79: Chapter 79 After the giant beast injection, a single punch shattered the armor.

Adding the 95,000 points remaining after buying the villa, the balance stood at 295,000.

Nearly 300,000—the highest peak since he transmigrated.

Zhang Yi looked at the balance on the system interface twice to make sure the system hadn't miscalculated, then set his coffee cup on the coffee table, clasped his hands behind his head, and sank into the sofa backrest, letting out a sigh of extreme satisfaction.

"300,000. From 2,000 to 300,000—how long has it even been?"

"At this rate of growth, in a few months I could buy a manor with a helipad in Beverly Hills, then hire a few real people to act out The Truman Show in my backyard."

He paused, then shook his head, dismissing the second half of his thought.

"Forget it, I'd have to pay them a salary to act."

"I have androids; they don't cost money."

But when he turned his gaze back to the surveillance feeds on the system interface, the curve of his lips faded slightly.

In the feed, the banquet hall of the Lackland Air Force Base commander was empty.

Chairs were overturned around the tables, the mouth of an empty reagent bottle lay crushed on the main table, and beside three whiskey glasses on the tablecloth, there were still a few uncleaned lipstick smudges and sweat stains.

On another surveillance split-screen, the lights in the underground experimental area of the Starship Base were still on.

Musk and Edward had returned safely and were reviewing the night's data with three core research leads.

Comparing the two screens, Zhang Yi spotted the problem: now Diana had nothing on her side, while Musk and Edward held liquid zero, capable of Limb Regeneration and resurrection on the spot after death.

If the two sides continued to fight, it wouldn't be long before it became a one-sided crushing defeat.

And once Musk unilaterally swallowed up those three military giants under Diana, the conflict would end too quickly to continue harvesting emotional points. Only with a back-and-forth struggle could he, sitting in the god's-eye view, reap a fortune.

One conventional, one unconventional; one high, one low; as one wanes, the other waxes.

He couldn't let the scales tip over just yet.

Zhang Yi opened the system shop and scrolled through the potion category.

liquid zero was for healing and regeneration; he needed a different type of enhancement potion, one that didn't overlap with liquid zero's functions but could create a mutual check-and-balance effect in direct confrontations.

After flipping through three or four pages, his finger stopped on an entry.

[Behemoth Factor (Concentrated) — Price: 10,000 emotional points/vial.]

[Description: Upon injection, it activates rapid proliferation of the musculoskeletal system within approximately 6-8 seconds, stretching the user's height to the three-meter level. Bone density increases by 10-12 times, muscle fiber contractile force increases to 15-18 times that of an average adult male, and surface impact resistance approaches light armor protection levels.]

[Effect lasts for about an hour. Afterward, the user reverts to their original size and enters a fatigue recovery period of equal duration. No permanent side effects.]

The Hulk route: height stretched to three meters, bone density increased over tenfold, skin approaching light armor. A single punch could smash a bulletproof SUV into a tin can.

But the effect only lasted an hour, and then there was an hour of recovery; it wasn't a permanent enhancement.

Good enough.

He placed an order for two vials immediately. 20,000 points were deducted, and two alloy injection tubes containing a deep bronze-colored suspension appeared in his system inventory.

Then, he selected Zhang Long's android card.

This time, Zhang Long was not wearing the ion suppression gloves or the directional traction gloves. Zhang Yi simply opened the deployment interface and dropped Zhang Long directly into the boxwood tea room of Casablanca Manor.

...

Arizona, Scottsdale, Casablanca Manor.

Diana had returned to the manor from San Antonio less than six hours ago.

She sat in a single armchair in her study, still in her clothes, without opening the curtains. She sat alone in the dim light, staring at the row of empty liquid zero reagent bottles she had brought back from the banquet hall—evidence left by Musk and Edward as a show of force. When she left the banquet hall, she had ordered Harlan to collect them all into sealed bags, and she had been staring at them for hours.

From the end of the Hongmen Banquet until now, she had been re-evaluating the entire situation in her mind.

The Tech Faction had given Musk liquid zero, which could allow someone to stand right back up after having their brain pierced by a bullet.

As for the Longevity Faction, Zhang Long had not been heard from since he left the tea room.

She had no way to contact him, no promises of support, and no tangible resources beyond verbal assignments.

If Musk and Edward decided to take the initiative now, the Hopkins Family wouldn't even be able to stall for time.

Sterling Remington and Augustus Knox were right: the three families had bet everything on their elite forces, yet all that remained on the table were three empty tubes and a failed execution.

Just as this thought hadn't fully faded from her mind, the air in the center of the study, half-lit by the dim desk lamp, suddenly rippled silently.

There was no lightning, no arc, and no sound.

Zhang Long just stood before her out of thin air.

He was still wearing the same sharp, dark casual wear, with the same handsome, cold expression.

Diana stood up from her chair, an almost subconscious action. A flash of extremely rare panic crossed her face, but she quickly suppressed it.

She lowered her head slightly and said, "Lord Zhang Long, I did not know you were coming."

Zhang Long glanced at her, not sitting at the tea table, and didn't beat around the bush.

He took two alloy injection tubes with a deep bronze metallic luster from the inside pocket of his casual wear and placed them on the desk in front of her. The tubes were ice-cold, and tiny symbols that did not belong to any human language were etched at the seals.

"Take these."

"Behemoth Factor. Individual enhancement agent."

"After injection, bone density increases over tenfold, muscle strength increases to over tenfold that of an ordinary person, height will grow to around three meters, and surface impact resistance approaches light armor. It lasts for one hour."

"This time in San Antonio, your elite forces were so suppressed by two vials of liquid zero that they didn't even dare to fire their guns. If you keep fighting like this, your three families won't survive the next round."

Diana looked at the two injection tubes shimmering with cold bronze light. Her lips parted slightly, but she couldn't make a sound for a moment.

She had thought Zhang Long would never appear again, and that the Longevity Faction's assessment of the Hopkins Family had been relegated to the "not worth investing in" category after the failure at the Hongmen Banquet.

But what he said now was, "If you keep fighting like this, your three families won't survive the next round." He hadn't given up on them.

The Longevity Faction was still watching her.

She reached out and picked up the two alloy tubes from the table. As her fingers touched the icy, smooth surface of the tubes, a stone that had been hanging in her chest for too long finally sank a bit.

Her vocal cords tightened slightly with emotion: "Lord Zhang Long, I will not let you down again."

Zhang Long didn't answer; he just lowered his eyes to look at the two bronze potions in her hand, as if confirming the delivery.

Then, without waiting for her to speak again, he disappeared into thin air just as he had arrived, without a sound, without any lightning. The air in the study rippled gently and then returned to normal.

Diana stood where she was, gripping the injection tubes in her palms, feeling the weight of the icy alloy sinking from her palms deep into her bones.

She stood there for about ten seconds, then turned and walked out the door.

This time, she knew what she had to do next.

...

Five days later, the underground testing ground of Casablanca Manor.

This testing ground was built in the bedrock forty feet beneath the manor. It was originally a private nuclear fallout shelter built by the Hopkins Family for the Department of Defense during the Cold War, later converted into an all-weather weapons testing ground.

The dome was about sixty feet high, the walls lined with explosion-proof alloy steel plates, and the floor paved with replaceable shock-absorbing target bricks. One end was equipped with a high-frame-rate ballistic photography array and vital sign monitoring terminals.

At this moment, a personal bodyguard of the Hopkins Family stood in the center of the testing ground—a lean, strong young man whose average training scores ranked in the top five of the entire family security echelon.

He stood in the center of the bunker, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his forearm muscles clearly defined under the cold lights.

Diana, Sterling, and Augustus stood on the elevated platform in the observation area.

"This was personally delivered to Casablanca Manor five days ago by Lord Zhang Long of the Longevity Faction."

Diana held up an alloy injection tube shimmering with a deep bronze luster under the cold light of the observation window. "Behemoth Factor."

"After injection, bone density increases over tenfold, strength and body size skyrocket simultaneously, and surface impact resistance approaches light armor standards."

"The effect lasts for one hour—enough time for any elite to cut through all conventional fire nets on the battlefield."

Sterling glanced at the injection tube, his brows pressing together slightly, unnoticeably.

Augustus crossed his arms over his chest, his lips pulled tight, but he did not speak.

Diana raised a hand toward the testing ground. Harlan, standing beside her, handed a Behemoth Factor, already loaded into a sealed injection gun, to the tester below.

Five seconds later, the potion was pushed through the hypodermic needle of the injection gun into the tester's forearm vein.

For the first three seconds, the tester just looked down at the fading injection mark on his arm.

At the fourth second, he suddenly opened his mouth, but made no sound. As his shoulder blades expanded outward, his bones themselves emitted a series of dull structural groans. His back muscles expanded simultaneously, bursting his tactical vest. As his knee and ankle joints stretched, a pulling sound emerged from within the bone marrow cavities.

In less than eight seconds, a muscular man originally six feet tall had expanded to nearly three meters in front of all the observers.

His head was only a few feet from the dome partition, and the muscles piled on his legs forced the bedrock foundation piles beneath the shock-absorbing bricks to emit a dull groan with every step.

The remnants of the deep bronze potion seeped through the venous network of his neck and arms, emitting a faint metallic luster. Then, he threw a full-force punch at an armored test target plate fixed to the side by hydraulic supports.

The alloy armor plate, capable of withstanding direct strafing from a 12.7mm machine gun, exploded from the point of impact. Fragments flew, shattering two shock-absorbing bricks on the wall.

At that moment, Sterling Remington's narrow, long eyes involuntarily widened for an instant.