Fu Cheng thought again of the mask Shen Lu had taken out. When she put it on, not only did her face change, but she also grew taller.
His fingers tightened slightly. ’That mask is definitely not something that can be made with current technology.’
He stared at Shen Lu with a burning intensity, leaving her completely baffled.
"Is something wrong?"
"...No." Fu Cheng still couldn’t bring himself to ask. He had already wasted a drop of the True Heart Potion out of curiosity about its effects.
The mask was no less impressive than the True Heart Potion, and Fu Cheng didn’t dare ask Shen Lu to take it out and use it again.
"Looks like we’re safe now." Shen Lu didn’t overthink it. "What do you think the government will do with Gong Tianhua?"
Fu Cheng’s gaze lowered. "I don’t know."
"He did such a terrible thing, shouldn’t he be sentenced?!" Shen Lu was filled with righteous indignation. "To kill so many people for some transformation agent..."
"Little Deer, the government only cares about benefits. Right and wrong come second to that."
"Hmph!" Shen Lu was unconvinced, but she knew Fu Cheng was right.
...
Inside an office at the research institute, Gong Tianhua had lost all his former refinement. His hair was a bird’s nest he had tousled himself. He slapped his head hard a couple of times before a police officer at his side grabbed his arm.
"I really don’t remember!" Gong Tianhua was on the verge of a breakdown. "I don’t remember meeting Gao Weineng or saying those things. After I returned to my office, I was about to make a phone call, and then... and then..."
Every time he tried to recall what happened next, his mind went completely blank.
’This isn’t normal!’
Gong Tianhua had an excellent memory. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to memorize several key data points just by glancing at Ding Min’s research report, allowing him to plagiarize her results and secure the position of deputy director.
The police chief, Fu Yang, pushed the door open and came in. "Take Gong Tianhua to the detention center for now."
The officer immediately complied, and Gong Tianhua panicked.
"The matter isn’t even clear yet! On what grounds are you detaining me?"
Fu Yang’s expression was impassive. "These are orders from above. If you have a problem, take it up with them. Asking me is useless."
In the Base Commander’s office at the government building, two parties sat facing each other.
On the left were government officials led by Zhao Changjiang. On the right were members of the Royal Family, led by the Eldest Prince.
The expressions on both sides were frigid, and the atmosphere had dropped to a freezing point. Even though the office was over 80 square meters, the feeling of suffocation was intense.
Zhao Changjiang looked at the young man before him, took a deep breath, and forced a stiff smile.
"Your Highness, your demands are a bit excessive." He was twenty-some years older than the Eldest Prince, but now he had to plaster on a smile for this brat, which was infuriating. "Gong Tianhua was certainly at fault, but his intentions were good. Besides, isn’t scientific progress just a matter of finding the right path through trial and error?"
"That doesn’t mean you can use the lives of innocent citizens for your trials." The Eldest Prince retorted coolly, his tone laced with an anger that was impossible to ignore. "And I’ve heard the transformation agent project was never approved by Director Gao. In other words, Gong Tianhua’s experiments were unauthorized."
"They’re just some lower-class citizens from the Lower City District. The base has no shortage of people like them. They’re unproductive, just scraping by on government handouts every day. Being able to contribute to scientific progress is the only use they have."
Zhao Changjiang ignored the Eldest Prince’s last point, intent on smoothing things over.
The Eldest Prince may have been young, but he was no fool.
"Whether they live in the Upper City District or the Lower City District, they are all citizens of the Imperial Capital Survival Base. Fundamentally, there is no distinction between high and low class. And please don’t forget, Chairman Zhao, that the establishment of the Imperial Capital Survival Base was the result of millions of people working together. The population of the Upper City District alone could not have achieved it."
"Yes, you’re absolutely right."
’Son of a bitch,’ Zhao Changjiang thought, even as his face showed that he was taking the lesson to heart.
’It’s easy for this kid to talk. All those pretty words... If he really cared so much about the common people, why not dissolve the Royal Family?’
’Every year, the Royal Family takes a quarter of the Imperial Capital Survival Base’s GDP. That’s a huge sum of money!’
But these were things he could only say in his head; he would never dare speak them aloud.
The most important thing now was to get the Eldest Prince to back down and make this Gong Tianhua incident into a small problem, then into nothing at all.
"Therefore, Gong Tianhua must be dealt with severely." The Eldest Prince was indeed young, only twenty-five this year, but he was not easily fooled. "The people trust us. We cannot betray that trust."
"But we also have to consider the government’s image! If we do as Your Highness says—issue a public apology and have Gong Tianhua removed from his post and imprisoned—it will damage the government’s reputation!"
Zhao Changjiang was starting to lose his temper, and his tone grew sharp.
The Royal Family and the government were not a single entity. Their relationship was complex; for the most part, they kept each other in check, maintaining a delicate balance of power.
Because the base was originally established in the name of the Royal Family, and its construction was mostly funded by them, the Royal Family held a transcendent status in the Imperial Capital Survival Base.
However, the Royal Family had little interest in participating in the base’s administration. They left the complicated task of managing the base to the government, only appearing to offer advice on important occasions.
It was called "advice," but it was no different from giving orders.
In the eyes of the Royal Family, the government was little more than their servants.
Well... or perhaps advanced servants?
In the beginning, the government was indeed very respectful of the Royal Family, and the Royals, for their part, preferred not to meddle in mundane affairs, so they rarely interfered with the government.
The two sides got along quite harmoniously. Even when minor frictions arose, they were quickly resolved.
But as time went on and several generations passed for both the government and the Royal Family, people’s attitudes naturally changed.
Now, the government resented the Royal Family’s arrogance, while the Royal Family, sensing the government’s attempts at insubordination, was greatly annoyed.
And right at this moment of feigned peace, the Gong Tianhua affair erupted. The government wanted to bail him out, while the Royal Family wanted to seize the opportunity to reinforce its standing among the people and weaken the government’s image.
"Hasn’t it already been damaged?" the Eldest Prince shot back coolly. "Besides, you still haven’t found the person behind all this. Heh. Didn’t you claim your security network was so safe? I don’t think so."
Zhao Changjiang seethed.
’That just made him even angrier. He knew all too well what those hacks in the underground research institute were capable of. They could do some research, and that was about it. A grand feat like taking control of every electronic device in the entire Imperial City was far beyond their abilities.’
’And there was no way they had the skill to infiltrate the research institute undetected.’
’Who was it?’
’Who on earth had disrupted his plans?’
’Who had destroyed his hope of taking complete control of the Imperial Capital Survival Base? If he ever found out who it was, he would tear them limb from limb!’