Chapter 4403

The waves stirred up by this action were far more significant than the tsunami triggered on the coastline, and the chain reaction brought about by several events exploding simultaneously almost ignited the entire Earth.

First, photos of Martian cities sparked widespread public discussion. Although in this universe's Earth, the existence of aliens was not a very shocking thing, the fact that aliens were so close to them and had been staring at them was indeed terrifying enough.

On a cosmic scale, the distance between Mars and Earth was practically hugging and gnawing on each other. Even humans with such backward technology could find ways to throw things at Mars. For any civilization with the ability to leave the surface, stepping on the gas pedal would easily lead to a rear-end collision. Calling them neighbors wasn't quite accurate; they were more like roommates sharing an apartment. At least roommates have a door, but there were no obstacles between Earth and Mars.

This overly close distance would naturally bring panic to humans, not to mention that this Martian civilization looked much more advanced than them, had visited Earth thousands of years ago, and had many people hiding on Earth. This fact itself had already widely caused anxiety.

Immediately after, the space station built by the Martians was launched into low Earth orbit without a sound. This meant that the Martian infiltration was even more terrifying than they had imagined.

Most people didn't know of Victor's existence, and even if they did, they didn't quite understand his ability to shape things out of thin air. Therefore, in their imagination, to build such a space station, a very complex industrial chain was needed. This meant that most of the high-level personnel in this industrial chain might have been infiltrated.

You have to know that the aerospace industry has always been the culmination of industry, covering materials science, engineering, dynamics, mathematics, physics, and astronomy, almost everything. To get a space station into the sky, the manpower and material resources required were unimaginably large. For this thing to fly into the sky and operate successfully, I'm afraid even most of the scientists were Martians.

And they also didn't know that Green Lantern and his girlfriend and father-in-law happened to be leaders in the industry. Wayne threw money at it, and the personnel in the various approval processes didn't even look at what this thing was, and it went into the sky so smoothly. The various processes were even completely legal and compliant. This proved that the supervision process was completely ineffective.

From these three aspects, the Martian control and infiltration of human society had reached a very dangerous level. If discovering Martian cities before had triggered public anxiety, then the space station going into the sky brought a little shock to the human upper echelons.

Next, three nails were driven into the surface, causing humans to lose their last bit of wishful thinking. Especially when even Superman couldn't pull this thing out.

They had also imagined that perhaps Martian technology wasn't that amazing. Isn't it just a space station? Who can't build one? Even if the city looked a bit advanced, maybe there were backward areas, which couldn't be considered strong evidence of advanced technology.

But once these three nails appeared, everyone had to admit that Martian civilization's technology was indeed very advanced, and humans couldn't shake what they built, not even Superman.

And finally, in the exposed Luthor Manor murder case, the fact that the murderer was suspected to be a Martian completely shattered humanity's last bit of fantasy—Martians had malice toward humans, and the two sides couldn't coexist peacefully.

Afterward, the speech delivered by the Martians also revealed a fact, which was that although Martians were not perfect creatures, they also had the weakness of breeding difficulties, but the method to solve this weakness happened to be on Earth. This meant that the two civilizations would be locked in a life-and-death struggle, and there was no possibility of reconciliation in this zero-sum game.

And for politicians in the United States, especially the federal government, the most terrifying thing about this Martian invasion event was that they weren't launching a military war with great fanfare, but fighting in a way that the United States feared most.

For politicians and the military, a military war wasn't entirely a bad thing. Otherwise, they wouldn't be setting fires globally. War could give them an extremely legitimate excuse to oppress the public; as long as they declared a state of war, then it was reasonable for the public to tighten their belts for it, and they could even increase the intensity and squeeze out a few more drops of oil.

Resisting aggression and suppressing internal conflicts were good things for both politicians and the military. Anyway, if a real fight broke out, it wouldn't be ordinary people who sacrificed, but the Justice League. Even if they couldn't win, they would be the last to die.

However, if it was an infiltration war, it would be very fatal. Especially since human technological means couldn't judge at all who was a Martian, then anyone could be a Martian.

This would bring about the situation that these politician lords least wanted to see, which was that they couldn't find where the enemy was. Without the enemy's shadow, they couldn't shift the conflict. And once completely infiltrated, everyone would face the most tragic ending.

For the Anglo-Saxons, death actually wasn't the most terrifying thing. It wasn't that they weren't afraid of death; it was just that in their cultural system, there was one thing far more terrifying than death, and that was becoming a slave.

For some countries, slavery might already be very distant, but for others, slavery was the version of the day. Even if it wore a coat of modern democratic society, it couldn't change its essence.

The vast majority of policies and laws in European and American countries were essentially warning people never to become slaves. Even if it meant selling one's dignity, health, and safety, one must never fall into the status of a lower-class person. Even if it meant letting the exploiters take whatever they wanted, and even if it meant enduring extreme pain, it was still much better than being a slave.

To this end, they created slaves and made them live very miserably to deter and warn others that living such a life was more terrifying than death. And such thoughts and atmosphere were not only popular in the lower and middle classes, but also deeply influenced the upper class.

Many people described the American upper class as angry small dogs. In the face of many problems that could have been solved peacefully and didn't need to get angry at all, they insisted on acting like stressed-out mad dogs. This was essentially the shaping of them by this culture. The cultural environment didn't allow for showing weakness; you had to act strong, or even bluff. Behind the overreaction lay a profound fear of being "eliminated."

Only people living in such a society could realize what kind of hellish life they would live if they became second-class citizens of Earth. Because hell had always been by their side, and the miserable state of those suffering souls was too close to them. Therefore, when this possibility appeared in their minds, their pressure exploded instantly.

Since the three nails were driven near the three most densely populated continents simultaneously, covering countries in both the East and the West. By comparison, the reaction speed of Eastern countries was considered slow.

When they were still studying what the Martians were trying to do, and many people hadn't reacted to the consequences, the Western powers across the ocean had already gone crazy.

They knew better than anyone what kind of miserable situation the indigenous people would fall into after the cuckoo took the nest, they also knew what they would suffer once they became Martian slaves, and they feared failure more than anyone else. They could only win this battle.

It could only be said that this move stepped on the tail of Western politicians. What they feared most wasn't confrontation, but being replaced.

The actions taken by Eastern countries first were nothing more than exploration, research, evaluation, and then on the other hand, attempting to seek communication. First, they sent engineering work ships and submarines to detect various data nearby, knocking and testing the material strength, while at the same time appeasing the public so they wouldn't panic. The most radical was just using the military to improve social security levels to prevent people from going crazy.

And the Western countries on the other side had already entered a state of total war. Politicians kicked one by one, kicking all those thousand-year-old turtles up, making those lazy butts who only knew how to slack off on weekdays find a solution at the fastest speed, immediately, right now.

They didn't even have any warm-up; they directly entered a state of madness. In all communication channels of the entire country, the same roar was echoing—"Get that thing away quickly!!!"

The activation tower could speed up the Martian breeding rate, which meant that for every second it stayed, a little Martian might be born. And because they couldn't distinguish them, and it was impossible to kill all newborns, then humanity was finished too. So the best way now was to pull the tower out quickly.

Now the entire Earth seemed to have become the canyon of a MOBA game, with everyone shouting "Push the tower! Push the tower!", and from time to time, two sentences of "Gather!" and "Save me! Save me!" would ring out.

The military representative team naturally sent out aircraft carriers, fighter jets, and submarines. The equipment didn't have to be new, as long as it was useful. The carrier strike group sailed toward the Atlantic in a mighty force, but whether it was the bombing of fighter jets or the torpedoes launched by submarines, they couldn't even scratch the skin of this nail, couldn't even scratch the paint on the surface.

The politician representative team sent out intercontinental missiles. At first, they didn't carry nuclear warheads, and it was useless. Later, even with nuclear warheads, it didn't work. Even if Green Lantern took action and didn't let the radiation spread to the city, Arthur's cursing was also quite unpleasant to hear.

But even if they didn't care about the Justice League's opinions, and gave up on environmental protection and human rights constraints, they still had no way to deal with this thing. Any heavy engineering machinery, undersea drilling rigs, all kinds of high-power cutters, as long as they could find them, they used them all.

Even toward the later stages, everyone was out of ideas, but as long as someone could propose a point of view, they would try it, and they didn't care whose equipment and technology it was. Asia, America, and Europe worked together, but it just didn't work.

Superpowered individuals didn't fail to take the field, but it didn't have much effect either. On one hand, this thing was inserted too deep and couldn't be pulled out by force, otherwise the entire crust would crack, and if things went wrong, it would be a Pangea version reprint; on the other hand, the cutting beams that could be used on Earth couldn't cut through it at all, and the ultimate beam like the one Clark used to attack Doomsday before couldn't be fired at the surface, otherwise it would become a dinosaur extinction version reprint.

In general, humanity was at its wit's end. In just this short week, more than a dozen congressmen were rushed to the hospital, and even battle-hardened generals had three cerebral infarctions and two cerebral hemorrhages.

Most importantly, the two parties finally stopped studying the voting matter. They held more than 70 meetings in a week without mentioning a word about ballots; everyone was studying how to pull the nails out.

After discarding the most important democratic procedure of the general election, the light of democracy finally shone on America again. When the blood vessels beneath the earth's veins were pierced, the white coastline was stained with blood, and the Atlantic seawater, like holy blood dripping onto the blood field, announced the death of the Lord Jesus and also heralded the coming rebirth.