PCJ – Chapter 661 Cooperation

“Will the authorities intervene in this matter?” Zhang Jiaohua quietly asked Wei Chenguang.

“I already filed this with them a while ago. Our cultivation world has certain privileges, but we still need to follow some rules. It’s like a gentleman’s agreement. No matter what we do in this situation, they won’t intervene. Even the American authorities can’t interfere. Besides, this is our territory. They came to cause trouble at our doorstep—the authorities should be thankful we resolved a crisis for them,” Wei Chenguang said indifferently. Clearly, he was much more familiar with the rules than Zhang Jiaohua.

Wei Chenguang continued, “Actually, we have a lot of cooperation with the authorities. Think about it—how many top officials have you seen die young from illness once they reach a certain level? Almost all of them only pass away naturally when their bodies are truly exhausted. This is largely due to the help of cultivators. They give us some leeway, and in return, cultivators give them foundational and nourishing pills, which help slow aging. Sect Leader, our Meishan Sect is no longer a small or obscure sect. I think we should strengthen our cooperation with the authorities when necessary. It would make many things much easier.”

“You handle that,” Zhang Jiaohua replied, completely unconcerned about being sidelined by Wei Chenguang. In fact, there was no way Wei could replace him. In the cultivation world, the spiritual spring was the core lifeline. Without it, even if Wei Chenguang unified all of China’s cultivators, he still wouldn’t be able to hold his position. But even if Zhang Jiaohua were ousted, he could start a new sect any time and use the spiritual spring to attract a large number of cultivators.

Zhang Jiaohua preferred not to waste time on such trivial matters anyway.

The Meishan Sect soon captured a large group of super soldiers, as well as a number of special agents. These agents were generously handed over to the arriving national security personnel, while only Azir and Baron were kept by the sect.

The infiltration of nearly twenty super soldiers into the capital shocked the higher-ups. America’s advancement in genetic technology was also a serious concern. If Zhang Jiaohua hadn’t previously released his research on in-vitro embryo cultivation, the country would be far behind in biotech compared to the U.S.

“We must develop our own super soldiers. Tsinghua University’s Life Science Academy has a strong technical foundation. This project will be a collaboration between the military and their researchers. We must catch up and surpass Western nations in the super soldier domain.” A top national leader issued an important directive to the Ministry of Science and the military.

Soon, the Ministry of Science sent someone to contact Huang Zhongfang. Upon reading the directive, Huang frowned. “This will be difficult. The project was originally led by Dr. Zhang Jiaohua. But after he graduated, our lab suffered a serious break-in. All experimental samples and active reagents were stolen. No one in the world has been able to replicate this experiment. It’s going to be hard.”

“Dean Huang, let me tell you something. Nearly twenty American super bio-soldiers infiltrated Beijing. These super soldiers were created through U.S. genetic engineering. If widely deployed in warfare, they would be terrifying. Their bodies are extremely strong, they have tremendous strength, and they wear special armor that even sniper rifles can’t penetrate. You can imagine the impact they would have in future special warfare. The leadership has asked our Ministry and the military to collaborate on this. After reviewing, we concluded that your national key lab at Tsinghua’s Life Science Academy is internationally leading in this area. Therefore, this project will be led by you, with support from our technical personnel and military experts,” said Li Ningbo, the director of the Ministry of Science.

Huang Zhongfang felt a headache coming. This experiment was originally led by Zhang Jiaohua, and the person who knew it best—Mei Qing—was no longer in the lab. Only a master’s student, Ma Nanli, was somewhat familiar with it, but his ability was limited.

“Director Li, I’ll need to contact Dr. Zhang Jiaohua first. See if we can persuade him to come back and lead the project again, or at least provide the necessary active reagents. Without that, we really can’t proceed. If we instead try to follow the American model, I fear we’ll never surpass them technologically.” Huang wasn’t outright rejecting the project—on the contrary, he hoped to take it on. Leading a project like this would be a huge boost to their research group. But without Zhang Jiaohua’s involvement, Huang didn’t dare accept it recklessly.

Li Ningbo nodded. “I just wanted to give you a heads-up. Your team is internationally leading, and you’re the best choice to head this project. Think about it carefully.”

When Huang Zhongfang called, Zhang Jiaohua and Mei Qing were studying the super soldiers brought over by the Americans.

The Meishan Sect didn’t hand over all the super soldiers to the authorities—Zhang Jiaohua was very interested in these genetically engineered weapons.

After sequencing the genomes of the super soldiers, they found that the Americans had indeed combined genes from various fierce beasts to create them. These super soldiers were literally born to fight. Their intelligence, however, was no more than that of a child under ten years old. Through brutal training, they had been turned into killing machines.

“Incredible. The Americans’ gene technology has already reached this level. It’s clearly far more advanced than what we know. It seems they’re still hiding a lot of their capabilities,” Mei Qing said with sincere amazement as she reviewed the analysis report. She had believed she was already close to the forefront of global biotech, but this one product from the Americans shattered her confidence.

“We’re always chasing others, but we never develop our own path. If we’re just following behind, how can we ever surpass them? Professor Mei, I think we should change our approach. These super soldiers have obvious flaws and are still far from ideal. They can’t handle complex tasks. If the ones sent this time had normal intelligence, they could’ve caused serious problems for us,” Zhang Jiaohua said.

Mei Qing nodded. “Exactly. They couldn’t adapt or retreat when a mission became impossible—they just waited for orders. But the people giving those orders had already been captured. We even used their own command tools to issue fake orders, and they couldn’t tell the difference.”

“That’s why I believe that if we truly want super soldiers, we should adopt more advanced technology. With our active reagent treatments, the super soldiers we cultivate will be far stronger than anything the Americans have.” Zhang Jiaohua said firmly.