289: Chapter 289 Empty it out, don't leave the foreigners even a screw.

"No money? Then pay with goods."

Lu Chen's deep voice echoed throughout the bunker.

He removed the cigarette from his mouth, and the holographic image exhaled a puff of pale blue smoke that passed straight through Michael's trembling body.

Lu Chen leaned back in the boss chair of the command center, his gaze turning completely cold.

"I don't want to hear any nonsense. There are four strategic nuclear fuel reserves within the United States. Wu Dong has checked the books; they contain thousands of tons of the highest purity weapons-grade enriched uranium."

Lu Chen stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray.

"Hand over the low-level physical key, and we'll consider this bad debt settled."

Hearing the words "nuclear fuel reserves," Michael's eye twitched uncontrollably. His heart constricted, and even his breathing stopped for two seconds.

That was the U.S. military's lifeline, the final trump card used to maintain global strategic deterrence.

They could recover from the emptied national gold reserves by frantically printing more U.S. dollars, but if they handed over all that high-purity enriched uranium, the United States would completely lose the ability to assemble high-yield strategic nuclear bombs.

Michael slumped on the carpet, which was soaked in urine and red wine. His lips were deathly pale, and he dared not respond to that statement.

The white-haired Four-Star General beside him, however, was frantic.

He braced his hands on the floor, looked up, and shouted at the holographic projection in mid-air.

"Dream on! That is the nation's final bottom line! You Eastern thugs, do you really think you can force us to hand over our country's heavy assets just by relying on a few pieces of junk mecha?"

The General's voice grew louder and louder as he shouted.

"We will never give you the key! If you have the guts, kill us all! Once the outside world finds out you assassinated cabinet members, the Fourteen Nations will surely trigger the final contingency plan and launch all the nuclear missiles from their strategic nuclear submarines directly at Jiangcheng..."

Da Biao turned his head and let out a cold snort from beneath his mask.

When dealing with such blind idiots, it's better to act than to waste breath.

"Noisy."

Da Biao spoke in a rough voice, his right hand gripping the alloy hilt at his waist. The hydraulic drive shafts inside his mecha let out a dull roar.

The ultra-high-frequency oscillating combat blade was unsheathed in an instant.

A sharp metallic screech exploded in the air, and the pale blue combat blade traced an afterimage through the air.

The white-haired General still had his mouth wide open, unable to even get the second word out.

Snap.

A muffled sound.

The General's entire right arm was severed at the shoulder. The wound was incredibly smooth, with even the bone shards instantly ground flat by the high-frequency oscillation.

After a second of shock, blood finally sprayed from the stump onto the expensive murals nearby.

"Ah! My hand!"

The General let out a shrill scream, clutching his spurting shoulder in agony as he rolled back and forth on the ground. Cold sweat instantly soaked through his military uniform.

The other three Generals kneeling on the ground were so terrified their faces turned pale, and they scrambled desperately toward the corner of the wall.

Da Biao, carrying the still-dripping combat blade, turned and walked over to Michael.

He casually pressed the tip of the blade down, pointing it directly at Michael's crotch.

The high-frequency microwave oscillation on the surface of the combat blade instantly shattered the designer leather belt around Michael's waist, sending fragments and the metal buckle falling to the floor.

The deadly chill emanating from his crotch made the hair on Michael's body stand on end, and his bladder tightened again.

"My boss has limited patience."

Da Biao stepped on Michael's lower leg, the weight of the mecha causing Michael's bones to creak.

"Three seconds. Hand it over, or I'll cut off every single part of your body piece by piece and assemble them into a QR code to send to your President."

Da Biao extended three metal fingers.

"Three."

"Don't kill me! I'll give it to you! I'll give you everything!"

In the face of absolute violence that crushed everything, all of Michael's political integrity and sense of national duty became bullshit.

He now had only one thought in his mind: to survive.

Michael used his trembling left hand to tear open his ruined designer shirt.

He fumbled for a slightly raised patch of skin under his ribs.

"There is no physical card for the low-level key... To prevent theft, The Pentagon wrote the supreme command into a micro-biological USB drive... implanted under the skin of every past Secretary of Defense..."

Michael gasped in pain, his fingers digging tightly into that patch of skin, but he couldn't bring himself to tear it open.

"What a pain in the ass."

Da Biao cursed, bent down, and gripped the tip of the combat blade with his metal fingers.

He roughly shoved Michael's arm aside and unceremoniously plunged the tip of the blade straight into the raised skin.

Michael let out a scream, his eyes rolling back, and he nearly fainted from the pain.

With a flick of the blade, Da Biao pried out a silver metal chip, only the size of a fingernail and stained with blood and flesh.

Da Biao held the blood-stained USB drive between the thumb and forefinger of his mecha, flicking off the bits of flesh with disgust.

He held the USB drive up in front of the holographic projection.

"Boss, the goods are secured."

Da Biao grinned as he reported.

In the holographic projection, Lu Chen glanced at the biological USB drive and nodded with satisfaction.

"The debt is settled."

Lu Chen brushed the ash off his jacket, his tone casual, as if he had just collected a few hundred dollars for a food delivery fee.

"Wu Dong."

Lu Chen spoke to the side.

The electronic voice of the command center immediately rang out inside the bunker.

"Boss, I have accessed the low-level logic of the biological USB drive. The physical explosion-proof locks of the four major U.S. nuclear reserves have been forcibly taken over."

"Package the coordinates and send them to Da Biao."

Lu Chen issued the final order.

"Tell Old Zhou in logistics to have the site in Jiangcheng ready for unloading."

"Understood."

Wu Dong replied.

Lu Chen's gaze returned to Michael, but he didn't even have the interest to spare another glance at this piece of trash.

The abyss-blue holographic beam flickered twice, and Lu Chen's projection instantly vanished into thin air.

Da Biao stuffed the biological USB drive into the storage slot on his mecha's chest.

He turned his head to look at the nine pitch-black Cangqiong Mecha behind him.

"Leave four brothers here to guard these foreign devils. If anyone dares to move, chop them up and feed them to the dogs."

Da Biao waved his large hand.

"The rest of you, come with me."

The dark golden space beacon lit up again, and a massive silver vortex tore an opening directly through the bunker wall.

Da Biao plunged into the spatial passage.

Meanwhile.

In Beijing, China, deep within a top-secret command center hundreds of meters underground.

A piercing red alarm suddenly flashed frantically throughout the vast command hall. Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared intently at the giant holographic globe that occupied the entire front wall.

On the globe, four red dots representing the United States mainland were flashing at a rapid frequency.

The Old Chief, wearing a faded, washed-out old military uniform, braced his hands on the command console, his brows knit tightly together.

"Report the situation!"

The Old Chief shouted in a deep voice.

An intelligence officer with the rank of Senior Colonel ran over, drenched in sweat. The tactical tablet in his hands flicked through several pieces of top-secret satellite data.

"Chief, something big has happened. Satellite monitoring shows that the explosion-proof doors of the four major nuclear fuel reserves located deep within the U.S. mainland are mysteriously opening on their own."

The intelligence officer swallowed hard, his voice trembling uncontrollably.

"These four locations are The Pentagon's top secrets. Right now, the hundreds of anti-aircraft missile positions surrounding them have all entered a forced silence state; not even a fly could fly in without triggering an alarm."

The Old Chief's eyes narrowed, and he immediately pressed for more information.

"The explosion-proof doors are all open? What are they doing? Moving nuclear bombs out to go crazy?"

"It's not a launch..."

The intelligence officer quickly pulled up a set of high-resolution optical photos and projected them directly onto the big screen.

The photos showed the area around the reserve was completely empty; there wasn't even a tire track from a transport vehicle.

"They, they seem to be moving nuclear materials out."

The intelligence officer couldn't even believe this assessment himself.

The Old Chief stared intently at those empty photos without a single transport vehicle.

He gasped, the image of the shockingly massive chassis of the Aerospace Carrier in the underground pit in Jiangcheng instantly flashing through his mind.

The Old Chief understood everything in an instant.

"Good lad..."

The Old Chief muttered a curse, but his eyes suddenly erupted with a terrifying brilliance.

No fleet needed, no transport plane cover required.

That kid Lu Chen had actually mastered the ability to traverse over ten thousand kilometers at will, directly locating and precisely deploying troops to rob another country's top-secret warehouses.

This kind of dimensionality-reduction looting method, which completely ignores physical distance and anti-aircraft firepower, simply did not belong to the Earth civilization of this era.

"Chief, should we sound a Level 1 air defense alert? In case something goes wrong in Jiangcheng..."

A staff officer nearby hurriedly suggested.

"Sound an alert, my ass!"

The Old Chief slammed his hand down hard on the command table, making the teacups on it rattle.

The Old Chief turned around, his gaze sweeping over all the high-ranking officers in the hall.

This was an absolutely once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for China to overtake its rivals and establish a new global order.

"Pass on my death order! Notify the heads of all eleven major heavy industry bases in the country immediately!"

The Old Chief's voice rang throughout the command hall, carrying an iron-blooded pressure.

"Bring out all the latest, top-of-the-line special engineering machinery and heavy-duty anti-radiation cranes that have just rolled off the assembly lines at each base!"

"Organize special trains, use the fastest military rail lines, and send them to Jiangcheng overnight! Don't ask for money, not a single cent; give them all to Chenguang Group for free!"

The staff officer was stunned.

"Chief, this involves billions in national heavy industry assets..."

"Less nonsense!"

The Old Chief pointed to the flashing red dots of the U.S. arsenals on the screen.

"If Lu Chen dares to pull down the foreign devils' strategic nuclear pants and bring us back thousands of tons of top-grade enriched uranium, the country will dare to build the reception platform for him all the way to the sky!"

"Go do it now! Anyone who dares to stall with paperwork or procedures at this critical moment will be dealt with by military law!"

"Yes!"

The entire hall was in a complete uproar, and communication channels were fully opened.

Nevada Desert, three hundred meters underground.

The largest strategic nuclear arsenal in the United States.

A silver-white spatial vortex abruptly burst open in the core area of the massive storage facility.

Da Biao stepped out with five tall and heavy Cangqiong Mecha.

The blinding searchlights inside the arsenal hit their pitch-black magnetic fluid armor, creating a chilling metallic reflection.

Da Biao looked up, his pupils contracting behind his mask.

In the entire thirty-thousand-square-meter space, countless silver-gray, special anti-radiation lead barrels were stacked densely and neatly.

Every lead barrel was stamped with a highly dangerous yellow-and-black nuclear radiation symbol. Inside, they were filled with high-purity, weapons-grade enriched uranium that could be directly used for refining and manufacturing strategic nuclear warheads.

Conservatively estimated, there was at least five hundred tons of stock here.

And this was just one of the four major arsenals.

Da Biao grinned, rubbing his two giant metal palms together in excitement.

"Brothers."

Da Biao activated the internal communication channel of the mecha, his voice wild.

"This is all top-grade firewood for the furnace."

The vector thrusters on the back of the mecha's arms suddenly lit up with blue light.

Da Biao took a forceful step forward, his hands gripping tightly onto the edges of two lead barrels, each weighing several tons.

"Get to work. Empty it out; don't even leave the foreigners a rusty screw."