News that the Mechanical Race was mounting a large-scale withdrawal soon, over the next few days, spread throughout the whole upper echelon of the Starlight Empire. A thing that made this great a commotion was, after all, impossible to keep hidden however one tried. Everyone was guessing: just what, in the end, was the Mechanical Race withdrawing on account of? It was rumored that the leaders of the various interstellar powers of the Galactic Alliance were, over this, holding discussions. And at the same time, the system resources left vacant after the Mechanical Race's retreat had been fixed upon by every power of the Galactic Alliance — for those, just now, were all masterless land!
Galactic Calendar, year 3031, October the 10th.
Zhao Chen had settled on a time with Li Yaqi for a holographic comm, to talk over this matter of the procurement.
Li Yaqi appeared before Zhao Chen.
"Congratulations, President Li." Zhao Chen applauded, and offered his congratulations. "Now the front page of the Starlight Empire's hot news, nearly every day, is word connected with the Northern Goose Group; you're even being called the Business Empress!"
"Do stop teasing me. These past few days I've been worn to exhaustion. Outsiders may not know it, but for all this deadly toil of mine, I'm still someone's hired hand." Li Yaqi looked at Zhao Chen with a touch of grievance.
Come to think of it, she still found it strange: a business this large, and Zhao Chen had, from the start of their cooperation and from beginning to end, genuinely never once put his hand in — had even, in full trust, left a portion of the income entirely in the Northern Goose Group's account. Before, that was one thing; but now, with a starship order of many tens of billions signed, Zhao Chen still showed no intent whatsoever of intervening. There was no telling whether he was truly uninterested in money, or truly, wholly trusted Li Yaqi.
"Let's talk, then — how did the signing of this procurement contract go?" Zhao Chen asked.
Li Yaqi raised a hand and set before Zhao Chen an electronic contract of the procurement order — one belonging to the top-secret class — letting Zhao Chen leaf through it as he pleased.
"The signing went very smoothly. The Empire military had originally been prepared to procure a quantity of 10,000, but because our T2 Tibetan Mastiff's price is only 3 million star coins, they decided to increase the order quantity — raising it to 15,000, for a procurement order with a total value of 45 billion star coins."
45 billion star coins — this exceeded even the expectation by no small margin.
Li Yaqi went on, "By the Empire military's requirement, this order must be delivered in full before the end of next year, and over that span several batches will be delivered progressively per the agreement. By the profit-sharing agreement between us from before, all costs are borne by me, so that when the time comes you can take 31.5 billion star coins as your share. My congratulations, Your Lordship the Viscount; by then your wealth may well be such that not even a Count or a Marquis could necessarily match you. And we've moreover received orders from various other powers. The T2 Hyena's market share has been snatched away by us, all of it."
Zhao Chen applauded and said, "And is this not all thanks to that maneuver of yours at the procurement fair, which directly hastened the T2 Hyena's death? What's more, Miss Li Yaqi, you've earned no little this time round either. The raw-material cost is only some 3 billion star coins; the other labor costs, transport costs, and production-line expansion and so on, all added together, won't exceed 9 billion. You've made close to 5 billion star coins on this. So far as I know, the Northern Goose Group's net income over 10 years, before this, probably didn't amount to as much as this one deal, did it?"
In this cooperation, Zhao Chen and Li Yaqi were, in effect, a case of both sides winning. Li Yaqi had gained the chance to stretch her limbs and show her mettle in the very field she'd dreamed of. And Zhao Chen could earn his money lying down.
"The affairs of the Northern Goose Group I'll still hand over to you to be fully responsible for. But there are a few things I need you to handle for me," Zhao Chen said, raising a matter of his own.
"Do go on," Li Yaqi said.
Zhao Chen said, "Now that the Northern Goose Group's scale is large, procuring starship raw-material resources is a good deal more convenient than before. So the starship raw-material resources I need on my end from now on — I'll trouble you to procure an extra share of them on the side while you're at it, and then I'll arrange for Chitong to quietly transport them over via her channels."
Before, the raw-material resources the Northern Goose Group procured in a year had come to only a few hundred million. So at that time Zhao Chen hadn't taken the Northern Goose Group's channel directly — otherwise it would have been all too easy to expose the relationship between the two of them. But now the Northern Goose Group was a great and established house; this little procurement of raw-material resources wouldn't draw anyone's notice at all, and Zhao Chen could naturally use this channel with an easy mind.
"That's no problem; just give me a raw-material order when the time comes," Li Yaqi said with a nod of agreement.
Once the two of them had finished talking, they brought this comm to an end.
The matter of the Empire procurement was, with this, more or less brought to a close. And because Zhao Chen couldn't see his Big Sis either, he had no heart to go on staying here. After bidding farewell to Chu Xuan, Su Lan, Xue Xiaoxiao, and the others—
Zhao Chen's T3 Blizzard set off on its return voyage to the Owl Dragon System.
And those crowds still busy discussing how the Northern Goose Group, bringing out the T2 Tibetan Mastiff-class Medium Interstellar Destroyer, had pushed the Hurricane Conglomerate's T2 Hyena-class Medium Interstellar Destroyer down from its altar — had no notion at all that the true behind-the-scenes hand of this affair had long since quietly departed. In their eyes there was only that rising Business Empress of the Northern Goose Group, Li Yaqi!
……
Blizzard-class Light Interstellar Battlecruiser · bridge.
"There's still nothing so comfortable as sitting on the bridge of one's own ship." Zhao Chen adjusted the captain's chair to a comfortable position, and at the same time opened the System page. These past few days he'd been together with Zhao Wan'er and the others all along, and hadn't had the leisure to look up the latest quarterly mission.
Quarterly Mission:
Requirement one: Redeem one T3-grade auxiliary-type interstellar warship technical blueprint.
Requirement two: Combat-type interstellar warships reach one hundred.
Requirement two was no great difficulty; if the numbers fell short when the time came, then at worst he'd expand a few more T2 Black Rhinos — cheap, in any case, and of fine cost-effectiveness. As for requirement one, Zhao Chen would need to give some thought to this problem of System points.
Just then, Zhao Chen felt as though someone were staring at him. Zhao Chen opened his eyes, and saw Zhao Wan'er standing beside him, staring at him without pause.
"Is there something on my face?" Zhao Chen felt at his own face.
Zhao Wan'er said nothing, only went on staring at Zhao Chen.
"What is it?" Zhao Chen asked, at a loss.
Zhao Wan'er, for all the world like the detective Sherlock Holmes, asked in a mysterious tone, "Is that Li Yaqi, and that T2 Tibetan Mastiff, connected with you or not?"
Good grief — this woman's sixth sense truly was something. That she'd actually gone and guessed even this?
Zhao Chen was given a fright, but on the surface his face still didn't change color in the least. "How could I possibly be connected with that business prodigy? If there's any connection at all, it's only that I happen to know her younger brother."
"Truly?" Zhao Wan'er stared at Zhao Chen dubiously.
And it was just then that Secretary Bessie suddenly walked over and reported, "Commander, the latest word sent back from base."
"Speak," Zhao Chen asked at once.
Zhao Wan'er, too, asked no more.
Secretary Bessie said, "It's about the word Chitong's reconnaissance has brought back — they've already discovered that slave-trading organization's base!"
Zhao Chen at once perked up. "Bessie, return to the Owl Dragon System at the fastest speed possible!"
For he was in a hurry to happily take delivery of his T4… in a hurry to take his revenge for Chitong!