101: Chapter 101 Military Bans Blogger Online, Blogger Tortured (Fourth Update)

At the same time, the FBI Moran team and the CIA Heinlein task force, who were retreating in another direction, were also surrounded in a low-lying dry ditch on the west side of the old spillway by a group of light armored vehicles from the 75th Ranger Regiment.

As Moran lay on the ground with his hands behind his head, he turned his head to glance at Heinlein, who was being held down on the ground next to him, and lowered his voice to say:

"Don't you CIA guys brag all day about being the best at running away?"

Heinlein's cheek was pressed against the gravel on the ground, his tone still maintaining the calmness of an intelligence veteran, though his breathing was heavier than usual:

"It only took them forty seconds from driving over to blocking the exit."

"My people don't have wings."

"Neither do yours."

On the other side of the ruins, Colonel Raymond Carter personally led an assault company of the 75th Ranger Regiment and intercepted Diana, Sterling, and Augustus at the entrance of the cracked bedrock ramp on the southern edge of the ruins.

Diana did not wait for the other party to finish their ultimatum before she voluntarily placed her hands behind her head, her movements fluid and calm, as if she were performing a routine task she had already determined would not last long.

Sterling and Augustus, who were behind her, also lay down. As they were being held on the ground and searched by Ranger soldiers, they still gritted their teeth and whispered back and forth behind Diana, saying things like, "This is just a formality; they wouldn't dare not release us given our backgrounds."

Diana did not respond.

She pressed her cheek against the sandy ground, not thinking about when she would be released on bail, but instead continuing to recalculate all the new variables between the Longevity Faction, the Tech Faction, and the Zeta Star royal family, wondering what kind of fission would occur in the Lighthouse Country's political situation in the face of the million-strong Zeta army arriving soon, and where they, who were already tied to the Longevity Faction's pirate ship, could find a glimmer of hope in the cracks.

Hoover Dam Visitor Center, observation deck.

One second before two thousand alien flying saucers poured into the Blue Star atmosphere from the rift in the sky, the number of online viewers in YouTube adventure streamer Jack Cooper's mobile live broadcast room had already exceeded four million.

He held his selfie stick as high as possible, turned the fill light to its brightest setting, and aimed the camera at the wedge-shaped array of flying saucers that blotted out the sky, his voice distorted with excitement.

"Guys, do you see that! This isn't the two groups of silver-gray fleets we saw fighting each other earlier!"

"This is a brand new faction! They're disc-shaped! It's the same style as that suspected experimental aircraft I filmed in the Mexican wilderness before!"

"But there are thousands of them! Their angle of entry into the battlefield is just too perfect!"

"Do you see that! Those green beams went straight through the shields! They went through!"

The live comments were scrolling wildly.

Someone said, "Cooper, you bastard, you've really hit the jackpot this time; you've filmed the end of the world."

Someone said, "Run! The Aliens aren't here to do a live stream; they're here to commit a massacre."

Someone else said, "I'll gift you a rocket, hurry up and crawl into a flying saucer."

Cooper didn't have time to read the comments at all.

When the 200,000-strong fleet turned their guns to encircle and annihilate the alien flying saucers, he was howling, "They're fighting! They've teamed up!"

"They were just fighting each other, and now they're teaming up to fight the Aliens! What does that tell you?"

"It means our human fleet has finally fucking stood up!"

When those few lines of blood-red characters were projected onto the sky by the remaining flying saucers, his voice had completely cracked, "The Fourth Prince!!!"

"Prince Dao Dun!! The Aliens have a Fourth Prince named Prince Dao Dun!! And he was captured by humans!!!"

"Wait... who captured him? Who has the ability to capture an alien prince?!"

At that moment, the volume of comments directly broke through the server's instantaneous load limit of the streaming platform, causing it to freeze for three seconds.

When the feed resumed, Cooper had already stuck his selfie stick into the ground and announced loudly with his hands raised to the sky, "It's confirmed, guys!"

"Prince Dao Dun is actually my good brother! He even asked me to borrow money yesterday!"

"If you guys get my donations to the number one spot on the entire site, I'll leave immediately, go to Zeta Star in person, and live stream what the Fourth Prince, Prince Dao Dun, looks like to everyone!!"

Someone was spamming rockets, saying, "Go find Prince Dao Dun quickly."

Someone kept spamming comments, saying, "Cooper, last time you said you filmed an alien base in Death Valley, but it turned out to be a gas station restroom."

Someone chimed in, "You idiots are still here watching the live stream, the Aliens' million-strong army is about to come and destroy the Earth."

Cooper didn't care at all whether the Earth was destroyed or not.

He stared at the live broadcast background, at the total donation amount that kept jumping up, his eyes shining like two steel coins that had just rolled out of a casino slot machine.

What he wanted was traffic, donations, dollars, and the streamer ranking that would put him at number one on the entire site in the next few days.

Just as he zoomed the focus toward the remaining fleet and the blood-red characters in the sky once again, a cold metal object slammed into the back of his head from the side.

It was a rifle butt.

A heavy rifle butt!

Cooper tilted to the side, a one-inch-long gash was smashed into the edge of his ear, blood flowed down his neck and into his collar, and the selfie stick flew out of his hand.

His phone fell to the ground, lens facing up, perfectly capturing his face as it plummeted from the peak of excitement into terror.

He clutched the back of his head while trying to crawl up, opening his mouth to curse.

Then, he saw who had hit him, his open mouth froze in mid-air, and he didn't dare utter another word.

On the entire visitor center observation deck, everyone, regardless of age or gender, had semi-automatic rifles pointed at their heads by groups of fully armed American soldiers.

Everyone was lying on the ground, nobody crying, nobody shouting, even children were being held by the back of their necks by adults against the stone floor, not daring to make any sound other than sobbing.

The soldiers' figures moved between the muffled sound of returning Apache rotors and the light of their navigation lights, confiscating mobile phones, camera memory cards, and all live streaming equipment one by one.

The scene was extremely quiet, except for the roar of water coming from the dam's spillway in the distance.

A middle-aged officer wearing an army combat uniform, with captain's rank insignia embedded on his shoulder straps, walked up to Cooper.

He looked down at the phone on the ground that was still flashing its fill light, raised his military boot, and stepped on it.

The screen made a crisp cracking sound as it shattered, the fill light flashed twice, and then went out.

The captain ground his sole repeatedly over the fragments, then pulled his foot back, crouched down, and looked directly into Cooper's face, which was gradually turning pale from blood loss.

His voice was not loud, his tone flat, as if he were asking a regular friend to borrow a charging cable, but within that flatness, there was not the slightest room for refusal.

"Did you upload that live stream to the cloud?"

"If so, which cloud?"

"What's the password?"

Cooper covered the wound on the back of his head with his hand, blood seeping out between his fingers.

He bit the bullet and lifted his chin, his voice trembling, but his mouth still refused to yield, "You... you are infringing on my legal rights..."

"You have no legal basis to forcibly demand my personal account password..."

"I have freedom of speech granted by the First Amendment of the Constitution! And the right to remain silent granted by the Fifth Amendment!"

"Oh, rights granted by the Constitution, is that right."

The captain glanced at the few soldiers standing solemnly nearby with rifles, his tone still calm.

He lifted his chin slightly, "Help him sober up."