Chapter 1263: The Moment….

The vampire who was questioning Prince Dracula stopped abruptly, as if someone had slashed his throat with a knife!

Magneto had just written a cheque to pay for the damages with his own money, but while he was handing out the cheque with a gloomy face, his hand abruptly stopped in mid air. The fingers of the person opposite him were already touching the cheque, but the person was now shuddering and no longer dared to take it.

A man in a suit was about to spit on Professor X, but he suddenly stiffened. He lowered his head to look down at his feet to make sure the trembling was not his hallucination. The crowd below broke into a loud commotion. A trace of ambition flashed across Professor X’s eyes!

The moment was here at last!

After playing his role as a saint, his image of someone who was brave enough to take responsibility and be held accountable was now deeply ingrained into the heart of everyone there. With the support of these people, who could now stop him from becoming a presidential leader after the apocalypse? Professor X had long recognised the fact that without enough political power and status, there was no way to carry out his own ideology!

As for the problem of population decline after the disaster, Professor X had already consulted with various professionals in this field. They told Professor X that humans were the most fertile creatures on the planet. This was mainly due to two aspects:

First, most animals have mating periods when they are in heat, but not humans. Be it in spring, summer, autumn or winter, human males from the age of 13 to 80 could mate at will anytime, anywhere.

Second, relying on the humans’ own technology, they could easily reduce the mortality rate during pregnancy and delivery to a very low level.

The United States government had also taken a lot of measures in response to China’s replica ark project. Early estimation showed that the number of survivors may exceed 3 million people. After the disaster, it would only take 30 years for the population to reach the figure of 100 million.

As for Professor X’s life span… Professor X was already powerful enough to take over the mind of a person who was brain dead or in a coma (this insane ability was shown in one of the X-Men movies)! Time was not a problem for him at all!

“The collapse of the Pacific Plate will begin from the centre. Imagine a biscuit breaking in two. A huge crack will slowly form across almost the entire United States, from the west to the east along the Mississippi River. The crack would turn into a super enlarged version of the East African Rift Valley. The intensity of the earthquake in areas near the crack will reach 13.0 in magnitude!”

“Fortunately, cities like New York and Washington will only be on the fringes of the first wave of disasters, but Los Angeles will be severely damaged due to the San Andreas Fault in San Francisco.”

“Generally speaking, the population in coastal cities will have higher chances of surviving the first wave of the earthquake, but the tsunami triggered by the earthquake will strike two to three hours later. The first wave of the tsunami will probably be more than 1000 meters high. That will be the real disaster that will wipe out the coastal cities!”

Sheyan’s words reverberated in the minds of the three leading figures.

By now, the three of them were already deeply convinced of the truth in his words.

The crowd was starting to panic from the continuous earthquake, although the intensity of the earthquake so far only ranged from magnitude-4 to magnitude-6. Despite not being immediately threatening to their lives, it was enough to crush the anger, shock and humiliation of the vast majority of people there! Their minds were instead gripped by endless fear!

Prince Dracula stood up with a bloodthirsty smile. First, he looked around. He saw that the questioning eyes from before had turned into total submission. Then, he slowly extended his hand and broke the neck of the vampire in front of him who was passionately questioning him a few minutes ago.

The vampire was so shocked that he even forgot to resist!

How could Prince Dracula miss this opportunity to clear out the dissidents? A bloody and horrible massacre immediately took place! Prince Dracula killed to his heart’s content, then ordered the vampires to board his flagship while licking his fangs in satisfaction.

Magneto coldly stared at the man in front of him; the man who was once his friend, but was shouting madly at Magneto to compensate him for all his losses a few seconds ago.

“Take this cheque. This is the money I got for you after selling my assets,” Magneto told him flatly.

The man’s face turned pale. He squeezed out a forceful smile and waved his hands repeatedly.

“It’s all a huge misunderstanding. Listen to me, my dear Erik…”

Magneto could not be bothered to say another word to him. He stuffed the cheque into the man’s mouth. After that, he looked around at the others in the room who had all broken into a cold sweat. He strode out of the room with a wild laughter.

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Eight formations of airships, 56 airships in total, remained in the base. They had already been filled with gas before the specified arrival time of the apocalypse which Sheyan told them, floating low above the ground.

However, because at least half of the people had wavered, the airships were then lowered to only three or four metres above the ground, and temporary giant steps were installed to facilitate the departure of those people. But now, as soon as the earthquake occured, the mutants, vampires and other loyal subordinates of the three leading figures instantly retrieved the giant steps without hesitation, then ordered the airships to fly higher. These people, who were infuriated, were doing this out of spite!

“This is for shouting at me to refund your money!” A currency changer on the airship sneered.

“This is for disobeying my management and leaving without permission!” A management staff member uttered hatefully.

“This is for my friend that you beat up at the base entrance!” An airship attendant said through gritted teeth.

“This is for littering!” A janitor on an airship said with a sneer while waving a broom around.

“This is for completely ignoring my words!” An airship captain said with anger.

***

Seeing the airships lift off and their only hope of survival about to disappear, those who came down from the airships fell into an even greater panic. The earthquake was still ongoing, and the fear in their hearts kept growing. Some of them started crying, some were yelling, some were shouting threats, and some had even taken out guns to fire at the airships.

This kind of behaviour obviously could not be forgiven, so they were quickly beaten up by the legendary figures and the weapons on the airships. The repair work was handed over to the vampires who could fly. They pasted something like Band-Aids on the damaged parts, then refilled the airbags with an air pump with the gas they had prepared in advance. The inside of an airship’s airbag was divided into a large number of smaller airbags, so one or two broken sub-airbags would not affect the floating capacity much.

The one who stepped forward in this situation was still Professor X. He slowly drifted into the air and asked the people to kneel down to confess their mistakes, then sincerely beg for forgiveness by muttering his name in their hearts. Only then could they find redemption.

Such a request akin to a religious charlatan’s would certainly meet with scoffs in times of peace, but in the current life-threatening situation, humans were willing to do things that were even more ridiculous than this. More importantly, Professor X could really read minds!

Soon, dozens of sincere confessors had a faint white light shining on them, and from an airship dropped down a rope ladder that rotated like a conveyor belt. One would not even need to climb the ladder; they only needed to hold tightly onto the rope ladder to be pulled up to the airship.

Now that there were examples, and the people could see a ray of hope, the situation finally calmed down. Although the ground was trembling violently due to the earthquake, the situation did not seem like it would be fatal for the time being.

In fact, most of the casualties occurred because some of the people could not hold on to the rope ladders properly. There were a dozen or so of them, and they naturally fell and died. Besides that, there were more than a hundred extremely religious people who felt that Professor X’s actions were blasphemous to God, so Professor X mercifully let them leave. Except for the airships, they were free to go to any corner of the Earth.

The happiest ones were naturally the people who chose to stay on the airships. They were staring at the fools below with arrogant looks. The names of these people had been recorded down. As strong supporters of the base, they would certainly be given preferential treatment in the future.

However, most of the people who left had not returned yet. They had stayed awake in terror the night before, and when the apocalypse did not come, they had left thinking that it was all one big joke, so they were now sleeping soundly to make up for the sleep they missed last night. There was no way they could get here in time, and even if we do, the base may not be willing to accommodate them any longer.

So after the Big Three had a discussion among themselves, they decided to execute an emergency plan. They would take advantage of this critical moment while there were still billions of humans alive to urgently replenish some population from New York City. To take in people so wantonly without prior screening was definitely somewhat inappropriate, but population was the primary productive force of a nation, so having more was always better than having less!

***

Everything was going well for the Big Three, but on Sheyan’s side, Party Ace was facing the most difficult challenge since they entered the Nightmare World.

The area they were in was hundreds of kilometers closer to the core area of the earthquake compared to New York! Most importantly, a crustal crack which extended from the epicenter was passing through this place, so the magnitude of the earthquake here exceeded 8.0!

How bad was a magnitude-8.0 earthquake? The official statement issued by the government stated that “most of the houses were damaged, the roads have collapsed and the underground pipelines have ruptured”.

Doesn’t sound that bad, does it?

But keep in mind that the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake was only 7.9 in magnitude. The most destructive first wave of the earthquake lasted only 22 seconds, and the earthquake had occurred in relatively undeveloped areas in Western China with low population density. The final loss was 800 billion yuan (~USD $116 billion) and the death toll was close to 100,000.

Normally, earthquakes would only last for a few seconds. A long one may last for a dozen seconds or so. Rarely would they last for more than a minute.

But in this 2012 world, the magnitude-8.0 earthquake was expected to last for nearly half an hour. Can you imagine the astonishing damage it would cause?