231: Chapter 231 The Bear's Claw Reaching Out from the Shadows

On a snowy night in Stockholm, a convoy of black armored vehicles left a blur on the highway.

Inside the carriage, the notification sound from the tablet rang out like a death knell.

Ada Wong casually swiped away a few pop-ups and turned the screen toward Chen Feng: "Boss, your inbox has exploded. In fifteen minutes, we've received over four thousand resumes. Harvard, MIT, the Max Planck Institute... every top-tier laboratory in the world is sending you their pledges of allegiance."

Chen Feng leaned back in his leather seat, not even lifting his eyelids: "Filter them according to the criteria I set earlier. Those goody-two-shoes with shiny resumes and mouths full of ethics—I don't want a single one."

"Understood." Ada Wong's fingertips tapped rapidly on the screen. "Just the kind of madmen who have academic stains and are willing to experiment on living people to get data, right?"

"Talking to smart people is always so easy." Chen Feng smiled. "These people can't survive in the mainstream academic world, but once they reach Umbrella, they'll know what a true paradise is."

Samantha, sitting opposite, pushed up her rimless glasses: "I'm reserving ten first. They need to be proficient with multiple gene scissors, and preferably have strong stress tolerance. I don't want to see them vomiting all over the dissection table."

"Is ten enough? Should I approve fifty for you?" Chen Feng teased.

"Too many people get in the way." Samantha lowered her head and continued running data on her tablet. "There's still a small bug in the Tyrant's gene lock; I need to fix it when I get back. As for the newcomers, throw them into the peripheral laboratories to get brainwashed first."

Sarah, sitting in the passenger seat, turned around to report: "Boss, Alan just called. Nasdaq pulled the plug twice because our pharmaceutical sector surged too much. He says this harvest will add at least another 150 billion in liquidity to the company's accounts."

"Tell him to hold back a bit; don't pull those leeks on Wall Street out by the roots." Chen Feng looked at the snowscape flying past the window and sneered.

This global recruitment drive, which cost ten billion dollars, had better results than he had anticipated.

With this batch of ready-made top brains, the analysis of the perfect G-Virus version, and the even crazier plans that would follow, could finally begin.

...

Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe.

Russian Federation, outside Moscow.

A gray Soviet-style building with no markings, three stories underground.

The heating pipes emitted a dull roar, and the conference room was filled with smoke.

On the giant screen on the wall, Chen Feng's speech at the Nobel Prize ceremony was playing on a loop.

"Ten billion dollars to buy up the world's top brains..."

The image froze on Chen Feng's young and extremely arrogant face.

At the end of the long table, Yuri of the Russian Federation's Foreign Intelligence Service stubbed out his thick cigar and exhaled a dense ring of smoke.

"It's too high-profile." Yuri's voice was hoarse. "So high-profile that it's almost like he's intentionally drawing fire from the entire world."

Sitting opposite him was a man wearing a black turtleneck, with a face so ordinary he would disappear into a crowd.

His name was Sergei, an ace agent of the Foreign Intelligence Service, codenamed "Winter General."

"Yuri, has the intelligence from the Da Shi State been confirmed?" Sergei asked, flipping through the thick dossier in his hands without lifting his head.

"Confirmed." Yuri threw a top-secret document into the middle of the table. "Our informant risked their life to bring back soil samples from the Golan Heights. The lab results are out. No antimatter weapons were used there at all."

Yuri pointed at some blurry photos in the document: "Those metal scorpions the Da Shi State used on the battlefield that could tear apart main battle tanks, and the black liquid that instantly vaporized thousands of Israel Soldiers... they're all living things."

Sergei's fingers, which had been flipping through the dossier, stopped.

"Living things?"

"That's right. Genetically modified biological weapons." Yuri's face was livid. "The U Federation suffered a massive, silent loss, but after that old fox Clark took office, he actually handed all of The Pentagon's arms contracts to this Umbrella company. This is completely illogical, unless..."

"Unless Clark has also been controlled by them, or they've reached some kind of dirty deal." Sergei finished the sentence and closed the dossier.

"This pharmaceutical company called Umbrella rose too quickly." Yuri stood up and walked to the screen. "From launching miracle drugs to harvesting Wall Street, and then to the mysterious weapons on the Middle East battlefield. On the surface, they are a medical technology giant, but in the shadows, I'm afraid they have long since built an army of monsters capable of overturning the existing rules of war."

Yuri turned his head and stared intensely at Sergei: "If they truly possess that level of biological weaponry, the threat to the Federation is even greater than the U Federation's nuclear bombs."

"I understand." Sergei stood straight and adjusted his collar. "What do you need me to do?"

"Go to Los Angeles." Yuri pushed a brand-new passport and resume toward him. "Find out what Umbrella is hiding underground. Remember, don't alert them. That group of people can rub Morgan and Rockefeller into the dirt; they are definitely not just an ordinary financial conglomerate."

Sergei picked up the passport.

The name on it was "Victor Ivanov."

The resume read: Former professor of genetics at a national laboratory in Eastern Europe, permanently expelled from the European academic community for suspected illegal human embryo cloning, currently heavily in debt and destitute.

"Understood."

...

Three days later, Los Angeles, Umbrella Headquarters.

The sixth underground level, the core experimental zone.

Chen Feng was wearing a sterile suit, standing in front of a massive bulletproof glass panel.

In the cultivation zone behind the glass, hundreds of cylindrical cultivation tanks were densely arranged.

In the pale green nutrient solution, "Small Tyrants," each two meters tall with bulging muscles, were in a dormant state. They had no facial features, only a split mouth filled with sharp teeth, and their right arms had been modified into thick bone blades.

Samantha was holding a tablet, rapidly inputting commands.

"Neuron blocker injection complete. Beginning obedience test."

Following her operation, the nutrient solution in one of the cultivation tanks drained rapidly.

The tank door opened, and a Small Tyrant suddenly opened its pupil-less eyes, let out a low hiss, and lunged directly out of the tank.

"Attention." Samantha didn't even lift her head, coldly spitting out the word into the microphone.

The berserk monster stopped its momentum mid-air, slammed onto the metal floor with a bang, and stood straight, motionless.

Chen Feng nodded with satisfaction: "The flaw in the gene lock is resolved?"

"Resolved." Samantha checked a box on the tablet. "I rewrote the pain feedback logic in their cerebral cortex. Now, even if you made them line up and jump into a meat grinder, they wouldn't hesitate for a second."

"Well done." Chen Feng patted the glass. "The Middle East is pressing hard for this shipment. General Qasim paid real money, so we need to ensure quality and quantity."

At this moment, the elevator door opened, and Ada Wong walked over in her high heels.

"Boss, the first batch of applicants for the research positions has arrived." Ada handed over a list. "Thirty-five people in total, all 'top-tier' filtered according to your requirements. Some are wanted for stealing corpses for experiments, others were sentenced for using their own students to test drugs."

Chen Feng took the list and glanced at it.

"Did you do a background check?"

"I had Red Queen run them through the global database; their identities all check out." Ada answered crisply. "These people are like rats crossing the street outside, but once they get here, they're more obedient than dogs."

Chen Feng's gaze swept across the list and stopped at one name.

"Victor Ivanov?" Chen Feng raised an eyebrow. "Illegal human embryo cloning? This Russian has guts."

"He is an absolute genius in the field of gene editing, but unfortunately, his brain isn't quite right." Ada explained. "He's been hanging around the underground black market for a few years and was nearly starving to death. When he saw our fund's recruitment, he bought a plane ticket and flew over overnight."

Chen Feng handed the list to Samantha: "Dr. Li, pick a few you find acceptable to help you out. Throw the rest into the peripheral laboratories and have them work on the basic variant cultivation of the T-Virus."

Samantha didn't even look at the list: "Whatever, as long as they don't touch my core data."

Chen Feng turned to look at Ada: "Keep up the security measures. These madmen are useful, but they can easily cause trouble. Once they enter the underground base, no one is allowed to leave without my orders."

"Don't worry, Boss." Ada smiled. "Marcus has already set up a dragnet in the living area; not even a fly can fly out."

Chen Feng nodded, his gaze returning to the monsters in the cultivation tanks.

His mind was full of the upcoming expansion plans, completely unaware that among this batch of seemingly desperate academic madmen, a lone wolf from Siberia had already infiltrated.

The Russian Federation's bear paw had already silently rested on Umbrella's threshold.

And this contest of surging undercurrents had only just begun.