Chapter 640: A Little Chat With Whitlock
"So, if I am understanding this correctly, you plan to return the entire planet to an optimal ecological condition. The entire planet." Whitlock leaned back in his premium leather armchair, steepling his fingers.
He looked at the nineteen-year-old sitting across from him, then at the impossibly powerful, gold-dressed woman currently treating that nineteen-year-old’s lap like a lounge chair.
"That is a massive undertaking, Liam. Even for you. Don’t you think?"
Liam simply smiled. It was a calm, even expression that offered absolutely nothing in the way of a concession. He rested one hand casually on Yanxia’s back as she continued to kick her feet idly in the air, deeply engrossed in whatever conversation she was having with Lucy through her Lucid device.
"Well," Whitlock continued, letting out a short, dry breath that was half-laugh, half-sigh, "if it’s you we are talking about, then I suppose ’massive undertaking’ translates to a minor logistical inconvenience. Though, I will be completely honest with you—it is a ruthlessly solid plan. A masterpiece of geopolitical maneuvering."
Whitlock allowed a genuine smile of professional admiration to touch his features. "You really know how to push the world’s governments into a corner. You build a paradigm where you leave them absolutely no other option but to capitulate to your demands, and you do it in a way where their own populations will demand that capitulation."
"If someone heard you describing it just now, Whitlock, they might think I’m some sort of heartless villain," Liam chuckled, the sound light and entirely unbothered.
"Well, to the governments sitting in emergency sessions right now, you’re not far off," Whitlock said. "You are dismantling their authority by rendering their utility obsolete. But tell me, how exactly do you plan to go ahead with this ecological restoration? And what is the timeline? I am assuming the mass-to-energy conversion technology you casually mentioned during your livestream will be the foundational pillar of this?"
"Yes. It will be," Liam said, his tone shifting slightly, dropping the casual warmth for the clinical precision of an architect outlining a blueprint. "The fact that one single kilogram of mass will provide enough electricity to power an average American household for over two million years means that energy poverty—and the geopolitical leverage that relies on energy scarcity—has been eliminated at the foundational level. But energy is only the first phase. The second is Nova Reclamation. Then Nova Express Delivery."
Whitlock raised an eyebrow. "Nova Reclamation?"
"It involves waste management, but not in any sense that the concept currently exists on Earth," Liam explained. "We aren’t going to bury things, and we aren’t going to burn them. I intend to effectively erase the concept of landfills from the surface of the Earth.
Using the molecular assembler at scale, we will systematically break down global waste at the atomic level. Plastics, heavy metals, industrial runoff—it will all be disassembled and repurposed, or converted into raw energy."
Liam paused, letting the sheer scale of that statement settle into the quiet air of the corner office.
"Furthermore, I understand that energy companies and defense departments globally have nuclear waste stockpiles they have been storing for decades. They hold them in concrete sarcophagi with no actual long-term way to dispose of them without the risk of wiping out humanity or poisoning the water table for ten thousand years. I intend to take care of that as well. We will neutralize the radioactive isotopes atomically."
Whitlock stared at him. The CEO of JP Morgan was mentally calculating the value of the global waste management industry, the nuclear disposal sector, and the carbon capture market, and watching them all drop to absolute zero in real-time.
"It will be a full package," Liam continued seamlessly. "Air, land, and water. Complete atmospheric scrubbing, soil detoxification, and oceanic purification. However, for the regions that fall outside of sovereign government control—international waters, the deep sea, the oceanic trenches—Nova Technologies will handle the restoration of those zones entirely for free."
Liam smiled, and the smile was incredibly sharp. "But in exchange for restoring them, Nova Technologies intends to lay formal claim to those areas."
Whitlock felt a chill run down his spine, followed immediately by a surge of pure, unadulterated awe.
He isn’t just cleaning the oceans, Whitlock realized. He is going to control seventy percent of the Earth’s surface.
If Liam claimed the international waters, no navy on Earth could contest him. The deep sea held untold mineral wealth, but more importantly, claiming it would establish Nova Technologies not just as a company, but as the largest sovereign territorial entity on the planet.
And the brilliance of it was that he was doing it under the undeniable moral high ground of saving the world’s dying oceans.
"So, you intend to clean the deep sea too, and take ownership of it in the process," Whitlock said, his voice quiet, vibrating with the magnitude of the revelation. "A deeply serious undertaking. And an aggressive one. When do you plan for this project to officially start?"
"That is still largely undecided in terms of a hard launch date," Liam said, casually stroking Yanxia’s hair as she hummed a quiet, happy tune. "But it will follow the Medical Nanites rollout. The global medical infrastructure needs to adjust first, which will happen in about half a year."
"So, two years for the Restoration Project to begin. Give or take," Whitlock deduced, his mind already spinning up the macroeconomic models.
Liam simply nodded.
"I see," Whitlock said, folding his hands in his lap. He looked at the boy—the god, the CEO, whatever category applied now—and realized that this was not a strategy meeting. Liam hadn’t come here just to outline a five-year roadmap for the global economy.
"So, for your upcoming trip," Whitlock asked, shifting the conversation to the actual purpose of the visit. "When are you coming back?"
"I have no idea," Liam said honestly. The weight of the cosmos, of broken law gears and the dying universe, flashed briefly behind his eyes before being smoothly tucked away. "But it will be anywhere from months to years. It will certainly be longer than my last excursion."
"I see," Whitlock said softly. He didn’t ask where Liam was going. He knew that the answer would likely involve concepts that would snap his terrestrial mind in half, and Whitlock was very fond of his remaining sanity. "Do take care of yourself, Liam."
"Of course," Liam said. He gently tapped Yanxia’s shoulder.
The Golden Immortal blinked, looked up at him with bright golden eyes, and gracefully pushed herself up from his lap.
Liam stood up, adjusting his simple t-shirt, and before he had even fully righted his posture, Yanxia hopped enthusiastically onto his back, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, returning to her preferred mode of transportation.
Whitlock couldn’t help but chuckle at the sheer absurdity of the visual. He stood up, smoothing his immaculate suit, and escorted them out of the office and toward the private elevators.
As they walked down the hushed, carpeted hallways, Whitlock allowed his mind to process the meeting he had just concluded.
Very few words had been spoken, relatively speaking. But the information density was monumental.
Nova Technologies was going to launch an ecological restoration product that would completely monopolize global energy, waste management, and oceanic sovereignty.
That information alone would dictate the absolute trajectory of global trade, commodities, and geopolitics for the next decade.
Whitlock understood perfectly well that Liam had actually just come to say goodbye, to formally inform his terrestrial anchor that he would be unavailable.
The information about the Global Restoration Project was just the icing on the cake. But it was the sweetest icing a financial institution could ever hope to taste.
Whitlock now knew exactly which global sectors were about to die, and which ones to short.
JP Morgan was going to position itself so perfectly ahead of the curve that the rest of Wall Street wouldn’t even realize they had lost until the game was already over.
The private elevator took them down in a smooth, silent drop.
When the polished metal doors slid open to reveal the expansive marble lobby of the headquarters, the atmosphere hit them like a physical wall.
The quiet, controlled environment of the executive floors was instantly replaced by the muffled, chaotic roar of the street outside.
The crowd outside the thick glass of the main entrance had grown exponentially. What had started as a spontaneous gathering of stunned pedestrians had violently evolved into a full-blown media circus.
News vans had hopped the curbs, satellite dishes were deployed, and dozens of reporters from global networks were pressing against the security barricades, microphones raised like weapons.
The moment they saw Liam approaching the glass doors with Whitlock trailing slightly behind, the crowd became a restless, surging ocean.
Whitlock stopped a respectful distance from the doors. "Safe travels, Liam."
"Keep an eye on things for me, Whitlock," Liam replied over his shoulder.
The heavy glass doors slid open.
Liam stepped out of the climate-controlled lobby and into the chaotic, humid air of the New York morning.
The moment he crossed the threshold, the noise became deafening. Reporters screamed his name, desperate for a quote about LucidNet Finance, about the livestream, about the young woman clinging to his back.
Simultaneously, a blinding, strobing wall of camera flashes erupted from every angle. Hundreds of digital shutters clicked in a frantic, overlapping cacophony, trying to capture the mythology of Liam Scott in high definition.
Liam stopped on the pavement.
He didn’t shield his eyes. He didn’t look overwhelmed. He simply frowned, a look of mild, profound annoyance crossing his features. He didn’t have the time or the patience for the terrestrial circus today.
Without breaking his stride, Liam raised his right hand and snapped his fingers.
The sound was not loud, but it carried a strange, resonant frequency that seemed to cut through the screaming crowd like a physical blade.
Instantly, the flashing stopped.
Every single camera, every smartphone, every digital recorder, every broadcasting rig, and every news van within a three-block radius simply died.
Screens went black. Lenses retracted. Satellite feeds abruptly cut to static. The catastrophic, simultaneous failure of thousands of electronic devices produced a collective, confused gasp that rippled through the crowd, replacing the screaming with a stunned, breathless silence.
Liam nodded in satisfaction as the oppressive wall of flashing lights vanished.
He didn’t offer a single word to the paralyzed media. Instead, he simply bent his knees, his aura wrapping around himself and Yanxia in a flawless telekinetic shield, and shot straight up into the morning sky.
There was no sonic boom, no displaced air, no dramatic shockwave to shatter the glass of the JP Morgan building.
There was only a sudden, silent streak upward. And the moment he cleared the rooftops, every screen, every lens, every satellite feed came back on at once.
The reporters stood on the pavement holding equipments that worked perfectly, with nothing on them.
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