Chapter 630 - 378: What Country C Has, We Must Have Too (Part 2)

Chapter 630: Chapter 378: What Country C Has, We Must Have Too (Part 2)

Li Xiang saw the special forces soldier lying in a pool of blood and sighed inwardly. ’I was wrong this time. Revenge should be swift. If I’d taken my revenge sooner, maybe there would have been fewer victims. But the world is so vast, and evil people are innumerable. I can’t possibly kill them all.’

WHOOSH! A piercing whistle tore through the air. Lin Ye turned his head just in time to see a small pebble flying toward his face. Before he could react, the pebble pierced his brow, shattered his skull, and blew the better part of his head apart. Brain matter splattered onto the combat uniform of the special forces soldier next to him, which bore the insignia of City No. 42.

Li Xiang had only casually flicked a pebble, yet it had reached a speed of Mach two or three—far more than Lin Ye could ever hope to block.

’Why would I need to use Star Sand on a small fry like him?’

He arrived at the warehouse and confiscated the three Nuclear Fuel Cells. Everyone present, down to the last man, met an untimely end.

They had been scared to death.

Li Xiang hadn’t physically attacked them at all. He had simply activated the Spiritual Abyss Sacred Seal to launch a Spiritual Attack. Endless, horrific illusions instantly flooded their minds, literally scaring them to death.

Half an hour later, the Mao Bear Country’s infamous Skull Society was annihilated. There might have been a few who slipped through the net, but they were only peripheral members. Not a single one of the 244 core members escaped.

Although this was a foreign country, these Underground Cities all had network access. The Skull Society members all carried Communication Devices, so Jiang Cai’Er hacked into this particular Underground City to locate them while Li Xiang carried out the precision kills. The efficiency of their operation was jaw-dropping.

The traitor who had defected from City No. 42, of course, also died a miserable death.

When the special forces team that had come to carry out the mission saw this, they were shocked beyond words.

"This... The mission is already complete?"

"But we just got here. We didn’t do a thing."

"The captain and Ma are dead. And even though the traitor and the Skull Society have been wiped out, those three advanced Nuclear Fuel Cells have vanished into thin air. We can’t say we completed the mission."

"Let’s take their bodies back. Even though they’re dead and the mission was a failure, they should still receive the honors of a martyr."

After the group returned, they were stunned to discover that their teammate, Ma, had indeed been granted the title of "Martyr," and his family received a large compensation payment. Their captain, Lin Ye, however, was branded a traitor. Everyone was utterly confused.

It wasn’t until Lin Ye’s family demanded an explanation, causing a public uproar, that the officials finally released the full story to quell the speculation.

It was all backed by conclusive evidence—though, of course, Li Xiang’s involvement was concealed.

Jiang Cai’Er had provided all the evidence after the fact.

At the end of the fourth year of the Apocalypse, Li Xiang was formally elected Head Shopkeeper and moved the central administration to City No. 03. The seventy-two Hive Underground City clusters across the country naturally voiced no objections. On the contrary, everyone was ecstatic.

It was, one might say, the will of the people.

Li Xiang gave a New Year’s address and officially announced a major project: the previously sealed underground railway network would be repaired, reopened, and put back into service.

Li Xiang didn’t need to involve himself in trivial details like the construction.

After all, Country C also had many Earth Element Transcendents, such as the Earth Vein Passage Envoy, a team with nearly eight hundred members.

Originally, there were only 469 members from all over the world. But after some attrition and the recruitment of new members over time, the team had expanded to a force of 800.

Among them, the highest-ranking, like Kanna, were already Tier Twelve, while the lowest were Tier Four or Five. All of them were loyal elites.

With so many people mobilized, in addition to engineering teams and various robots, progress was exceedingly fast.

News reporters visited the construction site for interviews and field reports. The person in charge estimated that the entire line could be fully operational in three months at most.

Moreover, it wouldn’t be the old-fashioned rails of the past. The entire system would be upgraded to a maglev model.

The news spread across the globe, sparking a flurry of shocked comments from netizens in every country.

"This is Country C’s speed?"

"The infrastructure fiend has been resurrected!"

"We’re still fighting Exotic Beasts and don’t even dare leave our cities, but they can already restore their national underground transport network?"

"Heh, even if we wanted to, we couldn’t rebuild. We don’t have the infrastructure capabilities, and... we no longer have a government that can truly command the entire nation."

In many countries, the various Underground Cities had long since become self-governing, and the original governments existed in name only. As the saying goes, "what is long divided must unite, and what is long united must divide." But after division, unification is an exceedingly difficult task.

Because no one is willing to relinquish power once they have it.

In truth, Country C had been trending in this direction as well. But Li Xiang’s power was simply too great, and City No. 03 was too advanced—they had even built a Stellar Mother Ship and colonized the Moon. Such achievements were enough to suppress anyone who harbored similar ambitions.

This was also one of the reasons Li Xiang was rushing to restart the underground transportation network—though it was a minor one.

Originally, he had planned to "rebuild our home" only after completely seizing authority over Earth, but now, he could not wait.

First, it could serve as a political achievement after taking office. A new leader has to make a few bold moves, after all; he had to do something different to boost morale.

Second, strengthening the connections between the various Hive Underground City clusters would aid in the greater Fusion of their populations.

Third, the domestic situation was already under control. The only tough nut to crack was the few Kings of Exotic Beasts at the Divine King Realm, deep within the Earth Core.

As for the Earth Vein Passage Envoy team, it would not be disbanded. Instead, it would continue to act as a "covert line" responsible for transporting valuable goods, including for international trade.

The underground transportation network was limited to within the country. The Underground Cities abroad, however, remained "isolated overseas," so the Earth Vein Passage Envoy still had a major role to play.