Resurrection Empire

Nowadays, Zhenjiang Marquis' Mansion and Chifeng Earl's Mansion are just across the water from each other, and they are as close as one family.

Although Marvell Louis was doubtful about the sudden request made by the descendants of the Gao family, he would not set up a checkpoint for the Earl of Chifeng's Mansion after all. After thinking about it for a while, he made the decision himself and agreed to the matter.

However, the two families are very close, but the brothers still have to settle their accounts. Marvell himself is old and doesn't know when he will die.

Now that he has accepted Ren Zhong's suggestion, he is ready to prepare for war, and the expenses in the Marquis Mansion are becoming increasingly huge.

Marvell also had to leave more capital for his younger brother Bourbon, lest he die one day and Bourbon would be left with nothing but an empty shell when he took over.

Therefore, the two parties conducted rigorous discussions on the negotiation table about the selling price of the junk star, who would bear the transportation costs, and the expenses for occupying the waterway during transportation.

After the negotiations between the two parties were completed and the final contract terms were presented to Marvell, he became even more confused. He frowned and said to his brother Bourbon next to him: "Something is wrong. Everyone knows that this non-renewable metal is already completely destroyed." Waste products. It has been publicized by the Materials Institute of the Yuanjiang Branch that the technology has reached the bottleneck earlier and cannot make any progress. They are actually willing to quote one-tenth of the new minerals. Also, the transportation costs are borne by the Chifeng Earl's Mansion. It is a proper thing, but the occupation of the waterway can be offset by the cleaning fee to clear the garbage star field. The treatment they gave is too generous."

Bourbon was also puzzled: "I asked the negotiators to just try to make a quote, but I didn't expect that they didn't have much objection, so they easily agreed."

Marvell Louis was getting more and more puzzled, but it was a pity that Uncle Chi Feng himself was still "sleeping" at this time, otherwise he would have wanted to ask this good brother.

"Forget it, let's leave it at that for now. Perhaps the Chifeng Earl's Mansion has made a lot of money over the years. After all, the scale of the galaxy controlled by Brother Ren Zhong is limited. He understands the difficulty of our huge expenditure on war preparations, so he deliberately gives us some benefits."

Bourbon thought about it for a while, "That makes sense."

…

On the other side, the acquisition work of the smuggling trio under the command of the Duke of Wenle had only minor twists and turns, but in the end it was smooth sailing.

It took Tang Tumao, Jin Wuyou and the others eight years to create their own Garbage Man character. This concept has long been deeply rooted in people's hearts.

Now they have suddenly increased their scale. They are no longer satisfied with purchasing low-quality metal products piecemeal from inhabited and prosperous planets that have been used for many times. Instead, they are eyeing those under the command of many Dukes. The Archons regard it as a metal garbage star that is like a cancer.

The higher the intensity of human activities, the more energy is consumed and the more waste is produced. This has never changed since ancient times.

Even the central area of ​​the empire, which is highly technologically advanced, cannot escape this stereotype.

Not only that, in the center of the empire, there are higher technologies and stronger productivity resources. Humanity is no longer satisfied with developing planetary resources. There are a large number of stellar wind capturers orbiting many stars in high latitudes to collect To capture the plasma in the stellar wind, hydrogen isotopes are the most important. There are also elements ranging from low to high atomic weights, which are also in full categories, but the content may be more or less.

This technology of capturing stellar winds provides almost inexhaustible material resources for the humans of the empire.

As long as the star is immortal, resources will not be exhausted.

In the long process of iterative utilization of resources, these elements from stellar winds eventually turned into metals and their isotopes with higher atomic weights, and then became real waste products in multiple recycling cycles.

As early as millions of years ago, Imperial humans found the idea of ​​piling waste in space.

After that, the garbage stars naturally piled up more and more, and became larger and larger.

Later, as metal recycling technology continued to improve, garbage stars composed of scrap metal were recycled many times.

However, in the past million years, because metal recycling technology has hit a bottleneck and has been slow to make progress, there are more and more garbage stars piled around many star fields, around star clusters, in the gaps between star clusters, and outside planetary systems, and they are becoming more and more useless. .

The increasingly large number of junk stars has brought about a more complex gravitational environment, which has also caused problems for the gravitational stability of stars in the central area of ​​the empire. Disasters may even occasionally occur, requiring a large amount of resources to be prevented and rectified.

This phenomenon is often more serious in more prosperous areas.

Duke Wenle's fiefdom star fields are basically in the central area of ​​the empire. The number and size of junk stars in the star fields under his command far exceed those of the far-flung star fields where the star systems are relatively scattered, the population density is low, and the economy and technology are not very developed.

For example, the total mass of junk stars in Wenle's first star field alone is nearly fifty times that of the entire Far Frontier star field.

If it is transported away, it seems that the cost is not cost-effective, but if it is left here, it is unsightly and poses a disaster risk.

It would be a pity to gather them all together to form a huge physical planet and create a pure neutron star. After all, what if the metal recycling technology advances one day?

In short, these things are useless, tasteless to eat, a pity to discard, and distressing.

The people at Duke Wenle's Mansion were worried about this matter from time to time, but finally they waited for the smuggling trio to take advantage of them.

They are actually willing to bear the sky-high transportation costs at their own expense, and are even willing to offer a purchase price based on one-tenth of the quoted unit quality of brand-new minerals. What a great person.

What is the thing that "developed countries" like to dump most to "underdeveloped countries"?

Of course it's garbage!

As a result, the smuggling trio relied on their extensive contacts to sign a large number of contracts in a very short time before the top figures in Duke Wenle's palace could react, and ate up more than 50% of the junk stars in one go.

This is 50% of the total amount accumulated by people from dozens of star clusters in nearly ten prosperous star fields in millions of years.

Even if the price is very generous, it has drained almost all the liquidity of the Chifeng clan.

It was at this time that Duke Wenle finally reacted.

The development of the situation was not at all beyond Ren Zhong's expectations.

Although no one can understand the true purpose of Ren Zhong, there must be a monster when things go wrong, so it is always right to stop it quickly.

Senna Romanov, who had fallen out of favor with the Duke, had to be pushed out again and was responsible for verifying the matter.

After looking at the report for a while, she was shocked to find that the Red Front tribe had actually swallowed up half of the garbage galaxies under Duke Wenle's residence in a short period of time like a siphon from a giant whale.

But then, Senna Romanov quickly turned from worry to joy.

Because based on the information provided by the Imperial Super Network and the Economic Intelligence Department, Senna discovered that Uncle Chi Feng actually fell into a financial crisis in a short period of time.

This is a great thing.

In today's era, with the widespread popularization of synthetic food, the financial crisis will certainly not lead to famine and chaos. However, observing the economic structure of the Chifeng Earl's Mansion, we can find that in the past ten years, in addition to daily necessities, the Chifeng people In addition to relying heavily on cheap goods provided by the Duke of Wenle Palace in terms of daily life, the country also relies more heavily on foreign countries in the energy field.

Although the Chifeng Tribe has been trying to build a Dyson giant device to capture stellar radiation for a long time, they have been too "military" in recent years, and a lot of productivity has been devoted to the military field, so that the Chifeng Tribe has its own Dyson device. The progress of the Mori giant structure is slow and simply not enough to meet its daily needs.

If it weren't for the huge investment in invisible coatings, the economy of Chifeng Earl's Mansion would have collapsed.

Senna immediately summoned the staff team and began to carefully dismantle the current situation and analyze the situation.

In the end, Senna came to the conclusion that although Ren Zhong would be killed sooner or later, it seemed that there was now a chance to cause serious damage to his industry and people, and even make Ren Zhong grateful and extend his tentacles in advance. Within the power of the Chifeng Clan, which is as strong as an iron wall.

A few hours later, as expected, the smuggling trio found that the junk star acquisition business was back in business.

Not only that, the Duke's Palace of Wenle is more open-minded, saying that considering the long-term good cooperative relationship between the two parties, it allows the Chifeng clan to use assets as collateral for credit sales, and even loans to cover transportation costs, and then only needs to pay a small interest. Just make regular repayments.

The scope of this mortgage asset includes the sovereign galaxy of the Chifeng clan, patented intellectual property rights, and fixed assets.

There was nothing to say, the smuggling trio became reckless on the spot.

Nearly five years later, the vast sea of ​​garbage stars finally crossed the star gate and appeared in the Nanxiang star cluster under the chain pull of large tug ships.

Nowadays, there is also a sovereign galaxy of the Chifeng Clan around the Nanxiang Star Cluster Star Gate.

This huge array of garbage stars was dragged over, and together with the garbage stars in the Far Frontier Starfield that had arrived early, they formed a huge ultra-distant orbital ring of the planetary system.

Seen from a distance, it seems as if a "Saturn ring" has been installed on the star, which is spectacular.

Standing on the habitable planet in this galaxy and looking up at night, you can also see the long river of garbage stars, just like the Milky Way.

Tang Tumao Jin and Wu You were in the spaceship looking down at the countless massive garbage stars below. They sighed in their hearts. They didn't embarrass the Earl's old team. Fortunately, they did not disgrace their lives.

But they also have worries in their hearts.

Senna and her staff can understand the situation, how could these three economic and trade bosses in the Chifeng tribe not understand it.

Five years ago, they exhausted the liquidity of the Chifeng clan and owed a large amount of loans.

Up to now, even though the invisible coating factory has been working overtime and operating at full power, it is far from being able to restore the liquidity to its previous state, and it has to make every effort to repay the monthly loan.

Not only that, it was also during these five years that the companies under the Duke of Wenle's Palace had been secretly raising commodity prices.

Although the products after the price increase are still more cost-effective than self-produced products, if the price of each product increases slightly, it will leverage a huge amount of funds.

After careful calculation, in the past five years, the per capita living standard of the Chifeng people has not only not improved compared to the past, but has also declined slightly.

Of course, no one would complain. After all, the Chifeng tribe had only established a flag for a short period of time. The core people still remembered the hardships of their ancestors from the Origin Star, and also remembered the miserable days of their ancestors on the Origin Star. , the non-staff people who were once pirates have also not forgotten the precariousness of the past.

But anyway, the situation is already very dangerous.

Tang Tu said anxiously: "The trouble is big, and now the material reserve has been completed. Based on the count's plan, I guess we will definitely find a way to reuse these scrap metals, and we will do a lot of business. But Expanding industry means a huge demand for energy. Energy batteries are unusual commodities and will suffer a large loss when traveling through the star gate, so they are basically provided by the Nanxiang Star Cluster. So when our demand here When it rises, the energy prices in the Nanxiang star cluster will definitely rise. The clan's economy is already barely adequate. If the energy prices increase again, we will be unable to make ends meet."

"That's right." Mao Jin just nodded muffledly.

On the other hand, Wu You seemed very confident, "Don't worry, the earl is as wise as the sea, how could he not consider this situation."

At this moment, the three secretaries suddenly walked into the conference room and said with a panicked expression: "Something happened."

"What's up?"

The three of them asked in unison.

The secretary didn't answer, and only forwarded an official document just sent from Duke Wenle's palace.

When the three of them looked at it, they were all silent.

They were "stabbed in the back".

Over the years, they have established extremely good personal relationships with many merchants, marquises, earls, viscounts and other nobles in the Star Territory under the Duke of Wenle.

But just now, these "good brothers" of theirs actually sent a jointly signed notice stating that they had completed the ship modification work and would immediately stop purchasing Chifeng paint.

At the same time, they also announced that they would not renew their sales agency contracts with Chifeng Paint.

Not only that, they also told the trio that the Duke woke up not long ago and believed that the zero-tariff treatment he provided to Uncle Chi Feng had effectively helped the Chi Feng clan achieve substantial development. Now, it's time to take back this benefit and return to the 20% tariff rate common in the empire.

What is particularly terrifying is that this 20% tariff is a bilateral tax on import and export.

This means that from now on, the price of goods shipped from Duke Wenle's Palace will increase by 20% on the spot.

The house leaked and it rained all night. The Chifeng Department of Commerce also received bad news almost at the same time. Almost all agents located in the Empire Center sent emails within a short period of time, stating that they would not renew their agency contracts.

This must be the work of Duke Wenle's palace.

God knows what kind of price Duke Wenle paid to put the Red Feng clan in a situation where they were completely drained of their resources.

Under repeated attacks, the Chifeng Ministry of Commerce soon discovered that even if the garbage star transformation project was put aside first, there would be problems with the normal energy supply within the Chifeng clan.

What is even more serious is that due to the long-term dependence on the Duke of Wenle in all aspects of industry, a large number of conventional material production enterprises within the Chifeng tribe have shrunk significantly.

Even if the technology is still there, it is no longer realistic to quickly rebuild to restore production capacity.

On the other side, Liu An, a scumbag, also made some changes.

The Earl's Mansion of Nanxiang announced that due to the high energy consumption of the Chifeng tribe for more than ten years, a large number of energy batteries were purchased from the Earl's Mansion of Nanxiang, resulting in the Earl's Mansion of Nanxiang itself experiencing an energy shortage.

Therefore, the energy company affiliated with Nanxiang Earl's Mansion announced a 50% price increase on the spot, which took effect immediately.

The arduous "national policy" of preparing for war at all costs for 43 years finally suffered a heavy blow after more than ten years of smooth progress.