Chapter 344 - 239: Respective Identities
Chapter 344: Chapter 239: Respective Identities
After Li Xiang returned, he gathered the core members of his team in an office at the scenic area for a small meeting.
The core members here weren’t many—just Yao Yao, Zhao Xueqing, Lei Xiaohui, and Lei Jiaming. As for Luo Feifei, he would inform her in person later.
A video call wasn’t convenient; it would be too easy to leak secrets.
This mission was top-secret, and everyone had to sign the highest-level non-disclosure agreement. During the meeting, the area around the conference room was cleared of all unauthorized personnel.
Even though the heavy snow meant no employees were at work, there were no tourists, and the villagers were unlikely to come by, it was always better to be safe than sorry. So, Li Xiang had the Little Fox, Er Huang, and the three kittens patrol the surroundings on guard duty.
If they detected anything unusual, they were to sound the alarm (by barking wildly).
At this moment, the Spirit Pets were lounging lazily in various corners, looking nonchalant but actually keeping a close watch on their surroundings. It had to be said, these little guys took their jobs quite seriously and looked the part.
"Another one of those Exotic Beasts? And in the United States?" The team members were all excited, with not a trace of fear.
After all, it was a cub that hadn’t matured yet. Besides, carrying out a mission in a foreign country would be even more exciting.
Especially since none of them had ever been to the United States.
Lei Jiaming looked a little awkward. "Um, Brother Xiang, I haven’t even gotten a passport yet. Will I hold everyone back? Plus, I don’t know any English."
Li Xiang laughed. "Don’t worry. This is a special case, so it’ll get special treatment. The passport and visa will be approved quickly. As for English, just stick with us. It’s not like you’ll be acting alone."
Li Xiang, Yao Yao, Zhao Xueqing, and Lei Xiaohui had been to Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand before and had crammed English for a while. They had continued studying it since, as English was still a very practical tool for global communication. Just a tool, nothing more.
You can never have too many skills, and knowing a foreign language or two is often very necessary.
But Lei Jiaming had never learned. Although he had a high school education, it had been many years since he graduated, and he now had several kids. How could he possibly remember any of it? He was a slacker in high school to begin with.
As for the passport and visa, those were no problem at all.
Their identities were already arranged, so why worry about something like that?
Li Xiang smiled faintly and told everyone about the cover identities the higher-ups had arranged for them. He added that they would receive their work IDs upon departure. They were all issued by legitimate government departments, stamped with official seals, and couldn’t be more real.
Li Xiang was an engineer for a certain power corporation, Luo Feifei was the team’s psychologist, Xu Xuan was a security consultant, Zhang Youyou was an accompanying reporter, Lei Jiaming was security personnel, and Zhao Xueqing and Lei Xiaohui were both secretaries. Only Yao Yao was slightly different—she was an assistant engineer. Well, basically, Li Xiang’s assistant.
Zhao Xueqing’s lips twitched. She looked like she wanted to say something but held back.
Lei Xiaohui couldn’t help but blurt out, "Brother Xiang, how come Yao Yao gets to be your assistant while we’re just regular secretaries?"
Zhao Xueqing chimed in, "Yeah, are we any worse than her?" ’My temperament and looks aren’t the least bit inferior to Yao Yao’s,’ she thought to herself.
Li Xiang quickly tried to placate them, saying, "I didn’t decide this. It’s what the higher-ups arranged when they assigned the identities."
"Can it be changed?" Zhao Xueqing and Lei Xiaohui asked, unconvinced.
Li Xiang shrugged. "Probably not. The documents and everything have likely already been made. Besides, it’s just a fake identity. Don’t worry about the details."
Yao Yao couldn’t help but rejoice inwardly. ’I’ve already kissed him, have you? And you still want the same treatment as me? I’m his personal little assistant, haha.’
She didn’t say a word, but her silent, smiling presence was enough to make Zhao Xueqing and Lei Xiaohui roll their eyes, fuming inwardly.
"Don’t get too hung up on these details. Last time, Yao Yao only got a Third-Class Merit, while you two got Second-Class Merits. She wasn’t happy about that, either," Li Xiang said, feeling a headache coming on. ’Having so many women around really is a pain.’
Fortunately, Zhao Xueqing and Lei Xiaohui weren’t the types to lose sight of the bigger picture or create a scene. They were just venting a little. Soon enough, they adjusted their attitudes and began to participate actively in the discussion about the mission.
Li Xiang briefed them on the general situation and the operational plan.
Because the United States is on the other side of Earth, Li Xiang hadn’t known about the meteor, but the nation’s satellites had observed it long ago.
The meteor had crashed in a place called the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, United States, forming a large crater. Afterward, a series of disappearances occurred in a nearby small town. The victims’ chests were hollowed out, and the local power grid began to fail frequently.
The US Military sealed off the site, claiming to the public that the "meteorite contains radioactive material." However, a certain department in China detected bio-energetic pulse signals from the location via satellite monitoring.
Based on the previous meteor incident in Rongcheng, it wasn’t hard for them to deduce that it was definitely one of those Space Exotic Beasts.
Moreover, several days had already passed, so the creature was bound to be a bit stronger than the one in Rongcheng.
This time, the one leading the delegation to the San Francisco Energy Cooperation Forum and Exchange Conference was, naturally, not Li Xiang, but a vice president from a certain power corporation. The entourage included managers and technicians from several energy companies, university professors and graduate students, as well as accompanying medical staff, reporters, security, and logistics personnel—a grand procession of about sixty-odd people.
Li Xiang and his team were just tagging along with this "technical exchange delegation" to enter the United States. After checking into their hotel in San Francisco, they would secretly depart for Nevada to carry out their mission. And for that secret mission, Li Xiang was the captain.
The team also looked up a map. Nevada was right next to California, and compared to California, it was relatively poor and underdeveloped.
If you considered California on its own, its 2023 GDP was as high as 3.8 trillion, enough to rank it among the top five globally, behind only the US, China, Germany, and Japan. California is home to the world-famous Hollywood and Silicon Valley, and many high-tech companies are based there.
Nevada, on the other hand, had a 2023 GDP of only 239.398 billion US dollars, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, ranking it 32nd among all states in the United States.
But the state has a large geographical area, making it the seventh-largest state in the United States. It is also the most mountainous state, with most of it located within the Great Basin. The terrain is rugged, with an average elevation of 1,500 to 2,500 meters. The highest point, Bondri Mountain, is 4,006 meters above sea level. It has little surface water, mostly endorheic rivers and salt lakes, making it the driest state in the nation. The ground is covered with sagebrush. That’s why it has another name: the North American Sagebrush State.
"Nevada" comes from Spanish and means "snow-covered," a description of the state’s coldness.
You can think of it as China’s Northern Tibet Plateau, as both places have vast deserts and abundant snow-capped mountain resources. The Nevada Range can be seen as its equivalent to the Himalayas.
Nevada also has a very famous city: Las Vegas, the world’s largest Gambling City. Its economic importance to the state is comparable to that of Lhasa in the Tibetan Area.
Nevada’s second-largest city is Reno, located in the northern part of the state and known as "The Biggest Little City in the World." Lake Tahoe, near Reno, is the most famous ski destination in North America and a world-class resort area.
Right now, both California and Nevada are covered in snow, especially Nevada, where the snow is much deeper than in other states.
And the Black Rock Desert, their destination, had also received snow.
Snow in the desert is not unheard of.
For example, China’s Taklamakan Desert, the "Sea of Death," has seen widespread snowfall for four consecutive years.
When Li Xiang and his team arrive, someone on the other side will have off-road vehicles and ski equipment ready for them. This was the good thing about working for the country: a dedicated logistics team handled everything, so they didn’t have to worry about it themselves.
In addition, the travel allowance was very generous. They hadn’t even departed yet, but each person had already received 100,000 in funds. Li Xiang got more, 500,000. It was deposited directly into their social security cards, tax-free.
The team discussed the general plan of action and even joked about going to Las Vegas to try their luck and experience the entertainment at the world’s largest Gambling City if they had time. But it was just talk. After all, they were there on official business; fun could wait.
Unsure how long they would be gone this time, Li Xiang had them arrange for others to cover their work.
Each of them recommended a suitable replacement.
For the livestream selling, they would be replaced as hosts by three other young women. Although their looks couldn’t compare to Yao Yao, Zhao Xueqing, and Lei Xiaohui, their advantage was their age—they were brimming with a youthful energy, their faces full of collagen.
These young women, around twenty years old, possessed a vibrant, youthful spirit that marked the prime of their lives.
Lei Jiaming, for his part, arranged for Lei Xiaonan to take over—the same "skinny monkey" Li Xiang had noticed before.
Li Xiang nodded in agreement, wanting to use this opportunity to see what Lei Xiaonan was made of. After Lei Jiaming left, Lei Xiaonan would take over his duties, mainly responsible for security and shipping.
If Lei Xiaonan passed the test and did his job well, then the Breathing Technique and Spiritual Medicine would naturally be his for the taking. If he messed up... well, they would just have to observe him a while longer.
After all, if he couldn’t even handle a simple task like this, he probably wasn’t cut out for bigger things.
As for Jiang Cai’Er, she still had school, so of course Li Xiang couldn’t take her running all over the place. For now, Jiang Cai’Er was still being kept under wraps, hidden away. The outside world didn’t know she was an Extraordinary Being, and even if they did, they had no idea about her freakishly powerful Superpower. Keeping an extra trump card hidden could be beneficial for the future.
Li Xiang contacted Luo Feifei in advance to ask for her location. She was in Shanghai shooting a commercial. After nightfall, Li Xiang went to Shanghai, climbed into her hotel room, and they had a secret conversation.
Luo Feifei was naturally excited. She would get to go on another mission with Brother Xiang.
"Will this conflict with your schedule?" Li Xiang asked.
Luo Feifei giggled. "For anything else, there might be a problem, but for this, there’s absolutely no problem." This was because people from the relevant departments had already spoken with her mother, her partners, the director, and so on.
Of course, neither the officials conducting the meetings nor the people they met with knew the details of the matter, only that Luo Feifei might have to go on a mission. They were told to cooperate as much as possible and were forbidden from pursuing any breach of contract issues that might arise because of it.
Everyone recalled how Luo Feifei had inexplicably received a Second-Class Merit before, and they all had their own speculations now.
There were rumors circulating that Luo Feifei had been recruited by some mysterious department and held a special status.
Others rumored that Luo Feifei had caught the eye of a high-ranking official and was being sponsored, and that it wasn’t impossible for her to become a general someday.
Luo Feifei couldn’t be bothered to explain these rumors, not that she could explain them clearly anyway. People would say what they wanted to say.
’If she was really being "sponsored" by anyone,’ she thought, ’it was by Li Xiang. And if she were to become a general someday, she would be a general for Li Xiang.’