CHAPTER 195: MEETING

Once Mr. Luo returned to the Black Orchid branch in Yangzhi City, he stepped into the elevator and pressed a series of numbers on the keypad. After a moment, the elevator started descending rapidly. As the lights flickered, the rotating panel above the doors went into the negatives.

About a minute later, the elevator trembled before coming to a stop. The rotating panel displayed -29. Mr. Luo was now at the main lobby located one hundred meters underground.

The elevator doors opened, and Mr. Luo walked out into a passageway. The lights above him and on the floor lit up. The walls were made of glass holding against water. All sorts of strange creatures were swimming inside it.

Mr. Luo ignored them and walked down the passageway. The pneumatic door ahead of him opened, and two slender women stood behind it. They were bald and naked. Their skins were covered in smooth, white implanted scales, which shone under the light. Even though the scales accentuated their curves, they still looked bizarre.

As if they were dancing, the two ushers spread their arms and curtsied to him before straightening and saying gently together, “This way, Mr. Luo. The directors are in Meeting Room Three today. Please come with us.”

Their voices had a layered, echoing effect.

Mr. Luo followed them expressionlessly. After a little over twenty meters, they left the passageway and stopped on a metal platform shaped like a blooming black orchid.

After a moment, the platform started buzzing and turning until they faced a door that showed the number three. The number lit up, and the door went up.

The two ushers motioned for him to go forward, and Mr. Luo walked onto the thick metal passageway. Before even arriving, he could hear the conversation inside.

“The research has reached its most critical stage. If we can make it past this hurdle, we’ll be able to launch fully developed implants and overturn customers’ stereotype of Black Orchid as a stiff and rigid company.”

“How much time will that take, Mr. Mo?”

Three more months—No, two months! In two months, I’ll produce satisfactory results.”

Five people were sitting behind a wooden semicircular table inlaid with crystal light strips. All of them were executive directors in Yangzhi City’s branch company and had delicate, beautiful decorative implants on their faces and necks.

Standing in front of them was an old man with his hair dyed green. He was trying to convince the directors to give him more time.

“We don’t have that much time,” Mr. Luo said.

The meeting room fell silent.

Mr. Luo turned to the five people behind the table and said, “I believe you know that we don’t have that amount of time.”

One of the directors asked sternly, “How could such a problem show up, Mr. Luo? Our plans have been really successful. Based on the reports from the other parties, we should have been able to hold everyone back for at least half a year.”

“Zhan Yi took matters into his own hands and backed down during the trial, which revealed our true state. Of course, I’m to be responsible for this as well,” Mr. Luo said grimly.

There was no way he could say that his carelessness had led to him making the wrong move, but someone needed to take responsibility, so he had Zhan Yi disappear on the way back.

The directors stared at him for a while.

After some time, one of them said, “You didn’t keep your assistant on a tight leash, Mr. Luo. Of course you need to take responsibility for this.”

Mr. Luo said nothing to that.

One of the other directors said, “It doesn’t matter who is responsible for this. We should focus on how to solve this problem. Mr. Luo, let me ask you, if the company faces a foreseeable attack from armed forces, how long can the External Operations Department hold them off?”

Mr. Luo had thought about this before and answered, “Yangzhi City couldn’t possibly win against us with the armed forces it currently has.

“But on the way back, I learned that none of Martial Valor University’s university board members returned. The Resolution Department members from Central City might have already arrived. I don’t know how many of them are here and who they are, so it’s hard for me to make an accurate prediction.

“However, as long as they don’t mobilize the army and we focus on defending the company, we should have no problems lasting for a month.”

“Is that a conservative estimate or an optimistic estimate? We need a concrete answer with a detailed analysis provided by data and a full report.”

Mr. Luo could only answer honestly. “That’s my personal, optimistic estimate. I’ll be investigating this later and will submit a report once I’m done, but the railway isn’t fixed yet, so it’ll be difficult for Yangzhi City to mobilize their army within a short period of time. We have time to make arrangements.”

“You mentioned the Resolution Department from Central City coming over. What if we throw in the combat bio-weapons we just bought? Will that be enough to fend them off? If we activate them, will they be enough to destroy Yangzhi City’s current combat forces?” another director asked.

Mr. Luo considered it carefully before saying, “Perhaps, but I don’t suggest using our combat bio-weapons. I’m sure that Azure Floodworks, Enclosed Shore, and the other companies waiting to attack us also have those bio-weapons. If we use them first, we’ll be revealing our hand, and they’ll set up countermeasures against us. It’s not a good choice.”

“What if we make use of the arrangements we’ve set up in Yangzhi City?”

“The Cult Investigation Bureau has been watching us closely. Lei Guangcheng is a veteran in ritual practices and a difficult opponent. Over the past few months, he has tracked down and dismantled many of the arrangements we’ve spent years setting up, and many cultists have been arrested. There’s no time to repair them now,” Mr. Luo answered with a shake of his head.

“What about the resistance group we’ve been sponsoring? Where are they now? Can we make use of them?”

“Those people are only good at destroying things,” one of the directors disagreed with the idea.

“No. They’re useful. They’ve helped us kill plenty of people in our way in the past. Now, they can help us hold back the Constabulary. At the very least, they’re better than nothing.”

The director who spoke then turned to Mr. Luo and said, “You’re not allowed to leave the company for the time being. You’re in full charge of the company’s defenses against external threats. You may leave now.”

Mr. Luo gave a nod to the directors and left.

The directors continued their discussion.

“We can try to convince Azure Floodworks to back down in exchange for ten years’ worth of research data. They should be interested in it.”

“The chances of that happening aren’t good. You know exactly what they want.”

“We’re already in control of several key waterways. What if...”

“It’s useless. Remember the leak of the headquarters’ data a while ago? I believe that they’ve started researching an antidote. Even if they haven’t come up with an antidote that has reached the standard for release to the public, we’ll still only be able to kill tens of thousands of people. That number is so low that it is practically meaningless. They can afford to lose that many.”

The directors continued their discussion for a little while longer. Once they were certain that they wouldn’t be able to turn back the tides while facing attacks from multiple forces of power, one of them suggested, “Since we can’t defend the branch company in Yangzhi City, for the sake of protecting the company’s results, I suggest activating Emergency Protocol Three.”

“Agreed.”

“I second that.”

“Same.”

***

Chen Chuan went back home and started reading through the documents Mr. Cao gave him.

They had some basic information on Black Orchid Co. It was publicly known in Central City, but outside, only certain professionals had the connections to get it.

Black Orchid Co.’s founder, Sun Shang, had entered a sleeping pod and had drugs injected into his system to go into deep sleep when he was near the end of his life.

The current CEO of Black Orchid Co. was his grandson, Sun Shu, and he was already eighty-eight years old, but his photo was that of a man who appeared just under forty. He looked just like a young adult transitioning to a middle-aged man.

After observing him a little, Chen Chuan continued reading.

Over the past fifty years, Black Orchid Co.’s headquarters were attacked thrice. The first was forty-three years ago. Since it was far too long ago, many of the people involved back then were no longer around, resulting in gaps in the records and certain incidents unclear. The second was fourteen years ago. It had been a small-scale explosion, so there wasn’t any need to talk about it in detail.

The most recent one was four years ago. An unidentified armed force broke into the headquarters, and it was believed that Black Orchid Co. had lost many research and development secrets.

The incident led to Black Orchid Co. changing its business tactics. It placed its focus on its branch companies, especially the one in Yangzhi City. This branch company could be considered its second headquarters.

While the other companies were increasing their research and development of combat-based implants and had their own areas of expertise, Black Orchid Co. was pretty lackluster. Even though they had poured in a lot of funds into research and development, their results were less than acceptable.

It wasn’t as if they didn’t have their strengths. The company’s cosmetics and epidermis implants were the best in the market, to the point where they left everyone else in the dust.

But in the current day and age, all companies and major corporations had their own armed forces. Possession of combat-based implants was vital for a company to be in control of its own survival.

In order to maintain their combat force, Black Orchid Co. bought large amounts of combat-based implants and combat bio-weapons from other companies every year.

They had even hired R&D teams from other companies to custom-make an armed force known as the Blood Ink Guards. Those chosen for the team were all martial artists who had gone through a strict selection process. They were given the best combat-based implants in the market and were equipped with all sorts of protective gear and custom-made weapons.

The information stated that there could be three squads of Blood Ink Guards in Yangzhi City, which meant ninety of such guards. The assessment of their combat strength was that they could slaughter a traditional battalion of up to two thousand soldiers within half an hour.

Aside from this, Black Orchid Co. had also bought a large number of combat praying mantises from Compound Eyes in batches. Based on the orders, they should have around five hundred combat praying mantises, but it was unlikely that Black Orchid Co. had received their full order already, so the exact number they had wasn’t known.

Chen Chuan’s expression turned grim. He had witnessed the might of the combat praying mantises. They were incredibly strong. As bio-weapons that could move at lightning speed, fly, and coordinate attacks with other combat praying mantises, they would be really tough to handle once five hundred of them gathered.

But since the government knew about them, it had to have prepared a strategy to deal with them.

At the very end was an introduction of the important people in Black Orchid Co, such as Luo Qi, the director of the External Operations Department. He was a martial artist at the Third Limit with few implants. This made him an even more difficult opponent, because it meant that he had a strong will and was confident in his own fighting strength.

The next two they needed to pay attention to were Han Jian and Cui Hong, the security supervisor and vice security supervisor. They were in charge of internal security within the branch company in Yangzhi City.

Han Jian’s information was unknown, and the name itself seemed to be fake. He had also never shown his face in public before.

As for Cui Hong, he was a Martial Valor University graduate. Chen Chuan remembered the Mutual Aid Group saying that they had recommended him for the position, but their contribution in him getting the position should have been an exaggeration. If he had gotten to work at Black Orchid Co. based solely on the Mutual Aid Group’s recommendation, he would have only been assigned a token role. That not being the case implied that he was actually strong.

As for the other managers and directors, most of them had combat-based implants. While they looked like they could fight, they weren’t martial artists, so Chen Chuan had reason to doubt their fighting abilities.

He pondered over his situation. Mr. Cao had told him to wait for orders, so he didn’t know who he would have to fight. But this should be a group operation, not an individual fight, which meant that he only needed to pay special attention to the elite fighters of Black Orchid Co. He decided to memorize all the people mentioned and be fully prepared for them.