Chapter 82: The Bustling Extraction

Without Jack playing the role of a traitor to his own kind, the Na’vi continued to live in their idyllic world. The group Ma Jun planned to deal with, including the elderly, weak, and sick, amounted to no more than a thousand. They posed no real threat.

On the entire planet of Pandora, though there existed something akin to the so-called Gaia consciousness, Eywa, it rarely intervened in the struggles between species. Humanity had been on Pandora for at least thirty years, and conflict had been constant, yet Eywa had remained silent. Even in the film, when a tribe’s home was utterly destroyed, Eywa did not intervene.

Only when Jack fully sided with the Na’vi, connecting with Eywa in a mysterious night to pour out his heart, did Eywa finally respond. From the moment Jack appeared, Eywa sent her seeds to disturb him; perhaps she felt something special for Jack. Yet, Ma Jun had crushed all of this before it could blossom.

There was no doubt that Eywa was shrouded in mystery. To provoke her would mean certain doom for Ma Jun, given his current strength. So he acted with caution, not greed, aiming only to seize one vast deposit of unobtanium and develop slowly.

Thunderous engines roared as a hundred aircraft took off. Ma Jun and Miles Quaritch were aboard the largest plane—the command ship. Whenever Ma Jun saw these aircraft, he couldn’t help but complain. Their design was so repulsive, the very look of a villain.

On the ground, colossal industrial trucks, over ten meters tall, moved ahead slowly. The trees of Pandora were enormous, but even after seeing many towering trunks, Ma Jun was stunned by the one before him. The sight of it was indescribably awe-inspiring.

This massive tree, with its thick trunk and canopy obscuring the sky, dwarfed even the command ship, making it seem minuscule. This giant tree was home to a Na’vi clan—a luxury, Ma Jun thought, for just a few thousand people to live in such a vast dwelling.

Beneath the tree lay an extremely rich unobtanium deposit.

“Commander, the fighter jets are in position, ready to attack at any time!” Quaritch called out loudly.

On the radar, Ma Jun could see a hundred aircraft forming a semicircle around the tree.

“Good. Launch gas grenades to drive the Na’vi out!” Ma Jun said, his face expressionless.

“Fire!” Miles issued the command.

Instantly, all the jets unleashed a barrage of gas grenades, which streamed through the cracks in the roots and flooded the tree’s interior.

The Na’vi poured out in groups, some riding their mounts and shooting arrows, roaring angrily at the jets.

“Commander, they’re firing at us!” a mercenary laughed.

“They must be joking,” Ma Jun shrugged. “Wait until most of the Na’vi are out, then launch incendiary grenades. Such a grand-scale logging operation would be unimaginable on Earth!”

The Na’vi’s arrows shot from below up into the sky, but they barely threatened the jets, only bouncing off their metal hulls.

Ma Jun, cigarette dangling from his lips, watched the scene below and frowned, waving his hand. “Miles, block the live feed from the site. Don’t let the base personnel watch.”

“Yes, sir!”

After half an hour, when not a single Na’vi remained visible in the tree, Ma Jun gave the order. “All aircraft, switch to incendiaries. Fire at will!”

Whoosh, whoosh—

Countless incendiary bombs, trailing thick smoke, shot furiously at the great tree.

Within moments, a raging fire erupted, sending mushroom clouds of smoke skyward like a nuclear blast.

Faced with such a ruthless demolition crew, the Na’vi could only leave in anguish and rage, supporting each other as they retreated, glancing back with reluctant eyes. Who would not mourn such a magnificent natural home?

The aircraft pulled back to a safe distance, then switched to live ammunition, firing volleys at the giant tree.

After round upon round, the roots were utterly destroyed, and finally the great tree collapsed, its majestic body seeming to shake the very earth.

“Well done!”

Inside the aircraft, the demolition team clapped each other on the back and celebrated.

“All right, work’s not done yet. Keep it up, everyone. I’ll head back and wait for your good news,” Ma Jun said.

With the operation finished, Ma Jun boarded another jet, taking Quaritch back to the base. Miles stayed behind, leading the rest to deploy firefighting equipment to clear the site, coordinating with the engineering vehicles that had been waiting below to set up preliminary defenses.

The abundant minerals and the drive for humanity’s future filled the people of Pandora with vigor. Ma Jun’s daily routine was simply to patrol the area, while his subordinates worked feverishly.

In just a month, on the land where the great tree once stood, a simple human base had been established. Though crude, it was enough to guard against Na’vi raids and wild beasts.

Mercenaries reinforced the defenses while the workers, mostly miners, drove the engineering vehicles to extract the ore. The unobtanium here was plentiful, and mining was not difficult; most deposits lay less than twenty meters below the surface.

Earth was already aware of what was happening on Pandora. No whistleblower was needed; Ma Jun himself passed the news along.

When the company learned its Pandora base had been taken over by Ma Jun, it was furious. Yet Ma Jun clung to the fact that the Carl family and the company had plotted to kill him, and with Harry, Juster, and other allied families applying pressure behind the scenes, all anyone could do was argue, hold meetings, and occasionally stage a debate—there would be no resolution anytime soon.

The most enraged were Dawson and Stark. After the events, they realized they had been played. The consequences: Stark was no longer CEO, and Dawson was no longer the heir to his family.

On Pandora, half a year passed, and the mining enterprise reached its peak. Countless minerals filled the base’s warehouses, so precious that Ma Jun almost drooled at the sight.

Having stirred up headlines both on Earth and Pandora, Ma Jun had completed his world-plundering mission; in other words, he could now freely enter and leave the world of Avatar.