Flight

"What wonderful stuff..."

"If we eat this, we might live for a very long time."

"Thinking about it now, those idiots who used to eat mummies were laughable..."

"The question now is, how do we get our hands on the other three Astronauts?"

"It's complicated... That idiot Blackwell went against my instructions and actually handed those three Astronauts over to that fool Vance. They're all in the White House now. It'll be hard for us to act."

"The White House... Then there really is nothing we can do."

"What happened to that CNSA observer? I want to eat him."

"That'll be difficult... He's hiding in the Houston General Consulate now. The consul general is a cunning old fox. We've never managed to infiltrate the place. We can only wait for an opportunity."

"China... Hmph."

"We destroyed them twice. We can destroy them a third time."

"That would be extremely difficult. The attempt during the World Anti-Fascist War failed. Japan wasn't up to the task, and those old bastards have been fighting us for so long. After suffering two devastating setbacks, they've become utterly impenetrable. Unless we use an outside power-but even the United States is no longer up to it... Besides, their technology keeps getting stronger."

"Even the strongest nation meets its end eventually. Be patient..."

"..."

Gao Jian gleaned a great deal of information from these conversations. The most important piece of good news was that Allen, Ron, and Jim were all still alive. They had actually turned up in the White House in the United States.

That allowed Gao Jian to breathe a sigh of relief.

Although the current president had questioned them personally, none of their lives were in danger. From the looks of things, those people lacked the ability to infiltrate the White House. Seen in that light, Blackwell, the [Artemis Moon Landing Program Director] whom Gao Jian had considered a hidden enemy, had actually done something good.

He had overruled everyone else's objections and sent the three men to the president.

Perhaps Gao Jian had misjudged him.

In the end, Robert was the only one who had died here. And it seemed he had approached them of his own accord, gotten into some kind of argument with them, and then been brutally murdered.

As for the "Robert" Gao Jian had just burned alive...

Gao Jian was now certain that he was a humanoid monster that had extracted fragments of Robert's memories. Gao Jian had no idea what to call such a thing. The creature had taken on Robert's exact appearance, possessed some of his memories, and spoke with the same accent.

He could hardly imagine anyone besides himself being able to tell that Robert was a fake.

Even his divine sense had failed to detect anything amiss.

Not even family members who lived with him day in and day out would have noticed, surely.

"Robert" had the same heart and organs as a human, but both his heart and his organs seemed covered by a gray filter. Even his blood was grayish red.

What exactly was this bizarre creature?

And what were those smartly dressed figures holding knives and forks in the memory fragments he had just extracted? Were they really human?

"So you eat people."

Gao Jian slowly clenched his fists.

From this moment on, any human or humanoid life-form whose body contained the spiritual effects of the Hundred Herbs Life-Renewing Pill would be his sworn enemy.

Even at the risk of exposing himself, Gao Jian would hunt them to the ends of the earth and burn their souls, denying them reincarnation for all eternity!

Yet at this very moment, Gao Jian felt utterly lost.

He suddenly felt as though a gray shadow had fallen over the familiar world before him. All the strange things about Earth that he had all but forgotten suddenly surged to the forefront of his mind.

What kind of world had he been living in for the past two years?

How many more creatures like that were out there?

Why had he never heard of them?

They could read memories at will, excise them, and even easily circumvent the Heart-Binding Curse, which was universally considered the hardest curse to deal with back home. What sort of monsters were they?

How many people in human society had been replaced by impostors like that fake Robert?

And what relationship did those human cannibals have with these monsters?

Gao Jian gazed at the lights beneath the night sky, silent for a long time.

Half an hour later, Gao Jian landed the helicopter at a medium-sized airport Elon Musk had purchased.

Many people at the airport came out to greet Gao Jian. By now, he was like a frightened bird, repeatedly scanning the ground crew who came to help him with his divine sense. He found nothing unusual.

But his cursory scan of Robert earlier had revealed nothing unusual either. Gao Jian now faced the same predicament as the consul general in Houston: he could not tell whether the people before him were genuine or impostors.

This severely undermined his sense of security.

After all, divine sense could only examine matter, not peer into thoughts. And the fake Robert's body was almost indistinguishable from a human body, possessing virtually all the expected bodily structures, muscle tissue, bones, and internal organs.

Still, the differences could be detected through close examination. The fake Robert's internal organs had not been fully functioning. Like the centrifuge that simulated vibrations in the SLS rocket's main engine, they had merely been simulating activity, pretending to function.

What had actually made his vocal cords speak and his body move had been Robert's bones and flesh themselves.

That was why that Robert had always given Gao Jian such a strong impression of a corpse.

He repeatedly scanned the ground crew with his divine sense. Only after finding no one with that same corpse-like quality did he manage to relax a little.

"You're Mr. Gao Jian, correct? The boss told us about you in advance. But why are you alone? Where's the pilot?"

After repeatedly confirming that Gao Jian was the only person in the helicopter, the ground crew could not help feeling puzzled.

Where had Cole gone?

Gao Jian suppressed the bitterness in his heart and said, "When that brave helicopter pilot came to pick me up, the FBI had already caught up with us. To buy me time, he set the helicopter to autopilot, and it flew here."

"I see... But don't worry. Our boss will definitely get the pilot out. He's got plenty of money."

The young ground crew member gave him a confident smile.

Clearly, everyone at this airport had complete faith in their boss.

Gao Jian nodded.

After Gao Jian arrived, the ground crew thoughtfully prepared food for him as well. Like a frightened bird, he spent a long time checking it, only eating once he confirmed it contained no highly toxic substances such as potassium cyanide.

The food restored his physical strength, and the small amounts of spiritual power and mental energy he had expended were replenished in moments.

Once he had eaten and drunk his fill, the ground crew guided him aboard a passenger plane.

"Rest assured, our flight has already received clearance from United Airlines. No one will bother us from here on, and Shanghai Pudong International Airport has completed the arrangements to receive us. You might want to get some sleep. It's quite a long journey."

There were six crew members in all. This was a wide-body Airbus with ample fuel, fully capable of crossing the Pacific Ocean.

Gao Jian hesitated for a moment before choosing a seat in first class.

First class was close to the cockpit. If anything unexpected happened, he could at least try to save the crew.

Whatever else happened, he was finally going home.

Too many things troubled him. The environment back home was much safer than here. Although he would inevitably be investigated after returning, that was still better than living here without knowing whether he would survive another day.

He hoped President Vance could keep those three Astronauts safe, and that the consul general could hold firm at the Houston General Consulate.

Gao Jian was also torn over whether to report everything he had seen and heard in exhaustive detail. But from what he could tell now, both the United States government and his own government seemed to be hiding things from the public.

Moreover, this secrecy was so thorough that ordinary people had no way of discovering it. As an aerospace engineer, the people he interacted with every day were also members of society's elite, yet he had noticed nothing in two years. That alone spoke volumes.

I'll go home first.

Gao Jian sighed inwardly.