This made him feel like the star of the opera troupe of the time. Although everyone in the troupe bowed and fawned before him, they were all subordinates to the troupe’s owner. Not only were they disloyal to him, but he also had no real power within the troupe.
The situation was different now. Dozens of members of this Japanese research team, including Kikuchi Kohei, were all his loyal henchmen. In this “Wu Han Palace,” he was the undisputed boss and didn’t need to live under Victoria’s shadow at all.
So he immediately said to Kikuchi Kohei, who was kneeling on one knee, “Go, summon everyone and have them all worship me!”
Kikuchi Kohei, full of respect and appreciation, loudly declared, “Your subordinates obey!”
Then, he immediately went to arrange everything.
Although those people did not understand Chinese, Wu Bolin used Kikuchi Kohei’s words in Japanese to give them psychological suggestions, so that they completely obeyed Kikuchi Kohei.
So, the group quickly gathered in the very cold square.
In front of the “Wu Han Palace” inscription, Kikuchi Kohei spoke to them in Japanese, instructing them to learn the pronunciation of the eight Chinese characters from him.
Japanese people are not particularly proficient in languages, as evidenced by their daily practice of learning English and the Chinese expression “识时务者为俊杰” (a wise man knows when to yield to circumstances). It took a group of people a full twenty minutes to rack their brains to learn the pronunciation of those eight characters.
Wu Bolin is also a patient person.
With his hands behind his back, he stood on a platform in front of a stone slab, staring at a group of people practicing pronunciation in small groups. Kikuchi Kohei kept running and weaving between them, constantly correcting their pronunciation mistakes.
At one point, Wu Bolin suddenly understood what life Victoria had lived for the past few hundred years. She was an empress surrounded by tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people! And she had sat on the throne for hundreds of years!
I wish I had the chance to live as freely as he did for hundreds of years.
In temperatures below minus fifty degrees Celsius, Kohei Kikuchi sweats profusely. The sweat drips onto his eyelashes and turns into ice crystals in the cold wind. Over time, this results in two thick, frozen eyebrows hanging down his eyelids.
He rushed over to Wu Bolin, knelt down on one knee, and said like a Qing Dynasty servant, “Reporting to Guanghan Zhenren, all members of Showa Station are ready!”
Wu Bolin frowned and demanded, “Say it again, which station?!”
Kikuchi Kohei then noticed the three Chinese characters on the stone tablet behind Wu Bolin and immediately corrected himself, saying, “Reporting to Guanghan Zhenren, all members of the Wuhan Palace are ready!”
Wu Bolin was finally satisfied and said coldly, “Since you are ready, let’s begin!”
Like a symphony orchestra conductor, Kohei Kikuchi turned to the crowd, waved his hand, and the crowd shouted in a very strange accent: “Zaixia Shenjian Gonghan Zhenren!”
The crowd shouted with enthusiasm, and the white mist they exhaled rose simultaneously, merging into one, creating a truly spectacular sight.
Wu Bolin was stunned for a moment, thinking he had misheard. He was Guanghan Zhenren, so how could these Japanese people insist on calling him Gonghan Zhenren?
At first, I thought these Japanese were being deliberately disobedient, but then I realized that was nonsense. They had been psychologically conditioned; even if I told them to stand naked in minus fifty degrees Celsius, they wouldn’t hesitate for a second. This was clearly a language proficiency issue.
Then he said to Kohei Kikuchi with a gloomy face, “Starting today, teach them to speak Mandarin for six hours every day, and each person is only allowed to sleep for three hours a day!”
Kohei Kikuchi immediately answered loudly, “Yes, sir!”
At the time, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, thousands of kilometers away, was unaware that members of its two scientific expedition teams, along with the crew of its only heavy icebreaker, had become Wu Bolin’s henchmen.
Since learning that the research vessel had arrived safely in Antarctica, they had not paid much attention to the research team’s situation, as the team was carrying out routine duties, and they assumed that these professionals would complete the handover of personnel and equipment smoothly in the next few days.
Three days later, when the research team members’ Mandarin language skills had improved significantly, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology received a message from the research vessel.
The research vessel experienced mechanical failure and needed to be inspected immediately on-site before it could begin its return journey.
Officials from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology were somewhat baffled. How could a brand-new research vessel break down so soon after arriving in Antarctica? Normally, minor mechanical damage wouldn’t affect normal navigation and would be repaired while sailing. But now the vessel was completely immobilized and required repairs in Antarctica.
So they immediately contacted the research vessel, conveying their greatest concern: “Do you dare turn back before the coastline freezes beyond the icebreaker’s capacity?”
Captain Matsushita Heikichi replied: “It’s hard to predict. Please be prepared in case the research vessel cannot return this winter.”
The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology was immediately shocked.
Leaving dozens of people and a ship stranded in Antarctica was not considered dangerous, because the ship and research station had sufficient supplies, sufficient for these people to stay until the Antarctic summer arrived.
But the key question is, who can afford to lose face like that?
Although news of the research vessel’s departure didn’t attract widespread attention, it did pique the interest of some polar enthusiasts and the research team’s families. If the vessel didn’t return, and news of it reached Japan, wouldn’t it be a disgrace to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology? And if it reached Japan, it would be a disgrace to the entire Japanese scientific community.
This isn’t just an overreaction from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology; there’s precedent to follow. Not long ago, two American astronauts were trapped in space for 286 days due to a Starliner malfunction, ending their planned eight-day mission. Images of one of the astronauts, reduced to skin and bones, shocked the world, and NASA nearly lost face. With American astronauts trapped in space and Japanese researchers trapped in Antarctica, if this spread, it would be enough to put the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology in serious trouble.
Although the noble tradition of seppuku (ritual suicide) by those primarily responsible for the Fukushima nuclear accident is no longer popular in Japan today, the tradition of hanging still exists. For example, Yasuhiro Sato, the person responsible for the Fukushima nuclear accident, knew he had committed a grave mistake and ultimately chose to atone for it with his death.
If a major mistake in polar scientific research were to occur and cause an international scandal, the person responsible would be under at least 70-80% pressure, though not as much as Yasuhiro Sato. Public pressure would be unbearable for most people.
Therefore, those in charge held a secret internal meeting. After some discussion, they decided to send a request to the members of the Antarctic expedition team and the crew of the research vessel, asking them to inform their families that they were conducting a secret scientific research mission in Antarctica and would not be able to return home for a short time. They also asked them to stick to their stories and not mention that the vessel had suffered any damage.
To appease everyone and ensure their full cooperation, they even proposed a ten-day wage rule. This meant that if everyone stayed in Antarctica one day longer than originally planned, they would receive ten days’ wages, and that would continue until they returned.
The research team members and crew had completely submitted to Wu Bolin and were completely uninterested in money. When Wu Bolin asked them to agree, they immediately and without hesitation.
The fact that everyone agreed so readily and without exception brought tears to the eyes of high-ranking officials at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. They considered their researchers to be the most dedicated in the world. Confident, they immediately announced that Japan would launch the largest and longest winter scientific expedition to Antarctica in history. This led the Japanese public to believe that a major discovery was yet to be announced, and everyone was enthusiastic on social media.
They didn’t realize that all of this was the work of Wu Bolin, the God of Guanghan.