233: Chapter 233 Want to get something for free? Let your master come and ask for it himself!

Top floor of the Los Angeles headquarters, Meeting Room No. 1.

The door was pushed open. Chen Feng wasn't even wearing a suit jacket, just a white shirt with the top two buttons undone, and he strode inside. Sarah followed slightly behind him, carrying a silver briefcase.

On the leather sofa in the meeting room sat a middle-aged man with blonde hair slicked back. This was Philip, the new White House Chief of Staff appointed after Clark took office.

Seeing Chen Feng enter, Philip didn't stand up. He just slightly raised his chin, his hand holding the coffee cup suspended in mid-air, his tone dripping with an arrogant bureaucratic air: "Mr. Chen, you kept me waiting for a full forty minutes. In Washington, not even the generals at The Pentagon would dare keep a representative of the White House waiting this long."

Chen Feng pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down, crossing his long legs: "Traffic in Los Angeles. Besides, you're on my turf; I decide how long you wait."

Philip frowned and slammed his coffee cup onto the glass coffee table: "Mr. Chen, I didn't come here to listen to your jokes. President Clark is very dissatisfied with Umbrella Corporation's recent performance."

"Oh?" Chen Feng leaned back with interest. "What is he dissatisfied with? Does he think my method of helping him send President Tanglangpu to prison wasn't gentle enough, or does he find the five billion dollars I dumped into his campaign account to smell like filthy lucre?"

Philip was choked up, his expression turning ugly. He cleared his throat and pushed a document across: "One thing at a time. The President now represents the interests of the entire U Federation. The biological weapons you sold at high prices to Da Shi State in the Middle East have severely disrupted the regional balance. The Pentagon demands that Umbrella must provide the U.S. military with an equivalent quantity of B-07 equipment free of charge, and open your core laboratories to allow the military to station observers."

Chen Feng didn't take the document, not even glancing at it.

He turned to look at Sarah: "Did I hear that right? He said provide free of charge?"

Sarah was expressionless: "Yes, Boss. He also said they want to send people into our laboratories."

Chen Feng turned back and looked at Philip as if he were an idiot: "Mr. Philip, did you forget to take your medication when you left the house? Or did that old man Clark suffer brain stem deficiency after sitting in the chair in the Oval Office?"

"Watch your language!" Philip stood up abruptly, pointing at Chen Feng: "You are insulting the President of the U Federation! The White House is no longer run by that loser President Tanglangpu. President Clark holds the most powerful military in the world. Do you really think you can stand against the state apparatus with just a few monsters?"

Philip grew more animated as he spoke, pressing his hands on the table and leaning forward: "Let me be blunt. The patent for your 'Neo-Genesis' miracle drug, as well as the control rights to those biological weapons, must be half-handed over to the White House. This is the bottom line. Otherwise, Congress can tear Umbrella into pieces tomorrow in the name of anti-trust and national security."

The meeting room was silent for two seconds.

Chen Feng laughed. He laughed out loud, shaking his head as he did so.

"Sarah, show him something."

Sarah stepped forward, placed the silver briefcase on the coffee table, and clicked it open. There were no weapons inside, only a stack of photos and a black USB drive.

She casually picked up a few photos and slapped them onto Philip's face.

The photos scattered everywhere. Philip looked down, and his pupils instantly contracted.

They were his bills from an underground casino in Las Vegas, as well as surveillance screenshots of him in a hotel room with several underage girls. The most fatal one was a transfer record of him laundering Clark's campaign dark money through overseas shell companies.

"You... you actually dared to investigate me?" Philip's voice began to tremble, and his previous arrogance instantly vanished by more than half.

"Investigate you? You think too highly of yourself." Chen Feng tapped the table. "Our intelligence department intercepted these while cleaning out spam emails."

Chen Feng stopped smiling, his gaze chillingly cold: "Go back and tell Clark that I bought his seat with my money, and I personally put the collar around his neck. Want to negotiate terms with me? Tell him to roll his ass to Los Angeles and kneel down to talk to me."

"You're crazy..." Philip took a step back, his finger pointing at Chen Feng trembling. "This is treason! President Clark won't let you get away with this. The military will raze this place to the ground!"

"Raze it to the ground?" Chen Feng stood up, walked over to Philip, grabbed his tie, and yanked him right in front of his face.

"Guess what happens if I send the contents of that USB drive to the media? How many days will Clark be able to stay in the White House? And guess what happens if I drop a few hundred Tyrants onto Washington? How many minutes can those tin toys at The Pentagon hold out?"

Chen Feng patted Philip's deathly pale face, his tone nonchalant: "Want to freeload my weapons? Pay with your life."

Sarah drew her sidearm from her waist, the slide clicked as a round was chambered, and she pressed the muzzle directly against the back of Philip's head. The cold sensation of metal made Philip's legs go weak, and he collapsed onto the carpet.

"Don't... don't shoot!" Philip completely broke down, clutching his head with both hands, his voice choked with sobs. "Mr. Chen, I was wrong! This was all the President's idea; I'm just a messenger!"

"Messengers have to follow messenger rules." Chen Feng released his tie, pulled out a tissue to wipe his hands, and tossed it onto Philip's head. "Roll back and tell Clark. If he wants weapons, he pays with real money, and the price is doubled. Wants to send observers? Fine, tell him to come himself, and I'll soak him in formalin to observe him as a specimen. Do you understand?"

"I understand! I understand!" Philip scrambled to his feet, not even bothering to pick up the photos on the floor, and ran out the door like a stray dog.

Watching Philip's pathetic retreating figure, Chen Feng scoffed coldly and sat back on the sofa.

"Boss, Clark is testing our bottom line." Sarah holstered her gun and kicked the photos on the floor aside.

"Normal. Just became the big boss, always thinks he's invincible. If you don't knock him down a peg, he really thinks he's something." Chen Feng picked up the coffee that had already gone cold on the table, and just as he was about to drink, the micro-communicator in his ear rang.

It was Ada Wong's voice.

"Boss, we have a situation. The bait you put out—the Russians have taken the hook."

Chen Feng put down the coffee cup: "They're pretty fast. How did they get it out?"

On the sixth underground level, in the surveillance room, Ada Wong was watching the surveillance footage of Sergei on the big screen.

"This Russian is quite professional." Ada Wong chewed her gum, her fingers tapping on the keyboard. "He took advantage of a bathroom break to plug the micro USB drive into a maintenance terminal next to the ventilation duct. He even used a quantum encrypted channel, connecting directly to the satellites in Moscow."

"The Red Queen didn't intercept it?"

"Didn't intercept. I even had the Red Queen help him disguise the signal to prevent transmission interruption." Ada Wong smiled like a fox. "The data packet has been fully sent."

"Which one did he steal?" Chen Feng asked.

"A simplified hybrid version of the B-07 'Walker' and 'Small Tyrant'." Ada Wong pulled up the code interface. "As you instructed, I deleted the entire control code section for the gene lock. I replaced it with the underlying logic of 'extreme hunger' and 'indiscriminate attack'. To make it realistic, I added a few lines of camouflage code; their experts won't be able to tell for at least a year or two."

Chen Feng was amused, leaning back on the sofa: "Well done. That old fox Yuri will definitely think he's struck gold when he gets this blueprint. Once they spend the money to build the production line and mass-produce the monsters..."

"Then Moscow will become a Resident Evil movie set." Ada Wong continued. "Tyrants without gene locks—the more they build, the faster they'll die."

"That's the price of being a thief." Chen Feng stood up and straightened his shirt. "Give Dr. Li a heads-up, tell her to hurry up and develop the special inhibitor for these mutants and the heavy firepower weapons specifically designed to deal with them."

Ada Wong was stunned: "Boss, what are you doing?"

"What else? When the Russians can't control the situation, we'll sell them the special medicine and weapons at a high price in the name of 'international humanitarian aid'." Chen Feng said righteously. "They help us test combat data, and we make money off them. This is called a closed-loop business."

Sarah listened from the side, speechless for a moment. When the Boss scams people, he really leaves no way out.

"Understood, I'll arrange it right away." Ada Wong cut the communication.

Chen Feng glanced at his watch; it was about time.

"Let's go, Sarah. Let's go check on the seventh underground level. The fifty lunatics that woman Samantha wanted should be settled in by now. Let's go see how these new employees are adapting."

...

Meanwhile, in the Russian Federation, on the outskirts of Moscow.

In a secret meeting room on the third underground level, Yuri looked at the massive data packet that had just finished downloading on the screen, his hand holding the cigar trembling with excitement.

"It's been decrypted!" The technical director ran over, drenched in sweat. "Director, it's the complete genetic map! Sergei succeeded! He got the underlying code for the monsters from Umbrella Corporation!"

Yuri stood up abruptly and slammed his hand on the table: "Good! Sergei has done a great service! Immediately transfer the data to the Academy of Sciences and have them organize personnel to reverse engineer it immediately! At all costs, within three months, I want to see our own biological weapon production line!"

The high-ranking officials in the meeting room erupted in cheers. They seemed to already see the scene of the Russian Federation rising again, crushing the West with an invincible army of monsters.

No one knew that what they had just opened was a hellish Pandora's box with a countdown timer set.

And the person who handed them the key was sitting in an underground fortress in Los Angeles, preparing to watch a good show.

Los Angeles, Umbrella's seventh underground level.

This was the newly expanded deep-level isolation zone. Fifty academic lunatics recruited from all over the world were currently wearing uniform gray sterile suits, standing on a huge circular glass plaza.

Samantha stood on the circular corridor on the second floor, looking down at them from above, holding a megaphone.

"Welcome to hell, you scum."

Samantha's opening was simple and brutal.

The crowd below exploded instantly. A man with a face full of flab pointed upwards and cursed: "Who are you calling scum? When I was selling clone organs on the dark web, you were still playing with mud! Your boss spent ten billion to bring us here just to have us listen to a little brat like you lecture us?"

Samantha didn't even blink, snapping her fingers.

The floor in the center of the plaza suddenly split open to both sides, and a huge metal cage slowly rose.

Inside the cage was an experimental subject nearly three meters tall, covered in black tentacles. It was a defective product that had previously failed the Ouroboros Virus fusion. Smelling the scent of living people, the monster frantically slammed against the titanium alloy bars, emitting hair-raising shrieks, with black slime splattering everywhere.

The man who had been shouting just a moment ago instantly went silent, retreating repeatedly, landing on his butt on the ground, his crotch soaked.

The others were also scared pale, desperately squeezing into the corners.

"This is your next research subject." Samantha's voice echoed coldly through the megaphone across the entire venue. "Your task is to extract the active enzyme from its body. I don't care what method you use. If you can't produce results within three days, you can go in yourself and be its dinner."

Chen Feng and Sarah had just stepped out of the elevator and saw this scene.

"Dr. Li's style of leading a team is truly unique." Chen Feng leaned against the railing, watching the group of shivering "top brains" below.

"These people don't listen to reason; if you don't give them something harsh, they won't know who the master is." Samantha put down the megaphone and turned to look at Chen Feng. "Boss, are you done on your end?"

"Just shooed away a dog." Chen Feng waved his hand. "How is your progress? Can you really rely on these people to analyze the perfect version of the G-Virus?"

"They are only fit for chores." Samantha pushed up her glasses. "The core data is all in my head. However, with them doing the basic rejection tests, the progress can be twice as fast. In two months at most, the G-Perfect Virus will be ready."

"Very good." Chen Feng nodded with satisfaction. "Speed up the progress. I have a feeling that those old geezers outside won't just admit defeat so easily. It never hurts to have more trump cards in hand."

He turned to look at the surveillance screen, where Sergei was pretending to wipe test tubes in the laboratory.

Chen Feng smiled.

Keep up the good work, Russians. I hope your production capacity is worthy of my ambition.