Chapter 1 The Saint of the Dao's Arrival

The Saint of the Dao came to notify Su Zhou to attend a meeting.

If the transcendent-level Su Zhou was still a talented junior in the eyes of the various Saints, a promising young man, then now, at the Commander level, the difference between Su Zhou and the Saints was probably only in name and prestige.

As long as Su Zhou did not show signs of being anti-human or anti-social, even if he planned to return to Hongcheng to be a local tyrant, listening to orders but not following commands, the Zheng Nation would not make things difficult for him. As long as they could coexist peacefully and he could help the country in times of crisis, there would be no problem.

It could only be said that it was fortunate that Su Zhou was not such a person. Although his personality was not perfect, it was enough for the Zheng Nation's officials to recognize him as one of their own and regard him as their trump card.

And a trump card naturally had a trump card's treatment.

"Most of the Saints each have their own duties, working in different regions and positions. Apart from the year-end summary, the Central Committee's meetings are generally held in the core spirit network."

Opening the door of the conference room, the Saint of the Dao handed Su Zhou a piece of iron shell that was very simple in style and looked very much like a welder's mask.

In fact, the Saint of the Dao was Su Zhou's guide into the upper echelons of the Zheng Nation's officialdom. This old man had been observing Su Zhou all along, and during the three months that Su Zhou was missing, he was the most anxious to find Su Zhou's whereabouts.

Taking it from the Saint of the Dao, Su Zhou could sense that this seemingly simple iron shell had extremely dense rune imprints.

Among the functions that he could identify were creating illusions, activating souls, connecting information, and isolating detection. It was undoubtedly a high-level magical artifact.

Like military exoskeletons and spirit energy aggregation towers, these modern magical artifact rune engravings were all in nanometers. It was humanity's way of taking a different approach through modern wisdom, catching up with the processing capabilities of immortals and gods.

But this did not affect Su Zhou's feeling that it really looked like a welder's mask.

When will the Zheng Nation's official aesthetics be a little more normal... Thinking so, Su Zhou did not hesitate and put it on directly.

Don't mention it, this mask was quite comfortable. After putting it on, he sensed a cool divine thought guiding him into a harmless illusion.

It felt like opening and closing his eyes, and Su Zhou realized that he had arrived inside a huge virtual conference hall.

This was an octagonal hall like a Bagua plate. There were four seats on the innermost side, and eight on each of the outer layers, for a total of thirty-six seats. Su Zhou was on the outermost layer, where a chair naturally appeared.

Some people had already arrived in the conference room, including the Number Saint and the Military Saint, whom Su Zhou was familiar with, as well as a middle-aged man with white hair whom Su Zhou had never seen before. The Saint of the Dao also appeared in one of the four seats on the innermost side. He turned his head and smiled at Su Zhou.

[337th Mid-Year Committee Meeting]

Su Zhou and the Saint of the Dao arrived relatively early. After them, people arrived one after another, and the meeting began naturally without any greetings or introductions.

"In the first half of the year, our country's military operations on the southern border and in the South China Sea have achieved obvious results. All of this is due to the efforts of the soldiers."

The first to speak was the Military Saint. This one-eyed old man stood up and spoke first, taking credit for the soldiers.

Then, he said with a serious expression, "However, the spirit energy recovery is intensifying, but the updating of our military's weapons and equipment has not kept up, resulting in outdated equipment in major military regions, a lack of military strength, a lack of training for the troops, and no new blood flowing in."

"Not only that, but we also lack high-quality spirit energy cultivator talents, as well as investment in scientific research. In this regard, we have no leading edge. Even the neighboring Dongying is ahead of us in exoskeleton armor design."

It could be seen that a huge screen appeared behind the Military Saint, and the words 'Comprehensive Spiritualization Reform of the Army' were written on it. To sum up his proposal, the big characters were to ask for money, people, and equipment, otherwise, it felt like even the Shan Kingdom would be unbeatable.

——Wait a minute, is this really the Zheng Nation's army that I know?

At first, Su Zhou didn't feel anything when he heard it, but from the second sentence, he realized that something was wrong—what outdated equipment and lack of talent? The talent that he, Su Zhou, had recently seen in the Security Bureau, which had been expanded to the 24th Special Operations Brigade, was fake?

What's more, doesn't he, Su Zhou, count?

As for spiritual energy scientific research, that was even more nonsense. Now, only the Europa Union and the American Federation in the whole world could compete with the Zheng Nation in this regard. And no matter what, the point that even the Shan Kingdom would be unbeatable was complete nonsense—they couldn't even put together a spiritualized army.

Before Su Zhou could frantically complain in his heart, the second person to stand up was the Military Strategy Saint. This bald old man's aura was not inferior to the Military Saint who had just sat down, and the huge subtitles of 'Grasp and Implement the Research and Development of New Strategic Weapons' also floated behind him.

The Military Strategy Saint's speech was concise and to the point. To sum it up, although our country has a large number of nuclear warheads, it is not enough to destroy all the countries on Earth, let alone destroy the major secret realms and other realms. This is a very dangerous sign, which means that our country's nuclear binding dead hand strike has a very large vacuum range, lacking the strategic destruction capability to destroy the entire Earth and secret realms and alien worlds together, and needs to be urgently strengthened.

"We must seize the time to develop more, larger, and stronger strategic weapons. This is our most important goal in the next five years!"

Su Zhou: "???"

The Military Strategy Saint used this sentence as his closing remark, and the youth with a black question mark face was almost brainwashed for a moment, feeling that the Zheng Nation's strategic destruction weapons were indeed not enough, and that they could not completely destroy the Earth, which was simply unimaginable.

But after coming back to his senses, Su Zhou immediately understood—this was all about crying poor to ask for funding!

The ones who spoke in succession were all acting schools who could say nonsense without changing their expressions.

According to them, the Zheng Nation's navy was basically the same as sinking completely, and might even be no match for the Golden Horde. The police and armed police and other law enforcement forces were even more short-handed, underfunded, poorly equipped, and dangerous due to the surge in crime in the spiritual energy era. If funding was not approved, the national police would not be able to afford to eat from tomorrow onwards.

The ones with better table manners, like the education sector, only said that the teaching staff was seriously insufficient and continued to cultivate corresponding teachers as soon as possible, requiring more funding and manpower. And the ones with bad table manners, like the aerospace major, said that the neighboring Zhuguo launched nineteen satellites in three months, and the Zheng Nation's aerospace major was about to be surpassed by Zhuguo and become the bottom of the world.

If they were to be believed, the Zheng Nation would probably collapse on the spot three days later.

It was not until almost every department had cried poor and asked for money that the main purpose of the meeting gradually got on track—the multinational joint 'Primal Life Tree Exploration Plan' of the Beast God Realm would be launched in a week, and the leaders on the Zheng Nation's side were the Saint of the Dao and Su Zhou.

The other personnel had already been decided and would depart from various places to gather at the Kunlun Secret Realm later.

Immediately afterwards, there was the 'Human Optimization Plan' mentioned by the White-Haired Saint of Life, which was to use the Mimetic Dao cultivation method to manipulate gene information and transform newborns or embryos into 'new humans' with excellent cultivation talents and no congenital diseases.

This experimental plan had entered the final stage, and only needed to be truly experimented with humans. The Saint of Life was here to apply for experimental permission.

After all, the most suitable time point for new humans was the embryonic period, but it was not to say that they could not be modified after birth or adulthood, but in that case, the content that could be optimized would be greatly reduced. For example, height and appearance would be difficult to change, and the best effect of the transformation surgery could not be tested.

"Human trials?" Su Zhou frowned, just about to vote, but found that this application had already been approved. He wanted to say whether this was a little too fast. Although many things could not be known without experimentation, the speed at which the committee approved it was too fast.

However, the Saint of the Dao's soul message quickly came: "The human trials that the Saint of Life is talking about are mostly carried out with his own clones, or even himself, and will not involve other people, so the committee has always quickly approved them."

"His own clones and himself? That's too cruel!" Su Zhou was stunned, and then cast a vote of approval in his hand: "And in that case, there is no need to apply?"

"He will not miss any of the procedures that need to be done. That guy Cang Lunzhe is the kind of person who is flawless."

Later, the Saint of Crafts also proposed a new concept called 'Netherworld Network'.

This concept was not yet clear, and the Saint of Crafts himself said it in a rather vague way. Su Zhou could only understand a few keywords, that is, the basis of this Netherworld Network plan was to carry out a brain-machine modification for all newborns, so that the brain could be embedded with a chip, so as to record all the person's information and memories.

After death, this memory and information would be included in a secret super database of the Zheng Nation as a reserve for the 'Netherworld'... In other words, the Zheng Nation was preparing to use its developed information network technology to artificially create an electronic netherworld.

This was much more complicated than the Saint of Life's. Not to mention anything else, the technology of brain-machine interfaces and memory storage was not yet complete, so the vote was not passed... But the Saint of Crafts was not discouraged. He seemed to have known this result for a long time, but he would come and try twice every year.

In addition, there were various secret realms, alien world development process plans, sweeps and strikes against clandestine transcendent organizations such as the Descending Spirit Society and the Prayer Society... In the entire virtual conference room, there was basically no silence of discussion, although the exchanges between the Saints were not without mutual bickering and accusations, the speed was surprisingly fast.

After hearing this news, Su Zhou felt that this was the real meeting of the Thirty-Six Saints... Even the previous funding competition of crying poor and asking for money was an important decision that determined the future development direction of the Zheng Nation, not to mention the plans behind, which might determine the Zheng Nation, or even the future of mankind.

All the plans were proposed, either passed or rejected. In just less than two hours, the meeting ended.

After the meeting, all the Thirty-Six Saints almost all left in a hurry. Even if some Saints' daily work was not busy, they still had to seize the time to cultivate. After all, in the world of spirit energy recovery, cultivation itself was also a real and unadulterated force.

"How was it? The rhythm was very fast, right? Was it a little nervous?"

After exiting the illusion used for the meeting, the Saint of the Dao looked at Su Zhou, who was taking off the illusion mask and seemed to be thinking. The old man thought that the other party was nervous, so he comforted him: "It's nothing. The meetings of the Thirty-Six Saints have always been in this style. Everyone is used to voting quickly and not wasting each other's time."

"No... I think this is very good. I can clearly know the future direction of the country, and it also gives me a clearer understanding of the next actions."

Su Zhou shook his head. He stood up and asked the Saint of the Dao with some doubts, "I'm just a little strange. The Zheng Nation is clearly in a good situation now, and there is no chaos in the country due to the recovery of spirit energy... Then why are we so nervously proposing one aggressive plan after another?"