Another man in uniform, hearing the middle-aged man in the suit, voiced his dissatisfaction. "Sincerity? I don't see any sincerity at all. All I see are threats and inducements. If they were sincere, would they need to park a fleet over our heads to threaten us?"
"Not attacking us is already their greatest sincerity." The middle-aged man in the suit glanced at the speaker and said expressionlessly, "If it were you, by this point you would probably have made the same decision. With a military advantage, you might even have launched an attack already."
The middle-aged man's words abruptly froze the atmosphere in the conference room, yet no one refuted him. After all, this truly had always been their way of doing things.
The others fell silent, while the middle-aged man continued. "So what do you mean? Resist? Use Paris's battered remnants to resist? Tell me, before a fleet like that, what right do we have to resist? Are three hours a lot? No, not at all. Even if we could assemble forces from elsewhere, they would probably be wiped out before reaching Paris. And of course, we would be wiped out as well."
"Are you saying that, even now, you want to drag countless innocent people across Paris to their deaths with you? Drag us into resisting alongside you, only to be killed? If you want to die, you don't need to take us with you."
After speaking, the middle-aged man sneered at the disgruntled fellow. The man abruptly rose to his feet, slammed both hands onto the conference table, pointed at the middle-aged man in the suit, and cursed, "Traitor! You're a traitor! A cowardly, life-fearing traitor!"
The entire conference room immediately erupted into chaos, with everyone yelling at one another. Yet before long, they split into two