Chapter 1851 - Waiting, and Cobra’s Huge Ruckus

So, a certain person’s foolish appearance was a complete ploy. Natasha only just realized this, and had even willingly let him take an ‘agent fee.’

D*mn it, none of Batman’s friends were good! The female agent cursed inwardly.

What followed were busy and full days of ‘undercover reconnaissance,’ which were more comfortable and fulfilling than any similar operations Natasha had been on before.

The two of them took turns going out to scout for four hours. They then spent eight hours training, analyzing the intelligence, and planning the operation. The remaining eight hours were for sleep and leisure.

Even when they were inside the ice house, there was an A.I. program to help check the surveillance equipment that had been set up and to monitor the base.

They didn’t need to sleep in the snow, eat poorly, or freeze their butts off when they needed to use the toilet.

What surprised and delighted Natasha even more was that she actually had good talent overall in the Chi Refining Technique.

In comparison, Robert was worse, Catherine was ordinary, Claire and Selina were excellent, and Luke’s little sister, Cindy, was the best.

As for Natasha herself, she had a good constitution to begin with, and could convert a huge amount of chi.

She was suspicious by nature and quick-thinking as an agent, which was inherently disadvantageous when it came to maintaining concentration.

But the resistance to interrogation which she had cultivated in the Red Room enabled her to fall into a self-hypnotic state very quickly.

Lastly, her sensitivity to chi was neither good nor bad.

But with Luke, who had been cultivating for a few years, to guide her, it wasn’t hard for her to enter that cultivation state which couldn’t be described with just words.

In this regard, she was much luckier than Robert.

After all, Robert was a man, and Luke’s Hypnosis ability hadn’t been strong enough back then.

Luke actually wasn’t too busy.

Since White Wolf had said that he would give 10% of his gains to Natasha for free, he naturally had to give her a chance to show some initiative.

If he had to do everything, Natasha would probably only get a basic amount of the spoils.

…

One day after arriving at the North Pole, Luke’s ‘Trailblazer’ drones had dug into the base and opened a connection to Luke.

His daily field reconnaissance mainly involved tapping into the base’s database via a cable.

The Trailblazer drones patrolled the base every day and sent back intelligence via the data cable.

Luke didn’t use wireless communication because this place was too ‘clean.’

The base was the only location to have wireless communication in a range of 100 kilometers.

Based on the analysis of the intelligence, this Cobra base had quite a bit of illegal tech.

He didn’t dare bet on Cobra’s surveillance team ignoring the fact that several unknown signal sources had suddenly appeared around the base.

On top of that, there were more than 300 guards in this base, all of whom were the soldiers in metal masks that they had seen before.

These guards were emotionless. They didn’t do anything other than follow the orders of the base’s leaders.

This… was too good for Luke.

1

If there were too many smart people, the value of this base would conversely drop.

Luke had already decided to do his best to soundlessly swallow up the entire base.

If he wanted to achieve this goal, he couldn’t be hasty.

If anything happened, ‘his’ base might be damaged.

…

It was a long wait, but with the specially trained female agent around, Luke wasn’t bored.

Natasha was even more satisfied.

After learning the basics of the Chi Refining Technique, she indeed felt pretty good.

At the very least, it instantly improved her skin condition.

Things like lack of energy, a sore back and leg cramps were nothing.

She felt that she could kill a bull with one punch.

Luke didn’t lose out either.

The credit points were nothing to him. The five-figure debt which the female agent owed was just a means of supervising her efforts – it absolutely wasn’t labor exploitation.

Watching Natasha cultivate was also a delight.

After teaching her the basics, he basically no longer gave personal demonstrations, and just gave pointers now and then.

Most of the time, he sat leisurely on the couch and watched her perform all sorts of extreme positions on the yoga mat to stimulate her body and circulate chi.

…

It was the end of September.

Luke had collected most of the key data from the base, and an opportunity had finally come.

Cobra hadn’t been resting on its laurels all this time. Instead, it had been causing a huge ruckus.

The Eiffel Tower? That was just the appetizer.

Cobra used what happened with the Eiffel Tower to threaten China, America and the European Union; if they didn’t hand over certain supplies to the tune of 100 billion USD, the remaining three warheads would be dropped on an important city in each region.

1

This was an unprecedented request that was immediately rejected.

But the remnants of the Eiffel Tower was clear for all to see, and NATO also had information on the nanomite warheads.

This was something that Europe and America had produced.

In fact, the warheads didn’t belong to MARS Industries, but to NATO.

All the researchers and key data on this project had always been under the direct control of several important NATO members.

James McCullen, the CEO of Mars Industries, only existed as the manager of the development division

Just like how the United States president didn’t have the right to ask a big company to give him its core technology, McCullen couldn’t touch the technology, let alone make his own warheads.

That was why McCullen had tipped off Cobra to steal the warheads.

He might be a co-conspirator, but the key was that he couldn’t make the warheads.

Nevertheless, he was very ruthless.

When the nanomites were being developed, he had emphasized results, so that the developers would focus on damage output.

The only countermeasure that existed was the control device that had been sent along with the warheads.

This control device was similar to a missile launch code; it could only be set up during production to be used in conjunction with the warheads.

Even if NATO produced another control device, it wouldn’t be able to control the three stolen warheads.

NATO had collaborated with a few countries to jointly develop the nanomite warhead as a deterrent that would be a ‘cleaner and safer’ weapon than a nuclear weapon.

Even if it fell into the hands of some other country, it would act as a deterrent more than anything else.

But what was embarrassing was that such a lethal weapon had somehow fallen into the hands of a terrorist organization.

The other party could threaten them without any qualms, but they couldn’t do the same, because nobody knew where Cobra was.

China, America and the European Union carried out many high-level negotiations for a month and came into contact with Cobra several times, but they couldn’t reach a compromise.

For these big countries, the supplies worth 100 billion dollars wasn’t the issue.

If they gave in to the terrorists this time, the other party would get greedy.

As long as Cobra still had the warheads, a second and third round of extortion would be inevitable.

Thus, the nations’ condition was that Cobra had to hand over the three nanomite warheads. Otherwise, the countries would rather gamble than pay a ‘protection fee.’

Cobra wasn’t stupid.

If it did that, who knew what the other party would do during the transaction.

Only by holding onto the warheads could they make the countries antsy.

In fact, Luke knew what Cobra’s real plan was.

They would launch the three warheads at the same time as they obtained the supplies, directly destroying three of the world’s top cities and creating huge panic and chaos.

The main point wasn’t how many supplies it could get from the other countries – Cobra’s goal was to create chaos.