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Chapter 174: Venture Capital - Captain Carter (1)
🕑 Added 2025-01-20 15:47:00 +0000 UTCCompared to the unlucky priest Imhotep, communicating with the relatively ordinary Cai Lin was much easier.
After a short exchange, Josh was able to understand her situation.
The timeline of her world was in late 1926, exactly 21 years earlier than Josh's world.
This matched the timeline of The Mummy. In the original story, O'Connell first reached the lost city of Hamunaptra with the French Foreign Legionnaires in 1923. His adventures with Evelyn began three years later, in 1926.
Cai Lin's father had once been a military giant in the Southwest, commanding tens of thousands at his peak. But he had died of illness a decade earlier.
Her family, however, remained influential in the region.
Because of her family background, Cai Lin, who greatly admired her father, joined the Jiangcheng branch of the Han Empire's official Huangfu Military Academy at the age of 18. This academy had just started recruiting female soldiers, making her part of the first-ever class of women soldiers in the history of the Han Empire.
As such, she proudly declared herself a female officer of the Han Empire, a rare identity for the time. There were only 213 officially recognized female soldiers in the entire empire, not counting unofficial appointments.
The trading beacon chose her just as she graduated from the academy.
Under normal circumstances, she would have joined a military intelligence unit to handle classified documents, much like Peggy Carter. But the appearance of the dimensional trading device clearly opened up a new path for her.
For a woman to join the military in that era was already a rare feat. Women with such ambitions were unlikely to fit into traditional roles.
Ambition, after all, isn't exclusive to men.
With her family's resources, raising a private army wasn't difficult. The only challenge, like Carter's, was earning the respect and loyalty of men in a patriarchal society.
But Cai Lin had a solution.
She had a younger brother.
By using her brother's name to rally her father's old subordinates, she could indirectly take control while letting him act as her puppet. A perfect plan!
Of course, it all depended on Josh's support.
"This blue serum is called Super Soldier Serum. There are only three vials. Once injected, it grants extraordinary strength. However, the process requires a lot of energy. That's where this green serum comes in—a high-energy food supplement. Use them together; inject the Super Soldier Serum first, then inject the supplement within five minutes. The process is painful, but there's no risk," Josh explained, supporting her bold ambitions rather than mocking them. He even offered something remarkable right off the bat—a newly developed Super Soldier Serum, created by Yuri after months of research using Captain America's blood samples.
Unlike the original serum used by Captain America or the Red Skull, Yuri's improved version had no emotional enhancement effects. It simply pushed the body to its limits without altering personality traits.
The new serum was more like the imperfect versions used by the Winter Soldier and Vito, but more refined and risk-free. The imperfect serums, after all, had a shockingly low success rate—out of thousands of test subjects, only two survived.
Because of these flaws, even someone as brilliant as Yuri couldn't replicate or improve the imperfect serum, despite having access to Vito's blood. He could only extract certain components and combine them with gene serums from the Red Alert universe to create the Beast Transformation Serum.
However, with Captain America's perfect blood and the research experience from Vito's serum, the development of the new serum became much easier.
In just a few months, Yuri achieved a first success.
The new serum may be slightly weaker than the original in terms of strength enhancement, but that was unavoidable. Combat potential depends not only on physical ability, but also on willpower.
The original Super Soldier Serum amplified desires and emotions, indirectly increasing the user's determination. This was evident in Bucky, whose imperfect serum made him weaker than the new Winter Soldiers created with Howard Stark's replicated serum.
The same principle explains why Captain America, even when facing far superior opponents, was often able to fight on equal terms.
The new Super Soldier serum had clear advantages; it was safe, had no side effects, and could be easily mass-produced. This made it ideal for widespread use. The use of the high-energy food supplement eliminated the need for the original serum's complex process of using electricity and special rays to boost energy, making the process much simpler.
For military and medical applications, this was truly a perfect Super Soldier Serum.
Early experiments showed that when soldiers used the serum and then supplemented it with Prozium before learning Gun Kata, their progress doubled.
Because the serum was so effective, Josh was cautious about releasing it widely in the short term. If it became widespread, it could drastically alter the global balance of power, which wasn't in his best interest at this time.
However, using it as an item for dimensional trade, it could become a top seller.
With this serum as her foundation, even if Cai Lin's ambitions seemed naive or foolish, as long as she didn't face anomalies like Imhotep or the Dragon Emperor, she could dominate her world. With the support of the trading system, she could rise again as many times as she needed to.
"Here are military weapons, equipment, and supplies twenty years ahead of your world's technology. They should last you a year. With these resources, you can easily form a strong army. Considering the strength of the current warlords in the Han Empire, you'll have no problem conquering the entire empire. Taking the Three Qin Region should be possible," Josh said. "Once you secure the Three Qin Region and locate the Dragon Emperor's Tomb, we can continue our transactions."
Since Cai Lin had nothing substantial to trade with Josh at the moment, this was all an investment.
The military supplies, combined with three vials of Super Soldier Serum, were a test. If she couldn't succeed with these resources, she wouldn't be worth further investment. In that case, Josh wouldn't hesitate to remove her and find a more reliable partner.
As always, there was risk in investing. But this level of risk was manageable for Josh.
"Thank you, Mr. Josh! I will complete your tasks as soon as possible!" Cai Lin exclaimed.
