The classic and luxurious sedan was far away from the center of Moscow, and the trees outside the windows were getting denser and denser, and the heavy snow covered the branches of the birch trees, looking desolate.

Zero drove herself, wearing a blue-gray woolen trench coat and a straight mink hat, and if she hadn't sat up straight and wasn't much taller than the top edge of the steering wheel, she would have looked a bit like a little lady.

"Shouldn't you go to the Kremlin to see the Minister of Defense?" Chu Tianjiao, who was sitting in the back row holding Murayu, asked with some doubts.

He took the initiative to ask to come along, saying something like "As an adult, you can't just watch your children go out on adventures", and I don't know if he is still thinking about the idea of finding a daughter-in-law for Chu Zihang; Lu Mingfei sat in the co-pilot and closed his eyes to recuperate.

As for Fingal...... He is known as the "town guard base camp".

"He invited us to meet at his house, where he lives in the suburbs." Zero said, "You'll know when you see him." ”

There was no reason for her to refuse an S-class half-breed companion whose spirit was "Time Zero", which might be the pinnacle of personal strength other than Lu Mingfei.

After driving out of Moscow for about an hour, the road ahead of it became narrower and narrower, and there were a few more roadblocks guarded by soldiers, but they did not need to stop and show their passes, etc., and after seeing their license plates, the roadblocks were opened far away.

You can see a courtyard surrounded by peeled birch trees in front of you, and the crisp sound of chopping wood echoes in the courtyard.

The soldier at the last roadblock gave Zero and Lu Mingfei a rough examination with a detector with a cold face, and confirmed that they were not carrying weapons before letting them go; Chu Tianjiao was stopped outside, and the soldier told him in stiff English that there were only two names on the visiting list.

As a last resort, he could only stay here, and at the same time glance at Lu Mingfei and ask him to be careful.

Lu Mingfei had already noticed something unusual, the wooden house that looked like a Russian country house was actually under close surveillance, and even without the blessing of a powered tactical helmet, he could find hidden soldiers and snipers in the surrounding hillsides, snow, and fallen leaves.

"General Vatutin, Deputy Minister of Defense of the Soviet Federation, is now an old man under residential surveillance."

Zero grabbed Lu Mingfei's hand and signaled that he didn't need to be too nervous.

Lu Mingfei saw zero concern - she was afraid that she would be offended by this, so she cleaned up the attackers who attacked them.

He nodded in return with a gentle smile and responded as if soothing a child, "Okay." ”

In the bleak cold wind, an old man in an army-green vest with broad shoulders like a bear was wielding a large axe to chop large pieces of wood into small pieces. With each fall of his axe, there was a spew of majesty and violence, like a heavy gunner calmly blowing one bunker after another to smithereens.

This old man chopping wood was obviously the person they were going to visit on this trip, Lu Mingfei could feel the invisible majesty of the other party, it only belonged to the kind of leaders in high positions, such as the captain of the Astarte battle regiment, the captain and commander of the imperial space battleship, etc., they often decided the fate of thousands of people with a wave of their hands.

The old man did not seem to notice their arrival, and was still chopping wood on his own, whistling loudly.

The old man stopped the axe in his hand, turned around, and locked his eyes on Lu Mingfei for the first time, with scrutiny and vigilance - a soldier who has experienced the baptism of real war will naturally not hide from the eyes of such a person.

But when he saw Zero, his eyes suddenly lit up, and he opened his arms to her, and let out a bold syllable, "Hi! ”

"No, I don't want to stick to your sweat." Zero refused in Russian with a look of disgust.

The old man still had his arms wide open, "Hey! ”

Unable to refuse this masculine invitation, Zero had to step forward and hug him, and the petite girl was almost nowhere to be seen in the arms of the giant bear-like old man.

The old man laughed, lifted Zero high on his shoulder, and carried her to the cabin in the woods.

This scene touched Lu Mingfei's heart slightly, and he used to comfort the children like this, at least he could give them a little sense of safety and dependence who survived under the alien or heretical knife.

The cottage is a modest setting, with Tchaikovsky's symphonies on an old-fashioned record player and fragrant cans of stewed beef on the fire.

Zero skillfully found tools in the house to grind the pepper, and Lu Mingfei helped to peel potatoes by hand - the heads of Xenomorphs and heretics could be sharpened, and of course potatoes could be sharpened.

Lunch was soon ready, and they gathered around a long pine table, the thick broth of potatoes and beef smelled of fresh fennel, and it was like a warm family feast, the granddaughter brought her classmates to visit her grandfather, who told the story of how great he was when he was young, and the classmates listened with a polite and gentle smile, and the granddaughter did not want to listen to the soup.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he raised a lot of money from his former military colleagues, and used the military connections to enter the shopping malls, selling planes to China, oil, and diamonds to the world.

At that time, the "Romanov family", which was doing business in Europe, wanted to enter the Russian market, so they cooperated with Vatutin, who gladly accepted this ally, but did not expect that the Romanov family sent a little girl who was not much taller than a suitcase.

Outsiders have always felt that Zero is his adopted daughter or illegitimate daughter, and he does not deny it, so that their cooperation between them will be more secretive, and the Romanov family has used Vatutin's connections to buy companies and land, and has also praised Vatutin as the largest financial oligarchy in Russia. However, the good times did not last long, with the government regulation, the financial oligarchs fell one after another, and Vatujing was confiscated of all his assets and placed under residential surveillance to this day.

Despite all the ups and downs, Vatutin didn't seem to care too much, he talked most about the events of the Soviet era, as if the career of a financial oligarchy was just a ticket for him, and he was always a member of the Soviet Red Army.

But the warmth and contentment in the room did not last long, and Zero's words cut it off like a blade:

"I'm here to ask you about the 'δ Project'."

It was as if a cold wind had poured into the wooden house, the temperature plummeted, and the majesty of the old times returned to the old man.

General Vatutin slowly put down his glass, and looked directly at Zero with a pair of piercing eyes that were dull and revealing a dazzling light:

"The last time you asked me this question was ten years ago, and I didn't answer it, and I thought you wouldn't ask it again. But today you brought this boy and asked the same question. Did you ask for him? ”

"The questions and the answers we're looking for are the same." Zero said lightly.

"Who the hell is he?"

"You don't have to know that."

"That's a state secret!"

"Your country is long dead."

The powerful auras collided with each other, and the grandfather and grandson's family banquet turned back into dialogue and-for-tat between business partners. Lu Mingfei didn't say much, his expression was calm like an irrelevant bystander.

"You tell me everything you know about the 'δ Project', and I will use all my connections to get you out of this country, and you can go to Spain, France, or England and live the rest of your life freely," Zero stared into Vatutin's eyes, "You're not afraid of loneliness or death or anything, but isn't it too humiliating for someone like you to die in this cage?" ”

Vatujing was silent for a long time: "Maybe I shouldn't have let you know me so well. ”

He poured himself a full glass of vodka and watched the fire slowly finish it. After a few minutes of silence, he began to speak.

"In the most prosperous era of the country, when it was once alone against the powerful Western coalition, it was an era full of ideals, and of course inevitably mixed with politics and violence. Our economic strength is far inferior to that of our enemies in the West, so we have to rely on military force to strike a balance. In order to have an advantage in a possible future war, we are also investing in the development of various new technologies that can turn the battlefield, such as the 1K-17 laser tank, the Kirov-class arsenal ship, the Tu-119 nuclear-powered bomber, ......"

"Of these now-failed, rusty wreckage sealed in an abandoned warehouse, Project δ is the most special, and its object is human beings themselves, as in American comics, to create super-soldiers. We screened children from the republics of the Soviet Union who we thought were genetically superior, some of whom were incredibly explosive, some of whom had a strong tolerance for pain, and some of whom had incredible computing powers...... We assume that these genetic strengths can be combined to create powerful and excellent warriors, which are even more useful in the field of espionage. ”

"Is it that simple for a genetic engineering project?" Zero frowns.

"It's also a bloody project, where we repeatedly create embryos and destroy them over and over again. Life is a consumable in this project, and they have created various types of deformed children, most of whom do not even live to be two years old; Some seemingly successful babies have very short lifespans, and the person in charge always gives us hope that each new generation of the project will improve...... It's just that we haven't been able to expect the birth of a real super soldier yet, and the country will die. "That's all I know." ”

"This man," Zero pulled out a black-and-white photograph of a man wearing a Soviet military uniform, "do you have any information about him?" ”

"Dr. Herzog, the head of the 'δ Project', he has come to Moscow for several meetings, and I have met him at the meetings." "He was a very secretive, even higher than mine, and I only knew him as a German genetic engineer who was captured in 1945 when Berlin fell...... But strangely, he couldn't tell the age, and he brought the full set of genetic engineering techniques of the 'δ Project', which surprised the academicians of the National Academy of Sciences. ”

"So...... It's just a genetic engineering project," Zero reconfirmed, his eyes staring at General Vatutin, his eyes a little cold, "A bloody genetic project." ”

"In terms of personal morality for the time being, and of course bloody for the failed test subject, but on a national level in general, these are the prices that must be paid, and a super-soldier may be able to save more lives in the future. In the face of war and the state, everyone is a number that can be sacrificed, including myself. Vatutin smiled coldly.

Lu Mingfei frowned slightly, a little disappointed - this old man didn't even seem to know about the special existence of "half-blood".

As for the bloody genetic engineering mentioned by General Vatutin, he doesn't have much mood swings, he was the creation of genetic engineering, from a galaxy that was almost completely burned by war.

He took out the two pieces of file paper from his bosom and handed them to the old man, and said in Russian, which he was not very proficient in, "Then do you have any impression of this file?" ”

Vatutin's eyes widened subconsciously - for a leader in a high position, he should not show his emotional changes on his face so easily, but the other party didn't seem to care about this now, and his eyes kept moving back and forth from the file photo and Lu Mingfei's face as if he was making a comparison.

"You survived, too? …… No, you're not like him, you don't have ...... in you."

Vatutin muttered to himself, somewhat incredulous.

"What else are you hiding from us?" Zero stood up and stared at him with his hands on the table, a kind of anger at being deceived.

The old man opened his mouth wide and wanted to say something, but someone didn't want to give him this opportunity.

……

At the barricade outside the wooden house, the two soldiers seemed to have received an order, pulled out the Glock pistol on their waists and aimed it at Chu Tianjiao, who was smoking on the side of the car, and at the same time, there were dark red laser aiming beams hitting him from different directions.

His strong survival instinct allowed him to release Time Zero in the first place, and the gray-white time-stopping field had already enveloped itself before the bullet hit. After drawing his sword and severing Glock in the hands of the two soldiers and kicking them away, he saw more figures standing up from all sides of the hut, as if a group of snakes had risen from hibernation crawling out of their burrows.

Even more deadly, two flying objects were flying towards the wooden house with a dazzling flame and tail flame.

There was no time for Chu Tianjiao to rush over to stop it, and in the next second, the sky-high flames engulfed the small room, accompanied by a deafening explosion, and the hot air waves swept away the surrounding snow and fallen leaves.

(End of chapter)