Free Web NovelChapter 2344: Chapter 2346: Those Who Are Not of Our Kind Harbor Different Intentions
Because of the insistence of a certain officer at Britain Airport, more than half the delegation had their luggage forcibly inspected.
Could they resist? Of course they could... but it really wouldn’t be appropriate. Even though the team had quite a few security personnel and that officer on the other side didn’t actually have that much authority, at the end of the day he represented the law enforcement of Britain.
The Huaxia Citizens had come this time to make friends, not enemies.
This kind of crap is really infuriating: if you refuse the search, a conflict is very likely; so the Huaxia Citizens, long used to wearing the "rabbit skin," discussed it and decided, fine, let them search... anyway we’re used to swallowing our anger; on the international stage, we can’t afford to throw away name and righteousness.
Very unfortunately, the tree wanted to be still but the Wind would not cease. The Huaxia Citizens felt they had given enough ground, but after the inspection that officer temporarily seized a sizable portion of their electronic devices, including but not limited to digital cameras, mobile phones, laptops, and tablets.
They said they needed to "evaluate" the content inside.
This kind of thing really isn’t very common, but it’s not completely without precedent either—once, when some Mai Nation citizen was going through Customs, because one person’s mobile phone had pictures in WeChat that "might involve pornography," he was directly deported back to Huaxia.
Was that unjust? Very likely it was, because that kind of inspection is supposedly random—with the throughput of Mai Nation’s Customs, it’s impossible to check every mobile phone like that. When something like this happens, it just means you got picked; your luck was that lousy.
But the truth is—this person was very likely being targeted, because it was only "might involve pornography."
However, there’s nowhere to argue this, since Mai Nation’s laws do in fact contain such a provision.
If something like this happens in the Britain Capital, it’s even rarer. Most of the time they use it to bully small countries, and they rarely use it on visitors from major powers, let alone on a delegation of a diplomatic nature like this.
And yet that still wasn’t the real scam. The real scam was that Huaxia’s Honglu Temple sent people over very quickly, and six hours later the superior of that Britain officer also showed up—the explanation given was traffic jams in the Foggy City. Fine, the Foggy City really does get jammed all the time.
But all the electronic devices temporarily seized from the Huaxia Citizens were gone... Could you maybe give us an explanation?
Feng Jun and the others were late to catch the relevant news, and by the time they did, things had already developed to this point. Even though Feng Jun felt that even acting now still counted as early, something like this happening after he had promised to protect them made him feel a bit slapped in the face.
After the three Huaxia Citizens read the relevant news, they looked at each other in dismay, while Sofia was still going through it word by word, trying to figure out what had happened—she had no choice; even though she had a gift for languages and had quickly become familiar with Chinese, she was still having some trouble with reading and writing.
The world really is that unfair. Feng Jun had always thought that reading and writing a foreign language was relatively easy—as long as your memory was good enough and you had the pronunciation down, that was it; speaking was the hardest part—especially with Chinese, since it even had tones.
If you haven’t actually lived in a Chinese-speaking environment, reading and writing should be easier and speaking harder, right?
But the way Sofia developed just didn’t make sense. Abroad, she hardly ever ran into a Chinese-language environment, yet somehow her spoken Chinese was great, and it was reading Chinese texts that she found difficult.
Which just goes to show that with some kinds of genius, you really have no idea what kind of skill tree they’ve specced into. ƒreewebηoveℓ.com
However... how to put it? Her opinion could basically be ignored, and the three Huaxia Citizens didn’t take her into account. Feng Jun spoke up first, "What do you all think?"
"Go to the Foggy City, obviously," Zhong Lijing answered without hesitation. "Our people got bullied... how is that something we can just accept?"
For a girl who’d been subjected to long-term unfair treatment to still have this kind of sense of justice, and not be particularly twisted inside, was really rare—never mind that her sense of justice had only dared to break out after she met Feng Jun.
Feng Jun’s thinking was more complicated than hers. "I think we still need to go back and take a look, get a handle on the situation. News off the internet... it just feels unreliable."
"Then let’s go back," Zhong Lijing’s faith in Feng Jun was really... beyond words. She often had her own ideas—one could even say they were her own unique brand of innocence and naïveté—but as long as Feng Jun spoke, she would trust him unconditionally.
Feng Jun didn’t stand on ceremony either. He took the three of them and headed back to Luohua.
It was just after noon in Rome, but on the Huaxia side it was already dusk, and the flaming clouds at the horizon were red enough to be frightening.
After Feng Jun returned, he didn’t bother with too much probing; he directly contacted Beauty Lin. "Hey, you Lin who’s been eavesdropping, I’m back. Let’s meet at the pavilion by Pump No. 1."
Beauty Lin didn’t act like an outsider at all and jumped straight into Luohua’s intercom channel. "Got it, I’ll be there in two minutes."
Which made sense; the place they were monitoring was very close to the mountain gate, and it was only about three hundred meters from the pavilion at Pump No. 1.
By comparison, Feng Jun’s villa was actually a bit farther from Pump No. 1—more than two kilometers, at least.
However, Feng Jun arrived a little bit earlier... but that wasn’t the point. The point was, as soon as he saw Beauty Lin, he asked directly, "Those reports from Britain, are they real or fake?"
Beauty Lin had a bellyful of things she wanted to say to him. Hearing his question, she could only counter with, "Which outlet are you talking about?"
Which outlet? Feng Jun froze for a moment before reacting—of course the media are divided by camps.
After thinking for a bit, he asked out loud, "I just want to know, were a lot of electronic devices temporarily confiscated?"
"More than just ’a lot of electronic devices temporarily confiscated’." Beauty Lin let out an angry laugh. "Our people were beaten... Didn’t you see those two pictures? There are scratches on their faces!"
"Fuck!" Feng Jun flared up on the spot, half because his compatriots were bullied, and half because he himself... had been a bit ineffective, "Where are the photos? Let me see!"
He really hadn’t seen any photos. He and the Little Celestial Master had logged into several sites one after another, but unfortunately the information was all highly similar—basically like some standard press release.
On this point, his view was the same as Tang Wenji’s: there are too few domestic sites that seriously produce content; most just scrape it, and pirated reposts are even more than can be counted. So even if he had seen the news, he still had to return home to verify whether it was true or not.
The search rankings were occupied by all kinds of traffic-chasing sites, while the truth was nowhere to be found; it was really a vexing situation.
So he was very willing to take a look at some on-site photos and analyze the situation.
"They’re all online," Beauty Lin called out, then turned and left. Before long, she came back from the mountain gate with a tablet in her hand—normally, when she entered Luohua, these things were not allowed to be brought in.
She swiped open the tablet and showed Feng Jun a few pictures and some chat logs; the situation was already crystal clear—this police officer had taken someone’s orders and was deliberately making things hard for the team from Huaxia.
When dealing with the problem in the early stages, this person acted under surveillance cameras. Although he was quite overbearing, on the whole he was still operating within the bounds of his authority.
But two people from Huaxia were beaten, and that scene was not captured by any cameras—it supposedly happened in a blind spot.
As for the missing devices, that was even more outrageous. The officer actually put these items into a room with "broken cameras," and then the items mysteriously vanished. Given the efficiency of England’s police work, it was almost impossible to get them back.
In those two photos of the beaten Chinese, the injuries weren’t very serious. One had a slightly swollen, split lip, and the other had two bloody scratches on his cheek.
However, this wasn’t just a question of how serious the injuries were. You have to know, the people who were beaten were holding diplomatic passports or official passports. This was a naked slap in Huaxia’s face.
In the group Beauty Lin was in, besides the photo uploads, there was also a lot of discussion. From it, Feng Jun learned that the Britain government was actually very angry about that officer’s behavior as well.
So they privately promised Huaxia that they would definitely deal with this person in the future. But as of now, there was no way to deal with him, not even an apology, otherwise the government would be attacked by the public—many citizens believed that this officer had faithfully fulfilled his duties.
At this point, someone in the group added that in many People of Britain’s hearts, there’s a mix of envy, jealousy, and hatred towards Huaxia Citizen. An aging empire’s feelings about the rise of a new power are extremely complicated.
Especially since Huaxia Citizen belong to the Yellow Race; buried in the consciousness of quite a few People of Britain is a "white supremacy" complex.
Of course, Britain also has this thing called Zhengzhi correctness. Hardly anyone would openly express discrimination against Huaxia Citizen, but that doesn’t stop them from quietly going to give that officer a like.
And that’s exactly what happened. On that officer’s personal Twitter, his latest post was his feelings about this incident. He even attached a photo that looked relatively fair and impartial, claiming he was just enforcing the law objectively.
That post already had over thirty thousand likes, and more than eight hundred comments, basically all unfriendly towards Huaxia, with more than half of them blatantly making racist remarks.
Still, in this group, they hadn’t captured many of those comments—everyone knew it well enough in their hearts; why bother making yourself upset?
Someone did remark, though: given the private hostility many People of Britain harbor toward Huaxia Citizen, that officer probably took very little benefit to be willing to make a move—Huaxia’s current international environment is really terrible.
There’s Mai Nation’s suppression from above, Ah San jumping up and down below, and hostile countries like Australia and Viking on the sides. Britain, Gaul, Teutonic and the like seem relatively fair, but that’s just because they’re waiting for Huaxia to stand in front of Europa and take the Thunder for them.
Deep down, they are still hostile or jealous. This kind of sentiment will never truly disappear until you become so strong that it makes people despair.
Realizing this, Feng Jun couldn’t help but secretly feel relieved. Fortunately, he had always maintained a cautious attitude about the Daoist Sects going overseas. Even when Sofia wanted to take disciples, he had been extremely careful.
"Those who are not of our tribe surely have different hearts." In this regard, he told himself, he absolutely must not lower his guard in the future.
