Chapter 156: Let Us Try This!

Inside the roaring waters of New San Francisco.

A figure walked securely, lifted by giant waves, radiating a sacred, dazzling, and noble light all over his body.

Beside him were roaring giant waves and half-collapsed buildings.

Human corpses and shattered cars drifted in the water, while sea beasts roared and surged.

Suddenly, as if sensing something, he looked up at the sky.

There, a steel-clad falcon spread its pristine wings and soared into the sky with a roar.

"Trying to run?" A cold smile touched his lips. He half-raised a hand, but after a moment of thought, withdrew his gaze.

Those few hundred people were of no importance.

Right now, the most important thing for him was...

The deity walking upon the waves raised his head and looked deeper into the mainland, where more territory and potential believers awaited his conquest.

"All of you belong to me."

Meanwhile.

In the capital of the Free State, within the White House, a symbol of supreme power.

The lavishly decorated room was laid with soft carpets, and the fire crackled in the fireplace.

"Have all the online information been blocked?!" The President of the Free State slammed his table and stood up, his stout body panting as he shouted, "Block it immediately!"

The assistant beside him hurriedly replied, "It has already been blocked. Signal towers within a hundred-kilometer radius of the West Coast have been completely shut down. No new videos are being uploaded."

"Good, well done. The most urgent task now is to delete all the videos that have already been uploaded to prevent a larger panic and protect the economy!" The stout face of the Free State President turned exceptionally resolute. "Also, have the VIPs been safely evacuated?"

"Thanks to the arduous efforts of our soldiers, everyone has been safely evacuated!"

"Phew..." The Free State President let out a slow breath. "That's good, that's good... As long as those VIPs are safe, that's all that matters."

The assistant looked reluctant to speak, a trace of pity in his eyes. "What about the ordinary citizens..."

"Ordinary people... You mean those who pay our taxes, toil for the VIPs their entire lives, only for their earnings to immediately turn into new profits for the VIPs, spending their whole lives generating wealth for the elite?" At this, the President said coldly, "I believe in the people of the Free State; they will surely overcome these difficulties!"

After a moment of hesitation, the assistant spoke with a complex expression, "But we originally had a chance..."

"What? Are you saying we should have built city walls like Great Xia?" The President slammed the desk. "Are you out of your mind?"

"Do you really think I didn't know that what Great Xia claimed was true?"

"But do you know how many resources and how much of its economy Great Xia consumed to build those walls?"

"Their economic development over the past three months has fallen far behind ours! They poured all their energy into those walls!"

"Can't you use your brain? The deities kill civilians, but our Free State is never short of unemployed people! As long as the VIPs remain, we can always recruit new workers! Do you have any idea how much economy it takes to build a Great Wall of steel?"

For a moment, the assistant was left speechless.

The President lit a cigarette, exhaled slowly, and leaned back comfortably in his chair. "Now that the VIPs have been evacuated, what comes next..."

"Ring, ring, ring!"

The phone on the desk suddenly rang.

The President hastily stood up, bowed respectfully as he picked up the receiver, and smiled with narrowed eyes. "May I ask who..."

"You are speaking with the Salvation Society, Council Member Number Three."

A chilling voice came through the receiver.

Hearing this, a thin layer of sweat broke out on the President's forehead.

"What are your instructions!" the President said respectfully.

The cold voice came through the phone: "Have you figured out what to do next?"

The President hesitated slightly. "I... I think I know."

Council Member Number Three said coldly, "You know, and yet you haven't done it?"

The President's expression turned hesitant. "If we do that, the impact will be extremely severe. In the next election, I might very well..."

"What are you afraid of!" Council Member Number Three rebuked loudly. "You are the President, you have the authority to do so!"

"Do you know how much of our territory is swallowed by the ocean, how many civilians are killed, and how many buildings are destroyed for every second you hesitate?"

"New San Francisco has already fallen; do you want even more cities to fall?!"

"Do you know how much economy we lose every single second?!"

The President took a deep breath. "You mean..."

"Now, release the nuclear missiles immediately!" Council Member Number Three ordered coldly. "No need for hesitation, and no need to conserve the number of warheads. Just remember one thing: kill that deity in a single strike!"

"Otherwise, every second we suffer massive economic losses! If this continues, we VIPs won't even have a place to hide, and neither will those ordinary people who work for us and generate our profits!"

"Hurry up! If you really let us suffer massive losses, I think your term as President should come to an end!"

"Yes!" The President straightened his posture.

But then—

"Wait." Council Member Number Three fell silent for two seconds, then suddenly chuckled. "Actually, there's no real need to kill him..."

"You just need to injure that deity, beat him to the point where he dares not invade again."

"That way, he'll flee toward the other side of the ocean. Heh, I hear things are heating up over in Great Xia... Why not give those people in Great Xia a little surprise?"

"After all, Great Xia made all those preparations. Heh, if we were the only ones to suffer these losses, that would be... far too unfair to us."

The laughter was sinister and bone-chilling.

"You want to drive him toward Great Xia?" The President's breathing quickened slightly. "You are as wise as the legends say! In that way, although our economic development has been delayed by this crisis, they won't have an easy time either!"

A soft laugh came over the phone: "This way, you can shift the blame onto Great Xia. I heard that Great Xia even abducted some of our citizens..."

"With this pretext, plus the fact that Great Xia will also be heavily battered by the deity, your approval ratings won't plummet. And with the help of the Salvation Society..."

"As long as you handle this well, I can guarantee that in the next election, you will still be the President of the Free State."

"Alright, go handle it."

"Beep, beep, beep..."

The line went dead, but the threatening voice seemed to linger in the air.

"Yes!" the President shouted aloud, then dialed another number. "Is this the First Military Base?"

"Mr. President, what are your orders?"

The President said coldly, "What is the current situation?"

"The seawater has advanced eighty-five kilometers into the West Coast. So far, we've lost four hundred thousand square kilometers of territory, affecting fifteen million people whose life or death is unknown... Currently, the deity is advancing at a speed of two hundred kilometers per hour, carrying seawater and sea beasts with it. Extremely fast!"

The President asked straight to the point: "How many nuclear missiles are needed to kill the deity?"

"Nuclear missiles?!" The person at the military base was startled. "You, you mean deploying nuclear weapons..."

"You must realize that once nuclear weapons are used, everyone who is still alive will die..."

"And because of the deity's high-speed movement, we must cover a vast area. This is definitely not something one or two nukes can accomplish. Factoring in the flight time of the missiles, we would need to... blanket a two-hundred-kilometer radius across the entire West Coast!"

"That would require at least a thousand nuclear warheads!"

"If we do that, we will lose a million square kilometers of territory. Even the people not affected by the sea, those who still have a chance to escape..."

Nuclear weapons have always been a double-edged sword!

While dealing effective damage to the deity, they would also directly render the original land barren, uninhabitable for humans, and spread nuclear contamination.

Furthermore, it would cause... vast numbers of innocent citizens, instead of dying in the ocean waves, to perish at the hands of weapons invented by humans themselves—weapons that were originally meant to protect them!

At this point, even the military personnel at the base spoke with a tight voice: "Mr. President, please give us time. Our troops are mobilizing, and the soldiers of the Free State are willing to try!"

"Try what? Do you know how much economy we lose every second?" the President rebuked coldly. "Do you have any idea how much loss your mobilization time causes!"

"Besides, even if you mobilize and use armed forces to barely kill those sea beasts and the deity, how much military expenditure will it take, and how many men will you sacrifice to hold back the ocean?"

"Unlike those workers, for every single soldier of yours that dies, the government has to pay a compensation of one hundred thousand or two hundred thousand Freedom Dollars!"

"The shells you fire, the fighter jets that get damaged, the combat vehicles that are written off—that is all money!"

"What's more, we don't have a Great Wall of steel; building that kind of thing is even more expensive!"

"In the face of danger, how can you let soldiers like yourselves take the field?"

"As for those workers, let them die if they die. We don't need to compensate them anyway, and we have plenty of unemployed people waiting to fill their shoes!"

The voice of the Free State President was cold and ruthlessly rational.