Chapter 339: World Countries Clench Fists 20

Divinity?

Ji Ming isn't the type to like self-doubt, but he still couldn't help checking over and over like solving a math problem, only then daring to believe that the Killer Goblin truly had a faint divine aura, so saying although his current level isn't even that of a lesser god, he has indeed stepped onto the correct path to godhood.

Recalling his appearance, resembling an ancient European monarch, which could even be called a minor "Heavenly Khan" in ancient Huaxia... Could it be that he truly intends to become some kind of demi-human god?

So at the start there was a lesser god's Rock Dragon, with himself stuffing a forest god avatar named Gresen, the Killer Goblin nearing sanctity through merit, and furthermore Mouse Kid, who had gained a huge following by hyping the "rat tribe" concept, seeming about to advance even further...

— So the gods were supposed to be big shots, right? How come I can count four just among my acquaintances? Truly, where the water's shallow, the turtles are many, and god-bros are everywhere.

After bidding farewell to Sha Ge, who stood in the sunset with what seemed like a halo of gold around him, the two, having been force-fed rations by him, once again set out on their journey deeper into the wildlands.

Naturally, as a guild led by the authorities, the YangYueExternalAffairsBureau, operating under the alias Feng Lang Ju Xu, would certainly not build its base in a particularly remote and dangerous spot, but rather in a fairly concealed valley.

After rounding a bend in the mountains and seeing an open landscape of hills and water, they finally stepped onto this land destined not to be ordinary.

Naturally, this peaceful scene before them was merely the base's external camouflage; after interacting with the few by the small river—if Ji Ming hadn't been mentally prepared, he wouldn't have realized they were guards disguised as anglers—their friendly smiles suddenly turned stern.

"You've finally come, please follow closely!"

The guard touched the revolver hidden in his coat, turned and walked toward a nearby woods, leading them through a series of twists and turns; somehow, the trees vanished and the scenery changed in an instant.

"Soaring, truly soaring—I, LaoZhao, am now basically a bureau chief; how could I possibly deceive a young person like you?"

LaoZhao laughed, picked up the sword at his side, and led the two out of the office.

No choice, he could only deflect.

"Sharpening the knife doesn't delay the woodcutter; as long as things proceed better onto the right track, everything will fall into place naturally, right?"

"Really making money, Uncle?"

"Nowadays is different from before; back when we spent money buying a few accounts, we'd soon exhaust the funds. Now our superiors value us—well, given our connection, I'll simply put in a word for you."

In a newly built wooden hut with a simple structure yet absolutely sturdy, he saw LaoZhao for the first time in the game.

Ji Ming:?

Why are you winking at me? You ask such a thing—how could I possibly know?

"Hey, you little brat actually know how to talk—come on, let me show you something good!"

Saying that, he stopped his steps and leaned slightly closer to Ji Ming's ear.

Indeed, deep in this valley lay a hidden cavern; by passing through the woods deliberately camouflaged to follow the terrain, one would enter a larger valley, and this is precisely the true garrison of the YangYueExternalAffairsBureau.

"So, the higher-ups have approved another sum of new funds; I plan to first give you the unit price here, then push for a bit more upward."

"How is it? Looks not bad here, right?"

Because he merely glanced and saw that these people had already planned every parcel of land in the entire canyon before breaking ground; now they're just gradually turning the drawings into reality.

He deliberately put away the map on the table in front of Ji Ming, letting him see only a glance of the grand plan.

"Actually, the project could have proceeded faster, but we waited two days to secure a better base, hoping not to fall too far behind schedule."

Although for Ji Ming nowadays, real-world currency basically means nothing, who would dislike having more money? Worst case, I'll donate it to the Hope Project!

LaoZhao grunted, seeming somewhat surprised, but the next second he felt it was understandable and nodded.

Ji Ming thought, I've already been made real by you offline—where could I run? You say this is useless; if you're capable, give me more work pay.

When designing, they had such foresight and insight; when executing, they proceeded with such orderliness—such a layout could hardly be the work of just a couple of wise men; these people before us are likely formidable figures in reality...

"The information you've provided lately has been extremely accurate, and indeed it's helped us a lot in many places; therefore our superiors value you greatly as an information source, specially instructing me to win you over and not let you go to anyone else."

Along the way Ji Ming has also seen quite a few Player Guilds, but compared to these before him, they are truly rather amateur, whether in top-tier or professional terms.

"Who knows, we might end up being a new war zone..."

"Damn, is it really that exaggerated?!"

Ji Ming blurted out in shock—no matter how important, doing this would be utterly absurd!

LaoZhao immediately started coughing dryly.

"Uh, it's just a bit of wind talk; I'm not exactly sure how to operate it, but there will definitely be a big move."

Having said that, he regained his calm, lighthearted demeanor and gave a faint smile.

"Besides... exaggerated? You're immersed in games every day—how long has it been since you last checked real-world news?"

"I've been busy with some proper affairs these past two days, so I really haven't paid much attention."

"Alright, let me tell you."

LaoZhao pulled out one clipping after another from various countries' official media, all concerning Double Moon Struggle, and not lacking front-page headlines.

"Look at this: over at White Eagle, both sides have already started arguing online over who puts more money into the game, as if whoever spends more gets more votes."

... Hmm, there's also the gathering of a hundred thousand signatures hoping the Great Holy Seat would add many gender options, which was countered by over a million signatures from global netizens—what veg cat-dog environmental group, but actually it's traditional performing arts.

"As for Silla, moreover, under the leadership of the Huque Company and the Park family, they mobilized the whole nation to pour money into the game, even letting the military directly connect, unwilling to do anything less than sending every soldier into the game to work for them."

... Below is a report of the EastJapan prime minister announcing continued taxation around Double Moon Struggle—henceforth wearing a helmet will incur a "fishplay" tax, removing it a labor tax, back and forth making the tax burden already approaching that of tobacco and alcohol.

"The Europa Alliance yesterday also just finished a vote meeting, saying they want to establish within the game a new organization directly managed by the EU to lawfully support and assist all player guilds originating from Europe."

... According to royal insiders, the push behind this resolution came from Gaul, Windmills, and the Spanish, Portuguese, Belgian representatives who couldn't find suitable alternative names; they are clearly intending to carry out otherworldly colonial slave trade—this is excessive, you guys hurry up and condemn them, don't look at me, we really did nothing, you go ahead and curse them!

"Even more exaggerated is the frontline of Old Hairy, Africa's internal strife, and even the White Eagle soldiers who ran off to steal oil from the big dog households—global chaos has decreased considerably compared to before, because everyone has poured their energy into the game."

"You say, with the world situation like this, the game still blatantly and covertly favors us—how could we not follow?"

Ji Ming reached out and scrolled down the page again, discovering that Time Magazine had already broken ground by announcing at the year's start that Double Moon Struggle would be the year's figure of the times, and furthermore in its latest issue used the exaggerated title "New Era Cold War" to report on the various countries' extensive deployments regarding the game.

Truly lively, again having the feeling of all countries rubbing their palms in anticipation...

After discussing the news for so long, the group had already arrived at another checkpoint's gate; Ji Ming glanced at the setup here, thinking this time there's indeed something big.

So after carefully checking LaoZhao's and Cang Lang's credentials, one of the guards even gestured to himself.

"This? This is a friend, you should know, right? Wai Shu—it was his intel that had the Silla side dig those pits."

"... Understood, please go in."

The guard nodded slightly, cradling his Winchester as he returned to the post.

But that wasn't the end; afterward the three successively passed through three checkpoints, each stricter than the last.

While Ji Ming began to ponder, could it be that they had secretly found some alien spaceship and were frantically mining Cybertronian technology when they finally arrived at the destination of this trip.

Stepping inside, he glanced at the hurried people in the corridor, smelled the somewhat fresh machine oil in the air, and Ji Ming roughly guessed where this was.

As expected, after the group silently came to the third floor and knocked open one of the doors, the spacious room's walls were actually covered with all kinds of design drawings and tools.

— Obviously, this is a research center.

Behind a wide wooden desk sat a middle-aged person working with head down; hearing the movement, he raised his head and pushed up his glasses.

"Director Zhao? How come you're here?"

"I have a bit of business, Engineer Zhang, sorry to disturb your work."

"Eh, what's there to disturb or not disturb? The project can't start yet; I'm just practicing drawing concept sketches here to get familiar with the new work direction."

Engineer Zhang was a gentle-smiling fat uncle; his gaze swept over the few people, finally landing on Ji Ming's face, his eyes slightly widening as he raised his tone.

"Hey, I recognize you! Wai Shu, I've been watching you since the closed beta."

Ji Ming's expression was a bit hesitant, not because he was surprised that the other could recognize him, but because he realized he seemed somewhat familiar with the other…

Yes, I vaguely recall from scanning the news that the youngest academician of Huaxia Engineering Academy currently surnamed Zhang successfully created a genuinely feasible, though still being optimized and iterated, but likely to be deployed in the future epoch-making ground combat equipment.

…It's only been a week since the server opened, and even someone of this stature has been sent in; it seems the higher-ups' emphasis is far greater than I imagined…

Suppressing the urge to look around everywhere, Ji Ming lowered his gaze.

"You're really overpraising me; compared to someone like you, a national heavyweight, I'm just an insignificant nobody."

"Eh, what's with big shot or small fry; honestly, I'm your fan—I've even joined your fan group!"

"Huh? What's that? I have a fan group?"

Engineer Zhang put down the pen in his hand and placed it properly to one side.

"So Director Zhao, the important person you said you'd bring me to meet is actually Wai Shu—wow, that's indeed important; even swinging a shovel to violently beat goblins counts as an iconic game scene."

LaoZhao also hadn't expected Ji Ming's fame in the game to be this great, and quickly added.

"You might not know this, but actually Wai Shu is an external member of our bureau; recently, the sources of those several key pieces of intelligence have all been him."

Although when Engineer Zhang trended on hot searches the corresponding entry was 【the happiest-smiling Academician Patrick Star in history】, this uncle is far more cheerful than Ji Ming imagined, laughing and clapping his hands.

"Whoa, there's even this matter? That's really like adding relatives to relatives; so you brought him here today just to meet, or… is there something else?"

"Mainly it's to let the two of you meet; besides… Wai Shu has provided us with so much information, we also need to show our sincerity—at the very least let him know roughly what stage we're at now."

"Oh~ I got it, okay!"

He pushed up his glasses again, and Engineer Zhang led Ji Ming over to the whiteboard on the side.

"Don't keep your head down, friend; since Director Zhao could bring you here, it means the things here can be shown to you—remember, rules and regulations are meant to keep outsiders out, not insiders."

Ji Ming nodded.

"I understand your meaning; mainly I'm used to being lazy and don't want to go further."

"Hmm, understandable; actually I sometimes want to slack off too."

Speaking, Engineer Zhang lifted a stack of drawings from the safe and used magnets to hang them one by one on the whiteboard.

"To make something, hardware and software are both indispensable; however, many of our materials and parts processing are still under research and breakthrough, so many of our things can only be in the planning stage—these are bold innovative design drafts."

Design drafts? So many!

As a fan of big, hard, iron things, Ji Ming could welcome the arrival of various officials to such an extent, both openly and covertly; although the degree of favor varies, they all gave him some small help, and that's actually the reason.

These, if left only to players, might take ten or even twenty years to produce; before this group of the strongest organizations on Earth, wanting to develop, wanting to advance further, is merely a matter of planting beans and getting melons.

But Ji Ming never expected that in just a short seven days they would actually produce this many plans…

"Ah?"

"Engineer Zhang, are you sure this is the design drawing for our mecha?"