Resurrection Empire-Chapter 1018 - 391: Fend for Yourself (Part 2)

But the more confident Ren Zhong appears, the more anxious some people become.

Unbeknownst to Ren Zhong, an emergency response team had already been formed within the Association to specifically discuss his situation.

Back when they successfully sent Ren Zhong to the Census Official College, some people within the Association breathed a sigh of relief, thinking it was a clever plan to easily trap him for several years.

Now, after over half a month has passed, with the Ren’s Group losing its core, the situation has changed.

Although Ren Zhong himself has managed to form a five-party alliance in Lower Origin Capital City, extending his economic influence far through the connections of Purple Crystal Mining and the Tanggu Group, and even acquired an important port town from Tang Xiangyun, controlling the resource recycling company and opening mines does not allow for large-scale troop deployments. Ren’s Group also does not have that much strong talent to station elite warriors externally, so Ren Zhong’s efforts for military expansion are greatly hindered.

During this time, other forces within the First Continent were rapidly integrating under the push of autonomy decrees, with one behemoth after another rising throughout the First Continent.

Among them, several forces secretly supported by the Mengdu Group have already approached the scale of Ren’s Group.

Moreover, these forces have a natural strategic alliance relationship that, when combined, surpasses the total military power of Ren’s Group.

Everything is heading in the direction Hugh Augustus hoped for, so this emergency response team does not wish to see Ren Zhong regain freedom too soon.

After much consideration, they finally found a solution, that is, to secretly assign the association’s most malicious and difficult Census Official as Ren Zhong’s mentor.

Given Ren Zhong’s character, he would likely fall out with his mentor by the first day. Therefore, Ren Zhong’s hopes for a smooth internship period of at least three years would be dashed.

After a series of covert operations, the emergency team rescheduled the malicious Census Official’s "availability," waiting for Ren Zhong to fall into their trap.

...

On the 26th day at school, after another busy day of classes, Ren Zhong returned to his villa, habitually opened the Dream Network system loaded onto his wrist watch, preparing to communicate with his close subordinates.

An odd thing happened, as the Dream Network system showed offline, and he couldn’t connect.

Ren Zhong had no choice but to switch to the public "WeChat" system, attempting to contact his information officer Hua Yuelan.

This time it worked, connecting directly after a single dial.

The two began to exchange subtle arguments.

Ren Zhong: "What’s going on at the research institute? What’s the recent progress of the revival plan?"

Hua Yuelan: "It’s okay, everything is stable, though some small bugs need fixing. Give me ten minutes."

"Sure."

Ren Zhong hung up the WeChat call, and ten minutes later, Hua Yuelan sent him a voice message saying, "It’s been fixed."

Then Ren Zhong switched back to "Dream Network," able to speak freely now.

He asked, "What happened earlier, why couldn’t I log into Dream Network?"

On the other side, Hua Yuelan sighed, "No choice, although we’ve embedded our own communication system into the underlying logic of the revival plan, it still requires a lot of localized computations to maintain deep encryption, prevent surveillance. But now we face a new situation."

Ren Zhong: "What do you mean?"

Hua Yuelan: "Whether it’s maintaining ’Dream Network,’ developing internal combustion engines at the Academy of Sciences, various supporting mechanical developments, establishing new oil and coal mining areas, or communication and maintenance of all industrial chains and military equipment under the group, all require enormous computational power. Recently, you’ve set up a Dragon Slayer Camp at the Academy of Sciences. It was okay at first, but lately, those in the Dragon Slayer Camp seem to be on track, and the computational demand is increasingly outrageous by the day."

"In the past, such computational demands couldn’t be met by local enterprises like ours, usually relying on Deep Communication Group’s cloud processing services, sending requests to the ’Network,’ receiving computational quotas, and being supported by the ’Network.’ Because the ’Network’ possesses limitless performance, regardless of the computational demands, enterprises simply needed to scale up the Ghost Particle Communicator array very easily."

"But now, the ’Network’ is gone. The Ruins Beast Crystal Chips produced within our territory must be largely handed over to the Tanggu Group to meet the consumption needs of the revival plan. Although we are also the leading research institution of the revival plan, continually skimming scraps, and can intercept some Crystal Chips and Crystal Core ourselves, it’s never enough."

```