Stars, Players and Immortals

Chapter 27: Zhang Qiming's Past

For Zhang Qiming, with the Sky Drive working in conjunction with Saint Sophia and two Class III AIs, theoretically none of those on the list would escape.

Whether it's the Deputy Chief of Maintenance of the Independent Wetware Network of the Guardian Fleet, the Chief Coordinator of Martial Law at the Spaceport, or the ships on the Crimson Corona, if they really want to do it, they always have a way to make them die a horrible death.

But the problem remains: if the people on the list die one after another, even if the College of Cardinals is slow to react, sooner or later they will find something wrong with Hagia Sophia.

unless……

Zhang Qiming leaned back in his chair, his gaze fixed on the lines on the removal list, his eyes narrowing slightly.

Unless, of course, you include Hagia Sophia in your own scheme and stage a self-inflicted injury.

At the same time, he also needed to find a decent scapegoat so that Hagia could use it to appease the College of Cardinals and so that the committee could continue to extend its reach into the naval forces.

In this way, the dead are not the focus; the focus will become that the committee has found the real thing, that Hagia Sophia is being targeted, and that there are indeed problems within the naval forces.

As long as these three things can be established simultaneously, it will be possible to create the illusion that the Heavenly Chariots are in a desperate situation and are resorting to any means necessary.

Zhang Qiming was slowly forming a plan in his mind, but he knew he couldn't rush things and had to proceed gradually.

Whether it's a self-inflicted injury or a scapegoat, it all depends on the right timing, the right people, and the right place. So, he quickly shifted his focus from the elimination list to the other two.

Infiltration list and recruitment list – complete these two side missions first, then focus on the more bloody and violent elimination list.

Now, it's obviously more convenient for Saint Sophia to handle the infiltration list herself. She now holds the Truth Investigation Committee card, and can gradually plant her own people in there.

Of course, SkyDrive isn't completely powerless to intervene.

At this moment, two names had already surfaced in Zhang Qiming's mind: Zhang Nanhai and Belissau Kaul.

These two men, one a scholar and the other a warrior, were not only among the original founders of Skydrive, just like him, but also among his most trusted confidants.

Like him, Zhang Nanhai was born in the incubation ward of the Terra Central Nursing and Unified Management Center.

They were orphans from the very beginning, and the first people they encountered in their lives were not relatives, but the assembly line management system of a giant corporation.

Terra's giant corporations will take care of raising these children, providing them with education, nurturing them all the way to university, and then gradually putting them into their own departments after they come of age, recouping the resources invested in the early stages.

If everything goes well, they will grow up in Terra and become beasts of burden, working for giant corporations for the rest of their lives.

Later, due to a less-than-honorable human transfer, Zhang Qiming, along with the young Zhang Nanhai, was transported from Terra to Mars by a raiding ship that worked for a private Martian force.

The two were thus placed into the training system under the Mechanical Church, starting as apprentices at the very bottom.

Those days were tough. For two young children with no connections, the church was never a good place.

When they were young, they encountered some dirty things in the church that were not worth mentioning. A guy disguised as a priest set his sights on young Zhang Nanhai.

A priest disguised as a priest set his sights on the delicate and tender Xiao Nanhai.

Zhang Qiming didn't say anything at the time, but used his own methods to quietly get rid of that person. The method was very clean, and he didn't leave any trace that could be traced back to him. It was during that time that he truly embarked on the path of a high-ranking official.

Whether on Terra or on Mars, Zhang Qiming always protected his younger brother Zhang Nanhai; and for Zhang Nanhai, Zhang Qiming was a family member who was both a father and a brother.

Later, the Sky Chaser quietly took shape underground, and with his help, Zhang Nanhai entered the SA Armed Forces, embarking on the path of a mechanical engineer, and rose through the ranks to become a second lieutenant in the SA Armed Forces.

As for Belisarius Caul, he was already a highly renowned mechanical sage on Mars before Zhang Qiming and Zhang Nanhai met each other.

Many people know that if he were willing to take a few more steps into the power arena, the position of Holy Cardinal would be easy for him.

But this wise man never looked down on the system of the College of Cardinals. He despised the people of the College of Cardinals and loathed their miserly behavior of hoarding knowledge.

In his earlier years, he even publicly advocated, like Hagia Sophia, for loosening knowledge controls, weakening the church's monopoly on technology, and opposing the Martian Church's policy of ignorance.

As expected, his actions led to the following outcome: the Holy Cardinals could not tolerate such voices, so they marginalized him and targeted and suppressed him from time to time.

Later on, Kaul got tired of wasting his breath arguing with those people.

He was unwilling to bow down and play along with their act, nor did he want to waste his energy on endless factional struggles, so he simply found a place to hide away and buried most of his time in engineering blueprints that no one else could understand.

It was around that time that Zhang Qiming found him and invited him to join Skywalker.

If it were just ordinary persuasion, Kaul would not pay any attention at all. But Zhang Qiming would not just talk the talk. Relying on his memories as a player in his previous life and some things he had discovered, he gave Kaul a condition that he could not refuse.

It was from that moment that the two began their collaborative relationship.

Thus, Skydrive was officially established, and over the years, the Skydrive organization has been able to build its framework not just by relying on Zhang Qiming alone.

The development framework of Chiseiro, the prototype chassis of the Sky Chaser I, the construction of armed mobile ship bases, and many other technological reserves and military industrial nodes that cannot be made public, all have the power of Belissau Caul behind them.

The mechanical sage is undoubtedly one of the most important founders of Skydrive's success today.

Moreover, he was Zhang Nanhai's teacher, so Zhang Nanhai would not encounter any bottlenecks on the path of becoming a master craftsman.

Unfortunately, while Kaur could pave the way for Zhang Nanhai, he couldn't help Zhang Qiming.

Because Kaul himself did not possess the advanced knowledge of the Myriad Machine Attendant lineage.

This thing is tightly controlled by the church, a true core monopoly. Not only can ordinary people not touch it, but even a sage like Kaul would find it difficult to obtain.

Moreover, he had offended the College of Cardinals too deeply in his early years, and many channels that should have been open to him were eventually completely shut down.

Therefore, even Belisarius Caul couldn't help Zhang Qiming in this matter, which is why he needed to obtain advanced knowledge from Saint Sophia before.

Now, Zhang Qiming needs the help of these two to complete his infiltration. Zhang Nanhai has been lying low in the SA unit for long enough and has accumulated a certain network of connections, while the sage Kaul can use his past connections to assist Nanhai in completing the infiltration.

As for the list of people to be courted...

Thinking of this, Zhang Qiming's lips slowly curled up slightly.

This side quest is actually a bit simpler.

As a player in the home world timeline in his previous life, he knew a lot of people's secrets, and now is the time to make use of those secrets.