Chapter 175: Exchange and Negotiation
As Ye Zi toyed with the oddly colored flame flickering at her fingertips, she chatted with the others.
Having just witnessed the true power of that tiny flame, they all prudently kept a slight distance from her.
After this period of in-depth research into her abilities, Ye Zi had gradually unearthed the truth behind them: it was far more than simple cooling; in reality, it was the redistribution of thermal energy within a certain range.
"That person's energy-draining aura is indeed somewhat restrictive for an energy manipulation ability user like me, but everything is relative. As long as the amount I can control is great enough, it won't be a major problem." She began conjuring up some formidable imaginary foes in her mind. "I still know too little about him. And I don't have just one ability; he should have some unrevealed trump cards too."
"So, when should we make our move?" Yue Yu reappeared with another flash, standing before the leader in her eyes.
"Let those rebels exhaust the hidden trump cards of Ziliu Sea first. Having threats looming over our heads is never a good thing, after all."
"Understood, Sister Ye."
"Mr. President, you have a call. It's that fellow from the sky; we've patched him through to you." The secretary carefully handed the phone to Joseph Lee, whose expression was far from pleased.
However, no leader of any nation would be in a good mood after mobilizing tens of thousands of troops to capture a single person, only for that person to escape.
The person on the other end of the line, however, simply did not view ordinary people as human beings; how many were trampled to death was merely a statistic.
"The fact that you're calling indicates there's still room for negotiation." Joseph Lee already regarded the other party as a terrorist possessing weapons of mass destruction. The ability to freely fly to an altitude of thirty thousand meters and survive there meant that, to a great extent, he was already in an unassailable position.
"Let's make a deal, shall we?"
"What do you want?" He had already anticipated Bai Mo would make demands, and his secretary behind him signaled for the negotiation experts, who had been on standby at the presidential palace, to enter.
"Knowledge."
"You want our scientific research achievements?"
"It's an exchange."
"With Huaxia's research capabilities, what do you have that's worth exchanging?" Joseph Lee scoffed, supremely confident in America's leading edge in research.
"In the field of Spirit Qi research, all of us started from scratch. You should have heard of the Contribution Points system. Through this system, by mobilizing everyone in society to think, we've gained a vast number of disparate achievements, which I've organized into a coherent system." When discussing these matters, Bai Mo spoke more voluminously.
"You're also in a high position within Huaxia's research institutes. Wouldn't doing this count as misappropriating national assets?" He made a joke.
"Knowledge does not diminish through sharing. From ancient times to the present, almost all loss of knowledge has been due to a lack of dissemination, a lack of sharing and transmission."
"What a grand explanation."
"I don't believe one-sided plunder can be sustained, which is why I've chosen exchange," Bai Mo continued, speaking earnestly.
"Are you so sure we'll compromise? From any perspective, America stands to lose. Exchanging vast amounts of technological secrets for what you call 'disparate achievements'—if we set such a precedent, then in the future, if there are more people like you, will we just have to give whatever they demand?!" As a hardline racist, Joseph Lee was deeply repulsed by the idea of compromising with a non-human.
"Huaxia has an old saying: 'Without desires, one is strong.' As long as you still care about your citizens, you can only choose to compromise," he threatened bluntly. "The fundamental reason is that you're not strong enough to do anything about me."
"You!" Joseph Lee was momentarily choked by Bai Mo's sudden shift in tone. "We can just as easily send people to Huaxia for retaliation!"
"But what does that have to do with me? I don't care about nations, or even races. I just need people to do my work. As for what they look like or what language they speak, I don't concern myself with that. So, I can't understand your obsession with these things."
"And speaking of retaliation, haven't you already sent people to Tianqing?"
"Once the operation in Tianqing succeeds, no matter how vast Huaxia is, there won't be a place for you to hide. Are you sure you want to offend the two most powerful nations in the world at the same time?"
"If it were that easy to bring down those old fogeys, then they would have wasted decades floundering in the circles of power," Bai Mo replied nonchalantly. "So, what's it going to be? A deal, or a meteor strike? If a multi-ton rock were to fall from tens of thousands of meters high and land in the center of a city, that scene would surely be beautiful."
"You're still over America right now, aren't you? You probably can't receive what we provide, so why don't we set a time for the exchange later?"
Joseph Lee continued to employ a delaying tactic. As America's President, he had access to real-time information about Tianqing and knew that his side currently held a significant advantage. Once the situation in Huaxia changed successfully, the initiative would shift to them.
"No need. I have a few subordinates near your new capital, Mo Bi Li Si, and they have clearance to access your internal databases. Your people can hand off the data to them, and they can simultaneously verify the authenticity of all materials."
"You've been planning this for a while? You've even completed this kind of preparatory work." Joseph Lee was annoyed; the feeling of having absolutely no initiative was deeply unpleasant.
"Would you believe me if I said all of this was decided on a whim? Have your people prepare seven computers immediately; they'll appear in front of the presidential palace in three minutes. Don't even think about any tricks. I'll be monitoring everything from the sky. If you lay a hand on anyone I send..." Bai Mo didn't finish his sentence, but both parties understood perfectly what he left unsaid.
"Three minutes... give us twenty minutes to prepare. Three minutes isn't enough to get the data ready." He decided to try and buy a little more time.
"Very well." Although he knew that from the moment he made the call, a team had already begun analyzing every word and that technical personnel were working to pinpoint his location.
However, at Bai Mo's current location, aside from something like space-based weapons, which might possibly exist, modern weaponry was essentially incapable of striking him.
For him, who could achieve virtually no external heat emission, missiles that relied on laser or infrared targeting were no different from blind men.
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