437: Chapter 423 Anti-theft (Text will be updated in a few hours)

The arrival of the train to Seventeen was different from the grand entrance people had imagined.

There were no flowers fluttering in the sky, no loud applause, and no earth-shaking roars. It arrived so quietly that people only realized it was there when the train's shadow covered the streets—it had arrived.

The noisy city seemed to fall silent for a moment as people simply tilted their heads back, silently watching the train's chassis slowly pass before their eyes.

After a long while, when the train blew its whistle to signal its presence, the long-prepared citizens of Mosco finally snapped out of it and hurriedly turned on their recording equipment to capture its majestic form.

The Russian President saw the train flying in the distant sky approaching him and immediately sent people to bring the families of the four students to the Kremlin Palace to wait for it to dock.

The train's seemingly slow speed was an illusion caused by its massive size. It descended at the edge of the city and took only a minute to cross half of Mosco, hovering over the Kremlin Palace.

Light beamed from the underbelly of the train, enveloping the families standing together and drawing them inside.

Although it wasn't the first time he had seen this scene—he had personally witnessed the train taking the five students to Seventeen—looking up again, the President still felt it was magical, his mind fully immersed in the sight.

By the time he came to his senses, the train had already whistled and departed, flying rapidly toward the horizon.

The President was shocked. He hadn't even asked if he could be taken to Seventeen as well; how could it have flown away already?

The train naturally wouldn't turn back, leaving the President to slap his thighs in lamentation.

The citizens of Mosco did not share their President's emotions; they were cheering while filming the train as it sped across the sky.

All the clamor was blocked by the train's hull. The family members, who had come inside and found seats, couldn't hear a thing, and they looked around the carriage environment with novelty.

The train service staff pushed open the aisle door, entered, informed the family members of the precautions, and then left.

As the crisp sound of high heels on the floor vanished behind the door, everyone's tension from facing the extraordinary eased. They sat in window seats, admiring the land and hometown that had raised them from an unprecedented bird's-eye view.

...

In the train's cockpit, Zhang Mu sat in a chair with his legs crossed over the control console. The train had already been set with its route and stopping points, requiring no manual control.

Taking advantage of this brief interval, he pondered the matter of the statue of god; the efficiency of collecting faith power was too low.

America's statue of god currently only had a few hundred students, their parents, and dozens of school staff paying respects; the faith contributed was simply pitifully small.

Although Russia was working hard to build transport facilities to expand the number of worshippers, the results were poor. Zhang Mu regretted more than once why he had been so thick-headed as to place the statue of god on a snowy mountain peak that was difficult for ordinary people to reach.

While this did indeed increase the prestige of the statue of god, prestige couldn't increase the collection speed of faith power.

Zhang Mu scratched his head, lowered his legs from the console, and sat up straight: "I can't wait anymore. I have to place statues of god in densely populated areas."

With the plan formulated, the only trouble in implementing it was that there was only one statue of god, and it couldn't appear in multiple locations simultaneously.

However, the problem was easily solved; he could just repeat the method used to drop the America statue of god a few times.

Once everything was sorted out, Zhang Mu immediately deactivated the train's autopilot and manually increased the speed to its maximum.

Half an hour later, the train flying over Russia entered a light gate, continued traveling through the pitch-black void for several hours, and slowly stopped before the entrance to Seventeen.

After dropping off the families, Zhang Mu transformed into Tevan, found the four people studying the "Technique" language in the self-study room, and notified them to pick up their families.

The four of them rushed out of the dormitory in surprise and ran toward the gate of Seventeen, while Zhang Mu teleported himself to the Armory area and ordered the person in charge to help him make hundreds of three-meter-tall stone statues of god.

Since its creation, the Armory had produced all kinds of weapons. To make statues of god, the production lines had to be modified.

He scratched his head, grabbed the blueprints Zhang Mu gave him, and ran to find the front-line workers to discuss which production lines to modify for manufacturing the statues of god.

Before the manufacturing of the statues of god was complete, Zhang Mu had nothing to do on Blue Star. After thinking for a while, he planned to go to the research lab to chat with Geoffrey to relieve his boredom.

As soon as he appeared, Geoffrey ran up to him in a frantic panic, gesticulating wildly as he spoke.

He seemed very excited, speaking in an extremely erratic and illogical way. Zhang Mu didn't understand for a long time and gave him a slap on the head with a dark face; only then did the man calm down and start explaining slowly from the beginning.

The cause of the matter could be traced back to the great battle between Lake and the Allied Forces.

Lake rarely suffered defeat against the Allied Forces, and after launching a counter-offensive, he was even more unstoppable, capturing important cities one after another. The city lords on the Allied side almost fled at the mere sight of him, not even having time to take the treasures from the city vaults.

Domit, considering that their goal was not to destroy cities but to build them, left behind a large amount of property as funds for urban construction projects, only selecting valuable treasures to be sent to the rear.

Half of these treasures were taken by Avril to advance matters like the Medical Squad, and the remaining half, Zhang Mu thought might contain something to help with the research and development of magic-conducting weapons, so he brought them all to Geoffrey.

It was originally just a casual move, a matter of luck; it would be great if there was something, but it didn't matter if there wasn't. He didn't expect that Geoffrey would actually find a treasure in there—the tears of the tree of life.

Supposedly, this was a treasure of the Elf Clan, and the consumer could permanently gain a powerful physical self-healing ability. The production was very low, so low that it could only ensure that each successive Elf Chief had one drop.

When Geoffrey dug out a crystal bottle containing a green teardrop from the mountain of rare treasures, he was very puzzled as to why a treasure of this level would appear in the Allied Forces' vault.

Stolen? Don't be ridiculous. With the strength gap between the Allied Forces and the Elf Clan, it would be the Elves robbing the Allies.

Obtained by chance from humans who didn't know its value?

That was also unlikely. Even the Elf Clan, the producers, had no stock of the tears of the tree of life. The Chief would wait by the tree the moment before one was born, and consume it immediately after it dripped from the branch; there was simply no opportunity for it to leak out.

Unable to figure it out, Geoffrey simply stopped thinking about it and happily began his research.

Initially, his idea was to use Blue Star technology to attempt mass production of the tears, but its components could not be detected no matter what.

After the researchers met and discussed, they separated a small portion of the tear for a Soldier to consume. The result was that it had no effect on humans. While they helplessly gave up, they also understood why the Allied Forces hadn't used it despite obtaining it.

For a long time afterward, the work of developing uses for the tear remained stagnant until a researcher suggested: who said the tear had to be used on 'people'?

Everyone suddenly had an epiphany. Right, why not try it on machinery?

No sooner said than done. Geoffrey immediately dropped his other work and led his subordinates through multiple rounds of experiments.

The results were substantial.

Geoffrey discovered that magic-conducting weapons made of steel infused with the tear not only possessed self-healing functions but also had their lethality amplified.

Excited, everyone immediately made more attempts and used the remaining small drop of the tear to build a magic guidance sniper rifle.

Geoffrey took the sniper rifle from the display case of sample weapons and jogged back to Zhang Mu.

"Lord Marshal, look."

Zhang Mu took it, flipped it over to look at both sides, and then poured magic power into the Core inside the firearm. As the Mental Energy connection succeeded, a faint wave of life energy reached his mind.

"Eh?" Zhang Mu looked at Geoffrey in surprise, "Life energy?"

He nodded heavily: "Lord Marshal, the self-healing function isn't very significant for ordinary magic-conducting weapons, but when used on a magic guidance sniper rifle..."

He only said half of it, but Zhang Mu already understood his meaning.

The ultimate combat power of the Special Operations Squad was indeed strong enough to threaten Saint-level beings, provided the magic guidance sniper rifle was overloaded.

If they ambushed a Saint-level, this strike had a high probability of taking out the target, but the price was that the sniper rifle couldn't withstand the violent magic power and would explode entirely, with the wielder being caught in the blast, resulting in both the gun and the person being destroyed. It was a life-for-a-life tactic.

Admittedly, comparing the difficulty of training the two, a one-for-one trade was undoubtedly a huge gain for the Special Operations Squad.

But one thing had to be considered—the foundation of the empires.

Among all the empires on the Saul Continent, the youngest one had a history of several thousand years. Even if it only produced one Saint-level every hundred years, over such a long time, it would have accumulated at least dozens of them.

How many Special Operations Teams did Zhang Mu have now?

Seven teams, and this was the result of using all of Lake's national strength.

One couldn't deny the various wonders and infinite potential of the Special Operations Teams, but realizing that potential took time.

Would the Ganno Empire, whose Bauhinia Legion and Wyvern Cavalry Regiment had been annihilated by Lake, give Lake and Zhang Mu time to develop?

Even if their territories were separated by several kingdoms and principalities, the answer was still no.

Zhang Mu had once estimated that by the day Lake and Ganno went into full-scale war, the number of Special Operations Teams would at most increase to twenty, and that was the most ideal situation.

In a decisive battle between the two sides, assuming the Special Operations Teams perfectly utilized their value, their limit would only be to take down twenty of Ganno's Saint-levels.

Then Lake would completely lose its means of suppressing Saint-levels and be steamrolled and crushed by Ganno's remaining Saint-levels.

But if the magic guidance sniper rifle had self-healing capabilities and the Special Operations Squad could snipe Saint-levels without dying, the outcome would be different.

Zhang Mu woke up from his thoughts and weighed the magic guidance sniper rifle with one hand: "Hmm... it seems we might not have to drop nuclear bombs in a mutually assured destruction anymore."

Geoffrey said excitedly: "Yes, Lord Marshal. If the Special Operations Squad has the ability to take out multiple Saint-levels, we'll have the confidence to fight a decisive battle with Ganno. It's just... the tears of the tree of life have been used up."

"Where can we buy them?"

"This, uh, they can't be bought."

Zhang Mu looked at him in confusion: "Can't be bought? You mean we can't mass-produce magic guidance sniper rifles infused with the tears? Then what are you talking about?"

He backed away awkwardly a few steps to avoid the spit flying toward him: "My previous attempts to detect its components ended in failure. Of course, it's not because of my lack of ability, but because the sample was too small."

The total amount was only the size of a teardrop, and after I tested it a few times, there was nothing left."

After thinking for a while, Zhang Mu asked, "Where is the place of origin?"

"The Elf Clan."

"The Elf Clan? What a coincidence?" Zhang Mu's tone was surprised.

"Coincidence?" Geoffrey didn't understand.

"You wouldn't understand even if I told you." Zhang Mu handed the sniper rifle back to him, "Immediately start research in related areas. As for the tears, I'll go find them."

"Lord Marshal, the tears of the tree of life only appear every few hundred years..." Geoffrey watched Zhang Mu's figure disappear and helplessly stopped talking.