The Last 299 Days of Humanity

The heated debate within Shengtian's top management about how to deal with Tie Mofu lasted for several hours, but ultimately the cautious strategy advocated by Yu Qing and Ya Shi prevailed.

The air in the conference room was heavy. Although there was still resentment between Chang Sheng's tightly furrowed brows, he took a deep breath, his gaze swept over the resolute faces of Yu Qing and his daughter Ya Shi, and finally nodded slowly.

He understood that when facing an opponent like Dadian Jinghua, acting impulsively could lead to complete defeat, and he had to prioritize the overall situation.

Thus, an unprecedented in-depth investigation into the core secrets of Dadian Jinghua was launched quietly yet swiftly under the absolute secrecy of the Changjin base.

Tie Mofu was imprisoned in the deepest confinement cell of the Changjin base.

This cell is less a room and more a pure white, high-tech cage. The walls, ceiling, and floor are covered with composite materials that can absorb and scatter almost all known detection signals, forming an invisible information insulation barrier.

To prevent this heavyweight prisoner from committing suicide, he was confined in a specially made, elastic, transparent foam. This foam was soft yet incredibly tough, completely encasing his body except for his head, rendering him unable to perform any voluntary muscle movements.

Only by precisely manipulating the micro-actuators injected into the foam through an external control system can his limbs be passively moved to prevent muscle atrophy and joint stiffness caused by prolonged inactivity.

Technology can make people feel like they're in heaven, but it can also make them feel like they're in hell.

Conventional interrogation methods have little effect on someone like Tie Mofu, whose will has long been hardened to the point of steel by extreme ideologies.

When faced with interrogators, he would either respond with a cold silence, like a lifeless statue, or occasionally speak, throwing out carefully disguised fragments of information that were difficult to distinguish between truth and falsehood, attempting to lead Shengtian's investigation astray.

In light of this, Chang Sheng ultimately signed the authorization to use a highly confidential and extremely risky technology—the "Deep Consciousness Probe."

This is not memory reading or hypnosis in the traditional sense. Instead, it attempts to bypass the subject's conscious defense mechanism by implanting a sophisticated neural interface at the junction of the back of the neck and the cerebral cortex, combined with the powerful computing power of the "Tianzhi" system, to directly access the deep storage area of ​​the brain and extract the most original, unmodified fragments of information.

This process is extremely dangerous, like walking through a minefield of the mind. It inevitably causes some irreversible damage to the neural network of the person being extracted, and the extracted information is often highly fragmented—blurry images, discontinuous syllables, strong emotional imprints, or isolated conceptual keywords.

The technical lead frankly told Yu Qing and Chang Sheng that the only way to obtain a more complete and coherent memory sequence was through deep overload extraction, but that would mean completely "formatting" the subject's consciousness, causing their body to irreversibly head towards brain death, thus turning them into the so-called "Yu Zi." Currently, Sheng Tian doesn't need to go to that point.

The technical team carefully performed several extractions while Temofu was kept in a state of high-intensity neurological inhibition by drugs. Even in the abyss of unconsciousness, Temofu's strong willpower still instinctively and fiercely resisted, and the data stream fed back by the probe was full of interference and noise.

The process was brutal, but some fragmented memories were still forcibly extracted and captured.

These fragments include: blurry blueprint images bearing the hallmarks of Dadian Jinghua; fragmented phrases such as “purification…priority…” and “west…testing ground…”; an emotional fluctuation of near-abhorrence for “disorder and inefficiency”; and key conceptual information such as “donkey-headed wolf,” “silent harvest,” and “defective product settlement.”

Shengtian's top-notch analysis team—comprising linguists, behavioral psychologists, strategic analysts, and data reconstruction experts—immediately got to work, working day and night to clean, piece together, cross-reference, and reconstruct the context of these chaotic fragments.

They were like restorers of an extremely precious broken antique, trying to glean the whole picture from the fragments.

When the preliminary analysis report was finally presented to Yu Qing, Chang Sheng, Ya Shi, and others, although they had already anticipated Da Dian Jing Hua's ambitions, the chilling truth revealed in the report still sent a shiver down their spines.

The ultimate goal of Dadian Jinghua is far more than simple commercial monopoly or regional hegemony. They believe in a hybrid of extreme social Darwinism and technological elitism, a ruthless philosophy of "purification".

In the blueprint of its core decision-making body, the "Purification Council," most of the existing humans on Earth are regarded as "ineffective loads" and "evolutionary defects," stumbling blocks that prevent the "elite humans" they identify as from advancing to a higher stage of civilization.

Their goal is to carry out a ruthless, systematic global "purification," with a clearly defined plan:
1. Preliminary preparations and differentiation: Continuously weaken the main adversaries (such as Shengtian and other potential obstacles) through means such as economic control, technological barriers, and information and psychological warfare, and intentionally incite internal strife and conflicts in various regions around the world, so that the "non-elite" groups weaken their power through self-consumption.

2. "Paradise" Pilot Project: The western region, sparsely populated and rich in resources but perceived as "chaotic," will be selected as the pilot area. Through proxy wars and induced economic collapse, a precise biological strike will be carried out in the final stage to completely "clean up" the region and transform it into a super-large leisure park and strategic resource reserve base exclusively for the "elite" humans.

The analyzed timeline shows that they plan to use a biological weapon based on a deeply modified "donkey-headed wolf" virus, with extremely high species targeting and infectivity, to carry out an operation called "Silent Harvest" in the western region in about ten years, with the goal of achieving "functional zeroing" of major animal (including human) populations within three months.

3. Comprehensive purification: After the successful "pilot" in the west, this model will be promoted globally to ultimately eliminate the groups in the eastern region that they consider to be "pseudo-elites" and "internal defective products".

Haiyuan City and its surrounding city-states were clearly marked as "defective settlements" that needed to be cleared out in the future, because they were filled with "stubborn traditionalists" and "technologically dependent and inefficient populations" in the eyes of Dadian Jinghua.

The sheer scale and ruthless intent of this plan placed unprecedented pressure on every member of Shengtian's top management. This was no longer a life-or-death business competition, but a survival war concerning the lives of billions.

Faced with such a dark and methodical extermination plan, Yu Qing realized that conventional methods of confrontation were far from sufficient. Extraordinary measures were necessary to completely disrupt Da Dian Jing Hua's unhurried pace and undermine their carefully laid strategic resolve.

“They lurk in the shadows, plotting their extermination, believing they are in control,” Yu Qing said in a low voice at the following strategic meeting. “We need to drag them into the light, dismantle their carefully constructed image of ‘elite,’ so that they become suspicious of each other and fear spreads among themselves.” An extremely bold, even somewhat unorthodox, counterattack plan was proposed and, after in-depth discussion, received the support of the core team:

Using Temofu's biological samples and acquired memory information, they will clone "Temofu" on a large scale and drop these clones as living information bombs around the world.

Shengtian's biotechnology department immediately went all out, mobilizing the most advanced somatic cell cloning and rapid maturation technologies to mass-produce Tiemofu's clones in a highly confidential underground production line.

Due to the adoption of a simplified process aimed at speed, the lifespan of these clones was drastically shortened to only seven to eight months.

They were implanted with a "core information package" based on memory extraction and reconstruction, and given simple behavioral instructions: once activated, they should do everything possible, using various occasions and channels, to expose Dadian Jinghua's "purification plan" to the public, and spread the internal strife and contemptuous remarks within its senior management.

In the following period, strange and unsettling events began to occur around the world:

In the bustling waiting hall of an international airport, a well-dressed but agitated and slightly dazed "Timofu" suddenly leaped onto the baggage conveyor belt and, using a lip-and-mouth megaphone, shouted at the top of his lungs that Dadian Jinghua would eliminate the "inferior race," and specifically named his city-state as the first target for elimination.

This caused an uproar and panic, and they were then forcibly dragged away by security personnel who rushed to the scene.

During a high-profile online international forum meeting, an unauthorized video window suddenly cut in, and the face of "Timofu" appeared on the screen.

He read out a summary of the "Purification Council" resolutions with a blank expression and a flat tone, clearly mentioning keywords such as "Western Paradise" and "improved version of the Donkey-Headed Wolf virus," before the signal was abruptly cut off by the organizers in a panic.

Meanwhile, in the central square of the city where Dadian Jinghua's headquarters is located, several clones of "Timofu" appeared simultaneously, mechanically distributing leaflets with shocking content to the crowd, and even attempting to break through the headquarters' magnificent glass doors, causing quite a disturbance and attracting media attention.

As for the dark web and certain social media platforms that are difficult to fully control, a large number of videos and text messages posted by the "Tiemofu" account have emerged, with details so detailed that they are chilling.

It not only replicates the framework of the global cleanup plan, but also "reveals" the contemptuous remarks among the senior management of Dadian Jinghua, such as one director privately calling another an "emotional fool," or referring to the residents of Haiyuan City as "industrial waste in dire need of disposal."

The emergence of these thousand "Timofu" clones is like dropping a thousand mental bombs in the global public opinion arena.

Initially, Dadian Jinghua reacted swiftly and forcefully, attempting to unify their narrative through controlled media channels, condemning these phenomena as "clumsy imitations" and "Shengtian Company's unscrupulous malicious slander and defamation."

However, the biological characteristics of these clones (such as fingerprints, irises, facial bone structure, etc.) are highly consistent with the real Temofu (Shengtian deliberately left some clues for professional verification during the manufacturing process).

The information they spread contained a large number of key points that only the core layer of the platform could know and that could not be publicly discussed or refuted (these details are derived from real memory extractions, which are fragmented but highly accurate).

More importantly, the mysterious and enigmatic image that Dadian Jinghua had long cultivated has now become a double-edged sword that backfires. As this alarming information continues to spread, the public is beginning to re-examine Dadian Jinghua's past actions.

Those seemingly unfathomable strategic investments, those shadowy figures appearing in conflict zones, that indifferent attitude towards bioethics—details that once seemed puzzling now appear to have terrifying explanations in this new context. As a result, a massive panic begins to spread uncontrollably.

The first to be affected were Haiyuan City and the surrounding cities and states that were named. The anger and fear of the people were ignited instantly, and the wave of boycotts against Dadian Jinghua and its related products reached an unprecedented level. Any local enterprises and institutions that had cooperated with Dadian were forced to distance themselves from it under pressure.

Secondly, the shock quickly spread to the inner circle of Dianjinghua. Suspicion proliferated like a virus. The existing discord and power struggles among the top management were amplified dramatically by the leaked internal remarks, with undercurrents of mutual accusations that the other side was the source of the leaks.

Meanwhile, lower- and middle-level employees were plunged into immense confusion and a moral crisis, with many privately questioning whether they were unknowingly contributing to a horrific plan aimed at destroying most of humanity.

Most fatally, the strategic rhythm meticulously planned by Dadian Elite's "Purification Council" over more than a decade was completely disrupted. They could no longer calmly advance the preparations for the "silent harvest," because the core logic and ultimate goal of the plan had been exposed to the light of day.

They were forced to make an emergency response: either risk being unprepared and forcibly launch the plan ahead of schedule, or do everything in their power to extinguish the raging fire of public opinion.

Yu Qing's "cloning offensive" successfully transformed Dadian Jinghua from a ruthless hunter hiding behind the scenes into a target of public criticism, overwhelmed and exposed to the world's spotlight.

They were caught in a dilemma: either outright denial or forced admission would have disastrous consequences. Internal rifts widened due to suspicion, while external pressure intensified as the truth continued to spread.

In the first phase of this unrestricted information war, Shengtian successfully turned the tide, kicking the ball back into Dadian Jinghua's half of the court.

However, Yu Qing knew that the most dangerous beasts are those cornered. Da Dian Jing Hua would never sit idly by and wait for their doom; they would inevitably launch a more extreme, more ruthless, and more unpredictable counterattack.

The true, most perilous chapter of the contest has only just begun. Sheng Tian must seize this precious, chaotic window of opportunity, bought with ingenious strategy, and actively seek the decisive chance to deliver a fatal blow to his opponent. (End of Chapter)