384: Chapter 384 Let the Typhoon Fight for Me

He picked up a pen and wrote a line of text on a blank space in the bottom right corner of the situation map: "Kra Canal — Start date TBD."

Then, he put down the pen and said to Old K: "Notify Zhao Yuxun that the deployment of the 1st Heavy Armored Division on the Cambodia-Thailand border is to be changed to permanent training. Notify Houssa that a copy of the Red Sea patrol logs from Yemen must be sent to Phnom Penh every week — have Somsak cite them in his first State of the Union address."

Old K clicked his heels together. "Yes."

Naypyidaw, twelve meters beneath the Presidential Palace, the secret room of the Strategic Command Center.

This secret room had been automatically expanded when the system upgraded to version 3.0 — it wasn't something Zhang Cheng had ordered to be built, but rather, the moment the upgrade was completed, the system had used some mechanism he didn't yet fully understand to directly add a space to the architectural blueprints that hadn't existed before.

The four walls were not made of concrete, but of a matte black composite panel that felt slightly cool to the touch and produced no echo when tapped.

Hidden behind the panels were quantum computing clusters, superconducting energy storage coils, and rows of data exchange modules emitting a faint blue light.

The overhead lighting came from the cold glow of the panels themselves; there were no bulbs, no tubes, just light.

Zhang Cheng sat in front of the holographic console in the center of the secret room. This console was not manufactured in Myanmar either — its control interface was a light blue screen of light suspended in mid-air; when a finger swept across the screen, it left a very brief trail that was immediately overwritten by new data streams.

On the light screen, the main interface of System 3.0 was silently unfolding.

[Host: Zhang Cheng]

[Version: 3.0]

[Daily Fixed Points Income: 50,000 points]

[Current Available Points: 1,432,780 points (including weighted bonuses for controlled regions)]

[Controlled Territories: Federation of Myanmar, Kingdom of Thailand, Kingdom of Cambodia (de facto controlling nation)]

[Controlled Population: Approximately 194 million]

[Summonable Death Soldiers Limit: No hard limit (Daily summon quantity is constrained by points)]

Zhang Cheng turned the page. The newly unlocked "Political Elite Specialization" module was represented by a golden brain icon, and clicking it opened a detailed customization menu.

The menu listed dozens of sub-specialization directions: Macroeconomic Planning, Monetary Policy Design, International Law and Foreign Affairs Arbitration, Taxation and Fiscal Budgeting, Public Health System Construction, Basic Education Curriculum Design, Constitutional and Parliamentary Systems...

Each sub-item was marked with its point cost and generation cycle — "Foreign Affairs Arbitration Specialization" was the most expensive, requiring 8,000 points with a 72-hour generation cycle; "Basic Education Curriculum Design" was the cheapest, costing 2,000 points with a 24-hour production time.

Zhang Cheng scrolled through the menu and selected seven specialization directions. The first batch of bulk customization — twelve top-tier Death Soldiers, covering Macroeconomics, Judicial Reform, Customs and Foreign Trade, Basic Education, Agricultural Technology and Food Security, Anti-Corruption Investigation, and Constitutional Drafting.

Total points consumed: 48,000 points. After generation, they would enter various departments of the Cambodian government as "International Expert Consultants" through the "Dawn Investment Group Southeast Asia Talent Transfer Program."

Each person's implanted background included: degrees from elite institutions such as the Harvard Kennedy School, the London School of Economics, and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore; over five years of work experience at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations Development Programme; and fluency in at least three languages.

After finishing the selection, Zhang Cheng confirmed, and the points were instantly deducted. A countdown for the estimated production time popped up on the system — 72 hours later, all twelve of the first batch would wake up simultaneously at the "Integrated Training Base" in the suburbs of Naypyidaw.

The moment they opened their eyes, they would speak fluent Khmer, have read every word of the Cambodian Constitution, and have a thorough understanding of Somsak's policy agenda.

Zhang Cheng named and saved this menu as "Cambodia — Governing Elite v1.0," then slid to the new equipment page in the store.

Three rows of new icons floated above the light screen.

First row: "GU-9 'Manta Ray' Trimaran Unmanned Underwater Vehicle" — a photo of a black airframe resembling a deep-sea manta ray, with a trimaran hull, no cabin, no crew compartment, all-electric propulsion, pump-jet thrusters encased in noise-reduction ducts, a maximum diving depth of 6,000 meters, and a range of 12,000 nautical miles.

It could carry synthetic aperture sonar modules, magnetic anomaly detection arrays, or six supercavitating light torpedoes, executing anti-submarine patrol and deep-sea reconnaissance missions in fully autonomous mode.

Second row: "Sky Shield Laser Anti-Satellite Platform" — a modified eight-axle all-wheel-drive heavy truck with a composite laser emission array mounted on the bed.

The core component was a free-electron laser, with peak power sufficient to directly melt the solar panels or optical lenses of enemy reconnaissance satellites in low Earth orbit.

The system was equipped with automatic target tracking and ballistic prediction modules, capable of completing the entire process of target locking, illumination, and destruction within the extremely short time a satellite was overhead; its interference and blinding radius for medium-orbit targets also covered the orbital altitudes of major global reconnaissance satellites.

Third row: "Weather Control Array" — the icon was an animated simulation of a satellite cloud map, in which the spiral cloud band on the periphery of a typhoon was being forcibly altered in its movement path by some invisible force.

Priced at one million points per unit, each unit could affect the local climate of approximately 100,000 square kilometers — including rainfall, temperature, wind, and seawater temperature.

System note in small print: "Array units can be networked and linked to expand the range of influence and amplify intervention intensity. Combined coverage area: No limit."

Zhang Cheng's gaze lingered on the Weather Control Array for a long time.

"Typhoon," he whispered to himself. "If those missiles last year had been pinned down in Tonle Sap by a typhoon in advance, we wouldn't have had to fight — the heavens would have fought for us."

He turned off the holographic screen, stood up, and paced slowly around the secret room. He had plenty of points — 1.43 million, and they were still growing at a rate of 50,000 per day.

The weather array was priced at one million, not because he couldn't afford it, but because he needed to confirm the actual effects, deployment conditions, and exposure risks of this thing. It wasn't that he didn't dare to gamble, but that he needed to count his chips before betting.

He walked back to the holographic console and reopened the screen. This time, he entered the "National-Level Environmental Modification Package" sub-menu.

The menu displayed a complete plan titled "Mekong River-Tonle Sap Lake Intelligent Water System Regulation System."

The evaluation data provided by the system showed that once the system was built, the available arable land in central Cambodia would expand by more than 40% within eight years, annual rice production would double, and the pressure of relocating more than 90% of the population during seasonal floods would be fundamentally alleviated.

In terms of power, the total installed capacity of the supporting intelligent dam network would be equivalent to three times Cambodia's current total power generation. And the total price for all this — 200,000 points — had already been deducted from his account.

Zhang Cheng pulled up the blueprints for the water conservancy system, for which the points had already been deducted, and opened the one-click delivery command.

He closed his eyes, his fingers hovering in mid-air for a moment, then he personally tapped the final confirmation: "Issue the project plan to the Southeast Asia branch of Dawn Investment Group, and have the branch transfer all technical documents, engineering drawings, and construction technical support to the Government of the Kingdom of Cambodia free of charge."