Homo Sapiens

A blinding white light.

Watanabe Mototsugu could barely open his eyes. After taking a moment to adjust, he realized his predicament: his hands and feet were tightly bound, and a ball gag was stuffed in his mouth.

His two assistants were in the same state.

He nervously scanned his surroundings. Besides the grayish-white walls, the cold-toned lights, and the chilling air, there was only the iron cage holding them captive.

’Dammit!’ Watanabe was furious, but also terrified. As a member of the East Japan United Commerce Association’s international intelligence center, he had been in charge of commercial intelligence in Southeast Asia for years and had extensive contacts throughout the region. He never imagined he would meet his downfall here.

To avoid complications, he had come to Dart Port without any fanfare. Only his superior at the intelligence center knew any of the details.

Now, all he could do was wait for his kidnappers to appear, hoping they would spare his life after receiving the ransom.

Unfortunately, he was sorely mistaken.

Soon, several grim-faced Soldiers opened the door to the holding cell for test subjects. They escorted Watanabe and his two assistants to a cleaning room, stripped them of their clothes, and sprayed them down with a water hose.

Then they were sent into an operating room.

Genetic modification, bio-chip implantation, and then a full interrogation of Watanabe and the others.

Thanks to perfected and advanced technology, and because these spy-type Soldiers only required genetic sterilization and inactivation of the prefrontal lobe without any need for physical enhancement, the genetic modification process was shortened to five days.

Similarly, for the bio-chip implantation, Li Qingye had already performed forty such surgeries. With the help of a few specially trained assistant-type Soldiers, he could essentially guarantee the completion of one implantation surgery every six hours.

Using the laptops and phones confiscated from Watanabe and his men, Li Qingye also looked into their backgrounds.

First, he sent an email to Watanabe’s superior to report on the situation.

In the report, he first stated that network failures in Dart Port might prevent timely communication. He then added that he couldn’t yet confirm if Homo Sapiens Company possessed eel breeding technology and that he would need about a month to continue his investigation in Dart Port.

The first step was to buy some time.

In reality, Li Qingye had secretly hacked and hijacked the phones and computers of Watanabe’s group the moment they arrived in Dart Port, which is what made them think there was a problem with the local communications.

Meanwhile, the newly converted Watanabe and his two men were undergoing intensive interrogation in the questioning room, every last scrap of intelligence being wrung from their minds.

To avoid alerting the enemy, the three men couldn’t die in Dart Port, but this was also a golden opportunity to infiltrate the East Japan United Commerce Association.

According to the intelligence extracted from Watanabe, the East Japan United Commerce Association was a loose coalition formed by six major financial groups—Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Fuji, Sanwa, and Quanyin. Its purpose was to advance their collective interests and navigate an increasingly complex international environment.

This so-called international commercial intelligence center was formerly the intelligence hub of the Furong Association (the Fuji financial group), specializing in investigating and gathering global intelligence to support East Japan’s major corporations.

Watanabe and his men belonged to the intelligence center’s Southeast Asia office—the Luzon Special Task Force. The force had a total of 12 direct employees and 243 informants, and it maintained close ties with connections on both sides of the law throughout Luzon.

This was why Watanabe knew so much about Homo Sapiens Company’s background and showed no apprehension toward Li Qingye’s fake identity, Jack Zhang.

He had simply underestimated Li Qingye’s decisiveness and was beaten to the punch.

Acquiring so much intelligence allowed Li Qingye to effortlessly learn information that had previously been difficult to investigate, such as the intricate network of connections within Luzon. It also made him aware of an opportunity.

The superior of Watanabe’s trio was in Manila, ostensibly an East Japanese sushi restaurant owner living there. The restaurant also served as an intelligence outpost.

As for the other official employees: one was at the sushi restaurant; three were in the Luzon Japanese Residents’ Council; three had started a venture capital firm, which was Watanabe’s group; two ran a Japanese language school; one ran a plantation; and one was the head of Kubota Company’s Luzon operations.

They were clearly scattered across various industries and did not contact each other often. When they did, they used events like residents’ association meetings as cover to talk at the sushi restaurant.

Li Qingye now had precise information on all these people and quickly began to strategize.

Watanabe and his men had brought their families with them to Luzon. Although the processing power of the version 1.2 bio-chip had been upgraded to an average of 622 trillion operations per second and the Soldier program had been further optimized, the weaknesses of the Soldiers were still apparent. For instance, they were incapable of handling unforeseen emergencies. While rare, such situations were not impossible.

Over a long human lifespan, all sorts of bizarre things can happen; it’s just a matter of time.

Casual friends and colleagues might not notice anything, but the overly rigid behavior of a Soldier would certainly be detected by close family members who spent every day with them.

But Li Qingye had no other choice. For now, it was a desperate measure he had to take.

Of course, it wasn’t that there was no way to solve the problem with the Soldiers.

A fundamental solution would be to increase the bio-chip’s storage capacity and processing power as much as possible, allowing for a sufficiently large database for the Soldier program and further enhancing its analytical capabilities.

But that was quite difficult at the current stage.

Other methods were merely stopgap measures that didn’t address the root cause.

For example, the currently converted Soldiers 1 through 40 were ordered not to go home, not to contact their relatives, and not to perform tasks outside their designated scope, all to reduce the likelihood of encountering unknown situations.

Another option was to simply eliminate all of a Soldier’s relatives. This was a short-term solution to suppress potential information leaks.

However, this approach was too cruel. Besides, the relatives had their own social circles. With a large number of people involved, problems would still arise over time.

Therefore, Li Qingye decided on a multi-pronged approach.

For instance, he could have the Soldiers frequently work late or travel for business to reduce time spent with family. Or he could have them use divorce or moving out to live independently as an excuse to live separately from their relatives.

However, not everyone required such a troublesome solution.

This was especially true for one of the current targets, the direct superior of Watanabe Mototsugu’s trio—Takasugi Hei.

This man had a falling out with his wife a few years ago and was now single. Although he had a few lovers in Manila, that kind of relationship was very easy to handle; he could just say he was tired of them and pay them off.

Moreover, Takasugi Hei was the head of the Luzon Special Task Force. As long as Li Qingye could capture him, with Watanabe’s group providing support, he could secretly seize control of the East Japan United Commerce Association’s intelligence forces in Luzon and even use them to infiltrate East Japan itself.

For Li Qingye, who was short-staffed and had few normal people he could use, manipulating the East Japanese was an excellent option.

The intelligence capabilities of the East Japanese in Southeast Asia and the East Asia Region were not to be underestimated. They might appear harmless on the surface, but their savage ambitions had never faded.

And as for Li Qingye’s investigation into his parents’ murderers, his current intelligence resources were clearly insufficient for the task.

Having made up his mind, he immediately formulated a plan to lure Takasugi Hei to Dart Port. Two other intelligence agents with relatively simple personal lives were also on his list of targets.