The Contest at the Sino-Japanese Summer Camp

The convoy that had been welcoming Wei Xiuming and his entourage gradually drove away from the city and into the sparsely populated suburbs.

Surrounded by mountains, there is a simple group of buildings in a mountain basin. The group was only allowed to enter after the lead car of the convoy had its identity verified by the sentry.

They were nominally a group of people, but were assigned to different buildings according to their identities. The building where the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was heavily guarded, with sentries every three steps and sentries every five steps.

As for the group of geophysics experts that the Black Eggplant had scavenged from who-knows-where, although they weren't heavily guarded, their activities were confined to the building where they were staying.

Seeing this scene, the experts, out of a certain arrogance, muttered a few words in private, but judging the situation, they did nothing more than that; in contrast, the agents were much more obedient, not only refraining from moving around and spying, but also staying in their assigned rooms without even opening the curtains.

From the moment they saw the printed page Zheng Xian produced, they understood the whole story. Nick Fury had betrayed their identities long ago; otherwise, a team of disguised agents entering another country's territory could be considered spies, and spies are not protected by the Geneva Convention.

--As for their deliberate disguise, it was actually the United States intelligence agencies that were deceived. The United States has always imposed a technology blockade on this country, prohibiting the exchange of high-end technical personnel. The level of those experts was just so-so; they were not top experts in the industry, at most they were at the upper-middle level. Precisely because they were not the top in the industry, they were not stopped at the airport for questioning or searching their carry-on luggage for technical documents or electronic devices for related literature.

Just like the Gestapo of the Third Reich searched for Jews.

As the only senior technical talent in the team, Wei Xiuming enjoyed a higher level of treatment. However, he did not get out of the car. His luggage was taken care of by others. The car drove around the camp once and then left, heading towards a more remote mountainous area.

The wide, flat road was gradually obscured by the lush canopy of trees on both sides. Although it was daytime, the sunlight was dim, and drivers had to turn on their headlights to see the road conditions clearly. From an aerial view, one would probably not even see the road, as it was extremely well hidden.

The road ended before a tunnel, where heavily armed sentries stopped them.

Zheng Xian and Wei Xiuming then got out of the car, verified their identities, and walked into the tunnel. The road was very long, and in order to avoid making the atmosphere dull, Zheng Xian began to tell Wei Xiuming about the past of the Divine Spear Bureau, but all of that was within the scope of the confidentiality regulations.

"The Divine Spear Bureau has been established for quite some time. Its predecessor was the Wu Hao's Sword Action Department, an intelligence agency responsible for counter-espionage work. Its reorganization occurred in the 1990s." Zheng Xian explained unhurriedly, "Three events occurred in the 1990s that led the country to concentrate its funding and personnel to build it up."

"Besides the disintegration of the CCP, are there other reasons?" Wei Xiuming asked, while expressing dissatisfaction with his intelligence work.

Movies are movies, and the world derived from movies is another world. The two cannot be easily confused. I was too careless.

"The disintegration of a superpower capable of confronting the United States left the United States without any rivals, which is one reason," Zheng Xian continued casually. "And the second reason is a summer camp organized by China and Japan the year after the CCP's collapse."

"A summer camp for grassland exploration was formed, consisting of 77 children from the Island Nation and 30 children from China. The Island Nation's representatives believed that the children, aged 11 to 16, could hike 100 kilometers. However, considering the physical condition of our children, the distance was reduced to 50 kilometers. And this was under the premise of carrying an average load of 20 kilograms—it should be noted that the standard for the best active-duty soldiers in the field is to carry 25 kilograms under normal temperature conditions for 13 hours and 75 kilometers in a long-distance hiking exercise."

Zheng Xian's words reminded Wei Xiuming of an article he had read in his previous life. It was written by a scoundrel who would kneel down and lick the soles of the shoes of Island Nation at the mere sight of them. He never expected that such a thing would happen in another world.

Moreover, the reason that scumbag wrote that article was simply to exaggerate and promote it for his own benefit; his wife is the person in charge of that summer camp, and he's just generating revenue through advertising.

Wei Xiuming asked, "Did the children from the Island Nation really do that? Carrying 20 kilograms of weight and walking 50 kilometers?"

Zheng Xian gently shook his head. "This goal is too unrealistic. Even adults without long-term systematic training might not be able to achieve it, let alone a group of children. With our intervention, the hiking distance has been shortened to nineteen to twenty-one kilometers, and luggage will be transported by horse-drawn carriages. If they feel tired, they can apply to ride in a horse-drawn carriage."

"But in the Island Nation, no one chose to do that. Even the children seemed oblivious to fatigue and pain. Even when they were sick, they would preach things like, 'I won't be a deserter, otherwise I can't face my teachers and parents,' and grit their teeth to finish the whole process."

"The next day, the Japanese leader organized a wilderness expedition, dividing their seventy-seven children into small teams. They then had to navigate the grasslands, where there were no roads, using only old-fashioned compasses and maps to reach their destination."

At this point, Zheng Xian stopped talking.

"Crazy!"

This is Wei Xiuming's assessment of the Island Nation: a group of minors, the oldest of whom are still in middle school, and it's just a summer camp, yet they are being treated like special forces. Wei Xiuming can't think of a better word than "crazy".

"This madness is also a tactical demonstration of our public opinion strategy," Zheng Xian said. "They did that to make us mistakenly believe that developed countries have a very strong ability to nurture the next generation, and that even their children are several times better physically than ours, thus undermining our national self-confidence and making us feel that we have completely lost at the starting line... And I am one of those thirty children."

After a moment's thought, Wei Xiuming came to a conclusion. "Are they using children for human experiments?!"

Zheng Xian said, "In terms of human enhancement technology, the United States is the most advanced. After World War II, they acquired comprehensive technology from the Third Reich and the Island Nation, which allowed them to protect war criminals. Germany and the Island Nation themselves have a large number of people trained through human experimentation and are also skilled in this field. Those children were actually a show of force by the Island Nation to us, supported by the United States. They were trained as soldiers from a young age, and their education was centered around war."

"The intelligence asymmetry allowed us to make the wrong judgment, which is one of the reasons why the Divine Spear Bureau was established."

As the long tunnel neared its end, Wei Xiuming asked, "What's the third reason?"