Chapter 1346: Killing Two Birds with One Stone

Tears welling up? Feeling wronged?

In Xia Qing's eyes, Zhang Han's tactics were even more repulsive than Tang Lu—Tang Zhengsu's daughter from the Su Feng Battle Team's brigade, arrogant and domineering. So repulsive that she wanted to draw her gun and see what face Zhang Han would make staring down the barrel.

Damn it, it's already the eleventh year of the Catastrophe. Anyone living outside the safe zone's inner city—even a two-year-old—knows that crying and throwing tantrums won't earn sympathy or food!

After a few seconds looking at Xia Qing's expressionless face, Zhang Han knew she wouldn't soften, turned around, and went after Zhang Song, who was heading toward the greenhouse.

The moment Xia Qing got home, she called her idol. "Third Brother, why did Zhang Han suddenly switch tactics? Is this person still useful or not?"

Zhang San, who had originally wanted to comfort Xia Qing a few words, flew into a rage after hearing her out. "If she's useless, what do you want to do? Exercise your lordly rights and bump her off?!"

Her idol was furious, so Xia Qing immediately backed down. "That's impossible, I'm not that impulsive. I just want to catch her in the act when she steals something—red-handed—and lock her up for a while."

Zhang Han had already torn off all pretense. Today she would definitely follow them into the laboratory to steal something, finish this job, then pull out of Territory Seven and return to Hongcheng.

Zhang San snorted coldly. "Last night she received two calls from Red One and Red Eleven, total call time over ten minutes. Probably because she's been here half a month with no findings, so her superiors gave her new orders. Is your laboratory cleaned up? Is the basement built?"

Xia Qing had no other strengths, but she was cautious enough and timid enough. Even now that she was a top-tier sniper, she didn't get cocky. "The lab is cleaned up, absolutely not even a single wolf hair left. The basement will be dug out tomorrow—right now it's covered with bamboo boards and pressed down with corn stalks, won't be exposed. Don't worry."

For this new human, Zhang San really wasn't reassured, and pressed further: "What water are you using in the artificial climate cultivation room right now?"

Her territory's biggest secret was the unpolluted spring water. Of course Xia Qing wouldn't be careless. "It's highly purified river water, Yi element content 4.0."

After reporting the water's quality and source, Xia Qing reported the results of the water system investigation to her idol. "The relationship between the Hidden Valley underground water system and the No. 49 Mountain underground water system has been fully investigated."

"Before the great earthquake in autumn of the second year of the Catastrophe, these two water systems were connected. Under the combined action of that violent earthquake's shear waves and regional tectonic stress, No. 50 Mountain not only developed mountain fractures but also showed obvious geological faults with the surrounding mountain ranges, and the underground water system connection was severed. So, we can proceed with the original plan to exploit the hot spring water."

If she hadn't investigated thoroughly, Xia Qing wouldn't have let Qi Fu and Zhao Ze lead teams to modify the Hidden Valley.

From when Xia Qing proposed investigating the underground water system and took away the geological data and instruments until now, it had only been half a month. Zhang San thought she had only learned a smattering, and hadn't expected her to have already investigated so thoroughly.

Instantly, Zhang San's mood lifted, and his voice turned kind. "You did well this time. Good work."

Xia Qing truly didn't dare accept that praise. "After Yang Jin learned last year that I had unpolluted spring water here, he led a team to survey the underground water systems of the nearby mountain ranges. I called him and asked for the survey results. Third Brother, are we going to reveal the hot spring water to Zhang Han today?"

Then, Xia Qing studied the survey results together with Broken-Waist Wolf, Little Wolf Bro, and Daigua.

After that, Broken-Waist Wolf used its keen sense of smell, combined with what it had learned, to conduct a preliminary survey of the hot spring water system.

Broken-Waist Wolf had been very busy these past few days. Once it was done, it would go take soil samples from the surface outlet of the hot spring water system it had discovered, to test whether the soil contained Yi element above average levels. If it did, that hot spring could be preliminarily confirmed as an unpolluted water source before it was destroyed.

However, Xia Qing didn't plan to tell her idol about these specific processes. Once the results were out, she'd give him a brief report.

Zhang San's voice was, as expected, no longer kind. "Don't reveal it yet. And don't touch Zhang Han either, or it'll damage my cooperative relationship with the Red Eleven base. Zheng Chen's special ops squad is still working out fine for me—I'm not planning to swap people in the short term."

Hongcheng sent Zhang Han, daughter of Red Eleven's deputy base commander, to carry out this mission precisely to kill two birds with one stone.

Red Eleven was Zhang San's partner. Zhang San had to consider the consequences and couldn't really deal with Zhang Han. Otherwise it would affect the cooperative relationship between both sides.

But Zhang Han had torn off all pretense today, so the cooperation between Zhang San and Red Eleven base was destined not to last long. That's why he said "in the short term" he wasn't planning to swap people.

In the end, it was because the Territory Alliance and the Ninth Center weren't strong enough, so her idol still needed to borrow external forces.

Xia Qing made a promise. "Bear with it for two more years. Two years from now, you won't have to give anyone face—do whatever needs to be done, however you want to do it!"

An idol standing at the top of the universe's pyramid shouldn't have to swallow this kind of petty grievance!

Zhang San snorted coldly.

Humans are social animals. No matter how powerful an individual is, they must live in interdependent relationships. These relationships can manifest as checks and balances, or as cooperation.

Just like how Xia Qing didn't like dealing with people and only wanted to quietly farm behind closed doors, yet still founded the Territory Alliance, relying on collective strength to achieve her own goals—Zhang San's personal research ability might be strong, but his research institute couldn't detach from the entire research system to fight the Catastrophe alone. It had to build on this large platform's data sharing and collaborative research to jointly face the greatest catastrophe in human history.

In the end, Xia Qing had simply overestimated him.

Still, though her overestimation was blind, it also moved Zhang San a little.

However, he wouldn't be as mushy as Xia Qing—getting moved and tossing people up onto a pyramid. Instead, he directly gave orders to solve practical problems.

"Since you've hidden everything well, let Zhang Han take whatever she wants to take, let her go wherever she wants to go. Let her and the people behind her know that Territory Three has no major secrets at all. You can obstruct her moderately, don't let her achieve her goals easily—boost the credibility."

"Then, I'll take measures to make those people think that my enhancing your physical fitness, setting up a laboratory in your territory, and joining the Territory Alliance were all to push you and your territory into the limelight—diverting their attention from my research lab and the No. 50 Mountain hot spring."

Xia Qing was moved. "Third Brother…"

"Beep—"

Before Xia Qing could finish speaking, a call-ended tone came from the phone. Her idol's end had gone completely silent.

Putting down the phone, Xia Qing looked at the only companion left in the room and sighed. "Little Feimao, Third Brother truly lives up to being an idol standing at the top of the universe's pyramid. He's not only brilliant at research, he also understands strategy. No wonder he was the one who exposed Hui One's underground research scandal back then, no wonder he could escape that cesspool of the Hui One Research Institute and move to Territory Seven."

"But I don't think things will go that smoothly. I need to make more preparations…"

Little Feimao said nothing, continuing to fiddle with its nest, throwing out the cow hair Xia Qing had stuffed in for it.