259: Chapter 259 Ten Cities in a Row

Lu Chen's index finger hovered half an inch above the red launch button.

He withdrew his hand.

"Old Wei, turn off the energy-gathering cannon."

Lu Chen turned and sat back in his boss chair.

Wei Jianguo froze in place.

"Factory Director, we're not firing?"

Wei Jianguo asked.

"The chassis's stored energy is expensive; it's not worth it to burn it on these few losers."

Lu Chen fished out a pack of double happiness and lit one up.

"Using a sledgehammer to crack a nut is beneath me."

Lu Chen turned his head to look at Wu Dong.

"Old Wu, how many of those Space-based Punisher satellites are left in the sky?"

Wu Dong tapped on the keyboard to bring up the encrypted frequency band.

"Boss, there are three fully loaded ones left, and one is currently in sleep mode recharging."

Wu Dong replied.

Lu Chen exhaled a puff of smoke.

"Wake them up. Target: the Lin family of Jiangnan, the Zhao family of the Northwest, the Ma family of Lingnan, and the Tang family of Western Sichuan."

Lu Chen bit down on the cigarette filter.

"Core manors, lock onto the latitude and longitude precisely."

Wu Dong's fingers flew across the keyboard. Four high-definition satellite aerial photos popped up on the large screen, with four sprawling luxury manors firmly locked in red crosshairs.

"Coordinates all locked. Weapon modules warmed up."

Wu Dong glanced at the energy bar on the screen.

"Ready to project high-energy particle beams at any time."

Lu Chen took the cigarette out of his mouth.

"Old Wu, use an overseas virtual number to send a text message to the heads of these four families simultaneously."

"What content should I send?"

Wu Dong asked.

"Just one sentence."

Lu Chen flicked off some ash.

"Look up at the stars and repent for your stupidity."

Jiangnan Province, Lin family ancestral home.

Lin family head Lin Yaozu sat in a rosewood armchair. In front of him were three tablets, with the heads of the Zhao family of the Northwest, the Ma family of Lingnan, and the Tang family of Western Sichuan on the screens.

The four people were holding a top-secret video conference.

"That idiot Wang Tianhe is too timid. He couldn't even handle a few hundred security guards. The Wang family deserves to be out."

Lin Yaozu picked up his teacup and took a sip.

"Old Lin, we've smashed over a dozen of Chenguang Group's peripheral warehouses, and Lu Chen hasn't made a move yet."

The head of the Zhao family frowned on the screen.

"His spaceship is hanging in the sky over Jiangcheng. Should we avoid the limelight?"

"Avoid the limelight? He can barely save himself right now."

The head of the Tang family of Western Sichuan sneered.

"Is the 14-nation joint fleet really that easy to provoke? He forced them to sign a treaty; does he really think they can swallow this insult? Once the foreigners' big weapons arrive, he and his ship will both turn to ash."

Ding.

Lin Yaozu's phone rang.

He picked up the phone and took a look. There was only an anonymous text message on the screen: "Look up at the stars and repent for your stupidity."

Lin Yaozu's brow furrowed into a knot.

"What's wrong, Old Lin?"

The head of the Ma family asked.

"I don't know which lunatic sent this threatening text message."

Lin Yaozu threw the phone onto the coffee table.

"I received it too."

"My phone rang too, with the exact same content."

The other three family heads chimed in one after another.

The four of them looked at each other across the screens.

Lin Yaozu snorted coldly.

"Playing god. Lu Chen must be out of options and wants to send text messages to disgust us?"

Lin Yaozu leaned back in his chair.

"This country follows rules. He dares to fly in the sky, but does he really dare to use heavy weapons against our centuries-old families? As long as he dares to open fire, the capital will be the first to not let him off."

The head of the Zhao family stroked his chin.

"The industries under our control involve the livelihoods of tens of millions of people. If he touches us, the economy will come to a halt. Even if he had ten times the guts, he wouldn't dare to mess around."

Lin Yaozu picked up the purple clay teapot.

"Everyone, rest assured. When the stock market opens tomorrow, keep dumping money. I want to make the Chenguang Electronics stocks hit ten consecutive limit-downs."

Before Lin Yaozu finished speaking, the night sky outside the window changed color.

The originally pitch-black firmament lit up with a dazzling, blinding light without any warning.

The bright light instantly illuminated the entire Jiangnan City.

Lin Yaozu subconsciously turned his head to look out the window.

A beam of light slammed down straight from the heavens.

There was no deafening explosion, no sky-high flames.

The Lin family ancestral home, along with all buildings within a 300-meter radius, physically evaporated the first 0.1 seconds after coming into contact with the beam of light.

Reinforced concrete, bulletproof glass, century-old rosewood, people.

Everything was reduced to its most basic molecular structure by the ultra-high-temperature, high-energy particle beam.

The video connection screens of the other three cities turned into full screens of static in the same second.

The Zhao family, the Ma family, the Tang family.

The same beam of light, the same evaporation.

Jiangcheng, mothership main control room.

The four satellite aerial photos on the large screen refreshed.

The four formerly luxurious family manors had disappeared.

Only four huge, deep pits, tens of meters deep and hundreds of meters in diameter, were left on the ground.

The soil at the edge of the pits had been melted by the terrifying high temperature, and after cooling, it formed a layer of smooth glass crystals, refracting a faint light under the moonlight.

Four families, four cities, simultaneously erased.

The main control room was silent.

Da Biao rubbed his bald head. He glanced at the four glass pits on the screen.

"This thing is much cleaner than how I cut people."

Da Biao muttered.

Wei Jianguo swallowed.

"Space-based particle weapon, no thermal radiation residue. This is much cleaner than a nuclear bomb."

Wei Jianguo stared at the data.

"It's just that the destructive power is too terrifying."

Wu Dong took his hands off the keyboard.

"Boss, all targets cleared. There were no casualties, because there wasn't even any ash left."

Lu Chen extinguished the double happiness in his hand in the ashtray.

"Cleaning the house is for the sake of hosting guests. Now that the rats are cleared out, we should get to our real business."

Lu Chen stood up.

He picked up the red communication microphone.

"Old Zhou."

Lu Chen called out.

"Here, Boss, what are your orders?"

Old Zhou's voice came over the broadcast quickly.

"The one million employees in the factory's underground bunker, along with their families."

Lu Chen tapped the table.

"Register them all and implement militarized management."

Old Zhou paused on the other end.

"Boss, the alarm outside hasn't been lifted yet. Although the 14 nations have signed a treaty, do we really want to keep hiding underground with so many people?"

Old Zhou asked.

"Who said we were going to hide underground?"

Lu Chen walked toward the bulletproof glass.

He looked at the vast Jiangcheng factory area below.

"The chassis that Old Wei and Chief Engineer Song created has ecological living modules reserved for 1.5 million people."

Lu Chen's voice was calm.

"Notify everyone to bring their personal belongings and line up according to the district numbers."

"Starting today, we are launching the full-staff migration plan."

Da Biao leaned in.

"Boss, are we going to take one million people to live in the sky?"

Da Biao was full of excitement.

"The rules on Earth are too rotten."

Lu Chen turned his head to look at Da Biao.

"We'll set the rules ourselves in a new place. We have the territory, we have the people, and we have the guns."

Old Zhou's voice was filled with extreme excitement.

"Understood. I will immediately arrange for the HR department and the security department to coordinate. We will complete the boarding guidance for the first batch of 200,000 people within four hours."

Old Zhou cut the communication to get to work.

Beijing, top-secret strategic command center.

The Old Chief looked at the four top-secret satellite reconnaissance reports that had just been transmitted to the large screen. The officers in the hall didn't even dare to breathe.

"Jiangnan, Northwest, Lingnan, Western Sichuan."

A major general's voice was hoarse.

"The core manors of the four century-old families were wiped off the map by some kind of unknown orbital weapon. There are rumors among the public now that ten cities exploded simultaneously, and doomsday theories are everywhere."

The Old Chief picked up his teacup and found that the tea was already cold.

He put the cup down.

"Notify the internet monitoring department to suppress all public opinion. The official stance is that it was a major meteorite impact event."

The Old Chief rubbed his temples.

"Chief, weren't Factory Director Lu's methods a bit too extreme?"

Cold sweat broke out on the major general's forehead.

"Four families, several hundred people, gone just like that."

The Old Chief glanced at him.

"Use heavy codes in troubled times."

The Old Chief stood up.

"Those families joined forces with foreign capital to short sell state-owned enterprises at such a critical juncture and sent people to attack important military industrial sites. They deserved to die. Lu Chen is wielding the blade for us."

The major general lowered his head.

"Freeze all the resources they have consumed over the past few months and reallocate them to the national defense budget."

The Old Chief walked out with his hands behind his back.

"From now on, whoever dares to provoke that person in Jiangcheng again, tell them to prepare their own urn first."

At the same time, on the ground of the Jiangcheng factory area.

The heavy iron doors of the massive air-raid shelter slowly opened. One million workers wearing Chenguang Electronics uniforms lined up in dozens of formations and walked out of the bunker in an orderly manner under the guidance of the security team.

Each of them held the distributed high-energy nutrition bars in their hands.

In the sky, the huge black mothership chassis slowly descended.

It stopped at a height of 100 meters above the ground.

Dozens of wide access ports opened on the belly of the chassis, and huge alloy stairs extended to the ground.

"Districts A1 to A1000, go to the No. 3 gangway. Do not crowd."

The security personnel shouted with loudspeakers.

There was no noise in the crowd; everyone had absolute loyalty to Lu Chen.

If the Boss told them to go to the sky, they would not stay on the ground for a second longer.

The migration of one million workers was extremely shocking.

Mothership main control room.

Lu Chen watched the orderly boarding scene on the screen, and he relit a cigarette.

Wu Dong had been sitting in front of the console in the corner. His technical team was cracking the data intercepted from the remnants of the Wall Street forces.

The sound of keyboard typing was intense.

Suddenly, Wu Dong's hands stopped abruptly.

He stared intently at the string of encrypted garbled code parsed on the screen. As the decryption program ran, the garbled code turned into a complex three-dimensional star map.

Wu Dong gasped, and his face turned pale instantly.

He didn't even have time to push his chair away and ran directly in front of Lu Chen.

"Boss."

Wu Dong's voice was trembling.

"A... a big problem."

Lu Chen turned his head.

"If the sky falls, the chassis will hold it up. What are you panicking about?"

Lu Chen exhaled a smoke ring.

Wu Dong handed the mobile tablet in his hand to Lu Chen.

"My people just decrypted the underlying logs of Freemasons' highest server."

Wu Dong swallowed.

"It turns out that all their actions against us weren't just to grab the resources on Earth."

Lu Chen glanced at the three-dimensional star map on the tablet.

"Those eleven old immortals have hidden themselves very well."

Wu Dong's voice was dry.

"Boss, we found their final lair."

Lu Chen raised his eyebrows.

"Oh? Which country's underground?"

Wu Dong shook his head.

He reached out and pointed his finger at a gray-white sphere on the screen.

"They aren't on Earth."

Wu Dong stared into Lu Chen's eyes.

"They are on the far side of the moon."