174: Chapter 174 Black Hole Bomb, Deploying it at the Edge of the Solar System

With a fluent and confident tone that had completely no pauses and zero self-doubt,

amidst extremely natural conversation, he casually pinned the title of "Bo Le" onto Joshua and dismissed the Longevity Faction officials as "blind men picking inferior horses",

making Joshua beam with joy and smoothly securing the Tech Faction's aid eligibility.

This was the sharpness of someone who had been president; no wonder he was able to become president.

After Prant obtained the Tech Faction's aid promised by Joshua, he crossed his hands and placed them on his knees. Although there was not much exaggerated expression on his face, an undisguised layer of confidence had already welled up deep within his eyes.

With the Deep State's Tech Faction backing him up from behind, his chances of winning the election had no choice but to rise.

And once he became president, he would prove to the entire United States:

How incompetent Biden was during his presidential term!

Because no one understood how to be president better than he did!

Joshua looked at Prant, his tone gradually shifting back from the previous appreciation to a business-like calmness.

"The Tech Faction will fully help you run for president next."

"However, after you succeed in your election, you need to follow the instructions of our Tech Faction to do one thing."

Prant lifted his hands from his knees, spread them out on the sofa armrests, and leaned forward slightly. Without speaking, he simply signaled the other party with his gaze to continue.

"After you become president, the Tech Faction will provide you with full technological support and assistance."

"During this period, you must do two things."

"First, build space flying gates."

"Second, fill the entire periphery of the Solar System with ten thousand black hole bombs."

Prant gently curled his fingers that were spread across the sofa armrest.

"Black hole bombs? That kind of thing that can blow up an entire fleet?"

"With the Tech Faction's supporting technology, building space flying gates and black hole bombs is definitely not a problem. You can rest assured about this."

Joshua put his gloves in front of him and casually pointed at the temporarily accessed holographic star map on the old nautical chart table, his movement resembling someone pointing at an already approved engineering checklist.

Then his voice sank slightly, carrying a trace of cold and resolute indifference in his tone,

"The black hole bombs are, of course, meant to deal with Grey Alien."

"Not to mention a million-strong fleet, even if a ten-million-strong fleet comes over and collides with these ten thousand pre-ambushed black hole bombs, they will all turn into nothingness."

Prant withdrew his fingers pressed against the armrest, placed them back on his knees, and fell silent for a very brief moment.

Then he looked straight at Joshua. His tone remained steady, but every single word carried an anxiety that was suppressed to the extreme.

"Black hole bombs can blow a million-strong fleet into complete nothingness, but what about Earth?"

Spreading ten thousand black hole bombs across the entire periphery of the Solar System—the explosion radius of each black hole would probably require at least a dozen light-minutes to fully release, while the radius of the Solar System was only about fifty astronomical units, just a bit over one light-day.

This equation only required middle school mathematics to understand:

The distance between the bomb explosion zone and Earth was far smaller than the bomb's maximum lethal radius.

While Grey Alien' fleet disappeared into the extreme gravitational field of the black hole bombs, Earth would also be pulverized by the full blast wave of the black hole bombs.

"After all ten thousand black hole bombs are detonated..."

Joshua slowly raised his blue-gloved hands from his sides and waved them lightly in the air, as if brushing away a cluster of invisible dust,

"Just a mere Earth, if it's gone, it's gone. What is there to regret?"

"In this vast universe, there are far too many habitable planets like Earth."

"For instance, our Tech Faction has already mastered a complete astronomical database. The third planet of the T Galaxy in the constellation Pavo, located twelve light-years away from Earth, is extremely suitable for human habitation."

"By then, those space flying gates built in advance will teleport humanity over."

"If the Solar System is destroyed, then so be it. Anyway, it's an erroneous spacetime, nothing worth pitying."

After hearing these words, Prant did not respond immediately.

He crossed his hands resting on his knees, pressed his ten fingers against each other, and then quietly leaned back against the back of the chair.

He had always considered himself one of the most cold-blooded businessmen on this planet,

able to sign debt restructuring terms without changing his expression during a casino bankruptcy case, and fly to campaign rallies to give speeches as usual while being simultaneously sued by over twenty female accusers.

But at this moment, what he felt from Joshua's words was not cold-bloodedness, but absolute rationality—

the most concise conclusion seen when overlooking all biological bonds from the perspective of a higher civilization:

if Earth was destroyed, it was destroyed; like many other habitable planets on the table, it had nothing irreplaceable about it.

That extreme rationality, which viewed the mother planet as nothing, was even colder than the Longevity Faction's routine of leaving a backdoor to a virtual world for the lower-class masses.

Edward Warren placed his coffee cup, which had already gone completely cold, next to the sofa armrest and remained silent for a few seconds.

There were some words he did not speak out loud.

Having been a senator for decades, he knew better than anyone else that certain things could not be said in front of Joshua.

But deep in his heart, he had been repeatedly weighing the exact same conclusion:

At least the Longevity Faction still had some regard for the lower-class masses, blockading Earth and giving them a virtual world where they could at least find a world of their own;

The Tech Faction ostensibly built space flying gates for all humanity, but who could go and who could not go to that new planet twelve light-years away would sooner or later have to be tallied;

By that time, the people truly able to walk through that gate would only be a tiny fraction of humanity.

Musk sat beside Edward, gently pressing his right wrist with his left hand, and also did not speak.

The exact same thought was spinning in his head:

The Tech Faction's plan had never included all of humanity in the survival quota from the very beginning.

The capacity of the space flying gates, the time window for transmission, the environmental modification cycle of the target planet...

Every single variable was hinting at the exact same thing:

Pandora's box could only hold very few people, and the rest of humanity could only vanish along with the Solar System.

The three of them—Prant, Edward, and Musk—were sitting in their respective seats at this moment, none of them speaking.

But their expressions were already very clear:

regardless of which faction they came from or what kind of deals they had made before, at this moment, upon learning of this future ending written for humanity by the Tech Faction, each of them carried the exact same heavy sense of helplessness in their chests.

Joshua glanced at them, simply bringing his gloved hands from behind back to the front and tapping them casually.

"There is no need to be so sentimental."

"By then, all of humanity will definitely go to that new planet. The use of the space flying gates is completely free, without charging a single penny."

Edward and Musk raised their heads at the same time.

Prant slowly untied his hands crossed on his knees and then looked at Joshua.

None of the three people present were fools; they were fully aware of the diameter of the noose behind the words "completely free". Free was sometimes much more expensive than paying.