184: Chapter 184: Two Blue Gloves Standoff, Fleet Called

The Giant Warriors took a step forward simultaneously.

Their heavy footfalls stepped onto the marble floor, and every step caused the crystal chandelier to sway slightly.

Prant took half a step back,

Musk's hand instinctively pressed against the inside of his suit, onto the safety pin of the infrasound grenade,

Edward slightly turned his body toward the fireplace, where there was a secret door leading to the basement.

But the expressions on the three men's faces at that moment were identical:

It was already too late for them.

Suddenly, a bolt of lightning struck vertically from the ceiling of the banquet hall, hitting squarely on the slate floor between Diana and that row of Giant Warriors.

The moment the lightning burst, an invisible repulsive field expanded outward centered on the impact point, blasting away all those three-meter-tall Giant Warriors like autumn leaves sweeping in the wind.

The massive bodies of the Giant Warriors shattered the floor-to-ceiling windows and overturned the sofas,

and the furthest one smashed directly through the partition wall between the banquet hall and the adjacent study.

Brick and wood chips drifted down amid the lingering afterglow of the lightning.

Joshua stood on the scorched and cracked slate floor after the lightning dissipated, with blond hair and blue eyes, wearing a black glove on his left hand and a blue glove on his right hand.

His standing posture was very casual, as if he had suddenly discovered a group of uninvited strangers in his own living room.

Prant slowly released his fingers pressed against the safety pin and let out a long breath.

Edward straightened his body from the side of the fireplace, adjusted his collar, and nodded slightly toward Joshua.

Musk withdrew his hand from the inside of his suit, and the expression on his face switched from the tension of being driven into a corner just now to a uniquely restrained sense of relief, characteristic of an engineer after confirming that all redundant systems had been fully activated.

Diana stood in place without moving, but her fingers involuntarily tightened around the hilt of her lightsaber.

Biden stood half a step behind her, and for the first time, another emotion besides anger and coldness appeared in those aged grey-blue eyes: fear.

He had seen Joshua before, not during that meeting at Casablanca Manor,

but every piece of intelligence regarding Tech Faction officials he received from Madeleine and Sawyer pointed to the same person:

Blond hair and blue eyes, a black glove and a blue glove, able to walk out of lightning and effortlessly swat away hundreds of special forces soldiers with a single wave of his hand.

Meanwhile, the Giant Warriors behind him, who had just struggled to crawl out from the shattered bricks and stones, all subconsciously took a step back the exact moment they saw Joshua.

They were enhanced soldiers injected with the Behemoth Factor, capable of tearing armored vehicles apart with their bare hands,

but last time at the ruins of Hoover Dam, it was these same blue-gloved and black-gloved men who used a single bolt of lightning to strike down all their kind to the ground.

"They are merely a pack of dogs raised by the Longevity Faction, yet their guts are not small, daring to come and kill my people."

Joshua slowly shifted his gaze from those Giant Warriors to Diana and Biden, his tone as flat as if he were evaluating a batch of substandard military supplies,

The blade of Diana's lightsaber trembled extremely slightly in the air.

Her voice remained steady, but there was no longer any room left for maneuver in her phrasing.

"Lord Joshua, we are merely serving our respective masters."

She raised the blade of her lightsaber, and the liquid silver armor layer accelerated its flow under the reflection of that pure white light, clearly having made preparations for battle.

The corners of Joshua's mouth twitched slightly.

He didn't speak again, only slowly raising his right hand wearing the blue glove from his side.

At the exact moment he was about to make a move,

another bolt of thunderous lightning struck vertically from the ceiling of the banquet hall, landing precisely on the slate floor between Diana and Joshua.

The lightning dissipated, and Zhang Long stood right in the middle of the two, dressed in dark casual wear, with a handsome and cold face, wearing a black glove on his left hand and a blue glove on his right hand.

With his back to Diana and facing Joshua, his tone was cold and indifferent, like greeting an old colleague he hadn't seen for a long time but with whom he had never been on bad terms.

"Joshua, what did you just say? Dogs of the Longevity Faction?"

"How do I remember that the blond real estate developer you recently recruited is nothing more than a political broker who sells votes?"

"You exchange votes for Space Jump Gate blueprints over there, while I exchange serums for the execution chain sealing off Earth over here; we are doing the exact same business."

"Neither of us has room to laugh at the other."

Joshua slowly lowered the blue glove from his side, his tone equally cold, but every word was tit for tat.

"At least what I offer is the vast universe, the grand admission ticket to entire new stellar system colonies."

"What is it that you give?"

"What you give is a lifetime membership to the virtual world, making all of humanity put on VR headsets to act as clueless leeks for the rest of their lives protecting that conservative turf of your Longevity Faction."

"Do you call this 'surviving'?"

Zhang Long put his black glove behind his back, and the fingertips of his blue glove lightly brushed against his side, producing a very faint crackling sound of electric arcs.

"Living in an infinitely virtual world, what's wrong with that?"

"The interstellar colonization you want—going to Maoer Star, taking the Space Jump Gate for free, and then what?"

"Joining the Interstellar Expeditionary Force and risking your life to grab territory, how many among those lower-class masses can survive to divide up the promised colonial merit fields?"

"What the Longevity Faction gives them is a path where they can enjoy peace while alive; what the Tech Faction gives them is a path where they can only be inscribed on a collective tombstone after death."

"Heh, do you really think you're the savior?" Joshua said coldly:

"Living for a thousand years hiding in a virtual world is no different from Peking Man shivering in a cave holding a torch."

"Humanity needs the real starry sky, not a bunch of dopamine secretions injected into their cranial nerve endings by the system."

"The real starry sky?" Zhang Long retorted tit for tat,

"The real starry sky you give ordinary people is the warm-up alarm of a Black Hole Bomb and the tactile sensation of a Maoer person's cold weapon piercing their throats."

"The Longevity Faction's virtual world at least won't let them be startled awake in the middle of the night by the battle cries of the Maoer people."

The two men stood on the slate of the banquet hall covered in dense cracks blasted by the previous lightning strike,

and the air between the blue gloves had been preheated by continuously accumulating electric arcs into a slightly distorted scorching halo.

Anyone could tell that if they said one more word, these electric arcs would crash directly into each other.

Prant, Edward, and Musk stood not far behind Joshua, the three of them stepping back a few paces in unison.

Edward and Musk had witnessed firsthand what happened after Zhang Long and Joshua met last time at the ruins of Warehouse 18:

100,000 versus 100,000, Space Fleet locked in mutual slaughter above Hoover Dam.

Diana, Biden, and those Giant Warriors who had just crawled out of the piles of broken bricks stood behind Zhang Long, likewise instinctively stepping back.