Cain was sitting in a V.I.P cabin of luxurious train named 'vehicle of maharajas'. This vehicle is a ramnent of the glorious times before the war of continental superpowers.
Most of the people present in the chairman's funeral were still in the mountain village waiting for the confirmation of their flights. Even money can't ensure the time schedule of flights, only a few handfull of elite citizens can bear the cost of aerial travel.
The air currents that the planes used to travel changes often and with seemingly chaotic patterns. A lot of calculations goes into predicting the next shift, and the accuracy of the prediction often is less than 40%.
The flights even needs to be protected by millitary jet fighters as the planes are not the only 'thing' travelling through the air currents.
Some elites and government official still choose to travel through flight, just for the adrenaline rush they got because of the sudden shift in weather and encounter with aerial beasts.
Cain dispises flight so he often travels by train. Fastest of the trains aren't even close too the speed of planes, yet the time delay of the confirmation of flights and the sudden changes of their schedule makes it so that the travel time taken by train throughout the nation is only a few days more than train.
Normally someone with as much responsibility as Cain wouldn't bother to waste even an hour on travel and choose to take the flight even if he dislikes being airborne.
But this time was special as someone 'special' proposed that they travel by train to gain a little more time to 'catch up'.
*tok tok tok*
"Come in john." Said Cain to the person causing disturbance to his peace.
The door to Cain's cabin opened with seemingly excited hurry, and a teenager with green eyes, porcelain skin and EmberWake like hair walked in.
"You want to go grab a few beverages from the bar?" Asked the young man with excitement in his eyes.
"Wait till you turn 20 in a few months." Said Cain evenly.
"You are not fun anymore." Said the young man grumpily.
"You can drink all the things you like if you misuse your position, go ahead and give others including me a chance to gather some dirt on you." Said Cain plainly.
"Someone as capable of you wouldn't choose cheap tricks." Said the young man while chuckling.
After these soft transaction of words John closed the door and sat opposite to Cain. He then put the file of documents he was carrying over the table between them.
"I'll be straight with you Cain." The youngman straightened and put on a serious poker face.
"I'll be going for everything EmberWake has, I'll leave the others of my clan with as little power and hold over the nation as I can, I'll do my hardest to approve of you as the vassal of my clan and after marrying Delilah noona and having our first child, I'll leave her and make sure you guys can meet each other in secrecy and maybe start a family with each other in a remote corner of this nation, all I ask from you is your help and cooperation in taking control of everything." Said John evenly.
"Atleast don't treat Delilah like goods, she's your future wife and an invaluable scientist." Said Cain evenly but the glint in his right eyes betrayed a hint of rage, maybe if Cain wasn't wearing his mask right now, we would've seen the rare sight of suppressed anger in his normally plain but horrible face.
"I'm in a position to treat most of the people as I like, and with your help I can treat the whole world as I'd like to treat it." Said John and continued after a pause: "You'd be a person like me too, we are alike very much, even if you dislike the fact, we were both chained and made to do stuff we hate even if we refused to do it, Join me and I'll give you Casper, join me and I'll give you all the secrets that you want."
John paused and put a flash drive keychain on the table and said: "This is to show my sincerity, something even many of my clansmen don't have access to, go and get all the secrets that you want, and do it fast, the more time you waste on making a decision the more the others will unite to bind us."
After saying all of that Johnation stood up, gave Cain a meaningful look and left his cabin.
Cain looked at the table, at the key chain with the flash drive and at the documents below. The documents had names of all kind some familiar and some unfamiliar, names of institutions he had knowledge of and some he didn't, the orphanage he was part of was among them, there were the code name of projects funded by EmberWake, some he knew of some he didn't, name of scientists, millitary generals and even government officials, It seemed that even if Cain was the CEO of EmberWake in name, he still wasn't able to grasp the part of the iceberg that was under the ocean.
He skimmed through the documents, kept the flash drive in the inner pocket of his suit, near his troubled heart, and looked outside the train window.
Outside the window he could see the distanced receeding figure of 'TianShan'. The longest mountain range of the world, dividing the biggest continent in two halves,There was the highest peak in the world 'Zenith'… the door to the abode of the Gods.
Cain thaught that EmberWake was like the TianShan, zenith of this world, seemingly the place of residence of the most powerful, but at the other side of it lays wilderness capable of destroying humanity.
Cain laid back on the soft cushion of his seat, then he put his feet over the table, over the documents containing many hints of great mysteries, secrets of this world. He wished if it was as easy to just put his feet over the things that he found disgusting as it was to put his feet over the table.
Cain kept looking out the window, thinking if he would be able to come back to the mountain village again by the time his chance to take part in the restoration of the bamboo village came.
According to the Chairman's will, everyone present at his funeral was supposed to come back to the destroyed village to restore it again, planting the core bambo - a mutated species of fungus that takes bamboo as it's host to make a new species all together - of the bamboo buildings.
The core bamboo will grow up to be tens of foot tall, the tallest of them would be used to make the bamboo buildings meant for the next Chairman of EmberWake, many small bambo will be used to build the structure of a house around the core bamboo, then the bambo will be joined with the core bamboo using Sashimono.
Then fungicide will be sprayed on top of the core bamboo, making the fungus within become frenzied and spread through the other bamboo at an astonishing speed, then the fungicide will be spread from outside causing the fungus to have no where to run, after the fungus us dead from coming in contact with the fungicide, the corpse of the bamboo gains the rigidity of solid concrete.
This technique shows how much advance EmberWake is in the field of Bioengineering and this technique is only the tip of an iceberg.
"Walking on top of corpses to reach their goals, how fitting of typical EmberWake." Thought Cain with a slight grin under his mask."
Cain started to think about the past, thinking about the times when things were simple for him, when all he wanted was a good house, steady career and maybe a family with Delilah.