"President Zhang, this..."
You call that a flashlight?
Are you sure?
A tangible question mark practically threatened to sprout from the forehead of the elderly man with the crew cut.
"Is there some special need for developing a flashlight like this?"
Zhang Tianyuan explained, "The monsters transformed from infected people in the other spacetime are extremely afraid of ultraviolet light, so to a certain extent, UV light is more effective at killing them than firearms."
Only then did everyone understand.
So this flashlight really would be useful in another spacetime.
They agreed on the spot, and the meeting then drew to a close.
Normally, everyone should have stayed for a meal with Zhang Tianyuan at the villa, but they had far too much business to handle. Understanding this, Zhang Tianyuan took the initiative to let them leave.
He ate dinner with Bai Xu and the others from next door, including Wu Yisi, who had never appeared before him until then.
Zhang Tianyuan was not surprised by the presence of someone like Wu Yisi. After all, when they met this time, Bai Xu had already mentioned that a psychologist was helping him.
"Have your superiors agreed to let you join the Mutual Aid Society?"
Zhang Tianyuan suddenly looked up from shoveling food into his mouth to ask.
Bai Xu quickly nodded. "They have. Once the official transfer orders come through tomorrow, our entire team can join the Mutual Aid Society."
The champion driver and the machine gunner sitting beside him were the most curious about the arrangements ahead.
The champion driver ventured a question. "I heard we're going into another parallel spacetime with President Zhang next, to conduct diplomacy across spacetimes with the 'us' over there?"
Although everyone spoke Chinese, and even their countries had the same name.
They were, after all, countries in different worlds, so diplomacy was the only term they could use.
Both their superiors and Bai Xu and the others themselves attached great importance to this matter.
There were no small matters in diplomacy, much less diplomacy across spacetimes. Most importantly, this would be the first time!
Zhang Tianyuan glanced at the champion driver. She was petite and delicate-looking; without seeing the powerful muscles in her arms, no one would have thought she could drive an armored tank through a pentagonal hairpin turn.
He remembered that this woman was called Ma Juan, nicknamed Mie Juan.
Her surname meant horse, yet her nickname was a sheep's bleat. Who knew where that had come from...
Zhang Tianyuan swallowed his food and wiped his mouth before saying, "You should have heard that the other spacetime is also an apocalyptic spacetime."
"We know about that
-the virus, and those monsters called Darkseekers." Mie Juan nodded.
"Good. It looks like you've received detailed intelligence."
Zhang Tianyuan said, "If everything goes smoothly and we reach that spacetime before the virus spreads, we'll carry out the diplomatic mission you mentioned."
"But," Zhang Tianyuan stressed, "if we're unlucky and the virus has already wiped out the world by the time we arrive, we'll have to prepare for hard fighting to take the cities back from the Darkseekers."
Everyone put down their bowls and chopsticks and stared intently at Zhang Tianyuan.
"Ahem." Zhang Tianyuan coughed twice. Seeing that everyone had more or less finished eating, he simply began explaining the basic situation in "I Am Legend."
"The KV Virus has roughly a 9.8% chance of turning people into Darkseekers. Another 0.2% are immune, and everyone else dies."
"In other words, after the virus spreads through a city of ten million, it will leave roughly 980,000 extremely aggressive Darkseekers that hide by day and emerge at night like vampires, along with-"
Zhang Tianyuan held up two fingers, narrowing his eyes at them. "A mere twenty thousand survivors."
At this, all five people present involuntarily shuddered.
Although they already knew these figures, hearing Zhang Tianyuan lay out the bloody facts so bluntly in numbers still left them vaguely uncomfortable.
Bai Xu looked worried, while Instructor Yin frowned and clawed at his hair. Mie Juan and the machine gunner clicked their tongues. Only Wu Yisi maintained a calm expression, though her delicate brows had drawn together at an almost imperceptible angle.
Zhang Tianyuan, however, had long since prepared himself mentally. After all, he had once considered charging into this world alone.
Now that he had these people accompanying him, with a large force backing him up, the situation was already very good.
"If we encounter that kind of bad situation, we'll have to fight the Darkseekers to establish a base, gathering survivors while searching for that world's official government..."
Wu Yisi tapped the table lightly and spoke. "Something just occurred to me. Are we immune to the virus? We may come from different worlds, but our bodies should be the same, shouldn't they? The virus should be able to finish us off just as easily."
"What if the virus has already broken out by the time we arrive?"
Zhang Tianyuan gave her an approving look.
"That's right. There's a high chance we'll get infected too, so we must take protective measures before going."
"As for that, I have a way to obtain a method for producing a KV Virus vaccine through somewhat unconventional means."
Wu Yisi leaned forward, her long, straight hair coiling on the table. "What method?"
They could obtain a method for producing a KV Virus vaccine before even entering that spacetime?
Zhang Tianyuan smiled mysteriously. "Perhaps you'll find out in the future, but now isn't the time."
"All right, let's leave it here for today."
Once everyone had left.
Zhang Tianyuan opened his base panel again.
His gaze moved down to the buildings:
[Wishing Machine · 1 (Wishes remaining: 3)]
This building unit ranked alongside the main base and the cloning laboratory as one of the three basic buildings, except that it had no physical form.
Because it was a cheat.
By consuming enough base energy, he could obtain a particular item or technology.
The amount of energy consumed to grant a wish depended on the gap between the wish and the technological level of his territory.
It was meant to let lords break through certain technological bottlenecks.
For example, if he wished for mobile phone manufacturing technology when his territory's technological level had already reached that of 2008, it might cost only a tiny amount of energy.
But if his territory was still in a primitive state, even selling both his kidneys would not give him enough energy points.
Zhang Tianyuan still had energy points.
He decided to give it a try.
"Open the Wishing Machine."
Zhang Tianyuan took a deep breath.
"I want a production method for an inactivated vaccine that can block the KV Virus with one hundred percent effectiveness, along with enough inactivated KV Virus material to manufacture one hundred thousand doses of that vaccine!"
[Cost: Wishes · 2, base energy points. Confirm?]
A flash of wild delight crossed Zhang Tianyuan's face, and he selected no for the time being.
The base energy cost was far lower than he had expected.
After all, his base was still nothing but wilderness. It did not even have an ancient workshop.
Yet producing this modern vaccine actually required fewer than fifty thousand energy points...
"It must be because of the '2012' world. The system may have counted this world as my territory too, so naturally, this world's technological level was credited to my base!"