Even recalling this moment from many years later, Xiao Hong would not forget what happened that day.
Less than half a minute after he yelled out the phrase “I would rather die than be stripped of freedom”, he raised his hands without hesitation. He looked at the person who walked past the corpses.
“Don’t! Don’t shoot! I surrender, I surrender! I will give you whatever you want! Don’t kill me!”
After looking at the corpse on the ground, Wang Peng moved the muzzle slightly. He aimed at Xiao Hong and Gao Ruiming and said in a cold voice, “Hand over Academician Lu.”
“Academician Lu?”
“Don’t play dumb with me.”
His muzzle moved down an inch, and Wang Peng squeezed the trigger impatiently.
Hearing the bang of the gun, Xiao Hong looked at the concrete shards splashing on the edge of his pants. He flinched in fear and shouted in panic.
“F*ck! Play dumb? I also want to know where that guy went! Wait, who are you? You are definitely not from the Pan-Asian Cooperation… Academician Lu should have been transferred away by them already. Gladstone! It’s you! It’s you, right! I know you cultists are not trustworthy!”
Seeing Xiao Hong becoming crazy, Wang Peng frowned slightly.
Gladstone?
The name sounds familiar…
If he remembered correctly, wasn’t this guy just an ordinary entrepreneur? He was the manager of the Alpha Centauri Colonial Exploration Fund who was currently raising funds for the “Noah’s Ark” project.
Wait a minute…
Cultist?
Could it be that…
A possibility suddenly emerged in Wang Peng’s mind.
Although it was a bit far-fetched, it was not completely impossible…
“You mean the well-known Alpha Centauri exploration foundation is a product of The Spirit of The Universe Foundation?” The gun was aimed at Xiao Hong’s forehead again. Wang Peng continued in an interrogating tone, “And Gladstone is their puppet? Or is he a leader of The Spirit of The Universe Foundation?”
“Ha, why are you still pretending?” Xiao Hong looked at Wang Peng coldly as he spoke like a poisonous snake. “You know better than anyone else what he did—”
“I’m interrogating you, you’re not the one asking me.” Wang Peng continued while looking at him with cold eyes, “I advise you to answer this question properly. This is related to whether you can get a chance to reduce your sentence in court.”
Looking at the muzzle of the gun, Xiao Hong felt that all his courage had been emptied.
Although he also had a lot of confusion in his mind, the impatient look on the face of the person in front of him made him afraid to speak a single word of nonsense.
Slowly, he squeezed a word from his throat.
“I said…”
Seeing Wang Peng’s gaze indicating him to continue, he tried to calm the tremor in his voice as he spoke.
“Last month… Gladstone found me and asked me to approve his Noah’s Ark plan. When I first got the plan, my first reaction was ‘what the hell are they doing?’, but I suddenly thought that building such a large starship could help the shipbuilding industry in Tiangong City, and this was an opportunity for us. The warp speed technology that they needed… We wanted it too.
“Then we discussed, and we wanted to first invite Lu Zhou to Tiangong City in the name of academic exchanges, then the town hall would give the Alpha Centauri Colonial Exploration Fund a credit endorsement and use the Pan-Asian Cooperation’s financial policies to issue pre-sale tickets and corporate bonds. But in fact—”
Wang Peng: “In fact, part of this money was transferred to the account of the town hall as a ‘war fund’ for raising military expenses?”
Although he wanted to deny it, this secret couldn’t be hidden any longer.
After hesitating for a while, Xiao Hong finally nodded in embarrassment.
“Yes, just like you saw…”
Wang Peng said coldly, “Taking our money to build guns and fight us. The audacity.”
“It was not my idea…” Xiao Hong whispered. He looked at Gao Ruiming, who was sitting next to him with an awkward smile, and said, “I was only responsible for signing the papers…”
In any case, such a thing had already happened.
The Alpha Centauri Colonial Exploration Fund colluded with the rebels in Tiangong City and also transferred the funds raised for colonizing Proxima Centauri b to the account of Tiangong City town hall. Forget about building a “Noah’s Ark”, the huge fines and management might make this company directly declare bankruptcy.
It was almost predictable. When the truth came out, a financial tsunami would be inevitable…
Wang Peng glanced at the two of them and continued to ask, “Little things put aside for now, so where is Lu Zhou?”
“Lu Zhou… I don’t know, I really don’t know,” Xiao Hong explained as the eyes of the person in front of him became more and more menacing. He continued, “I admit, we are also looking for him! His warp drive engine is the key to our victory! And according to our experts’ guess, there should be a way to interfere with the hyperspace channel. As long as we master the technology to interfere with the hyperspace channel, we can prevent the Pan-Asian fleet from coming…”
Looking at Wang Peng cautiously, Xiao Hong gulped and continued, “Then we went to his room, and he was not in there at all. A few pieces of clothing were missing. Later on, we tried to investigate the surveillance, but ever since he left the hotel, he seemed to have evaporated. Not one frame of surveillance of him was found! We wondered at the time whether you guys knew about our intentions and moved him away in advance.”
Xiao Hong had basically been able to conclude that the person standing in front of him was not a cultist but an agent of the Security Bureau. As for the unidentified armed forces who attacked the town hall, Wang Peng didn’t seem to know them either.
With that said, those people could only be sent by Gladstone…
Thinking of this, Xiao Hong’s face suddenly showed an angry expression. He clenched his jaws and said, “I see! That despicable and shameless villain! Those people are not special forces of the Pan-Asian Cooperation at all, they are killers they sent to murder us! This group of idiots stabbed me in the back! Listen, Academician Lu is not here. If he isn’t protected by your people, he has to be in the hands of the foundation!
“They want to betray us…”
Just as Xiao Hong was cursing, the ceiling of the underground garage suddenly shook from an explosion.
Hearing the intense footsteps and the sporadic gunshots that suddenly started to sound again, a touch of despair appeared on the faces of Xiao Hong and Gao Ruiming.
“It’s over… Everything is over.”
Staring at the ceiling, Gao Ruiming whispered.
For some reason, when he said this, there was a sense of relief in his heart.
It was better to fall into the hands of Pan-Asian Cooperation than to fall into the hands of those cultists.
After working with Gladstone for so many years, he knew everything that guy had done, and he knew how cruel and dirty the methods of those people were.
Lifting his gaze and looking at Wang Peng with a solemn expression, Xiao Hong spoke in a weak voice.
“For this information… How many years is reduced on my sentence?”
“Maybe twenty years, maybe thirty years, the key is to see how big the fish we can catch using the clues you provided.”
Hearing this answer, Xiao Hong gradually breathed a sigh of relief. His tight shoulders also relaxed a little.
Wang Peng smirked disdainfully at this clown as he spoke with a slight mockery in his tone.
“Don’t be happy just yet.
“As for how many centuries your sentence is, that depends on the judge.”
