Chapter Thirty: Have I Violated the Heavenly Laws?
Page (1/3)
“Comrades!” General Lin declared, sweeping one hand through the air. “The quartermaster has just finished taking inventory! By a rough estimate, our rations are sufficient to keep us alive for more than a month! We also have a considerable reserve of ammunition!”
“But most importantly—look! Do you know what this is?”
With another grand gesture, General Lin directed the soldiers’ attention toward the quartermaster.
Cradled in the quartermaster’s hands was a sleek, exquisitely crafted drone. Its dim blue lights appeared harmless enough, yet no one dared underestimate its combat power.
“It’s a Strangler!” one soldier cried after recognizing the model.
“My God! It really is a Strangler!”
“A Strangler drone! That’s an absolute weapon of war! A single Strangler’s combat strength is enough to rival that of an entire battalion!”
That was no exaggeration.
The Strangler drone was a specialized combat drone independently developed by the Dragon Kingdom after the invasion of the Anomalies.
The drone’s instantaneous firepower was enough to flatten a small mountain!
Though compact in size, it did not fire bullets. Instead, it unleashed a special form of death ray.
Death-ray weapons were fundamentally different from lasers. A laser was a tangible beam of focused light characterized by extremely high temperatures.
A death ray, on the other hand, accelerated a stream of charged particles until they approached the speed of light. It was cold light, and the physics behind it was extraordinarily profound.
Every nation in the world had placed research into death-ray weapons on the agenda. There was ample practical evidence that death rays were among the few weapons created by humanity capable of inflicting substantial damage on anomalous creatures.
That was precisely why every country regarded death-ray weapons with such importance.
In this battle concerning the gods, the Dragon Kingdom had fallen behind because of a break in its historical legacy. So it had fully embraced the spirit of the old days, when its people had supposedly used abacus beads to calculate nuclear bombs. In only a few short years, it had not merely mastered the mathematical models and physical principles underlying death rays—it had even begun mass-producing them.
Although “mass production” was something of an exaggeration.
Because of the technology’s complexity, only three professors in the entire Dragon Kingdom had mastered its principles completely—and even those three each possessed only part of the necessary theory.
In other words, without those three professors, not a single death-ray weapon could be manufactured. And if even one of the three were absent, production would still be impossible.
As a result, the Dragon Kingdom could produce, on average, only four death-ray weapons a year. Not one more.
At present, the Dragon Kingdom had only twenty-seven tanks, fifteen fighter aircraft, and seventy-one Strangler drones equipped with death-ray weapons.
The commanders of the army, navy, and air force stationed people outside the Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Death-Ray Physics almost every day. They were practically waiting on the three elderly professors hand and foot—serving tea, pouring water, sweeping floors, and even locking up for them.
The instant a new weapon was completed, all three branches of the military would rush to claim it. Fierce arguments, red faces, and bulging veins were commonplace.
And now, the Divine Bureau had sent thirty Strangler drones equipped with death rays to them in a single delivery!
That was an astonishingly generous gesture.
“My heavens! Thirty Stranglers! I’ve never fought such a well-funded battle in my entire life!”
Page (1/3)
Page (2/3)
“This is truly something to celebrate!”
General Lin’s face was radiant with joy. He immediately cleared his throat and said, “Comrades! Our country and our people have not abandoned us! They are still watching over us!”
“We must show them what we are capable of!”
“Starting today, each of the thirty Strangler drones will be assigned four operators! The crews will rotate every six hours! The men may rest, but the machines will not! We will expand outward without interruption, twenty-four hours a day!”
…
Meanwhile.
Inside the military broadcast studio, Ji Tianxing’s heart was bleeding.
When Ji Yun said he was sending thirty drones over, Ji Tianxing had not thought much of it.
But who could have known that the boy had sent Strangler drones?
Wasn’t everything supposed to be equal under 7.62-millimeter fire?
Where was the 7.62?
The Strangler drone used death-ray weaponry! It did not carry conventional weapons at all!
Thirty Strangler drones!
That was the entire Ji family’s stockpile!
Had Ji Yun really been willing to spend so extravagantly just to kill Ji Ling?
It seemed the old saying was true: one could not catch a wolf without risking the child.
A single Strangler drone was enough to flatten a small mountain peak.
And thirty of them were being used to kill one Ji Ling?!
How was that any different from using a nuclear bomb to kill a mosquito?
Had Ji Ling committed some unforgivable offense against Heaven?
Actually, none of that was truly unacceptable to Ji Tianxing.
After all, the Strangler drones sent to the Eastern Theater could be brought back later. They were not gone forever.
But Ji Yun’s method still caused Ji Tianxing unbearable pain.
According to Ji Yun’s plan, if they wanted to ensure that nothing came to light afterward, the Strangler drone into which he had implanted a Trojan program would have to be scrapped.
Page (2/3)
Page (3/3)
All thirty of the Ji family’s Stranglers had been earned through glorious military achievements!
Each one was priceless!
Ji Yun was truly prepared to throw everything away!
But by now, there was nothing anyone could say or do.
The viewers in the scrolling comments were cheering as well.
[Major General Ji Yun is really willing to spend!]
[Exactly! Those are Strangler drones! He sent thirty of them in one go!]
[Thirty Stranglers just to save Ji Ling, that useless leech who does nothing but get jealous and plagiarize! Ha!]
Everyone believed that the thirty Strangler drones had been sent to save Ji Ling’s life.
Only Ji Tianxing and Ji Yun knew the truth.
The Stranglers had not been sent to save Ji Ling.
Quite the opposite.
They had been sent to take his life.
At the same time, inside the Ji family villa, Ji Yun exploded.
“What the hell?! I told you to choose a drone! You chose a Strangler?!”
“Couldn’t you ask me before making your choice?!”
Ji Yun hurled a bottle filled with XO against the floor.
Standing on the floor was a middle-aged man whose hair had already receded into a bald ring around his head.
“Major General, you only told me to go choose one… I—I work with computers. I don’t know anything about drones. You told me to choose whichever one I wanted…” the middle-aged man protested pitifully. “How was I supposed to know it was something that valuable?”
“You—!” Ji Yun was rendered speechless with fury. Gnashing his teeth, he said, “Just to kill one Ji Ling, I’m supposed to bury a Strangler with him?!”
“A piece of trash like him! Is he even worthy of having a Strangler buried alongside him?”
“Do you have any idea how much damage you’ve caused me?”
“If that Strangler belonged to some minor country, it would be valuable enough to make the president of the United States launch a war to seize it!”
“Do you understand its value now?!”
Page (3/3)