Stars, Players and Immortals

Chapter 9: The Leader Pool

Zhang Qiming continued to explain to Zhang Nanhai:

"This is sincerity and attitude. If Sky Drive sends people over right away, in her eyes, it will just be another underground force trying to use her name to do things; but if we let Chishiro show up first, she will know that Sky Drive is not just a criminal force that only knows how to kill and set fires. We have our own Type III AI, our own technology system, and we are qualified to stand in front of her and talk about revolution."

"As for whether Chishiro will be controlled by her, you don't need to worry about that; the words of the machine god are not as powerful as you think. She can control Ares' core only because Ares himself likes this kind of thing."

After saying this, he stood up.

Outside the protective shield, a maglev train whizzed past deep into the corridor, its flickering lights sweeping over the two men before quickly disappearing into the endless industrial night of Sailor Valley. Zhang Qiming simply raised his hand with his back to him, as if casually ending the conversation.

"I'm leaving now. Be careful yourself. Those dogs in the courtroom have been sniffing around these past few days. Don't let them actually follow the scent here."

Zhang Nanhai sat there and slowly exhaled, not responding immediately. Only after Zhang Qiming had taken a few steps away did he reply in a low voice:

"understood."

He then stood up and took another road, leaving the old residential area that was half-hidden by abandoned protective shields.

……

……

The next day.

Mars Mariner Valley Manufacturing Corridor.

This is the largest industrial area on Mars. The entire canyon stretches for four thousand kilometers and, from orbit, looks like a huge crack running across the Martian surface. Humanity has crammed a complete industrial civilization into this crack.

At the bottom of the valley is a workers' city, on the canyon walls are automated factories, and deeper inside are crisscrossing magnetic levitation tracks. Machining, automated production lines, and military production run day and night here, like a heart wrapped in steel and steam, pumping power to the entire red planet time and time again.

The mastermind behind the Mars terror attack, Zhang Qiming, the leader of the Sky Drive organization, lived in a standard living pod in the middle of this manufacturing corridor.

The first broadcast of the morning came on time from the wall terminal. The public channel, which had been stuck on the martial law announcement from the previous night, was forcibly switched. The Martian emblem on the screen slowly unfolded, and a broadcaster in a dark ceremonial uniform appeared in the center of the camera. His expression was upright, and his tone was steady, with a solemnity and restraint unique to church officials.

[Mars Joint News Morning Report]

[As confirmed by the Joint Council of the Churches of Mars, the General Affairs Department of the Covenant Army, the Office of Sacred Revision, and the Deep Space Shipping Safety Committee, Her Excellency Saint Sophia Paleologina, formerly stationed at the Mars L2 High-Altitude Spaceport Command Center and currently the Coordinator of High-Altitude Industrial Defense and Orbital Order, officially concluded her high-altitude duty early this morning and departed for her return to the Martian homeland.]

Her Excellency Hagia Sophia's return is at the invitation of the Joint Council and the College of Cardinals' provisional resolution to participate in the current tasks of restoring order to Mars, stabilizing the industrial network, appeasing believers, and coordinating security across multiple blocks.

The church emphasized that during this special period, Mars needs unity, order, and a significant symbol capable of communicating between heaven and earth, harmonizing industry and faith, and calming the emotions of the people and various factions.

Meanwhile, the Sacramento Examiner's Office has officially announced that relevant departments will continue to intensify their efforts to investigate various rumors, fabricated images, malicious incitement, and heretical statements arising from last night's attack on Cathedral Square.

[Mars is currently in a stable overall state. Major industrial areas, transportation hubs, orbital transport lines, and deep-space facilities are all operating normally. The temporary curfew and secondary verification procedures implemented in some areas are necessary security measures, and we ask all citizens, technicians, workers, and immigrants to cooperate.]

[It is understood that after Her Excellency Saint Sophia returns to Mars, her first stop will be the Joint Command Center in the main city, where she will hold a closed-door meeting with representatives of the Joint Council, high-ranking officials of the Covenant Army, and the Industrial Coordination Department. Following this, depending on the situation, she will successively inspect the Mariner Valley Manufacturing Corridor, the Tharsis Plateau Military Industrial Area, and the Polar Ice Sheet Research Area. The Church will announce the schedule of subsequent public events at a later date…]

This concludes our special morning news report. May the god of machines bless Mars!

By the time the news broadcast ended, the Saintess's flagship had already entered the low-altitude Martian flight path. The silver-white hull slowly descended between the morning light and industrial light strips, eventually heading towards the main city's joint command center along the predetermined route.

Zhang, whose position had been optimized, sat at the table, quietly watching the flagship slowly slide out of view from the public channel screen, and then raised his hand to turn off the news.

Following the assassination, the court and church leadership conducted an internal purge, resulting in the dismissal of a large number of visa officers and a tightening of the previously relatively loose approval process.

He wasn't originally on the optimization list, but to facilitate operations, he had the South China Sea Commander put himself on it.

This can be considered a different kind of resignation, starting one's own business.

At this moment, Zhang Qiming, an ambitious young entrepreneur, raised his hand to summon his own panel and then locked it on the [Leader] interface at the top.

If you want to start a business, you should naturally find some like-minded partners to work with.

[Leader Pool Panel]

[Administrator/Commander/Science Officer (Recruiting)]

[Science Officer (1)]

【Commander (1)】

Zhang Qiming's gaze lingered on these three lines of text for a moment.

The civilization leaders here are not the kind of game units that can be delivered to your door with the click of a button.

It's more like a system-enhanced talent selection mechanism that searches the entire planet's real population over a long period and then identifies a very small number of individuals who truly possess leadership potential from among countless people.

They are real-world geniuses, the rarest and most irreplaceable people in an entire civilization. Their talent, ability, will, knowledge, and influence far surpass those of ordinary people.

These people don't have player templates, and they can't level up quickly like players by fighting monsters, but their growth rate is comparable to that of players.

Their strength comes from knowledge, experience, political ability, scientific research capabilities, and control over the structure of civilization.

Unfortunately, the search for leaders in the pool is not unlimited.

Moreover, the leader pool itself has a capacity limit. With Zhang Qiming's current civilization template level, the system can only lock onto a maximum of four potential targets at the same time.

In other words, the Leader Pool system can only discover a portion of the most outstanding talents, but there are still some potential individuals that Zhang Qiming must discover himself, and some even need to be actively cultivated by him so that they can gradually grow into true leaders in the long process of politics and civilization.

The current Martian colony has a total population of over 200 million, but only three people have been identified by the system as having leadership potential.

This number is sufficient to illustrate the point.

Zhang Qiming's gaze fell to the bottom of the interface. Currently, he already had two leaders.

[Science Officer: Belissau Caul]

[Commander: Zhang Nanhai]

His gaze unconsciously drifted to the talent options that were listed as "[Recruitable]".

[Administrator/Commander/Science Officer: Saint Sofia Paleologina]