The Army Marches Out to Finish Off the Conglomerates
Director Wang took off his glasses and wiped the dust off the lenses with a glasses cloth.
"Now is the window of opportunity for the raid. All teams, get ready quickly and assemble at Square Number One at 7:30 tomorrow night!"
After the meeting, outside in the corridor.
Jiang Si and Da Vinci had been waiting there for a long time, pushing two stainless steel carts.
"Come on, line up! One item per person, no one can take more than one!"
Jiang Si is so handsome
Li Ding'an took a battle sword and tested its feel.
Chan Ka-kui wanted to take the second hand to keep as a backup, but Jiang Si slapped his hand away.
"Get out of here! You wretched, spendthrift brat! There's nothing more!"
On the other side.
Da Vinci carried a large gray cloth bag and would grab people in the corridor and stuff things into his arms.
All of them were thermos cups printed with the Double Happiness logo and small medicine bottles with handwritten labels.
Cao Dahua was stuffed with three thermos cups.
"Old Cao, this is a life-saving treasure, you'd better hold on tight."
"A high-pressure gas self-defense thermos; if you encounter someone you can't fight, just unscrew the lid and throw them!"
"It contains concentrated base ingredients from Liuzhou's ten-year-aged snail rice noodles. Even if it doesn't kill the guy by frying, it'll suffocate him with its fumes!"
Cao Dahua was skeptical, but he unscrewed the glass a crack, smelled the rim, and nearly choked while leaning against the wall.
Da Vinci then slapped a few more bottles of pills into Li Hongqi's hand.
"Xiao Li, this is a concentrated tonic pill made from old ginseng. Chew one when you're exhausted, and you'll be back to full of energy."
"But you must remember, don't drink this medicine with Lao Cao's snail rice noodle soup, the two gases will clash in your stomach and intestines and cause diarrhea."
Li Hongqi responded and then handed the medicine bottles to Riptide and Christina behind him.
Sing Sing lit a cigarette, and, deep in thought, went to the square and found a chair to sit down.
The fact that so many people were involved in this raid demonstrates how dangerous it was.
I wonder how many of them will be able to return after this trip...
Lost in thought, Christopher found him.
"Director Zhou, this is a heatstroke prevention medicine for the Yellowstone Crater. Holding it under the tongue will keep you warm for three hours."
Sing Sing suppressed his somewhat downcast mood and cheerfully accepted the medicine box.
"Christopher, when I went through your file earlier, I found that your GPA was a whopping 3.9 when you graduated from high school, with perfect scores in biology and chemistry."
Sing Sing flicked away the lighter.
"Logically speaking, with your academic potential, wouldn't it be so much easier to apply for a full scholarship to medical school?"
Why would anyone insist on jumping into that high-interest loan trap of the Ivy League Student Aid Fund?
Christopher gave a wry smile and sat down next to him.
"Director, scholarships are awarded to those with good academic performance, which is actually one of the biggest misunderstandings about United States education in the world."
The Gambit, who was being chased and beaten by Jacqueline, saw the two of them there and hurriedly fled to avoid the disaster.
"Tell me more? Back when I was a slacker, I thought scholarships at prestigious universities were all about getting high scores on exams!"
"The 3.8 GPA is just a visible threshold posted on the bulletin board for people to see; underneath, it's all about shady dealings."
Christopher's tone revealed a detached, almost absurd understanding of the ways of the world.
"Over there, when assessing a student's excellence, the exam score only accounts for a small part; what truly determines their fate is the postal code of their home address."
"Postal code?"
After receiving his thick bulletproof vest, Cao Dahua leaned over and asked, "What does receiving a scholarship have to do with sending a package?"
"Old Cao, you're an amateur. They're looking at the class background behind the postal code."
Sing Sing exhaled a smoke ring and looked up at the sky.
"A hundred years ago, Old Qian, who wore a tuxedo, lived in that neighborhood; a hundred years later, his great-grandson still lives there."
"Admissions officers can tell whether your grandfather is a sugar daddy just by glancing at the number on the envelope."
Christopher nodded vigorously.
"That's right, the year I filled out the form, I wrote the zip code of a slum, and I was immediately screened out in the initial review."
"Later, I went to the admissions office with my perfect score report to demand an explanation, and the white director there confronted me behind closed doors."
"He was holding his coffee and gave me a cold laugh, saying that if scholarships were really awarded based on exam scores, the scholarship pools of all the top universities in the US would have been monopolized by students from the three East Asian countries plus Vietnam long ago."
Christopher spread his hands, mimicking the director's arrogant tone.
"Especially in China, the students here are all test-taking machines with a merit-based mindset!"
"The test is out of 100, and you all want to get 120. If we only look at test scores, how are those local rich kids who play rugby supposed to compete?"
"The school has a total of one thousand full scholarships, and only about seven percent of them are allocated to Asian students."
"Once the full quota of seventy people arrives, even the geniuses who score perfect marks will all have to go and sign high-interest loans for Ivy League Student Aid Fund!"
Cao Dahua grinned as he listened.
"So, you top students from prestigious universities fell into a trap set by the bookmakers the day you stepped into the school gates?"
"That was a meticulously calculated social purge procedure."
Christopher rubbed his knees with both hands.
Before falling into the Ivy League Fund grant trap, I also thought that as long as I got into medical school, even if I took out some student loans, I could eventually pay them off by earning hundreds of thousands a year as a doctor.
"But I didn't understand at the time that for ordinary people living there, the margin for error is actually zero."
"It all started when the hospital's Personnel Division received that anonymous whistleblower letter from the Ivy League Fund."
"Simply because I awakened Mutant Gene, the hospital suspended my intern qualification that very day, citing medical safety compliance."
"Without the hospital's proof of income, my credit score plummeted within 48 hours."
"The bank's system automatically triggered a risk warning and locked my credit card."
The landlord came to the apartment the next day with a sheriff and posted an eviction notice, giving me 24 hours to get out.
"Without a credit score, I don't even qualify to rent a basement. Once you lose your fixed address, in the eyes of the law and the banking system, I go from a law-abiding citizen to a high-risk homeless person."
"If any legitimate company's background check system scans your social security records and finds that you don't have a fixed zip code and address, even casual jobs like washing dishes or delivering takeout won't hire you!"
Lin Xiaoyu, who had a similar experience, came over and overheard their conversation, and was quite moved.
"The exorbitant compound interest on student loans, the astronomical medical bills, the health insurance tied to employment, and the credit scoring system that can kick you out of society at any time—these four swords hang over the neck of every ordinary person."
"As long as you never get sick, never lose your job, never encounter an accident, and never awaken a special ability that attracts the attention of conglomerates."
"I can barely maintain a semblance of dignity, serving as a cash cow for the Wall Street tycoons for the rest of my life."
"But what if you slip, fall seriously ill, or have your license revoked by a conglomerate..."
"No one in society—the legal, financial, police, gang, and debt collection agencies—will lend you a helping hand."
"They will pounce on you all at once, devouring your last savings, your dignity, and even your marrow and internal organs!"
Christopher's eyes were filled with the relief of surviving a disaster.
"We Mutants are even worse off; we don't even have the freedom to rot in a sewer."
Sing Sing raised his hand and patted Christopher's shoulder forcefully.
"Here, the country is your shield."
"Tomorrow night, our four armies will set off across the ocean to give those guys on the other side a taste of what a physical kill threshold really is!"