Captain, your ship has exploded again.

"All of you, come in and sit down. Don't fucking stand by the door."

Are you trying to cosplay as a nesting doll here, or are you trying to tell me the signal is strong, at full bars and two bars more?

Zhang Xun was the first to enter. Since they entered in a queue, Natal, Wang Ge, and the rogue team followed closely behind. Marcus, who was still recovering the road roller device, was the last to enter. He was also the tallest among them.

"Tch, whose fault is it that things have turned out like this? Why did you have to come and probe my defenses? I... cough, if I wasn't afraid you'd tell on me, I'd show you what the 'twinkle of death' really means."

Zhang Xun, who had just entered, was still stubbornly retorting. Although his system, Yi Jiu, assured him that Hua Xia's appeal for elimination would be rejected, as the person who knew his system best, he naturally knew what that 'skinny Zhou' was after.

"Hey kid, still being stubborn even in this situation, looks like you have something to rely on!"

Wu Kedi lit a cigarette, but before he could even take a puff, the middle-aged woman next to him snatched it away.

"Smoking, smoking, all you do is smoke. You're already so thin, why are you still smoking? I'll just smoke you to death."

With that, he chopped off General Wu Kedi's damaged arm with a single chop; the part appeared to be a replaceable type.

"Honey, give me some face in front of the younger generation. After all, I'm one of the people with the most real power!"

"Yes, yes, the top leader, a leader who's so old yet still works so hard, I must have been blind to follow you..."

It is clear that General Wu Kedi and his wife were a pair of bickering lovers.

Seeing that he had no chance to smoke, General Wu could only turn on the surveillance footage and say, "Zhang Xun, as a soldier, I'll be frank. The reason I stopped you from killing Ironblood wasn't because our interests clashed. On the contrary, the higher-ups wanted to eliminate any destabilizing factors as soon as possible. Unfortunately..."

Sitting next to him, Wang Ge ate an orange and asked, "Old man, didn't they reveal who was behind it all?"

Everyone in the room looked at the Predator soldiers being interrogated and bound on the monitor, while no one paid any attention to the deliberately shrunk morgue.

"The problem is that the truth has been revealed, but the person behind it is already dead. The other party was a recruiter. Although he was not Chinese, he was a person whose death was certified by the Suwu System."

Zhang Xun tapped his fingers on the table habitually and said, "A clone?"

Wu Kedi snatched half an orange from Wang Ge's hand and said, "We can't be sure. We only know that the other party used a dead person who had connections with Ironblood to contact us using a special communicator. However, when we tried to contact them again, the other party's communicator had completely gone silent."

"A veteran, and the death of that recruit is very likely related to the other side. The communicator that can contact Ironblood could only have been handed over by Ironblood. The person who recruited Ironblood should know something."

Zhang Xun didn't think there was anything more to dig out on this clue. Since the national level had intervened, General Wu must have already completed what ordinary people could think of.

"They're dead too. The Sumeru Civilization only cares about taking them out but not burying them. The Ironblood can still help humanity, mainly because the United States promised benefits. And as you all know, technology relies heavily on logistics. Without a base, the Ironblood is no different from a dish here."

As he spoke, General Wu Kedi threw an orange into his mouth, the splashing juice seeming to depict the fate of a Predator.

Just as Zhang Xun was pondering, the search results from Tianwen came out, and a document about the Predator made everything clear to him.

"What a brilliant scheme! The United States, Iron Blood, the mastermind behind it all, and even us, have all been caught in your trap."

Knowing he couldn't hide it, General Wu Kedi generously shrugged and said, "There's nothing I can do. Only Ironblood has that stuff now, and it doesn't keep well."

This will both send a warning to our adversaries and probe where the problems lie. It will also allow us to gauge your strength, given your notoriously rapid pace of improvement. Plus, as captain, you've been hiding the most secrets; we need to investigate to uncover your true capabilities.

"Scrape? That's great! We're short of technical personnel, so give me your new technical personnel prospects."

Zhang Xun leaned forward and pressed down on the other side. Although his helmet was not open, he wanted to use this method to put pressure on the other side.

General Wu Kedi, having completed the installation of his new prosthetic arm, tapped the parts of his ear canal with the little finger of his new prosthetic arm and said, "Great! It's graduation season, and a new batch of college students are graduating. Although there's a shortage of people everywhere, I've decided to assign them to the two of you."

"Bullshit, you want to give it to two recent college graduates? That stuff is like opening a blind box. It's all stuff from my warship lab. If you want me to sink the ship, just say so."

I want you to train skilled technicians to replace Zhao Wanyang, not naive and foolish college students.

"Dream on! You think you can just kidnap one national treasure and then try to kidnap two? Do you really think the Chinese Academy of Sciences is training talent for you? Go away and get your urine and mud mixed up. You're dreaming."

General Wu Kedi waved his hand at Zhang Xun as if shooing away a puppy, tilting his head so he didn't want to look at Zhang Xun at all, for fear of getting angry and fighting with him again.

"Tch, a miser drinking cold water."

Zhang Xun sat back in his chair, picked up the juice Natar handed him, and said, "Since you're not going to give me any more personnel, how about giving me some of Ironblood's blood? You know Zhao Wanyang needs research materials too, doesn't she?"

General Wu Kedi clicked his tongue and said, "Tsk, so that's what you're thinking about! You're not old enough yet, what do you need these for? Just wasting things?"

Many people only know that Predators are incredibly skilled in battle, but what they don't know is that, in the comics, their blood has the effect of prolonging life.

This is also why General Wu's wife is so young. Of course, Zhang Xun does not believe that Tie Xue was recruited by General Wu and his men. The most likely explanation is that General Wu killed Tie Xue, or that his wife was bathed in Tie Xue's blood.

Since the movie version didn't mention the effects of the blood, only someone from the Chinese side who had contact with it would devise this plan to scheme against the other side.

Although everyone's attention was previously drawn to the iron-blooded man in the interrogation room, Tianwen, the personal assistant, was not distracted by such tricks. Combining the information it had searched, Tianwen offered its insights to Zhang Xun: when it comes to comparing massive amounts of data, no one is better than artificial intelligence.

General Wu Kedi said with great difficulty, "It's not that I don't want to give it to you, Zhang Xun, but you need to understand the current situation. The older generation of leaders are getting old. Although the new successors have taken office, there are too many things to handle, and many new positions need people. There is a clear shortage of internal affairs personnel..."

"Ten kilograms!"

"What kind of international joke is this? Even if Ironblood is an inflated balloon, it only has that much blood. Besides, who told you to be so useless and kill two of them? Get out of here, it's not even five hundred grams at most."

"Damn, five hundred? Believe me or not, I'll personally go to the interrogation room and squeeze the juice out of you. By then, there will be more than five hundred grams of juice on my car. If we split it 50/50, I'll get my share. Five kilograms is the minimum."

When asked about the two street vendors haggling over the price, Wang Ge said he knew them and then turned to chat with his master's wife.

After some investigation, he finally understood why his master had become like this.

As a high-ranking official in China, General Wu Kedi advocated for his personal involvement in the recruitment plan.

Only when the top leadership understands and comprehends the recruitment process can they avoid misjudging the recruitment situation in terms of policies and responses, and only then can China avoid national collapse due to excessive recruitment.

China has a long history of warnings against such powerful individuals: "Those who possess sharp weapons naturally harbor murderous intent." This is not merely a historical account, but a cautionary tale for future generations.

The recruits we are now recruiting are people who are armed with powerful weapons. If they lose their composure in dealing with the situation, not only will China be thrown into chaos, but human civilization will also inevitably perish.

This is not an exaggeration. As the oldest civilization, China has produced too many treacherous individuals throughout its history. In the current era of nationwide literacy campaigns, these online trolls are even more adept at conceiving terrible ideas. If any brilliant minds emerge from among them and come up with any horrible thoughts, humanity will be doomed before it even leaves the beginner's village.

It was precisely because of General Wu Kedi's advocacy that Zhang Xun and his recruits were not subjected to any further constraints.

Because in addition to producing 'poisonous strategists,' China also produces 'Cao Cao.' Don't get the wrong idea; he wasn't a good wife, but rather someone who was very suspicious. Of course, you could also replace him with Liu Bang, Zhu Yuanzhang, or Yang Guang, etc.

Wang Ge seemed to be chatting casually, but his real purpose was to test his mentor's wife and try to get information from her about the technicians who would perform prosthetic limb modifications for them.

Because Wang Ge had already learned from his master's wife that the prosthetic bodies implanted in the two of them were the famous 'Sianweistan,' the military-grade prosthetic bodies among the Edge Walkers.

However, if it were just a simple 'Sianweistan', it would certainly be no match for Zhang Xun's team's armor. The one who upgraded and iterated this prosthetic body multiple times must be a newly cultivated technical expert from China, and also Zhang Xun's primary target this time.

However, they were destined to be disappointed. Even if Zhao Wanyang did not keep anything from China, the Chinese leadership would not put all their eggs in one basket, and the chief of the new technology troops would never be handed over to Zhang Xun and his group.

"Going to the old leader won't help, stop dreaming, Zhang Xun. It's just one kilogram of blood. And don't even think about the new head of the technology department."

Don't you see how many times Zhao Wanyang has faced life-threatening situations with your team?

She's a precious gem, not a piece of trash. We're already heartbroken that you've lured away the all-around talented Zhao Wanyang. What more could you want?

"What? Trade the Death Star II for it? No way! I know you too well. You'll hand it over with one hand and then take it back with the other under the guise of protecting the technocrats. You're forty years too early to be calculating with me!"

It's clear that General Wu Kedi was just a bit rough around the edges; anyone who could sit in his position was a shrewd and calculating individual.

"Damn it, old man, it's so hard to get something from you. If you piss me off, I'll use the excuse of cleaning up traitors to make your space fortress a mess."

"You dare! I'll stick you into the main gun and shoot you out. In terms of the number of warships, the total tonnage of the fleet, status and seniority, I'm bigger than you in every way. Even if I take out my manhood, I can use it as a stick to beat you to death."

"Stop trying to pass off modified parts as high-end products. I'm taking the blood and the person. Just you wait and see. Even if I have to search the entire fleet, I'll find the second-generation chief!"