30: Chapter 30: The Hydropower Black Hole Appears, and the Silencing Chain Emerges

Edward's tone was very calm, but this calmness itself showed that he was not letting Musk control the conversation.

"I've searched all over."

"From the Energy Management Commission to the Senate Appropriations Committee, from the Nevada Public Utilities Commission to the Las Vegas Hydropower Joint Dispatch Center."

"Everyone's answer is the same—the data is fine, you misread it, and there are corresponding supplementary records for these deficits later on."

"But when you ask to see those so-called supplementary records..." He paused. "The files are gone."

"Either they're lost, or they're classified and cannot be disclosed, or this department says the data is with that department, and that department says it's another department's business."

"After going in a circle, you're right back where you started."

"And that data black hole is still a black hole."

After he finished speaking, he did not extrapolate further.

Instead, he took a thin manila envelope out of his briefcase and placed it on his lap, not handing it over immediately.

He just let it sit there, as if waiting for Musk to make a decision.

Musk's gaze lingered on the envelope for a moment, then he looked at Edward, and then back at the envelope.

The sea breeze suddenly grew stronger, blowing a few seagulls circling above the old lighthouse off course.

Holding his coffee cup, he took the last sip, set the cup down on the stone railing, walked forward a few steps to Edward, and took the envelope from Edward's hand.

He didn't sit down when he opened the envelope. Instead, he stood right there in front of Edward, pulling the contents out and looking through them page by page.

The first page was Frank Gall's biographical information—

A highly detailed dossier containing all of Gore's public records on the Hoover Dam project, along with a complete timeline of his post-retirement alcoholism, his public remarks targeting "the big shots upstairs," and his sudden death from a heart attack in 1946.

On it, several key time nodes were marked in red pen by Edward's staff:

1931, dam construction began; 1936, completed; 1944, Gore cursed out "big shots" outside a bar; 1946, Gore died of a sudden heart attack.

The second page was Burton Cramer's information—

Owner of the West Coast Observer.

His newspaper's financial status, his in-depth exclusive interview with Gore, his plans to launch the report as a "series,"

the police report records of how he went from ambitious to mentally unstable within seven days, and all the official records of his death from jumping off the roof of his own newspaper building.

This page was also marked in red pen: the sentence Kramer said at the police station, "I will take that secret to my grave and never speak of it," was circled.

The third page was information on the missing journalist—

A very thin sheet of paper, because that was all the searchable information combined.

The journalist's name, his tenure at the West Coast Observer, his byline on the Gore reports, and the subsequent cold police record: "Missing Persons Registry."

Musk didn't say a word while looking at these materials.

He read extremely fast,

a skill he had honed during his startup days in Silicon Valley, allowing him to catch the most core logical loopholes in dozens of pages of business plans within minutes.

His gaze lingered on each page for no more than thirty seconds,

but when he finished the last page, he did not put the documents back into the envelope.

Instead, he flipped back to the page of Kramer's police report, paused there, and stared for a few more seconds.

Then, he quietly uttered three words.

"Abnormal."

He closed the documents, but instead of handing them back to Edward, he kept them in his hand, turned around, walked back a few paces, and then came back again.

He stood before Edward once more. In his bloodshot eyes, tired from staying up late, all the previous banter and scrutiny had completely vanished.

Replaced by a pure, sharp, and cold gaze that belonged to an engineer.

His expression made one thing clear—he didn't need Edward to explain anything further.

With the data of Gore, Kramer, and the missing journalist laid out together, he could already see that none of these were normal deaths.

These were three nodes on a silencing chain that had been covered up for nearly eighty years,

with each node tied to the same invisible fuse,

and the other end of that fuse was the secret project beneath the Hoover Dam that had consumed fifty years of hydropower resources.

This was by no means ordinary political corruption, some undisclosed military nuclear facility, or some secret Federal Government supercomputing center.

Corruption didn't require silencing, and nuclear facilities or supercomputing centers needed it even less.

There was only one kind of project that required silencing—

one whose very existence was top secret, and anyone who leaked its existence had to vanish completely from the face of the earth.

Looking at Musk's expression, a faint smile appeared at the corner of Edward's mouth.

He took the materials back from Musk, put them back into the envelope, and then took another item out of his briefcase—

a tablet.

"Mr. Musk,"

Edward said, casting his gaze toward the gleaming silver Starship launch tower in the distance.

In the afternoon sun, the launch tower looked like a giant silver javelin, pointing straight up into the flawlessly blue sky over the Gulf of Mexico.

Nearby, several heavy cranes were slowly rotating their booms, and welding sparks showered down from the keel, shining so brightly in the sunlight that they were almost invisible.

His voice was unhurried, like a casual observation made while looking at a painting,

"What you are doing is a grand plan."

"It can colonize humanity on Mars, make humanity a multi-planetary species, and upgrade human civilization from a single-planet civilization to an interstellar one."

"That is magnificent..."

He withdrew his gaze from the launch tower and looked at Musk.

His voice suddenly changed, no longer carrying the casual political banter from before, but a deeper, inexplicably bitter sincerity.

"...But what does any of this have to do with me?"

"Or rather, what does it have to do with someone like me?"

Musk rested one hand on the mottled stone railing beside him and tilted his head slightly.

He could sense that the other man wasn't being sarcastic, but was stating some plain truth.

He stared intently at Edward's face, waiting for his explanation.

"To tech people like you, the goal is civilization, the species, the progress and upgrade of humanity as a whole."

Edward's voice was unhurried, as if he were delivering a conclusion he had pondered for a long time,

"But people like me, from a political family that has been rooted in Nevada for over a century, what we want isn't the starry sky or civilization."

"What we want is legacy and stability."

"Or rather, a legacy of hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of years."

When he spoke the words "a legacy of tens of thousands of years," he deliberately slowed his pace, letting each word linger a fraction longer in the sea breeze.

Then he smiled slightly,

a small but deep smile that held all the eternal, unyielding rules of the ancient political machine that Musk was so unaccustomed to.

"Just like the slogan that the emperors of ancient Dragon Nation most often had people shout. You should have heard of it."

Musk leaned against the stone wall of the lighthouse, crossing his arms over his chest.

The posture seemed relaxed, but anyone who knew him would know he was thinking with all his might.

He frowned and asked, "What slogan?"

Edward turned his face, looking directly into Musk's eyes.

He said softly,

"Long live, long live, long live the Emperor."