212: Chapter 212 The Truth Revealed Behind the Scenes, Mosaic Enrages

Harrington pressed both hands on the edge of the table and leaned forward slightly,

and those grey-blue eyes, which had never shown any flaw amidst countless internal crises of the British alliance, were now clouded with a layer of shock that still refused to fade even after his worldview had been repeatedly shattered.

Duval stood beside him, slowly lifting the hand he had kept behind his back all along and resting it on the edge of the table, his lips parting slightly and then closing.

Narendra Singh interlaced the ten fingers resting on his knees a little tighter.

Shigeru Hasegawa's already straight back tensed even further after this round of repeated demonstrations, and his silence was heavier than any questioning.

On the side of Lighthouse Country, Biden and a group of high-ranking Washington officials quickly exchanged glances with one another.

Mark Milley lowered his voice and analyzed word by word into Biden's ear:

"All the electromagnetic shielding systems, wave-absorbing materials, and acoustic jammers we laid out in the Shenandoah Valley... every piece of equipment capable of preventing Yuanzi's surveillance was never defended by ourselves from beginning to end."

"The reason Yuanzi cannot infiltrate every confidential document here is simply because the technology of the Longevity Faction is blocking all monitoring windows for us."

"We previously thought it was because our foundations were compliant, our equipment was in place, and our materials were effective... none of that is true..."

He paused for a fraction of a second, pressing his gloved hand tighter against the edge of the terminal, and then continued,

"Just now, as soon as John, Gaul, Ah San, and Sakura received the data, it immediately turned into garbled text, indicating that Yuanzi still has the ability to block the transmission of information to forces outside the Deep State."

"And every Washington official present here is already an enlisted subordinate of the Longevity Faction, which is why we can see the complete content."

"Currently, apart from the Deep State, there are no other forces in the world capable of directly countering Yuanzi's interference."

Biden did not say much more, simply sitting back down slowly, crossing his hands, and resting them on the table.

Looking at the four faces sitting across the long table, which were still piled to varying degrees with shock and prudence, he spoke in a steady and resolute tone:

"As you all witnessed just now, those garbled texts are all the handiwork of Zeta Star's Yuanzi."

"It is a quantum-state holographic communication device composed of higher-dimensional atoms, capable of blocking anyone from reading technological data in real-time at the information layer."

"Its purpose is obvious: to prevent all humankind from uniting, and to stop the proliferation of any military technology capable of resisting Zeta Star's million-strong fleet."

"Therefore, this is not us sending fake goods, nor is it a malfunction in any transmission protocol."

"It is Yuanzi intercepting in real-time every batch of technological data leaving the control range of Lighthouse Country."

Harrington slowly withdrew the hands supporting the edge of the table, placed them in front of him, and shifted his gaze from Biden's face to the sending terminal screen that still displayed the complete blueprint.

Duval looked over as well, then slowly sat back down in his original seat.

Narendra Singh and Shigeru Hasegawa also returned to their respective positions in silence,

in their eyes, there still lingered a thousand unasked questions,

with the most glaring one being why it was specifically Biden's eyes that could make the garbled text automatically recover,

while the gazes of everyone else would even cause the complete blueprint to shatter on the spot.

But they all understood that at this advanced technological level involving direct authorization from the Deep State, some questions were not meant to be asked.

Since Biden did not proactively explain it himself, they were not unwise enough to court awkwardness.

Biden slowly unclasped his hands crossed on the table, his tone switching back to the standard voice of a veteran negotiator leaving a face-saving exit after completing a full round of confrontation:

"Washington has preliminarily locked onto Yuanzi's interference mechanism and blocking path."

"Next, we will formulate a specialized response plan targeting this collective garbled-text incident."

"This plan takes time, and during this period, we ask you all to wait a bit longer."

"Once the plan is implemented, this batch of technological data will be resent to your hands via a new path immune to Yuanzi's interference."

Harrington pulled the briefcase he had taken off and left untouched on the table back to his side and nodded slightly.

Duval gently crossed his slender fingers, saying nothing more, and simply nodded slightly toward Biden.

Narendra Singh released his hands that had been clasped on his knees and rested them on the table, saying not a word, yet cooperating by recalling his aides who had already lined up ready to bid farewell.

Shigeru Hasegawa was the last to straighten his back from the back of the chair, neatly putting his briefcase and tablet into the briefcase handed over by his assistant, and then bowed slightly to Biden.

The heads of state, accompanied by their respective entourage of high-ranking officials, rose one after another. Walking along the long corridor of the Shenandoah Valley underground command center flanked and guarded by armed death squads, they stepped one by one into the bulletproof motorcade waiting to pick them up.

Right before getting into the car, Harrington said in a low voice to Duval:

"Yuanzi can block technology, but it cannot block fear."

"The tighter the blockade, the more people are convinced that those materials are real."

Duval wrapped his overcoat tightly around himself without replying. As he sat in the back seat, he gently smoothed out the briefcase on his knees, deep in thought.

Amidst the morning mist, the motorcade drove out of the Shenandoah Valley one by one.

...

Hollywood Hills, detached villa.

Zhang Yi leaned against the back of the sofa, several monitoring screens open simultaneously on the system interface before him.

Over in the Shenandoah Valley,

the motorcades of Harrington, Duval, Narendra Singh, and Shigeru Hasegawa had just driven away from the federal supreme command center. The heads of the four countries sat in the back seats of their respective bulletproof sedans, their expressions varied and silent.

Zhang Yi placed his coffee cup on the coffee table, a smile of satisfaction unique to a mastermind behind the scenes curving at the corner of his mouth.

What Yuanzi blockade, what Longevity Faction protection—it was all imagined by that group of high-ranking Washington officials themselves.

From start to finish, it was simply him adjusting a few parameters in the system on a whim to stir up some emotional fluctuations and earn some emotion points, smearing a layer of garbled text over the receiving screens of John, Gaul, Ah San, and Sakura.

Whichever screen Biden walked in front of, he would remove the garbled text from that screen;

the moment Biden walked away, he would smear the garbled text back on.

It was as simple as that.

As a result, those people deduced in the conference room an entire logical closed-loop of "Longevity Faction's technological barrier countering Yuanzi's quantum interference".

Even Mark Milley used his husky voice as a veteran of The Pentagon to analyze with a straight face:

"The reason we can see the complete content is because we are already enlisted subordinates of the Longevity Faction."

Back then, when Zhang Yi listened to this sentence while leaning on the sofa, he almost choked out the coffee he had just drunk.

But all the better, the deeper they imagined things, the greater their emotional fluctuations, and the more substantial the credited emotion points would be.

This wave of garbled-text manipulation—

just the moment Harrington leaned close to the screen and saw the garbled text, causing his pupils to violently contract;

the continuous twitching of Duval's facial muscles as he repeatedly leaned in and backed away to confirm the eerie phenomenon;

Narendra Singh's suppression;

and the tension in Shigeru Hasegawa, who remained wordless from beginning to end while straightening his back more and more...

every person's fear, shock, and deep-seated unease were all accurately calculated by the system, adding millions of emotion points to his account.

He picked up his coffee to take a sip and was just about to close the monitoring screen of the Shenandoah Valley,

when another real-time screen in the corner of the system interface suddenly caught his attention.

That was the screen from Fourth Prince Daodun's side.

Prince Dao Dun was sitting on the sofa in the viewing hall,

and the holographic projection screen wall in front of him was covered with colorful mosaic preview images.

On Prince Dao Dun's ashen-white oversized face, his expression had turned unimaginably ugly.

Zhang Yi immediately switched the system's main screen over.

...

New York, North Shore of Long Island, Astor Family private recuperation estate, viewing hall.

Prince Dao Dun was sitting on the sofa directly facing the holographic projection screen wall, his ashen-white slender fingers clutching the remote control.

His huge black oval eyeballs stared unblinkingly at the images playing on the screen wall.

Rockefeller III, Samuel, Isabelle, Rothschild, and William Vanderbilt V stood in a single row behind the sofa,

all with their hands hanging down and heads lowered, not daring to even draw a heavy breath.

After the art data package sent by Sakura Country was unzipped, it was automatically arranged on the holographic menu according to three major categories: music, art, and film and television.

Prince Dao Dun first clicked open the music folder,

which was filled with a complete audio archive of Sakura Country ranging from Heian-period gagaku to Reiwa-period idol group title songs, with each song labeled with Japanese-English bilingual introductions.

He listened to a few tracks and said nothing, his black eyeballs only occasionally rolling slightly with the fluctuations of the melody.

Then, he clicked open the art folder.

From ukiyo-e to contemporary animation original paintings, every piece came with detailed creation background descriptions.

He flipped through dozens of pages, paused for a moment,

lingered slightly before the golden cloud patterns of the Scenes in and around Kyoto, and then continued flipping forward.

Finally, he clicked open the film and television folder.

The images on the screen wall

switched one by one from traditional Japanese Noh performance documentaries to Showa-era black-and-white films,

from Heisei-period television drama collections to Reiwa-period animated movie trailers.

Prince Dao Dun's fingers pressed the remote control intermittently and absentmindedly,

and on that ashen-white face, there was initially a bit of amused curiosity,

but the further down he flipped, the gloomier his expression became.

Because when the menu flipped to a subfolder labeled "Adult Art Films",

a large number of mosaic-covered images began to appear on the screen wall.

At first, it was just one or two scattered clips;

the further down it went, the more numerous and densely packed they became,

with every censoreship method and thickness classified and archived, and some directly plastered entirely across the preview thumbnails.

Prince Dao Dun clutched the remote control in his hand without pressing pause, silently finishing the entire folder.

Then, he gently placed the remote control on the sofa armrest and turned his huge black oval eyeballs toward Rockefeller III,

his tone extremely calm, yet hidden within that calm was a suppressed fury on the verge of shattering:

"Rockefeller, what on earth do Sakura Country mean by specially sending these mosaic videos for me to watch?"