"Yes, I am a reporter for the Xinhua News Agency, and my question is this: are you able to tell us how expensive the train tickets will be, or have there not been any discussions regarding that topic yet?" asked the reporter with a professional smile. Qin Zhenya nodded as he considered the question. It was a relatively harmless question, especially compared to what he was expecting from the international media. For the moment, at least, the atmosphere in the room seemed to be settling down.
"Yes, thank you for your question," Qin Zhenya replied. "There have been discussions regarding the ticket prices for passenger trains, and we have already reached a preliminary decision. A ticket from Shanghai to Beijing will cost two wooden coins per passenger." He paused briefly before continuing. "For our other train services, there have not yet been any concrete discussions regarding pricing, and we are currently not renting out cargo trains to private companies. The government has reserved the first six months for testing."
Qin Zhenya smiled as he finished his answer. He was quietly relieved that the atmosphere in the room had become much more relaxed than it had been at the beginning. A few minutes earlier, it had felt as though a pack of hungry jackals were waiting for him to make a single mistake so they could tear him apart. Now, at least, the reporters were behaving like ordinary journalists instead of predators circling their prey.
"Miss Cristy, what is your question?" Qin Zhenya asked with another professional smile. He knew exactly what was coming next, however, and his relaxed expression was partly an act. There was one reporter in the room whose questions he was expecting to be considerably more troublesome than the others. Unfortunately, that reporter was also the one person whose name he already knew.
"Now that the room has been brought to temperature, let's get this absolute bomb out of the way first," Qin Zhenya thought. "Then we can go back to a reporter from my own country." He did not actually know any of the reporters personally, but he knew Cristy. The documentary she had filmed several years earlier had not merely been shown to the rest of the world; it had also been readily available to Chinese citizens, meaning that even Qin Zhenya had seen it.
Qin Zhenya considered the entire documentary to be a scam, or at least a heavily manipulated piece of journalism. At the same time, he understood that Cristy had to continue playing the character she had created for herself. That meant there was little chance she would waste this opportunity by asking a harmless question. If anything, he expected her to go straight for the throat.
"Yes, I am a reporter for the CEUNG, the Central European News Agency," Cristy began. She maintained the same friendly expression she had worn throughout the broadcast. "So far, you have been presenting us with all of these incredible statistics, and on paper, they certainly look impressive." She paused for just long enough to make sure everyone was listening before continuing.
"But as we all know, China is a mountainous country, and that situation has not exactly improved since the Earth expanded," Cristy continued in a conversational tone. "Some might even argue that the expansion has made the problem worse. So, what exactly is the capability of your train when dealing with mountainous terrain?" She smiled pleasantly as she delivered the first part of the question, but everyone familiar with her knew that this was only the beginning.
"And are these prices actually realistic when you take into account the additional costs that mountainous terrain will surely create?" she asked. "Will the Chinese taxpayer actually see any meaningful use from these trains, or is this simply another vanity project where the taxpayer is left paying the bill?" Her tone remained friendly, almost casual, but the question itself was anything but harmless. It was precisely the sort of question that could force a government representative into admitting something he was never supposed to discuss publicly.
Cristy had done her homework before coming to the event. She had contacted people she knew within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and had asked about the difficulties their own trains were experiencing. Mountains had been identified as one of the major problems they were facing, particularly when it came to expanding railway networks over difficult terrain. It was also one of the reasons the trains had initially begun operating in the Netherlands, because, besides the existing infrastructure, the relatively flat terrain made the technology considerably easier to use there.
She was hoping Qin Zhenya would give her something useful. Even a small admission regarding the cost of construction, the difficulties of crossing mountains, or the amount of money the government expected to lose could become an important story. The fact that she asked it with a friendly smile only made the question more dangerous. She was not trying to start a confrontation; she was trying to make him lower his guard.
"Right. Next question, please," Qin Zhenya said.
He did not answer her question. There was no way in hell he was going to answer that question on live television. No matter what he said, the answer would inevitably be taken out of context by either his own government or the foreign media. He could already imagine the headlines that would appear if he admitted that the railway project was going to cost the government an enormous amount of money.
The worst part was that Cristy was right about the underlying problem. China really did have serious difficulties with its mountainous terrain, and those difficulties had only become more complicated after the expansion of the Earth. Building railways through mountains was enormously expensive, and simply drilling through every mountain in their path was no longer a realistic solution. Qin Zhenya knew that the first five years of the project were never expected to generate a profit.
In fact, the government could potentially end up a billion coins in debt simply because of the railway project. That was before taking the rest of the government's expenses into consideration. Qin Zhenya understood perfectly well why the government did not want him discussing those numbers publicly, because the amount of debt the government was already taking on was genuinely shocking. He personally did not find it particularly surprising, however, because China, just like almost every other country in the world, had been forced to rebuild practically everything.
Everything had to be paid for. Factories had to be rebuilt, infrastructure had to be restored, roads had to be constructed, and the economy had to function despite the enormous disruption caused by mana. At the same time, there was very little reliable income available. The secret realms were still sealed tight, meaning that the corrupted creatures contained within them could not be farmed for coins. The situation had become so desperate that Qin Zhenya had even heard rumors that the Minister of the Treasury had personally visited one of the secret realms where a corrupted human was hiding.
According to the rumors, the minister had spent an entire hour provoking the corrupted human and begging him to come outside with all of his friends. Qin Zhenya had initially assumed that the story was an exaggeration, but considering the government's financial situation, he could almost believe it. The minister was desperate for money. Not merely somewhat desperate, but desperately desperate. When a government reached the point where its treasury minister was allegedly begging corrupted humans to come out of a secret realm, it was clear that things had become rather absurd.
What made the situation even more stressful were the calls coming from around the world demanding that governments reduce their debts. Qin Zhenya found those demands rather laughable, even if he understood why they were being made. Unfortunately, the vast majority of ordinary people did not see the situation that way. They heard that their governments were drowning in debt and immediately assumed that something had gone terribly wrong.
Many of those demands had originated in the United States. Capitalists there were loudly calling for governments to allow private investors to purchase their debt and lend them money. The goal was obvious: by becoming major creditors, those investors would gain greater influence over governments. With paper money having largely been cast aside because almost nobody used it anymore, control over government debt had become an entirely different form of power.
That was also part of the reason the American president had gone rogue. The old financial powers that had once been able to exert enormous influence over the government no longer possessed the same leverage. Qin Zhenya understood that this situation would eventually change again, however. Once governments began issuing bonds and actively selling their debt, those calls for reform and financial control would likely become much quieter.
But none of that mattered right now. Qin Zhenya had no intention of discussing China's enormous financial problems in front of an international audience. Cristy had deliberately placed him in a situation where practically any honest answer could become a political disaster. So there was only one safe option.
Refuse to answer.
"As you can see, the representative refused to answer my question," Cristy said to the camera with a professional expression. "The rest of the Q&A session was then wasted on questions that said very little, and no foreign journalist was allowed to ask a question." Her tone remained calm, but the conclusion she was drawing was obvious. "Therefore, we can only conclude that what China showed us today is a deeply flawed project intended to waste taxpayers' money."
"That is all for today. Thank you for watching. Back to the studio," Cristy finished.
The drone filming her remained hovering for a few seconds before she finally switched it off. Her professional smile disappeared almost immediately. She then turned to her right and gave the man watching her from across the platform a look so vicious that it seemed to demand violence without a single word being spoken.
Cristy was not the pretty princess everyone expected her to be. Her appearance had certainly helped make her famous, and being a stunningly attractive blonde British woman had made her an easy face for European news broadcasts. But beneath that appearance was someone considerably more dangerous. She had already faced people who had decided that making her disappear would be easier than dealing with her reporting.
On one occasion, two men had attempted to cripple her because she had become too critical. Cristy would have killed them herself if the police had not arrived first. Even so, she had managed to obtain enough incriminating evidence before they were taken away to give the European Union considerable leverage over the situation. That evidence allowed the EU to control much of the narrative surrounding the incident and made it far more difficult for China to simply dismiss what had happened.
After that, no similar attempts were made. Cristy continued her work, continued reporting from China, and continued smiling into cameras as though nothing had happened. To viewers around the world, she remained the attractive and professional reporter who seemed to have an uncanny ability to get herself into the middle of important events. Very few of them understood just how dangerous her job had actually become.