Flandre called out to the old craftsman, stopping him just as he was about to pack his belongings, then picked up her smartphone to dial the Lungmen Guard Department dispatch, concisely explaining the situation.
Once Flandre ended the call and the old master learned the underlying truth from her, his face turned pale with fright, and he hurriedly handed the two firecrackers over into her small hands.
He muttered bitterly under his breath about how there could exist such utterly unscrupulous, reckless merchants. After all, anyone possessing a sane mind would never commit an act as monstrous as intentionally mixing raw Originium Dust into holiday firecrackers.
This was no different from attempted mass murder.
Before long, the LGD officer who had previously met Flandre managed to squeeze through the dense crowd, panting heavily as sweat beaded on his forehead. Upon receiving the final two missing firecrackers, the officer bowed again and again, expressing his profound gratitude.
After all, the vast majority of citizens who purchased and ignited holiday pyrotechnics were young children and impressionable youths. Consequently, had this illegal shipment slipped cleanly into the market, those two vulnerable civilians would have been the ones to suffer the tragic consequences.
It was precisely because of this terrifying prospect that the LGD command center had treated the operation with such extreme, manic urgency.
One had to realize that the Lunar New Year was fast approaching. If a young citizen were to contract Oripathy because of a simple holiday firecracker during such a joyous season of national celebration, that was a catastrophic failure even Governor Wei Yenwu could never tolerate.
Naturally, now that the central administration had traced the precise manufacturing origin of those hazardous explosives, the black-market company behind the supply chain was in for a world of absolute agony.
In the cold, merciless words of Wei Yenwu himself: "Since these criminals enjoy playing with volatile Originium explosives so much, send them directly to the places where such explosives are actually required."
"For instance, the deep mining veins, or the hazardous shipping channels shattered by catastrophic landmass collapses."
"I guarantee those individuals will be allowed to detonate explosives to their heart's content."
"As for whether catastrophic accidents occur during their labor... isn't that precisely what they deserve?"
Once the LGD squad took custody of the hazardous items and departed, Flandre's group happily strolled back to the villa carrying their hardened, hand-painted clay figurines.
News of the incident was rapidly relayed back to the Governor-General's Office through the Guard Department's internal network.
Upon receiving the briefing, Wei Yenwu's expression turned somewhat peculiar.
Mainly, this was because Lady Fumizuki had just brought back Chen Huijie, Hoshiguma, and Swire—all three knocked completely unconscious by heavy drinking—and had them quietly arranged to rest in the executive guest suites.
If Wei Yenwu recalled correctly, this black-market firecracker investigation was originally supposed to be personally spearheaded and overseen by Chen Huijie.
However, upon learning that Hoshiguma was treating Flandre to dinner tonight, and had even brought along that elder sister whose name he had heard of but never seen in person, Ch'en had handed the operational legwork over to her subordinates so she could tag along and participate in the feast.
The ultimate result? The legendary Three Heroes of Lungmen were utterly wiped out at the dinner table, while the crucial public safety investigation Ch'en was supposed to execute was casually wrapped up by Flandre instead.
Looking at it from this perspective, one had to admit that twist of fate often brought about the most ironic outcomes.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, after Flandre and her entourage returned home and recounted the evening's events in the living room, Fujiwara no Mokou leaned back against her chair and remarked:
"I had heard that Originium was practically omnipotent across Terra, but this degree of integration is far too extreme. I thought it was already absurd enough that it serves as their primary fuel, completely replacing conventional electricity and oil. I never imagined it could also be powdered and used as an explosive agent to boost pyrotechnic yields."
"That is a matter of course," Patchouli explained calmly, setting down her teacup as she detailed to Mokou just how terrifyingly absolute Terra's dependence on Originium truly was. "You must understand that at this technological era, the thermal weaponry utilized by the armed forces of every sovereign nation is fundamentally built upon Originium mechanics. Take modern artillery shells, for example; from the initial ignition in the breach to the final kinetic explosion upon impacting the target, every phase relies entirely on Arts-reactive Originium."
Patchouli adjusted her glasses. "The reason why regional electronic infrastructure and domestic devices fail completely or are utterly destroyed during natural Catastrophes is that their internal energy cells are driven by Originium. A Catastrophe causes ambient Originium to enter a state of extreme activation, and once hyper-activated, the wild energy violently shatters the original delicate containment systems of the equipment."
Patchouli laid bare the grim reality of Terra's total reliance on the mineral. It could be said without an ounce of exaggeration that if one were to magically erase every trace of Originium from Terra overnight, the entire planetary civilization would instantly collapse back into a primitive age in a single second.
"Wait... wasn't it established earlier that Originium is an extraordinarily dangerous biological hazard?" Mokou immediately caught the critical flaw in the system. "If these Terran nations deploy Originium weaponry on massive military scales, wouldn't their armed forces..."
"Precisely," Patchouli nodded. "Therefore, after any major military conflict on Terra, regardless of which side claims strategic victory, at least a quarter of the surviving soldiers will contract Oripathy. Regions like Great Yan handle the aftermath; if a soldier is infected due to wartime service, the state assumes responsibility for their medical care and placement until their natural passing."
Patchouli's tone cooled slightly as she continued. "However, in brutal empires like Ursus, high-ranking officers who become Infected might be quietly arranged into private imperial sanatoriums. As for the lower-ranking, common infantrymen? At absolute best, they receive a paltry severance package. After returning to their home villages, not only do they face severe social ostracization, but they are frequently hunted down by local imperial Inspection Teams and hauled off to the northern mining tundra as slave labor."
Flandre chimed in, her tone quiet and grounded: "That's why the combat strength of the Reunion Movement led by Sister Talulah is so formidable. A massive portion of those hardened warriors aren't just angry civilians; they are former frontline soldiers who were accidentally Infected on some forgotten battlefield, discharged without support, and stripped of any home to return to."
Flandre wasn't speculating; this was the raw truth she had personally witnessed during her time alongside the Reunion Movement. Why were so many newly arrived Infected—especially the young and middle-aged members—able to form cohesive, terrifying combat units after only basic tactical orientation? It was because they had originally been trained Ursus regular infantrymen. They had simply contracted the disease during obscure border clashes.
What? One might point out that no continent-spanning world wars had broken out across Terra in the past two years?
That argument ignored the constant, violent reality of small-scale border friction. For ordinary citizens, small-scale friction meant two people bumping shoulders and exchanging pushes. But small-scale friction on a geopolitical level meant border regiments exchanging heavy artillery fire along disputed frontiers. Although the mortality figures of such localized skirmishes rarely made international headlines, the number of soldiers wounded and contaminated was vast.
Coupled with Terra's intense martial culture and the extreme difficulty of long-range communication through Catastrophe interference, it was entirely routine for multiple border battles to flare up and extinguish while the civilian populations back in the capital cities remained completely oblivious. This reality ensured that the Infected population across all nations remained perpetually high—not merely due to natural disasters and industrial accidents, but driven relentlessly by human conflict.
Listening to Flandre's breakdown, Fujiwara no Mokou let out a heavy, solemn sigh. Then, a thought suddenly struck her, and she looked up:
"Speaking of which... can this substance called Originium actually infect us?"
Flandre shook her head cleanly: "Nope!"
Sitting across from them, Patchouli picked up the explanation: "Originium does not simply infect organic tissue at random; its initial integration vector relies on targeting specific genetic sequences unique to the native races of Terra. Of course, that only applies to low-concentration exposure scenarios."
Patchouli's gaze turned deep and analytical. "Fundamentally, Originium infection is not a biological disease in the conventional sense, but a physical process of physical erosion and structural information overwriting. If any of us were subjected to an environment of extreme, hyper-concentrated Originium energy, our physical forms would still experience physical displacement. And the most terrifying aspect of Originium's influence is that once the overwriting process begins, it never truly stops. It will continuously analyze the subject's biological existence, eventually converting their entire physical form and consciousness into pure information, storing it forever within the crystal matrix."
"So those people who die of Oripathy... they didn't actually succumb to a disease, but their entire existence was digitized and locked inside the Originium crystal?" Mokou asked, a look of genuine shock crossing her face.
"You could put it that way," Patchouli nodded quietly.
This was a profound, horrifying discovery that she and Yagokoro Eirin had uncovered after conducting deep laboratory analyses on Originium samples. However, both scholars had unanimously chosen to keep this revelation strictly sealed, opting to conceal it from the public.
After all, if the native inhabitants of Terra were to discover that the "clean energy" powering their cities and homes actually contained the digitized remnants of countless living souls... the psychological horror would be unthinkable.
The most tragic part was that even if the people of Terra learned this agonizing truth, their civilization could not survive a single day without Originium. It would trap an entire world in a hellish reality where every citizen felt profound moral guilt using their power grids, yet remained utterly powerless to abandon them.
Neither Patchouli nor Eirin were malicious entities; there was zero reason to inflict such existential despair upon the local population.