185: Chapter 184 Arrival in Hong Kong

Cao Xiao looked at Ni Zhen seriously and smiled, "Hearing you say that, I'm starting to regret it. You have so many demands before you've even officially started! What will it be like in the future? How about you just go back where you came from! I can't serve you!"

"Uh! These are all standard benefits. Are you running a sweatshop, trying to make me do hard labor? Although I'm strong, I also eat a lot. Even if I worked overtime twenty-four hours a day, you'd still lose money." Ni Zhen pretended to look pitiful as she looked at Cao Xiao.

"Alright, enough nonsense. The two of them are here, let's get down to business. Xiao Zhang, Xiao Zhou, please sit." Cao Xiao knew Ni Zhen was being difficult on purpose, and he was happy to banter with her to pass the time. Just then, Zhang Qiling and Zhou Qingxuan entered the cubicle.

"Greetings, Chief!" Zhou Qingxuan was a bit reserved and greeted Cao Xiao politely.

"Hello! Xiao Zhang, close the door. Let's get down to business," Cao Xiao said.

"Let me introduce my department first. The department I belong to is called the Huaxia Strategic Inspection Department. You've probably never heard of this strange name and might think I'm lying to you, but this department really exists. First of all, the Supervision Department is a unique, secret organization in Huaxia, directly under the jurisdiction of the National Standing Committee. Apart from the Supreme Leader, no one can interfere with the internal affairs of the Supervision Department, yet it maintains relative independence and is not known to the public; even many high-ranking officials are unaware of its existence."

"The Supervision Department is not a secret department or intelligence agency in the ordinary sense. Except for Ni Zhen, neither of you has come into contact with another magical world—that is the world of Ability Users. Whether you believe it or not, Ability Users really exist in this world; both Ni Zhen and I are one. I'll talk about the nature of our Supervision Department first; you can check the archives yourselves regarding the topic of Ability Users after you join. The duty of our Supervision Department is to monitor and manage Ability Users and handle all supernatural events that occur within the country."

Not only Zhang Qiling and Zhou Qingxuan, but even Ni Zhen, who was a martial artist, was left completely confused. Just as a head full of questions was about to be asked, Cao Xiao spoke again.

"My position in the Supervision Department is the Director of the Huanghe City Supervision Office. The jurisdiction of our Supervision Office is the entire Huanghe City region. Since I have just taken office, the previous members of the Supervision Office have all been transferred away. Now, the Supervision Office only has me as the Director, which is why I invited you to join. Don't look at me with those eyes. Ni Zhen, I'm telling you, you can't escape even if you want to. You are a martial artist and also a member of the Ability User world. If you don't want me to 'concern' myself with your work from time to time, you better honestly join the Supervision Office. Xiao Zhang, Xiao Zhou, don't be afraid. Although you are not Ability Users, you can still become reserve members, and they are non-combat positions, so there won't be any danger in your work."

Ni Zhen was unhappy and opened her mouth to refute, and Zhang Qiling instinctively wanted to refuse, but Cao Xiao didn't give them a chance to speak at all.

"You don't have to worry about salary and benefits. The salary is at least three times more than what you had before. Cars and houses are provided for free. When there are no missions, apart from daily training, you are usually very free. In short, it's one sentence: whether you are willing or not, you are now members of the Supervision Department. Our Supervision Department implements a lifetime system. Unless you retire, die, or are seriously disabled, there is no such thing as resigning. You won't have to worry about not finding a job for the rest of your life. You don't need to express any opinions on this because I have already handled the employment procedures for you. These are your identification documents."

When three red officer ID cards and three mysterious black metal-cased documents were suddenly placed in front of them, the three of them were already stunned. They opened their mouths in unison, but collectively lost the ability to speak, as if they had suddenly experienced a trial of fate. The presiding judge was the devil, and they had lost the right to self-defense and resistance. Now the devil had delivered the verdict to them, letting them accept the foreseeable arrangement of fate. The amount of information contained was so huge that they were at a loss for how to respond.

"Cao Xiao, I want to strangle you! Why did you handle the procedures without our consent? Why is it a lifetime job? Why didn't you tell me beforehand that there was some damn Supervision Department? With my third-rate skills, I dare to manage others? Am I tired of living? Cao Xiao, I'm not done with you!" Ni Zhen stood up abruptly, grabbed Cao Xiao by the neck, and sprayed saliva at him in a rage.

"Cough, cough~ Let go! If you strangle me, you won't get a penny of your salary for the rest of your life! If you happen to kick the bucket one day, I can still give you a pension, so if anyone dies, it'll be you first." Ni Zhen didn't use her full strength, otherwise his neck would have long since turned into noodles. After struggling out of the demon's claws with great difficulty, he caught his breath and said, "Enough nonsense. From today on, the heavy responsibility of maintaining world peace is handed over to you! Next, I will start arranging work."

"Ni Zhen, what you need to do is to recruit at least one hundred elite soldiers from the major military regions across the country for me within half a month. At the lowest, they must be special forces. I will contact the superiors and the leaders of the major military regions to negotiate. I will also give you a secret mission: take this opportunity to dig up some technical soldiers for me. Any type is fine; get as many as you can. I don't care if you use coercion, temptation, trickery, kidnapping, or seduction. In any case, I want to see no less than twenty people after half a month. For every extra person you recruit, I will give you a bonus of ten thousand. But don't try to fool me with just anyone. If I find you are making up the numbers, I will deduct one year of your salary for each one. You just need to get the people to me, and I will solve the subsequent trouble. This is an order! If you don't go, you can sit on the bench for a year and wash everyone's dirty clothes every day!"

"You... you bastard! Fine, I'll go. Just watch me recruit ten thousand people back and eat you poor!" Ni Zhen gritted her teeth, clenched her fists, blue veins bulging on her face, and glared at Cao Xiao indignantly.

"Hehe! Even if you recruit a million people, I can still afford to support them. Xiao Zhang and Xiao Zhou will follow me for the time being!" Cao Xiao replied to Ni Zhen nonchalantly, and said to Zhang Qiling and Zhou Qingxuan, "Xiao Zhang will fly the plane for me and serve as a bodyguard, and Xiao Zhou will act as a flight attendant and my personal assistant. I will have someone send you the weapons and equipment later. Huh? Why aren't you talking? Are you that excited? Calm down, you don't have to be too grateful to me; actually, I've always been a good person!"

Zhang Qiling still didn't speak, just looked at Cao Xiao resentfully, while Zhou Qingxuan's eyes flashed with curiosity and expectation. However, she was a bit shy and reached out to pinch Zhang Qiling next to her. Zhang Qiling shook his head at her distressingly and remained silent.

Cao Xiao was creeped out by them. Since the matter was basically explained, he stood up and said, "Since everyone has no objections, then it's happily decided. You must remember that if you don't want to be plotted against, you cannot reveal a single bit of your identity regarding the Supervision Department. That's it for today. Ni Zhen, there is one million in this card. It is the activity fund prepared for you. If you dare to spend it indiscriminately, I will deduct it from your salary. Xiao Zhang, Xiao Zhou, wait for me at the airport tomorrow morning at ten o'clock. I have already handled your tourist visas. If everything goes well, we will set off tomorrow. That's it, I'll pick up the tab."

After Cao Xiao left, Zhang Qiling pulled away Zhou Qingxuan's hand that was pinching him, and said to her helplessly, "Alright, stop pinching me. You saw it too, our future boss is an extremely shameless bastard, a perverted narcissist. Resisting will have more serious consequences. He has us figured out. This time I dragged you into this, but don't worry, if there is real danger, I will block it in front of you!"

"No, don't you think our new job is very interesting? There really are Ability Users! Not only is the salary high and the benefits good, but we can also come into contact with many magical things that ordinary people can't touch. Just thinking about it makes one excited. I also want to learn Ability User skills, maybe I'll be the one protecting you in the future!" Zhou Qingxuan's face suddenly burst into a pleasantly surprised smile, and she said excitedly.

Zhang Qiling: "...!"

Ni Zhen: "...!"

...

Free from worries, Cao Xiao was very happy at this moment. After leaving the coffee shop, he actually forgot to hail a taxi home and wandered around the streets leisurely until it was almost dark before returning home. When he got home, he found that no one was there. After calling to ask, he learned that today was Saturday, the girls had gone out in the morning and were still playing outside, and his parents had taken little Guoer to Li Dongping's house to visit. Bored at home alone, he simply returned to his room, lay on the bed, and fiddled with the things in his space.

After building the underground base, there was very little metal material left in the space. All the electronic products obtained from the Junhua Trading Company warehouse in South Africa had been disassembled into raw materials and consumed. Moreover, when building today, due to the incomplete types of raw materials, many substitute materials were used, and many high-precision equipment could not be manufactured. Other metals could be replaced by alloy materials, but there was no way to replace the various rare elements indispensable for manufacturing precision equipment. Therefore, the yacht that the Angress Family gave him had not yet completed its upgrade and transformation. In his vision, this yacht would become the most powerful war fortress in the world, equipped with various super-era attack and defense weapons, fearless of threats from missiles, fighter groups, aircraft carrier formations, and submarines. Moreover, it would possess long-range precision nuclear strike capabilities. As long as all its power was revealed, it would be enough to confront the military power of a developed country and deter anyone who harbored ill intentions towards him and his industries, including those powerful Ability User organizations. This would be his trump card and his secret weapon. As a weakling with low combat power and persecution paranoia, one couldn't blame him for becoming a conspiracy theorist.

Rare earth is known as the "industrial vitamin" and is a collective term for 17 special metal elements. It is widely used in everything from aviation missiles to computer chips. Rare elements can be solved as long as a rare earth mine is found. Huaxia used to be the country with the richest rare earth resources in the world, but the total amount of rare earth resources in the world is very limited. Huaxia's economy and technology are developing rapidly, and it is a major consumer of rare earth. Its own consumption growth is very fast, and now even the export volume is decreasing year by year. In the future, there will definitely be a situation of insufficiency. He didn't want to find it from within the country, so he targeted the United States and Japan. The United States is the third-largest country in the world in terms of rare earth reserves, with about 15% of the world's total rare earth reserves. However, the rare earth mines in the United States have long been sealed, and production is zero. They use the imports from Huaxia and other rare earth-producing countries for their own domestic use, and the price is very low, which makes Cao Xiao feel very unbalanced, so he plans to find an opportunity to go to the United States to relax in the near future.

Speaking of Japan's rare earth resources, it makes Cao Xiao even more unhappy, because Japan has no rare earth mine production at all, but the fact is that their rare earth reserves are much larger than most countries, because they have imported at low prices from China for many years and have reserved enough stock for their own country to consume for half a century, and every year they are still constantly importing from Huaxia and dumping them on the seabed near the coast. In addition to importing and hoarding, after Japan imports rare earth from Huaxia, it exports it to third parties, thus becoming a fairly large rare earth exporter in the world. What's even more hateful is that when Huaxia reduces export quotas or increases export prices, they start to make a scene, which is disgusting. It is said that a few years ago, Japan discovered that the deep-sea seabed mud in its exclusive economic zone contained high concentrations of rare earth, and the mud deposit area reached at least thousands of square kilometers, with quite rich rare earth reserves, enough for them to consume for hundreds of years. They were very proud of it. Cao Xiao thought that as a keen spectator, it was necessary for him to calm them down and cool them off.

The yacht modification plan changed, and the agreement with the crew naturally became invalid. Moreover, there were too many black technologies on the modified yacht that could not be exposed to the public. Cao Xiao was not at ease letting people who had not yet gained his trust come into contact with them. Moreover, there was no need for so many crew members after the modification, because at that time the entire yacht would be driven by a primary intelligent automation system. Except for waiters, there was no need for crew to drive. Thinking of this, he immediately called Dapu and asked Dapu to pay double the breach of contract fee to those crew members and terminate the contract with them. However, he let the captain, Daphne, stay behind, and at the same time appointed her as his representative in South Africa to supervise the operation of Tiandu Company and help Hao Linger set up the Dizang Company South Africa branch, and also let Dapu be responsible for observing her from the side.

He was originally prepared to organize the items in his private space, but as soon as he saw those messy things, his sleepiness came up. He closed his eyes and sank into a dream not long after.

...

The next morning, Cao Xiao finally saw his private plane at Xianhe Airport, but he was a little disappointed because its size alone made him unable to be satisfied. Compared with the long-range passenger planes in the airport, it looked very stingy. The interior decoration was less magnificent and more like a bit of a hick. As soon as he entered the cabin, from the glaring golden reflections, he could tell that the rich man who originally ordered this plane must be an out-and-out bumpkin. If it weren't for the fact that the modification would take a long time, Cao Xiao would have wanted to throw it back for modification and repaint it by the way.

The plane had no problems. Zhang Qiling was very professional and reliable in this regard. He flew it into the sky by himself for half an hour and did many high-difficulty maneuvers without any malfunctions. Cao Xiao also checked it inside and out. After confirming that it could take off, he filled it with fuel, took twelve bodyguards and Zhou Qingxuan, and boarded the plane.

At 4:30 in the afternoon, the plane landed on time at Hong Kong International Airport.