171: Chapter 171 Top-Level Approval Unlocks New Technology

The air in the monitoring room froze completely.

The Chief's breathing over the speaker became extremely heavy.

Director Zhao stared fixedly at the hand Lu Chen had pressed on the table. The knuckles were large, and there was mud in his fingernails. It was this same hand that had just casually torn up a 50-billion check.

"Lu Chen." The Chief's voice on the other end was suppressed with rage. "You are forcing us to use extraordinary measures. You must understand. If the state determines that you constitute a substantial threat, your fate will only be…"

Lu Chen raised his hand to glance at the chipped Casio on his wrist.

"Eight and a half minutes left on the countdown." Lu Chen didn't even acknowledge the Chief's words. "You can continue reading your script. I'm not in a hurry."

The Chief's words were choked back in his throat.

Two commissioners sat slumped on the floor, scrambling toward the corner. They had just seen the fate of those twelve monsters. They had no doubt that once the ten minutes were up, this man before them would really open the factory gates completely.

Turn Jiangcheng into a living hell, and then pack it up as scrap metal to sell to Freemasons.

Suddenly, a harsh sound of electrical interference came from the red encrypted phone. With a beep, the original frequency was forcibly cut off.

The communication indicator light shifted from a blinking blue to an absolute deep red. This was a forced connection from a top-secret, high-sequence line.

A hearty, robust old man's laughter echoed from the monitoring room's large speakers.

"Satisfying. Fucking satisfying."

The old man's laughter made the empty Red Bull cans on the table tremble slightly.

Upon hearing this laughter, Director Zhao shuddered. His knees went weak, and had he not been bracing himself against the edge of the table, he would have nearly knelt on the floor.

He knew all too well who this frequency and voice represented.

Just moments ago, the old man, sitting in a courtyard in Houhai, Beijing, had used the data link of the military's Colonel Lone Wolf to watch the entire live feed of Da Biao's one-sided crushing of industrial violence.

"Chief… Chief, hello." Director Zhao swallowed a mouthful of saliva. His voice was completely shattered.

"Little Zhao. Shut up. Stand aside." The old man's voice turned cold abruptly. "Using 50 billion to buy out someone else's foundation worth 10 trillion. Who taught you to negotiate business like this? It's embarrassing."

Director Zhao's face turned pale. He nodded repeatedly, stepping back to the wall, completely yielding the dominance of the table.

Lu Chen leaned back in the canvas chair. He pulled a crushed double happiness cigarette from the pack and bit down on it.

"Factory Director Lu." The old man's voice came through again. The tone had changed. There was no condescending command, but rather the tone of equals discussing matters.

"5 billion per set. This price is fair. We'll do it your way." The old man made the decision directly. "I won't buy your blueprints, nor will I interfere with your production lines in Jiangcheng. However…"

The old man paused.

"I don't have as much cash on hand as you think." The old man's tone was straightforward. "100 billion. I'll take twenty sets of ready-made goods first. I want to replace the Northern Military Region's Spearhead Company with this suit of iron."

"I can't afford two thousand sets of armor. This 100 billion is just me building a good relationship with you, Factory Director Lu. It also counts as buying peace for the Jiangcheng territory. Is that okay?"

Lu Chen pressed the lighter. Click.

A flame ignited. He lit the cigarette and took a deep drag.

"Deal." Lu Chen exhaled smoke without any wasted words.

"Good courage." The old man laughed loudly. "Eight o'clock tomorrow morning. The military will have a bulletproof special train arriving at the Jiangcheng freight station. Twenty skeletons. You need to send people to load them for me. The funds will be transferred to your public account through a special clearing channel within twenty minutes."

"Payment upon delivery. No credit." Lu Chen tapped his fingers on the table.

"We'll do it by your rules." The old man cut off the communication directly.

The dial tone echoed in the monitoring room.

Director Zhao frantically wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. In just a few minutes, he felt like he had walked through the gates of hell. The look he gave Lu Chen now was filled with nothing but awe from the bottom of his bones.

Lu Chen shifted his gaze to the side.

"Old Zhou." Lu Chen spoke.

"Yes. Brother. I'm here." Old Zhou hurriedly threw the pipe wrench in his hand to the ground, making a crisp clanging sound.

"Go get the company's official seal. Take Director Zhao to the finance department downstairs." Lu Chen pointed outside with his cigarette. "Verify the account, transfer the funds, stamp the seal, and issue the invoice."

Lu Chen paused for a second.

"Issue a full VAT special invoice. Deduct the tax points from that 100 billion." Lu Chen looked at Director Zhao. "You are a public institution. There can't be any mistakes with the taxes. Right, Director Zhao?"

Director Zhao nodded repeatedly. "Right. Right. Factory Director Lu is right. Do it by the rules. It must be done by the rules."

Old Zhou bent down to pick up the faded green canvas bag, clutching it tightly to his chest.

He had lived for over fifty years. In the past, he used to follow the old factory director to beg for payments of a few tens of thousands, acting like a grandson and kowtowing every day. Today, he was going to take people to collect 100 billion in cash.

Old Zhou straightened his back and walked briskly to the folding table.

"Director Zhao. Let's go." Old Zhou's tone was firm. "First room on the right downstairs. Don't dawdle. Thousands of brothers outside are waiting for their wages."

Director Zhao didn't dare to say another word. He took the two limp commissioners and followed Old Zhou out of the monitoring room.

Lu Chen stood up and walked to the monitoring screen to take a look.

The heavy rain had stopped. Searchlights lit up the outer perimeter defenses.

Lu Chen pushed open the iron door of the monitoring room and walked down the stairs. His old leather shoes stepped on the water-logged ground, making dull echoes.

In the core area of the 8,000-acre construction site, there was the smell of mud and machine oil everywhere. Fifty security guards wearing titanium alloy skeletons were cleaning up the battlefield.

Four heavy excavators rumbled over.

Da Biao was shirtless, wearing dark gray metal chest armor. He was carrying a blood-stained high-frequency hydraulic shear in his hand.

"Damn it. The stuff these foreigners made, their bones are really hard." Da Biao spat out a mouthful of muddy saliva. "They even chipped my hydraulic shears."

Lu Chen walked to the ruins of the blast wall.

Piles of metal remains, emitting a pungent chemical odor, were stacked together. Dark green nutrient fluid mixed with mud water flowed all over the ground.

"Brother. Why did you come down?" Da Biao walked over, the servo motors on his body emitting a low-frequency humming noise.

"Is it cleaned up?" Lu Chen looked at the broken titanium alloy spines and bone blades on the ground.

"They're smashed too badly to be put back together." Da Biao kicked a grayish-white head on the ground. "It's just that the glowing stone in the chests of these bastards is a bit weird. Just now, Da Qiang smashed one with a hammer and blew out one of his hydraulic rods."

Da Biao pointed to several pieces of micro-reactor debris nearby that were glowing with a dark red light.

"Load them onto the truck. Send them to Underground Level 3." Lu Chen ordered. "Throw them into the Quantum Gravity Smelting Center. Remelt them. Turn them into molten iron. Use it to cast the leg armor for your new batch."

"Alright. That's a satisfying idea." Da Biao shouted at the top of his lungs. "Brothers. Throw all this junk into the dump truck."

Several skeleton security guards walked over, picking up the hundreds-of-pounds monster remains with one hand and throwing them directly into the truck bed, making a dull thumping sound.

Lu Chen walked to the largest pile of remains.

This monster had its titanium alloy spine pulled out by Da Biao. Mechanical nerves and biological tissue were mixed together, exposed to the air.

Lu Chen took out his lighter and played with it, looking down silently at the pile of rotting meat.

The ultimate weapon created by the foreigners with countless dollars hadn't even scratched the primer of his armor.

The moment Lu Chen's gaze locked onto that piece of mechanical spine, a blinding azure light popped up on his retina without warning.

The light curtain occupied his entire field of vision. Streams of dense data poured out crazily. A crisp system prompt exploded in Lu Chen's mind.

[Detected high-dimensional biological mechanical fusion remains.]

[The remains carry low-level neuronal physical interface channel technology.]

[Starting reverse parsing… Progress 10%… 50%… 100%. Parsing complete.]

The blue data stream converged into a pulsating 3D model.

[Hidden technology node judgment achieved. Forced unlock successful.]

[Obtained: Complete blueprints and manufacturing process for neural interface micro-sensors.]

Lu Chen's fingers holding the lighter stopped. A few lines of detailed red explanations popped up on the panel.

[Description: This sensor can be directly implanted inside the individual Exoskeleton, replacing the existing pure mechanical push-rod commands. It seamlessly connects the operator's biological neural signals with the hydraulic servo motors.]

[Effect: Armor response latency is reduced to zero. Instant burst speed and extreme evasion capability are increased tenfold.]

Lu Chen stared at the data on his retina. His breathing didn't change at all, but the cold light at the bottom of his eyes exploded instantly.

Tenfold increase in reaction speed.

What did this mean? It meant that once Da Biao and the others wore these improved skeletons, they would no longer be heavy infantry relying on brute force to smash people.

They would be super monsters capable of crushing supersonic fighter missiles with their bare hands.

Anderson, that old dog. He wanted to use twelve monsters to destroy Jiangcheng, but instead, he had delivered a tech gift package, directly completing the last piece of the puzzle for this batch of Exoskeletons.

"Brother. What are you looking at?" Da Biao saw Lu Chen dazed and walked over to take a look at the ground. "This spine is smelly and hard. We can't grill it, right?"

Lu Chen turned off the system light curtain in front of him. The blue light dissipated.

"Da Biao." Lu Chen put the lighter back into his jacket pocket.

"Yes. Brother."

"Call Wei Jianguo down." Lu Chen turned to look in the direction of the new 3,000-acre factory building. "Send this spine to the clean room exactly as it is. By the way, go notify logistics to prepare the purple crystal raw stone slices we got last night."

Da Biao scratched his bald head. "Director Wei has been up for two days with red eyes. You're giving him more work?"

"Tell him, if he doesn't want to fall behind this era, get down here and work." Lu Chen's tone was cold and hard. "I want to dig out all the transmission hubs in those two thousand skeletons within twelve hours. Replace them with new ones."

"Replace all of them? That's a lot of work." Da Biao was stunned for a moment.

"After replacing them, wearing this equipment, you can go into the sea and tear apart nuclear submarine hulls with your bare hands." Lu Chen spat out the sentence.

Da Biao's eyes widened instantly. His mouth opened wide enough to fit a fist. The hydraulic pumps on his body emitted a violent hiss.

"I'll go carry him down right now!" Da Biao turned and took a long mechanical stride, crossing four or five meters in one step, galloping towards the main factory building with a rumble.

Lu Chen stood in place, looking up at the night sky that had just cleared.

The smell of mud permeated the air.

The first batch of twenty ready-made goods was about to be sent to Beijing. The cash flow in the account would soon see a terrifying surge of 100 billion.

Anderson's cards had all been played. Freemasons' biochemical weapons had all turned into scrap iron on the ground.

After being on the defensive for so long, and having established the rules, Lu Chen threw the cigarette butt that had burned down to the filter into the water, stepping on it.

Now, it was Jiangcheng's turn.

He looked toward the West, across the ocean. That was where Manhattan was.

It was time to pull up the ancestral graves of Wall Street and Freemasons by the roots.

Lu Chen took out his walkie-talkie and pressed the red communication button.

"Wu Dong. Go watch the finance room. After the 100 billion arrives, immediately connect to all invisible overseas account interfaces." Lu Chen said coldly.

"Boss. After opening the interface, what are we buying?" Wu Dong's excited voice came from the walkie-talkie.

"Buy everything they want to keep." Lu Chen lifted his foot and walked toward the main control building, stepping through the mud and water.