Too Much Attention

In this world, some opponents might move so slowly that you felt you had all the time in the world. But everything else in the world kept moving, even before the things you were focused on had finished their turn.

In the Pandora World, the human city-states were merely the ongoing decline of a former age of glory. They had inherited a deep foundation of industry and social civilization, but in essence, they had made no fundamental changes to adapt to this era.

Before Wei Keng arrived, the ones that had truly adapted to this era were the Gene Colonies of this world.

The downstream area of Zhushui Jiao was the most fertile region. Over the past hundred years, the Gene species here had been replaced by neighboring groups roughly every ten years. Wei Keng's arrival and occupation had also counted as one such change. But that didn't mean the region would no longer face challenges from Gene Colonies elsewhere.

On September 28, while Wei Keng's main focus was still on figuring out how to communicate with the humans of this world, at least three Gene Colonies around him began radiating their genes toward one another.

Before the Pandora Era, Gene species on Earth also normally diverged. For example, the genes of the ancient Chinese cat eventually diverged according to region, producing Yang's Tiger, the Siberian Tiger, the South China Tiger, the Bengal Tiger, the Indochinese Tiger, the North China Tiger, and the XJ Tiger.

After the Pandora Era began, this happened much faster. When one branch of a Gene Colony occupied a region, and the colony's original Mother Branch was wiped out in the competition between species, the loss of its unifying source would lead to territorial disputes between the colony and the Sibling Branches that had diverged from its Mother Branch.

Of course, in the Pandora Era, Gene Colonies could diverge, but they could also merge again!

That was what happened when they sensed a stronger genetic radiation unlike their own.

Wei Keng had always been worried about a "coalition of the surrounding human city-states." In truth, the surrounding Gene Colonies were the ones forming a coalition.

The Tiger Shrimp in the streams and rivers within dozens of kilometers of Wei Keng changed again and again, until at last they became a unified species. Small herbivores in caves and gecko-like creatures crawling through the treetops also began to converge.

Thirty years earlier, an Apostle-level Super Colony had landed in this region of sixty thousand square kilometers. After eliminating the region's ultimate node, the Gene Colonies here had once again begun to unite in this way. Wei Keng hadn't noticed any of it; his attention was still on the human settlements.

September was the production season in Jian City. Black smoke billowed from the iron pipes in the factory district. Dust had gone uncleared from the nearby residential buildings for decades, and aside from a few bright windows, every brick and tile wall was as black as a stove.

This was what a relatively advanced industrial city had looked like in the 1930s and 1940s. Even then, women in bright qipaos and stockings had walked through these dreary, filthy streets.

A few buildings in the gray city remained clean. They were the administrative center, where the city's powerful figures were discussing the latest crisis.

"This is a crisis for our city," Zeng Longmu said.

Nobody made a sound at the meeting. Everyone accepted the City Lord's assessment. But they all knew that this wasn't so much a crisis facing the city as a crisis facing the political faction led by the City Lord.

After all, the person who had "acted rashly" and "failed to think things through" before sending out military forces was the City Lord. If they accepted peace talks from a position of defeat, they would face a serious crisis. So when they reestablished contact with the Wei Keng Group, Jian City had to take a hardline stance. Then they could work things out—things like prisoners, trade, and other matters of exchange.

For politicians at the top, it was acceptable to commit crimes, but not to make mistakes. Crimes could be whitewashed, while a mistake could get you beaten down so badly you'd never recover.

And so Jian City's council unanimously approved a hardline policy toward the "Same-faced People" to the south.

Two days later, a caravan that came to see Wei Keng leaked the confidential decision to him.

They wanted to keep fighting? Wei Keng was frustrated.

This was a headache for many parties at war around the world: the conflict couldn't be brought to an end. He could only send large numbers of scouts northeast and keep Jian City under surveillance.

There was a cost to this. Maintaining one scout at the front required three people to cover preparation, standby, and active duty. Keeping those three people in place now required another five in the rear to support the work. Even though every Wei Keng was versatile, and standby and reserve personnel also held other posts—one person could do three jobs—the burden still added up.

That evening, Wei Keng met with Zeng He and Fang Hong again and laid things out plainly. Whatever happened, he would release them in two months. But the situation between him and Jian City was no longer just about prisoners; they had been drawn into a much deeper struggle.

"Jian City is still using military force against me, trapping us in a deadlock in our dealings. This concerns our bottom line, so I ask you both to consider it from every angle. If the people I deal with can always use force to get what they want, won't they do the same the next time? To be honest, I'm not afraid of fighting. I just hate having to guard against every direction all the time. I'm exhausted. So I have to show them that this won't work on me."

Fang Hong tried to find the words to argue. "I don't think Jian City meant it that way."

"My friend, I'm not trying to argue with you. I'm simply telling you how I view your side right now. I'm taking Jian City very seriously. This is a yes-or-no question. Given the situation, I won't show mercy to anyone who might pose a threat to me. That means I hope you'll stay neutral. I don't want you to make some move that turns you into an enemy I have to shoot—not even—"

Wei Keng glanced at Zeng He and offered her a token of goodwill, revealing his bottom line. "You can leave first if you want."

Then he turned to Fang Hong. "You, whom I'm continuing to detain, must not get involved while I'm dealing with Jian City."

"You don't have to let me go. I'll stay here with him."

The girl smiled at Fang Hong, who stood there looking wooden, then turned serious as she spoke to Wei Keng. "You're much more candid than my uncle for laying everything out so clearly. Thank you. I hope we can still be friends after this conflict ends."

"Of course. Better not to become enemies if we can help it." Then he silently added, If a deep hatred does arise, I'll go to extremes again. And that would be another mistake, wouldn't it?

"Are you really confident in their promise?" Bai Linglu asked. The promise in question was that Zeng He and Fang Hong wouldn't make any trouble as prisoners if Jian City made its move.

"Of course not. I'll still have people watching them."

"Oh." As an overseer, she had a duty to remind Wei Keng of certain risks.

Wei Keng continued, "I said so much when we first met because I wanted to reduce the chance that I'd have to pull the trigger on them."

Bai Linglu pondered his words. She was beginning to realize that her partner paid a great deal of attention to the human society of this world. He did his best to avoid all sorts of trouble instead of "relying on his strength and charging right in."

Was that a strength or a weakness when it came to crossing worlds?

If Wei Keng had to answer, he might have said, "What I'm doing is probably no different from what an ordinary person would choose."

October came, but the cool autumn air had yet to reach South China.

In Jian City, the "Bad Guy March" began.

Standing on a hill eight kilometers outside Jian City, they watched the city. The gates in its three layers of cement walls opened, and a column of troops belching black smoke marched out from the heart of the city.

There were six diesel armored vehicles in the column. They weren't proper military vehicles, of course—just something like tractor engines with sheet metal welded onto them. They clattered and roared so loudly you could hear them from a kilometer away. The column also included more than forty horse carriages, bringing the total to roughly five hundred people. Through his binoculars, Wei Keng spotted what looked like a good number of AK Series automatic rifles among their individual weapons.

If those weapons were well maintained, they could still group their shots tightly within a range of two hundred meters. That meant the troops could use burst fire at that distance to suppress Wei Keng's squad tactics.

When thugs fought, it made little difference whether they had a Da Hei Xing or a long spear. The fighting took place within twenty or thirty meters. But on a battlefield, if one side could deliver accurate, sustained fire from two hundred to four hundred meters and the other couldn't, the weaker side couldn't make any tactical movements. Any company that tried to raise its head would be forced back down by enemy fire, leaving it to watch as the other side flanked it under cover of fire.

That was what had happened in the battle in the Himalayas in '62. Semi-automatic rifles obtained from the Soviet Union had successfully suppressed the Sten Submachine Guns left over from Britain's Second World War supplies. The Sten Submachine Gun had an effective range of only a little over a hundred meters. Beyond that, its shots spread too widely to inflict much damage. The newly made Single-Shot Rifles Wei Keng had issued were forged from Rail Steel, but their rifling was poorly cut, and they fired low-velocity Black Powder rounds. Their range was only about two hundred meters, and their firepower was even worse than that of a Sten Submachine Gun.

Wei Keng couldn't help marveling at the deep foundations the city-states had inherited from the Civilization Era.

The city's old military strongman, Zeng Kaomu, sat in one of the armored vehicles.

This white-bearded old man was famous in the city for his coarse hair and even coarser temper. Now he was leading six Mechanical War Chariots and fifteen medium-sized Mechanical War Beasts, each weighing no more than seven hundred kilograms. He leaned out through the armored vehicle's hatch, looking ahead with his chin raised.

Suddenly, he spotted a sign standing in the road. He raised his binoculars and read its message: "Halt. Armed conflict benefits neither side. Please take all issues back to the negotiating table."

The old man tossed his binoculars to an officer beside him, then laughed heartily to the people around him. "I thought they were so tough. Turns out the moment my Cannon Vehicles roll out, they turn into cowards! Hahaha!" He raised his whip and urged them onward. "I've spent my whole life in the saddle, praying for a soldier's death, and never got my wish. Alas!"

The Old General was in such high spirits that the other military personnel laughed and cheered along, as if defeating the enemy would be as easy as reaching into a bag.

At the old man's signal, the armored vehicle revved up and rumbled forward, crushing the sign Wei Keng had put up just half an hour earlier.

Watching from the hill, the First Brigade couldn't help asking in their mental link, "Can they not read?"

Then Wei Keng saw the old man spit on the broken sign as the vehicle rolled past. He decided, "They can read. They're just arrogant."

But arrogance came at a price.

For Wei Keng, this war was an unexpected overtime round. But they had a Contingency Plan ready before the battle.

Wei Keng: Our main force is equipped with Micro Submachine Guns, which aren't suited to a head-on fight. If the enemy is determined to fight, we won't have the upper hand in an exchange of fire.

The only option is to pick them off with Sniper Rifles along their route and harass them from every possible position. Fire from all directions without worrying about hitting anyone; disrupt as many of their movements as possible. When they fall into disarray, fire a quick mortar barrage, then withdraw at once. Split their armored vehicles from the main force, and wait for an opportunity to destroy them.

Even after the plan had been finalized, Wei Keng remained worried. What if the enemy had Rifle Grenades? What if their resolve far exceeded his expectations and they had excellent combat discipline? If they came under attack, what if they fired a volley of Rifle Grenades at the area where the Sniper Fire came from, pinned down his formation, and launched a counterattack?

Then their harassment from their blocking positions would turn into a limited Encounter Battle.

So they would hide the only Heavy Machine Gun they had on high ground. If the enemy organized a charge, the Heavy Machine Gun would provide cover. Of course, after the troops withdrew, they would ditch its mount and try to carry the gun back with them.

Bai Linglu didn't say a word during Wei Keng's discussion. She really wanted to munch on sunflower seeds.

Back to the present. Twenty seconds after the sign was crushed, the armored vehicles rolled forward without a care, covering another hundred and fifty meters. Suddenly, one of them seemed to hit a Steel Wire tied to a tree stump.

About a second later—

An explosion ripped through the roadside. A piece of metal, compressed by a Shaped Charge, became a high-speed projectile and slammed into the armored vehicle. With a bang, it tore a large hole in the bottom of the homemade vehicle, whose body was pieced together from civilian Steel Plate, and the engine died.

This kind of device was common on roads in the Middle East in the twenty-first century. American mercenaries—"security personnel"—and the US-Equipped Army recruited by the region's puppet governments were often given such a warm welcome.

And now, as the weaker side, Wei Keng had to learn to cook up this dish and serve it to his guests.

The effect of the "meal" was spectacular.

The blast sent the white-bearded old man flying. The force hurled his whole body out through the armored vehicle's hatch, like a plug of pus squeezed out of a pimple.

The Old General was still half alive from the waist up, but a metal jet had blown away his lower half.

After the explosion,

Wei Keng, who always believed in "looking at things through the lens of development," watched the chaos inside the Ambush Circle and abandoned the plan he'd just settled on.

The troops that had been so aggressive moments ago now scattered like ants from a broken nest. They couldn't mount a company-level counterattack; even their squads had fallen apart.

That was it? With the whole force falling apart like a fallen tree scattering the monkeys in its branches, Wei Keng felt they could take a shot at them.

And so the Wei Keng Collective sent the order for an "all-out attack" through the system, by Flag Signaling, and with Signal Flares.

In the dimensional space, Bai Linglu's little hand began moving again as she made a record, and her lips couldn't help curling into a slight pout.