. Exceptions were rare—such as Baron Sanchez, the Blood Clan envoy in the Purgatory Corridor Academy Shadow World, who had been openly received into the Demon Realm after advance negotiations to search alongside Demon Realm investigators for humans lurking within the academy.
"Boss Cat, tomorrow morning we leave Hersalem and make a trip to the Demon Realm."
Lanqi tapped his fingers lightly on the desk, looking at the newly crafted card in front of him: Polymorph: Human.
It was a spell card capable of transforming the user into Lanqi Wilfort, crafted by his own hands over the past two days.
Because he had brought Boss Cat along this time, providing ample card slots, he had even outfitted the cat with a ten-equipment-card portable card-making toolkit set, allowing him to craft magic cards even inside a Shadow World.
Still, these compressed portable tools were far inferior to the high-grade instruments in real-world workshops; crafting cards inside a Shadow World was significantly more difficult than doing so in reality.
Lanqi planned to have a capable, trusted subordinate from his faction polymorph into him, masquerading as him over the next three to four weeks to maintain appearances in Hersalem according to his plan.
During that time, Lanqi would disguise himself as Luoqi McCarthy, cross the Land of Eternal Night, enter the Demon Realm, locate Hyperion, and explore whatever diplomatic avenues he could negotiate with the great demons.
Throughout this journey, he would keep the Shadow World broadcast switched off. Aside from not wanting the people of the Southern Continent to see Luoqi McCarthy, he was even more unwilling to let the real world see him in his demon form.
Once he morphed into a demon, shorn of human skin as disguise, other demons in the Demon Realm might well discover that he was a great demon—a revelation that would be exceedingly difficult to explain to the people back in the Southern Continent.
"Meow, sigh... I wonder how Hyperion's demon connections are holding up in the Demon Realm. I'm really worried she won't adapt to the climate."
Boss Cat fretted, deeply missing Hyperion.
When Hyperion had ended up in the Kingdom of Asethelan before, it hadn't worried about her at all, since that was a pure, peaceful land. But the Demon Realm—just thinking about it made the cat shiver.
"Don't worry. Everything will be fine once I bring her back," Lanqi said firmly, reaching out to stroke the little black cat.
"Yeah."
The little black cat nodded.
Over these past few days, Lanqi had been surprisingly normal, even if Boss Cat couldn't quite comprehend what he was doing day in and day out.
Aside from holding discussions and drafting proposals, he conducted himself entirely as a proper prime minister should. Upon returning home from work, he occupied himself with small-scale magical engineering research and development, never launching into the grand, earth-shaking speeches one might have expected.
It was glad that Lanqi had finally taken its and Hyperion's advice to heart.
Though this Shadow World seemed utterly hopeless, after their trip to the Northern Continent, Boss Cat had complete faith in Lanqi's abilities and upper limits. A Shadow World was Lanqi's forte; as long as he worked earnestly, raising the win rate from 0% to the target requirement of 1% after forty-odd days might not be so difficult after all.
All the cat needed to do was ensure Lanqi ate balanced meals and stayed healthy each day.
It saw that the current state of the Polant Empire had updated to:
[Public Sentiment: 145 → 276/1000 (Popular approval rating and cohesion)]
[Parliament: 252 → 227/1000 (Approval rating among Polant Empire's upper echelons)]
[Military Strength: 124/1000 (Benchmarked against the Horning Empire)]
[Treasury: 222 → 236/1000 (Current productivity status of the Polant Empire)]
[Diplomacy: 115/1000 (Diplomatic relations with the Demon Realm and surrounding nations that have yet to surrender)]
The odds of victory were still 0.0000%—not even the fourth decimal place showed a positive digit.
Still, that was understandable. Lanqi's progress over this week had been modest at best. Aside from generally stabilizing public sentiment and parliament, the only decisive metric that showed a slight increase was the treasury, which was merely a byproduct of rising public sentiment.
Boss Cat felt that because Lanqi had adopted such an overly prudent, sensible approach this time, people watching outside the Shadow World might perceive Lanqi as having essentially idled away an entire week just getting his bearings.
Or rather, out of forty-five total turns, he had already burned through the first six. It was hard to imagine the sheer pressure Lanqi's teacher, Loren, was enduring out there.
For the upcoming journey to the Demon Realm, the Shadow World broadcast would have to remain cut off for three to four weeks. When the broadcast resumed, who knew if Loren would have survived the strain?
This all-or-nothing diplomatic gambit allowed no room for failure; otherwise, Lanqi and Loren would both find themselves scrambling to defend their families against a storm of public fury.
"By the way, Lanqi, what is this thing you prepared for?"
Standing on the desk, Boss Cat patted a paw against some scattered handwritten notes and a complex project proposal lying before Lanqi.
Lanqi had arranged a great deal of work prior to departure, but this was the only one Boss Cat somewhat understood. It did not involve much of the Polant Empire's political infighting, being merely an engineering strategic initiative.
The cover read: The Salem Plan.
Overseen by the Army, it would consume vast amounts of resources and manpower. The initial phase entailed magical engineers conducting research and testing in a classified institute on the outskirts of the capital, Hersalem, immediately followed by construction and expansion, with multiple laboratories and factories established nationwide to assist.
"Whether it succeeds or not doesn't matter. What I need during this period is to do everything possible to let southern spies know that we have a 'Salem Plan' and are pouring all our efforts into manufacturing a secret weapon. In short, to make the Horning Empire suspect us," Lanqi answered.
He kept no secrets from the cat.
"Can it actually produce anything, then?"
Boss Cat grew even more puzzled.
It felt that in a mere forty-odd days, completing the startup phase would already be an achievement; producing actual results was completely out of the question.
"It can't produce anything," Lanqi shook his head frankly. "But as long as we keep the Horning Empire guessing about whether we actually have a 'Salem Plan,' that will be enough."
"But there really isn't one!"
Boss Cat was totally mystified.
"Who's to say?" Lanqi spread his hands.
Just because they couldn't build one didn't mean they didn't have one.
When the time came, he could airdrop a Nuclear Fusion Wolf onto the Horning Empire, and they might just believe it.
They might even believe such bombs could be mass-produced, and that the Polant Empire could drop a second one.
In any case, by fabricating an imaginary "Salem Plan" out of thin air, he would create a chain of suspicion in the Horning Empire, which would naturally deliver a little shock of light and heat to the Blood Clan when the moment arrived.
Dropping a Nuclear Fusion Wolf in this era probably wouldn't land him in a military tribunal, so he could press the button with complete peace of mind.
The crucial part now was going to the Demon Realm to secure fuel.
And early tomorrow morning, once his secretary found a snowfield coachman who could safely guide him and Boss Cat across the Land of Eternal Night, the journey would begin.
Chapter 541