190: Chapter 190 Released

After receiving the formal response from the Blue Star Defense Department headquarters, the high-level officials of the Eastern Great Power finally felt a sense of relief after their hearts had been hanging in suspense for a long time.

With the phantom energy stones serving as the core medium for talent testing, everyone felt a surge of confidence. The Eastern Great Power was vast with an enormous population base; they refused to believe that they couldn't screen out top-tier geniuses from across the nation capable of countering the alien threat!

Immediately afterward, Elder Dong turned his attention to the Death Warriors under Qin Yang's command, attempting to explore the source of this mysterious force's strength. However, the initial strength of the Death Warriors was an innate combat power that came with the system refresh, while the gene enhancement potions that could achieve strength advancement were controlled by Qin Yang. Without Qin Yang's explicit authorization, all the Death Warriors remained tight-lipped, and not a shred of core information was leaked. After a round of investigation, Elder Dong ultimately came up empty-handed, failing to find any valuable clues.

Meanwhile, the catastrophe in H City had already caused massive waves among the populace. When the Great Lizard launched its surprise attack, the streets were crowded with civilians. Many people risked their lives to record the cruel scenes of the alien monster slaughtering living beings and engaging in fierce combat with the military on their mobile phones. In a short period, videos of the Great Lizard's rampage and the army's bloody battles swept across the entire internet, spreading like wildfire.

Initially, the authorities tried to control public opinion and suppress the spread of related information to avoid causing nationwide panic. However, after fully understanding the nature of the Great Lizard as an alien invasion, the high-level officials ultimately chose to allow the videos to circulate. This was done precisely to let the public gradually accept a harsh reality: alien creatures had already begun invading Blue Star, and humanity's peaceful life had long been shattered.

Even if disclosing the truth in advance would trigger local panic, the current situation was still within controllable limits, and national order remained stable, which was enough to keep the public's panic within a reasonable range. If they persisted in hiding it until the Great Lizards arrived on a large scale and the disaster fully erupted, that would be the true end of the world, at which point the entire Blue Star would fall into irreversible chaos.

The disaster had broken out in H City. Initially, when people from other regions saw the videos, they assumed they were clips from some sci-fi movie with realistic special effects, and they even wondered how such bloody and violent scenes could pass censorship. It wasn't until a large number of H City residents who had experienced the disaster personally came forward to testify that the video content was by no means fiction that the entire country was instantly in an uproar, with shock and unease spreading rapidly.

Seeing that public opinion had fully fermented, the National News Broadcast officially stepped forward to issue a public statement. They confirmed the existence of the alien Great Lizards for the first time and candidly admitted the fact that H City had suffered an alien invasion. At the same time, the government solemnly promised that an effective way to combat the alien creatures had now been found, calling on all citizens to remain calm and not panic blindly, as the state would exert all its power to protect the safety of the people and properly handle this crisis.

Of course, these words were more of an expedient measure to soothe the people's hearts. On the other hand, the work of screening for talented geniuses relying on the phantom energy stones was already being pushed forward at full speed and in an intensive manner.

The Eastern Great Power had caused such earth-shattering changes, involving subversive events like alien invasions and Gene Warriors, that it was impossible to hide from the overseas nations that were constantly keeping a close eye on them.

Previously, although various countries were shocked by the appearance of Gene Warriors, they could still barely accept it, as it still fell within the internal combat power breakthroughs of Blue Star. But when the truth of the alien invasion was exposed, the heads of state around the world were completely stunned, falling into an unprecedented solemnity.

Man-made Gene Warriors were merely a power struggle within humanity; however, an invasion by an alien civilization concerned the survival of the entire human race and was a catastrophe that affected all living beings on Blue Star!

Faced with the crisis, various countries temporarily set aside their differences and urgently convened a United Nations special assembly to discuss common strategies for dealing with the alien invasion. Even the USA, which usually went its own way, had no time to worry about the trivial matters of the Neon Country and truly faced the alien threat concerning human destiny for the first time.

At the United Nations assembly, the representative of the Eastern Great Power disclosed all known information. When the heads of state learned that only Gene Warriors wielding special weapons made from alien materials could break through the Great Lizard's hard defense, and that ordinary thermal weapons were completely ineffective, their expressions changed drastically. Their looks were identical to those of the Eastern Great Power's high-level officials when they first learned the truth—full of despair and solemnity.

The complete failure of thermal weapons meant that any country on Blue Star had lost its conventional power to resist alien creatures, leaving them to be passively beaten and allowing the Great Lizards to slaughter them at will.

Fortunately, the Eastern Great Power representative then announced the existence and function of the phantom energy stones, which slightly eased the tense expressions of the heads of state. At least, humanity had found a method to cultivate combat power and resist external enemies, which was far better than waiting for death.

However, the Eastern Great Power only had twenty of the most basic phantom energy stones. Even if they were all used for screening geniuses domestically, it would be far from enough, so it was naturally impossible to share them with other countries. The Blue Star Defense Department headquarters had also already finalized a decision to first use these twenty basic phantom energy stones to verify the feasibility of the national genius screening plan. Now that the Eastern Great Power branch had been exposed, it would serve as the first pilot site to carry out the testing work. Once they gained experience, they would consider whether to support other countries.

...

Within the Eastern Great Power, compared to external forces, the high-level officials always trusted the soldiers who protected the country most. The first testing sites for those twenty precious basic phantom energy stones were, without suspense, set in the major military regions across the country. According to the instructions of the high-level officials, more than two million active-duty personnel in the country would all undergo talent detection with the phantom energy stones. Priority would be given to screening top-tier talents from among them, concentrating resources to fully cultivate them and create the first batch of elite forces to counter the alien invasion, with the testing range gradually expanding to the general public later.

Military first, then civilians, advancing layer by layer—this was the most stable and efficient plan at the moment.

To ensure the absolute safety of the phantom energy stones, the Death Warrior team under Qin Yang's command was ordered to take on the top-secret escort mission of transporting the phantom energy stones to the major military regions, becoming the strongest shield for this batch of core resources.