101: Chapter 101 Trendsetters of the Times

Thompson remained silent after hearing Black Panther's question.

The answer was obvious; when the time came at the United Nations General Assembly, everyone would stand and applaud, unanimously electing A-Zu as the Deputy Ball Chief. Chen Mu's turn had already been rehearsed once.

Black Panther walked back to his chair but didn't sit down. Resting his hands on the back of the chair, he looked down at Thompson.

"These nations are filled with smart people. They need someone to stand against A-Zu and his group of aliens, but they can't be directly associated with them."

"After all, if A-Zu doesn't fall, the first person he'll deal with is the one who publicly opposed him."

He spread his hands: "And so, the Human Renaissance Alliance emerged."

He pressed his left palm down: "I promised them that I would share all the intelligence we obtain with them."

"In exchange for their intelligence agencies in New York joining the Human Renaissance Alliance."

He pulled his hands back, clasping them over the chair back again: "This way, even if something goes wrong later, as long as I die, the matter ends there."

"All of you were merely deceived by me; it has nothing to do with anyone else. As for whether you live or die, that depends on the aliens' mood."

Thompson looked at him: "So, you've turned the Human Renaissance Alliance into a front for these nations to fight the aliens in New York?"

"You could say that." Black Panther took his hands off the chair and stood up straight again. "And I've already finished talking to the high-level officials in the United States."

"As long as we don't plot to overthrow their government or try to assassinate the president, they'll turn a blind eye to some of our actions."

As he spoke, he reached into his lab coat pocket and pulled out a neatly folded check.

He held it between two fingers and handed it to Thompson.

"By the way, take this."

Thompson took the paper and unfolded it. It bore the Citibank letterhead, and the amount field contained a number he had never seen on his pay stub in his entire life.

A full thirty million dollars!

"This is the intelligence fee given to me by the CIA Director," Black Panther said nonchalantly. "It's to buy all the intelligence you'll obtain in the Interstellar Police Department in the future."

Thompson snapped his head up from the check, his eyes wider than when he'd heard about the dozens of countries supporting the Human Renaissance Alliance.

"You're moonlighting as an information broker too?"

Black Panther tossed the lighter in his hand and said with a smile, "It's called 'horizontal and vertical alliances'! Naturally, we must unite all the forces that can be united."

"Do you know how many people are in our Human Renaissance Alliance now?"

Thompson hesitated, then tentatively guessed a number: "A few hundred?"

Black Panther shook his head and held up one finger: "It's tens of thousands! And they're all elites from various industries."

Thompson's eyes widened. He slapped the check onto the table and sprang up from his chair. "Holy crap! Just how many countries have you allied with?"

Black Panther counted them down on his fingers, but each finger he folded down felt like a national flag exploding in Thompson's mind.

"Quite a lot. Besides the Permanent Five, there's India, Japan, the Middle East, Australia, Europa..."

"There are even quite a few African nations. You know, those brothers in Africa are very familiar with me."

"Oh my God! How are you going to manage so many people?" Thompson asked in surprise.

Black Panther smiled and put his folded fingers back into his pocket.

"I don't need to worry about that. I have the contact information for the heads of these intelligence agencies. Whatever I need, those heads will naturally handle it."

He pointed toward Professor Rajan, who was unhurriedly placing a petri dish into the incubator.

"These agents and spies will still follow their respective countries' previous management models."

"I won't break up their organizational structure, I won't re-squad them, and I won't implement some unified numbering system. Whoever they reported to before, they'll still report to now. However they used to meet, they'll still meet that way."

He took his hand out of his pocket and spread it open.

"It's just that, whereas they used to report only to their respective national intelligence agencies, they now have one more person to report to—me."

"And their respective countries have tacitly allowed this to happen."

He closed his palm: "This is 'horizontal and vertical alliances'. You don't need to command everyone; you only need to make them work for you."

Thompson stood there, looking down at the check in his hand: "So, we're not fighting alone anymore?"

Black Panther also sat down, relit his cigarette, took a puff, and nodded with a smile: "We never were!"

——————

Chen Mu leaned back on the sofa, watching the mirror image of Black Panther and Thompson discussing the Planet Wuhu's Superpower Serum.

"'Horizontal and vertical alliances'?" Chen Mu took a sip of red wine, savoring the phrase.

Over the past few days, his attention had been alternating between the White House and the Wuhu Shop. He only glanced at the Human Renaissance Alliance line every few hours.

As it turned out, in the gaps of those few hours, this King of Wakanda had quietly made over two hundred phone calls, turning the intelligence agencies of dozens of countries on Earth to his own use.

Chen Mu drained the red wine in his glass. He had been a bit worried that the character creation of A-Zu was too strong.

If these countries had surrendered at the speed of light, just as they had when he last descended upon Blue Star, his fear value would have peaked during the first explosive period and then quickly decayed, eventually becoming completely stagnant.

That wasn't what he wanted. He wanted a constant tug-of-war of emotions—fear and hope rising alternately, resistance and despair tearing at each other.

Only in this kind of stalemate would humanity continuously contribute fear value to him.

This required a human force capable of arm-wrestling with A-Zu; at the very least, he couldn't let the lion swallow the elk whole in one bite.

He had originally planned to secretly add some chips to humanity's side or have Danzou place some restrictions on A-Zu. He didn't expect that before he could act, Black Panther would have already set the chessboard.

"What a director fears most isn't an actor performing poorly," he muttered to himself, looking at Black Panther's face in the mirror. "It's when the actors are all waiting for the director to explain the scene."

Chen Mu was in a very good mood. This good mood came from the satisfaction a creator feels when they discover that a character under their hand has begun to actively push the plot forward.

He reached out and lightly swiped his finger across the mirror surface. Black Panther's face was crumbled into a ball of cold white light, then coalesced again.

This time, the scene switched to a high school girl's bedroom. A few movie posters were stuck to the pink wallpaper, textbooks and a half-eaten apple were piled on the desk, and a cloud-shaped nightlight sat on the nightstand.

Mary and Gwen sat side-by-side on the bed in their pajamas.

Mary's hair was still wet, with a towel draped over her shoulders; she had clearly just showered.

Gwen sat cross-legged beside her, hugging a pillow. A phone was placed in front of each of them, the screens showing Peter Parker's social media page.

Gwen swiped the screen with her finger, then suddenly nudged Mary's ribs with her elbow and whispered something.

After Mary heard it, she slapped her forehead and then fell straight back onto the bed, her head making a dent in the pillow.

Gwen covered her mouth and laughed until she was doubled over, her pajama sleeve sliding down to reveal half her wrist.

Chen Mu's gaze swept over Gwen and landed on Mary, who was still lying on the bed, sighing at the ceiling.

As a high school student about to graduate, she had no idea what kind of vortex she was about to step into.

But Chen Mu knew.

"Do you want to participate in the tides of the era?" he said softly to the girl in the mirror, who was hiding her face under a pillow. "Then let me see if you can become a trendsetter of this Guga era."