55: Chapter 55 If you don't believe me, I'll build you a coffin.

She finally understood her father.

On that sunny afternoon twenty years ago, she pushed open the door to her father's study, carrying the merger memorandum of Northrop Grumman she had just dug out from the archives, and asked the question she thought was merely out of academic curiosity: "How did you build the b-2 bomber in three years?"

Her father lifted his eyes from his book, his pupils shrinking under the light into two abysses that refused to admit the truth.

His lips didn't move, his hands didn't tremble, but she would never forget that look in his eyes for the rest of her life.

It wasn't anger, and it wasn't disappointment. It was fear.

After that, she was stripped of her right to inherit the behind-the-scenes control of Northrop Grumman and was exiled to this 80,000-acre desert estate to guard stone walls and cacti.

She had hated her father for twenty years. Only now did she understand that what her father had stripped her of wasn't her inheritance. He had stripped her of the chance to touch the truth.

Because he knew that once Diana touched the truth, those behind the truth would touch Diana.

She also understood her grandfather.

That tough old man in the old photo album, wearing a hunting jacket with a gaze sharp enough to pierce through the paper, who said to her father by his deathbed, "Whoever investigates the Hoover Dam, hunt them down," was never trying to cover up the shame of the Hopkins Family.

It was to let the Hopkins Family continue to live.

She also understood Charles.

That stubborn guy who would rather spend his whole life hiding in a run-down auto repair shop in South Los Angeles changing brake pads than step into an office on the top floor of Century City, who, while taking that old brake fluid pipe in the pre-dawn auto shop, had said lightly, "If we don't kill them all, someone will come to the ends of the earth to hunt us down."

That wasn't a guess. It was a premonition he had received along with the family teachings from his father, one he had never complained about to anyone.

And this entity providing alien spacecraft to the Hopkins Family, regardless of who originally stuffed the "source specimen" into the Northrop Grumman laboratory, and regardless of whether this group was hiding beneath The Pentagon or in some deeper layer of underground power conduits, would never allow the secret to leak.

This organization was able to make thirteen elites die in "accidents" using different methods between 1997 and 1999, and could make her grandfather, that shrewd lone wolf who single-handedly merged two old aviation companies, willingly use "silencing" as the primary clause in the family's generational will.

Now, the Hopkins Family had not finished the last matter cleanly. Edward and Musk had escaped. Five snipers had failed to pin those two down in the Los Angeles warehouse district.

And now, Musk and Edward were following the same leads, digging up old graves, prying open wooden crates, and conducting reverse research.

Would the entity that issued the "exterminate them all" order to her grandfather come to kill her? This question only stayed in Diana's mind for a second. The answer was certain.

Just as she would blow up those five incompetent snipers. The Deep State was more ruthless than her, struck faster than her, and left fewer survivors than her.

Beatrice held the glass of ice water with slightly stiff fingers, but did not drink it.

Wallace Keating suppressed all the shock that could be shown on his old Defense Intelligence Agency face back into his throat, but his spine was not leaning against the back of the chair, instead maintaining a vigilant posture as if he would lean forward at any moment.

Harlan placed the water glass back on the stone platform, not even bothering to wipe the wet mark, only looking at Diana.

"The Hopkins Family has reached this point today not because we are smarter than others, but because every time we encountered a risk of annihilation, someone was willing to risk their life to hold the threshold."

Wallace put his glasses back on, regaining the steady tone that only old frontline intelligence officers had when chatting, but beneath that steadiness were strings pulled tight, "How long this old bag of bones can hold out, I await only the Miss's command."

Beatrice did not speak. She used the rubber band on her wrist to tie a stray lock of hair back, her movements steady, but in the gap of tying her hair, her eyelashes lowered two degrees, and she nodded extremely slightly in Diana's direction.

Harlan did not express his stance, but his hands were already placed flat on the edge of the stone platform, in the exact same quiet posture as when he had taken the bullet box from his chest in the old factory to help Mr. Hopkins check the gun years ago. It wasn't an oath. It was a decision already made.

Diana was silent for a few seconds. Then she stood up from the chair, her hands pressing against the edge of the stone platform, her gaze sweeping over the dark gray matte wing of the last model in the row of b-2 bomber evolutions. She raised her head, looking at the three people in front of her who were already prepared to die for her.

"Since the people from the Deep State want to see me, then let them come."

Her voice was not loud, but in this windowless secret room, every word seemed to be hung in the air by a plumb line. "It just so happens that I also want to see what the so-called Deep State actually looks like."

Harlan moved his lips, but did not speak. Wallace and Beatrice exchanged a glance for an instant, silently waiting for her to continue.

Diana gently pushed that b-2 bomber model to the center of the stone platform, the cold light of the lamp ring covering her wrist.

"All current deductions are just deductions."

"Whether the Deep State actually exists, what form it takes, and whether it is as omnipotent as the legends say, will only count when they actually come knocking."

"If they really come, that just saves me the trouble of looking for them everywhere."

"If they don't come, then the so-called hunt is just a cycle of fear passed down through generations, not worth losing sleep over."

… Inside the invisible tent, Zhang Yi sat cross-legged on his sleeping bag, the system interface in front of him frozen on the screen of Diana finishing the sentence, "It will only count when they actually come knocking."

He stared at the cold and determined face on the screen for about three seconds, and then the corners of his mouth slowly curled up.

"You won't shed tears until you see the coffin, right? Fine, then I'll build the coffin for you."

His tone was not heavy when he said this, as if he were chatting with Diana on the screen from across the distance. He wasn't angry; Diana's reaction was actually completely within his expectations.

For a military-industrial giant of her level, holding the behind-the-scenes management rights of Northrop Grumman, having personally planned assassinations and personally silenced people, she had seen more of the world than Edward and Walsh combined.

If you just threw a few yellowed file fragments in front of a person like this, she would only push up her glasses after reading them and say, "Insufficient evidence, continue investigating." She didn't need to be persuaded. She needed to be shocked in person.

She needed to see certain things with her own eyes, things that were not within her cognitive framework, not within her firepower coverage, and not within any level that her power could reach, and only then would she believe.

So this time, he had to make a heavy investment. While Zhang Yi calculated the list of props he needed to prepare in his mind, he unconsciously rubbed his temples.

He had a premonition that this trip would burn through quite a lot of Emotional Value. It was definitely painful, but compared to the system forcibly unbinding from him, and him becoming a homeless person lining up at the door of a Los Angeles relief station to get free bread again, this bit of pain was nothing.

Of two evils, choose the lesser; he had been very skilled at this arithmetic problem back when he was delivering food in his previous life.

And honestly, an opponent of Diana's level actually stirred up a bit of his competitive spirit; if you want to be serious, I'll be serious with you. If you want to see the Deep State, I'll make the Deep State look even more real than the real thing.

He opened the system store and searched directly for alien spacecraft in the vehicle category. The store's filtering logic was as cold as always. When he first clicked in, the whole screen was full of high-end goods with seven or eight zeros following the price tags. He scrolled down expressionlessly until his fingers were almost cramping, and finally, in the "Entry-Level" section at the very bottom, he found something he could barely afford.

[Circular Shuttle-Class Light Reconnaissance Ship (Unarmed Type) — Price: 500,000 Emotional Value points.] [This model is a basic reconnaissance unit of an alien civilization, equipped with an anti-gravity propulsion system, capable of free hovering and high-speed maneuvering within a planetary atmosphere. No offensive weapon configuration.] [The only attached device is a Wide-Area Thermal Radiation Beam Generator: Originally designed as a sterilization procedure for non-contact sample collection on the surface of low-civilization planets; when irradiating carbon-based organisms, it can cause a burning sensation on the body surface and temporary movement impairment, but is not lethal.]

Five hundred thousand. Zhang Yi stared at that number for a few seconds, feeling like he wasn't browsing a system store, but some kind of cosmic luxury boutique where he would go bankrupt just by touching the items.

He didn't hesitate for too long and switched directly to the negotiation window with the system. After so many trades before, he had figured out the system's temper: if you can't afford to buy, rent; if you can't afford to rent, rent by the hour; anyway, there was always a way to get the price down to a range he could afford.

"How much for rent?" [Annual rent: 100,000 points.] [Monthly rent: 30,000 points.] "I only want to rent it for one hour."

The system paused for a moment, as if calculating an unusual small-amount order. [Hourly rent: 5,000 points.]

Five thousand. Still expensive. Renting a spaceship for one hour cost five thousand; in his previous life, renting a BMW 7 Series with a driver for a day only cost about a thousand, which translated to about a hundred per hour. The hourly rent for this alien spaceship was dozens of times that of a BMW, and it was only equipped with a sterilization beam that couldn't even kill someone, not even counting as a weapon.

But he couldn't worry about that now. Five thousand was five thousand; he could afford it, and he only needed to complete the shock to Diana within this one-hour window. "Deal."

After the flight vehicle was finalized, Zhang Yi closed the store interface and opened the system storage space. In the item bar, there were four android cards waiting to be activated: one Grey Alien, one middle-aged woman, and two Men in Black. They were bought with the two thousand Emotional Value points the system gave him when he first transmigrated, five hundred each, low-end versions.