"When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

As Shen Wuxiang considered Lu Ban Mountain a piece of fat meat, they stepped into this vast slaughterhouse.

One Lu Ban Mountain, a hundred thousand troops filled.

This is a well-known proverb under the starry sky.

Everyone knew the Lu Family was formidable, and the depths of Lu Ban Mountain were unfathomable.

But just how formidable...

No one knew.

After all, who would deliberately provoke such a behemoth for no reason?

Even if there were frictions, they were confined to the political arena, the military, and the marketplace... and not at the doorstep of the Lu Family's lair.

This was a probing.

It was also the first time the Lu Family's old mansion had encountered a besiegement.

It had to be said, Shen Wuxiang's probing was successful:

The Lu Family truly was formidable, and Lu Ban Mountain indeed unfathomable.

The news spread, causing a global tremor.

No, it was shock.

Countless people and powers had to reexamine this family, which had been nearly suppressed to the dust for twenty years, and reconsider whether their relationship with them was dangerous.

A millennium-old family, with profound heritage, indeed.

Military Committee.

As the First Commander and direct leader of this war, Shen Wuxiang was the first to know the news, with a face solemn as water, silent for a long time.

With Shen Wuxiang not speaking, the other high-ranking officers also remained silent.

Each sat stiffly upright, eyes on their noses, noses on their hearts, as if they had nothing at all to do with the matter.

Director Guo of the Security Bureau, responsible for intelligence collection, was also invited to the meeting. His gaze swept around the faces of those present, he opened his mouth to speak, but in the end, he closed it, wisely choosing to remain silent.

If no one else was speaking, why should he step out and touch this sensitive topic?

Unfortunately, just what one fears tends to come to pass.

"Fire Fox, White Wolf, and the 722—three ace brigades, more than thirty thousand men went in, and not even a splash?" Shen Wuxiang's eyes, authoritative and profound, fixed on Guo Nu, as he demanded.

Outside, the bombardment was thunderous, and all of Phoenix City could hear the noise.

But once inside the mountain, people seemed to vanish without a trace, silently annihilated.

You don't even know how they died.

To whom could you plead your case?

He wanted to probe, to use them as chess pieces.

But you must bring back some results from a probe.

You must let people know, to what extent those thirty thousand could fight them, how many losses they suffered...

How many more troops would it take to take them down?

It seemed as though everything had been done, and yet, as if nothing had been accomplished.

This created a feeling of frustration and powerlessness.

Guo Nu swallowed hard and began to explain, "The battlefield recorders they carried with them lost signal the moment they entered Lu Ban Mountain. We fought desperately to regain control over these devices..."

"But, as you know, our technology and equipment are far inferior to that of the Lu Family... so until the end, we couldn't get any live footage of the battle scene."

"Every year we allocate tens of billions of starry river coins to the Security Bureau, where has all that money gone? Why is our technology and equipment still so far behind the Lu Family's?"

"..."

Guo Nu didn't dare to respond, much less refute.

He knew that the Military Minister was angry.

His questioning... was just venting his anger.

Because he understood better than anyone present that the Lu Family's technological and scientific superiority, established over thousands of years of accumulation and innovation by generation after generation...

Ants might build their towers quickly, but the Lu Family was born an elephant.

The Lu Family was playing with machinery while you were still playing in the mud.

"General, please calm your anger, Director Guo has done his best. This battle... is not a crime of combat," Wang Daolong, a member of the Military Committee, stood up to speak for Guo Nu; after all, the two had a good private relationship.

"If it's not a crime of combat, then what's the issue?"

"It's a victory in terms of technology, a crushing dominance in mechanics," Wang Daolong looked to Shen Wuxiang, speaking up for Guo Nu and also easing the situation for Shen Wuxiang.

After all, with the defeat of Wang's troops, Shen Wuxiang, the initiator, was in an awkward position.

Just this?

"As everyone knows, the Lu Family are descendants of the Mechanical Ancestor Lu Ban, they have a technological advantage of thousands of years, and they keep their latest weapons and equipment private, never provided to the military..."

"Every time, under our pressure, they would reluctantly, like squeezing toothpaste, give us a little... but what we get might be things they researched decades or even a century ago..."

"How can we fight? Our soldiers enter Lu Ban Mountain, and they simply initiate a signal jam... No more battlefield recorders, the command system collapses..."

"Generals can't command their soldiers, soldiers can't receive orders, everyone scrambles like headless flies... isn't that just being toyed with by the enemy? Where's the power to fight back?"

"Yes, the Lu Family is too cunning."

"The Lu Family has ulterior motives, they must have had rebellious intentions for a long time..."

"They were prepared all along, otherwise why hide their technology, their equipment?"

"Is the Lu Family still the Empire's Lu Family? Is Lu Ban Mountain still the Empire's territory?"

"This matter is not over... if thirty thousand are not enough, we send fifty thousand, if fifty thousand are not enough, we send a hundred thousand... if all else fails, erase Lu Ban Mountain from the star charts..."

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Shen Wuxiang, in name the Chairman of the Military Committee, the first person in the military, had everyone speaking out on his behalf.

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