The Omniscient

Chapter 26: The Grim Messiah

"Is this your friend?" Old Wang pointed at Lin Li and asked.

Huang Ji replied, "You could say we know each other. He wasn’t originally involved in this—it’s you who dragged him into it."

Old Wang frowned, surprised. "He’s heard all this, and you’re telling me you’re just ‘acquaintances’?"

He had assumed they were close friends, given that Huang Ji had made no effort to shield Lin Li from any of the secrets they had discussed.

"We only met this morning," Lin Li interjected.

"Hah! I knew someone as dumb as a pig like you couldn’t be connected to him!" Old Wang snapped, mercilessly mocking Lin Li.

Lin Li’s face turned red with embarrassment, but he couldn’t find a retort. The man berating him had managed to con him for an entire month, making him willingly bow, serve, and call him master. If it hadn’t been for other victims exposing the scam, Lin Li might still be fooled.

"I trust him. I never misjudge people," Huang Ji said calmly.

Given enough interaction, Huang Ji could evaluate anyone’s reliability, and Lin Li was highly unlikely to leak anything. The only exceptions would involve unforeseen changes in the future or the use of coercive measures like truth serums.

"He’s just an ordinary college student," Old Wang retorted. "Do you think he’ll keep his mouth shut? Listen, kid, I’ve already been exposed. People have infiltrated my home!"

"We’ll have to run after this. Since you’re just casual acquaintances, he absolutely cannot know where we’re going."

Lin Li exclaimed, "I swear I won’t tell anyone!"

Instead of fear, Lin Li was trembling with excitement after learning about aliens, the Illuminati, and the Messiah. His fascination with mysterious phenomena stemmed from boredom with the ordinary world. Yet, despite his curiosity, he had always been tied down by the demands of academic life.

Today had upended everything. Huang Ji’s combat skills had stunned him, effortlessly neutralizing armed thugs. Even Old Wang, whom he had dismissed as a scam artist, turned out to be a member of an underground resistance against dark forces.

This sudden upheaval ignited an unprecedented yearning in Lin Li.

"Let me join you!" he pleaded.

Old Wang, however, remained cold. "Kid, this could get you killed."

"I’m not afraid!" Lin Li declared.

Old Wang turned to Huang Ji. "I know his capabilities, or lack thereof. With that little brain of his, letting him join us is a death sentence!"

Huang Ji replied, "Whether he joins or not is up to him. I don’t need my helpers to be geniuses."

"Besides, have you considered that just by showing him your ‘Golden Elixir trick,’ you may have already doomed him?"

Old Wang froze at that remark.

Huang Ji continued, "You’ve been hiding out, surviving by scamming people on the streets, but you need a significant amount of money. You can’t just scrape by forever. If you truly had a magical ‘Golden Elixir’ performance, making money wouldn’t be hard. Even if you chose to scam people, you could have targeted wealthier victims. Why stick to conning small-time thugs and students?" Ṙ𝘼₦ÖʙÈȘNôv(el)B\\jnn

"Do you still insist it’s just a magic trick?"

Old Wang sighed. "Fine, the trick involves something we stole from a research facility."

"Whether I use it or not, exposure is inevitable. I used the Golden Elixir routine to attract a few big fish, then hid the item afterward. I’ve been coasting on my silver tongue since, avoiding using the elixir again."

Huang Ji nodded. Old Wang had risked everything in one day, performing the ‘Golden Elixir’ trick to bait ten targets. Afterward, he claimed the elixir was too powerful to be shown frequently and stashed it away. His plan was to quickly earn enough to escape, knowing that if caught, he could die without revealing its location.

"But that’s precisely why anyone who’s seen the Golden Elixir becomes a target," Huang Ji said.

"Even now, I could send Lin Li home and we could leave. But sooner or later, the enemy would track him down."

Old Wang was silent for a moment. "They wouldn’t necessarily kill him. The Illuminati usually doesn’t murder casually in China."

"And what if he was already destined to die?" Huang Ji asked.

Both Old Wang and Lin Li froze, confused.

Huang Ji elaborated, "Lin Li, I’m skilled in medicine, blending both traditional Chinese and Western methods. The first time I met you, I noticed a hidden condition and suggested you get a check-up."

Lin Li recalled their first meeting and nodded quickly.

"When Old Wang knocked you down in the alley, I massaged your neck and noticed an abnormal pulse. After further assessment, I suspect you have cancer," Huang Ji said bluntly.

"Wh-what?" Lin Li stammered in shock.

Huang Ji reached out and pressed his fingers against Lin Li’s side. "Does it hurt here?"

"Ow! Yes, yes, it hurts!" Lin Li gasped.

Huang Ji nodded. "It’s confirmed. There’s a tumor growing there."

The simple and direct diagnosis left Old Wang amazed. Huang Ji’s medical skills seemed endless. What Old Wang didn’t realize was that Huang Ji’s “diagnosis” had nothing to do with the tumor. He’d merely pressed a sensitive spot that would hurt on anyone.

Old Wang finally dropped his objections. If Lin Li were sent home, the Illuminati would eventually find him, interrogate him, and, if he had stomach cancer, likely kill him under the guise of natural causes.

Lin Li sat in stunned silence, clutching his abdomen.

Huang Ji reassured him, "The tumor is still small. If you get timely and proper treatment, you’ll be fine."

Gathering his courage, Lin Li asked, "I have a question. Since the Illuminati can’t control everything, why don’t you report the aliens to the government? Wouldn’t it be better to use the country’s power to fight them?"

Huang Ji immediately responded, "Impossible."

Old Wang added, "That’s suicide."

"Why?" Lin Li pressed.

Old Wang began, “First of all, we don’t have concrete evidence. Most of what we know about aliens is inferred from our knowledge of the Illuminati. We’ve never actually seen aliens ourselves.”

“Second, while the Illuminati may have less influence in certain countries, their economic power is global. This means we couldn’t possibly unite all social strata within a single nation. Without solid evidence or sufficient data, anything we say would just be dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Do you think a government could base its policies on conspiracy theories? Even if some people believed us, there would always be more who opposed us, leading to political instability.”

Lin Li blinked and asked, “Political instability?”

Huang Ji elaborated, “The Messiah organization has been destroyed and rebuilt three times in its history. It was first established in 1948 by two Air Force officers involved in the Roswell incident, alongside some Navy Intelligence officers and a few dozen enthusiasts.”

“Later, the organization grew to include its most famous member: John Fitzgerald Kennedy. At the time, he was a congressman from Washington, D.C., and the highest-ranking politician in the group.”

“For a while, the Illuminati didn’t even realize this underground group was forming to oppose them. Over a decade of effort, the Messiah organization succeeded in getting Kennedy elected as President of the United States in 1960.”

Old Wang nodded in agreement, while Lin Li’s jaw dropped in disbelief.

Huang Ji continued, “Regardless of his personal flaws, Kennedy accomplished many significant things during his presidency. Within just three months of taking office, he heavily promoted advancements in space technology, publicly declaring a massive investment in the aerospace field. This sparked the space race with the Soviet Union. By the following year, he had established plans for a moon landing and repeatedly requested Congress to increase funding for space exploration. At the time, the U.S. could barely send an astronaut into space, let alone achieve a stable orbit.”

“This alone didn’t concern the Illuminati. They didn’t care about a simple moon landing. But Kennedy went further: he replaced CIA Director Allen Dulles and appointed his brother as Attorney General to curb FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s power. Both Hoover and Dulles were members of the Illuminati, and the ensuing power struggle was intense.”

“With the CIA factions loyal to him, Kennedy began targeting the Illuminati’s influence and exposing some of their hidden technological advancements, significantly boosting national progress. That was the Messiah’s peak, and they recruited many new members during that time.”

“At this point, the Illuminati realized they had a serious enemy. They quickly uncovered the Messiah’s existence. Their deeper resources allowed them to exploit Kennedy’s missteps in Cuba and the hostility of the Soviet Union to orchestrate the Cuban Missile Crisis, nearly triggering World War III. This shows the Illuminati have contingency plans and don’t fear nuclear conflict.”

“Thankfully, Kennedy maintained direct communication with the Soviets every twenty minutes during the crisis, avoiding a spiral of mistrust and ultimately de-escalating the situation.”

“But by then, the lines were drawn. The Messiah and the Illuminati were irreconcilable. Just a year later, in 1963, Kennedy was assassinated. It was the simplest, most direct solution.”

“After his assassination, many of his close allies were either killed or demoted. Numerous Messiah members were quietly eliminated.”

At this point, Old Wang let out a bitter chuckle.

“It wasn’t just the assassination,” Old Wang added. “In the subsequent presidential election, the Illuminati demonstrated their overwhelming influence. They orchestrated a landslide victory for Lyndon Johnson, who was sworn in as President on a plane immediately after Kennedy’s death. The election was a crushing 44-6 win, the most lopsided result in U.S. history.”

“Johnson was an ordinary candidate who had previously lost to Kennedy. Yet in that election, he achieved an unprecedented landslide, winning 44 out of 50 states. To this day, that record remains unbroken. The defeated candidate was stunned to realize that so-called ‘strongholds’ were a complete illusion. The appearance of two competitive parties taking turns in power was just a façade.”

“The Illuminati had been deliberately balancing the two parties for appearances. If they wanted, they could have ensured a candidate swept all 50 states. They only refrained for the sake of maintaining the illusion of fairness.”

“From that point on, the Messiah understood that our strength wasn’t even in the same league as theirs.”

Huang Ji concluded, “They only did it once, just to show us that they ‘could, but usually choose not to.’”

“In just three years, the Messiah’s golden age was over. With their existence known, the Illuminati never allowed them to gain traction again. Most of the Kennedy family defected to the Illuminati, providing information about Messiah members to save their lives. Even Robert Kennedy, as a defector, tried to run for president but was assassinated during his campaign in Los Angeles.”

Old Wang added, “The betrayals were numerous, but the most devastating was Jacqueline Kennedy herself. She married Aristotle Onassis, a Greek member of the Illuminati and the world’s richest man. She provided a full list of Messiah members, leading to the organization being nearly wiped out.”

“After over a decade of rebuilding, the Messiah remains a shadow of its former self, limited to minor actions in secrecy. Our gap in strength is insurmountable. Joining us means living in constant danger. Do you still want in?”

Old Wang turned to Huang Ji and said, “You refused my son’s invitation. I assume it’s because you know the Illuminati is unbeatable.”

Huang Ji smiled. “I don’t believe in unbeatable opponents. I refused because I knew your organization lacked the potential for greatness.”

Old Wang fell silent.