Chapter 479.3: Let's Make A Deal

What Zhao Xiao couldn’t accept, what he couldn’t even believe, was that he had actually been abandoned by the Academy!

Noticing the NPC’s dejected expression, Night Ten, who had overheard the bet, walked up and teased, "Don’t be so down. Look at it from another angle... Maybe the Academy hasn’t really abandoned you."

Zhao Xiao looked up at this annoying guy, not understanding why he was suddenly offering comfort. But he quickly realized he was overthinking it.

Night Ten continued in a mocking tone, "Maybe they just deleted your identity from their database."

"You..." Zhao Xiao gritted his teeth and glared at him, but in the end, he swallowed what he was about to say.

Bullshit...

He reminded himself that sometimes, when living under someone else’s command, he had to lower his head.

Just then, plumes of smoke suddenly rose in the yellow sands in the distance. Seeing the commotion, Zhao Xiao was briefly stunned, then hope lit up in his eyes.

He suddenly remembered that the Golden Lizard Kingdom was a prospective member state of the Scientific Committee, essentially a semi-affiliated vassal of the Academy.

Those people might be reinforcements from the Golden Lizard Kingdom!

Even if those kingdom’s armies fought poorly, they still had numbers on their side. Even if each one only spat once, they could drown these guys.

However, that burst of joy didn’t even last two seconds before truck after truck appeared behind the dust cloud.

It was clearly not the Golden Lizard Kingdom’s army.

And it wasn’t just Zhao Xiao whose hopes sank. The Signal squad that had been trailing behind them this whole time also felt the same pit in their stomachs.

In the rear compartment of the tracked vehicle, Jiang Xuezhou, with her eyes tightly shut, muttered softly, "New Alliance’s reinforcements! There are at least 300... No, maybe 400!"

The medic sitting beside her forced a wry smile. "Was that really necessary?"

Zheng Hao, who had remained silent until now, finally spoke. "They’re not here to deal with us... it’s likely a show of force aimed at the Golden Lizard Kingdom."

The New Alliance couldn’t possibly be unaware of the kingdom’s relationship with the Academy.

Their deployment might have been excessive, but just to bring home one of their pilots, the New Alliance was apparently prepared to confront the Golden Lizard Kingdom.

The thought made Zheng Hao feel conflicted.

From the driver’s seat, Old Song turned to the captain and asked, "What now?"

There was no longer any hope of rescuing those prisoners.

They were basically watching helplessly as those people wandered around under the Academy’s nose and then swaggered their way home.

After a long silence, Zheng Hao finally said, "Report the situation to higher-ups... Wait for instructions."

They had already moved out of range of the signal towers, but they could transmit the report using a drone as a signal relay.

Jiang Xuezhou nodded. Just as she was preparing to deploy the relay drone, her brow furrowed slightly and she pressed a finger to her temple.

"There’s an incoming unknown communication request... It should be from those people."

Zheng Hao immediately responded, "Patch it through to me."

At the same time the order was given, a pale blue holographic screen unfolded in his vision, and a stranger’s face appeared on the other side.

It was Zheng Hao’s first time seeing that man. But when he looked into the man’s eyes, he felt a strange familiarity... It was as if they had locked eyes once before, a few days ago.

"I’m Old White, commander of the Burning Corps," the man in the hologram said.

Zheng Hao stared at him. "What do you want?"

"Nothing much. Just thought it’s a bit unfortunate, your team’s made up of archaeologists, not soldiers. And yet, your superiors sent you to provoke us."

Zheng Hao’s heart sank slightly. It seemed the prisoners had already said something.

But he still didn’t understand why this man contacted him, or why he was revealing those things he learned.

"You contacted me just to mock me?" Zheng Hao frowned.

"I’m not that petty." Old White chuckled. "I heard you’re already out of the Academy’s signal range, so let’s be frank... I’d like to make a trade."

"What kind of trade?"

"We’re quite interested in your vehicle."

Zheng Hao was briefly stunned, then sneered. "Oh? And then?"

"You leave the vehicle, and take the prisoners with you."

Zheng Hao burst out laughing.

Leave it behind?

He admitted that his team wasn’t a match for the soldiers they were facing, just as those elite soldiers might not be a match for their team when it came to dealing with mutants.

But expecting him to just hand over a Reindeer tracked vehicle? That was wishful thinking. Its off-road capability far surpassed those trucks they had.

Anticipating his reaction, Old White smiled and continued, "Don’t be so quick to refuse. I’ll throw in 20 rifles and a truck as well."

Zheng Hao’s face remained cold. "What good are those scraps to me?"

Old White smiled calmly. "Not much. But you’ve tailed us this far... Wouldn’t you like to walk away with something? Don’t you want to win, just once?"

Zheng Hao gave a bitter laugh and said in a low voice, “By ‘win’, you mean we leave behind a tracked vehicle and in exchange get a few E-class prisoners and some rifles?"

"What if I added some tissue samples from Organism X-277, the Mother Body?"

Zheng Hao froze, eyes lighting up with a trace of madness. But he didn’t lose his head, he stared at Old White cautiously. "You’re willing... To give that to us?"

Old White smiled on the hologram and shook the test tube in his hand. Inside floated several fragments of tissue.

"Yes. Our allies authorized me to give you a small sample. After all, Mutant Slime Mold is a common enemy. If you make progress, it helps us too."

Of course, the one who authorized him wasn’t the Enterprise, but the administrator.

And the tissue in the tube wasn’t recently collected, nor was it from Little Feather. It had been extracted from whatever existed in level B6 and flown in with other samples via Enterprise’s aircraft to Oasis No.8.

Still, it would be enough to fool a field researcher.

The Academy would never believe the New Alliance had a domesticated Mother Body it could freely study.

Just look at how crazy things got every year during the Tide in Clearspring City, not even the Post-War Reconstruction Committee could handle those things.

And they were in a desert. There was no Mother Body nearby.

Zheng Hao stared at the test tube and quietly ran a visual recognition program. When the result came back with an 87% match, his breath caught in his throat.

There was no doubt about the authenticity of it!

He had thought he would never be promoted to a Researcher in this lifetime. Retaining his D-class Prospector status already felt like a blessing.

But now, the opportunity had come knocking again...

The gates of the Biological Lab Data Center would open to him. Hundreds of mentors would extend offers. His entire team and their project would be absorbed into a prestigious labs. They would transfer from the dead-end Investigation Department into the endlessly promising Research Department.

As for losing a mere Reindeer vehicle, no one would care. The elites of the Academy would be fighting each other to cover that expense for him.

And most importantly, that was a windfall outside of any mission. No one could take the credit from them!

“... What exactly do you want us to do?”

Old White’s smile deepened. “Very simple. We’ll leave the prisoners, the goods, and a truck at the camp. You send someone to drive the tracked vehicle over, and then bring everyone else away.”

Zheng Hao asked cautiously, “How do I know you won’t go back on your word?”

“We have no reason to. If we wanted to kill you, we would’ve done so. Or do you think we’re not capable?”

Seeing Zheng Hao still hesitating, Old White added, “And I should tell you, though I’ve got authorization from my superiors, this isn’t a deal between the New Alliance and the Academy. This is between the Burning Corps and your Signal Squad. So I hope there’s no tracker or surveillance gear in that vehicle...”

“From your standpoint, you don’t want anyone else to know what happened today either, do you?”

Zheng Hao stayed silent for a long time, then slowly nodded. “Let’s hope you keep your word.”

Old White smiled and nodded. “We will. And I have a feeling... This won’t be the last time we cooperate.”