Chapter 783.2: Daddy Scammer Back At It Again

After thinking for a while, he finally seemed to grasp the key point. “So as long as we make those representatives happy, everything will be fine?”

“Yes.” Li Minghui nodded quickly and looked at him sincerely, or rather, eagerly. “We’re friends. You have to help me with this!”

His idea was to have Nihark push for placing the order as quickly as possible, finalizing the contract and blueprints and paying the deposit and advance payment. Unfortunately, he had still overestimated the duke’s intelligence.

Perhaps Nihark had grown too accustomed to being rich and had started treating the Southern Sea New Alliance like his own home, he waved his hand grandly and declared, “That’s easy! I’ll lend you another 10,000,000,000 Xilande currency!”

Li Minghui, who had been drinking tea, nearly sprayed it everywhere. He coughed several times before putting down his cup.

“This isn’t about money! Ahem. Of course, if you’re willing to support our reconstruction, we absolutely welcome it. But we’re currently discussing the sale of warships. Do you understand? These are two separate matters.”

Why the hell can’t this guy’s brain make the turn?

Looking at the dumbass duke, Li Minghui was caught between laughter and tears, but he had no choice but to patiently explain.

Nihark frowned and thought for a while before speaking again. “Mr. Li Minghui, there’s nobody else here. Why don’t you just tell me, what exactly do you need me to do?”

Li Minghui stopped beating around the bush and stared directly at him. “I want the order finalized as soon as possible, before those people who never stop arguing at meetings can interfere with our close and inseparable friendship!”

Nihark’s eyes lit up in delight. Rubbing his hands together, he said, “That’s wonderful! I was thinking the same thing! What’s the strongest ship you have?”

The fish had taken the bait.

Li Minghui immediately answered, “The Ocean Edge battleship! It can shoot down one of the Army’s airships every minute!”

Nihark was shaken to the core. He nearly shot up from the sofa and stared at Li Minghui in disbelief before gasping, “It’s that powerful?!”

Li Minghui coughed. “You can buy one and try it.”

To be honest, war wasn’t a game of rolling dice and comparing numbers, so the question itself was idiotic. However, there was nothing he could do. This was exactly the kind of explanation the customer liked, so he could only use such amateurish comparisons.

Sure enough, Nihark’s eyes began burning with desire. His thumb and index finger rubbed together so quickly they nearly sparked, and he practically started drooling.

“How much do you want for it?!”

Seeing Nihark’s eager expression, Li Minghui’s own heart began pounding, but he forced himself to remain calm and continued improvising. “Maybe a billion Silver? We’d have to wait until the design drawings are finished before making a proper estimate. But of course, we support installment payments here. You can pay a 50,000,000 Silver deposit first, and our shipyard can begin construction. After work starts, you can pay 10,000,000 per month until the balance is cleared.”

That last part was mainly because he was worried the huge fish he had hooked might be frightened away. To his surprise, however, the man opposite him wasn’t intimidated by the astronomical figure at all. Instead, he sprang to his feet in delight.

“Excellent! A billion Silver it is! How about this? We’ll take a slight loss and call it 10,000,000,000 Xilande currency!”

The moment Li Minghui heard the words “we’ll take a slight loss,” he nearly choked to death on his own saliva. He quickly interrupted the duke’s daydream.

“Mr. Nihark, respected Grand Duke of the Xilade Empire... you can’t calculate it that way. Payment has to be made in Silver.”

Nihark froze and frowned. “What do you mean?”

“It means exactly...”

“We lent you all that money! You used Xilande currency to buy so many things from us! Tens of thousands of tons of steel, cement, cotton, soybeans, and sugar! And now when we want to buy something from you, we have to pay in Silver?! What the hell do you mean by that?” Governor Nihark’s gaze turned slightly hostile, and suspicion emerged in his murky eyes.

The debt denominated in Xilande currency had to be repaid in Xilande currency. It was written clearly in black and white.

Were these people actually planning to repay us or not?

Li Minghui froze as well. He had already sharpened his butcher’s knife, only for the pig to suddenly wake up. Quickly, he started patching the hole.

“It’s not that I don’t want to accept it... Of course we’re willing to accept it. It’s just...”

His brain spun furiously to the point smoke was nearly coming out of his ears. Suddenly, inspiration struck and he slammed his palm on the table. “It’s the shipyard that won’t accept it!”

Nihark froze, completely confused. “The shipyard?”

How the hell had the shipyard gotten dragged into this now?!

“Yeah...” Li Minghui sighed and put on a helpless expression. “New Alliance companies hold shares in North Island Heavy Industry, so they need to audit the books. And North Island Heavy Industry has to pay its workers in Silver too. There’s nothing we can do about that. We can’t exactly force them to accept Xilande currency, can we? Forget whether the New Alliance shareholders would agree, the shipyard workers wouldn’t.”

He didn’t even mention that the battleship’s electromagnetic cannon came from Shelter 70, that Shelter 70 was currently managed by Shelter 404, and that Shelter 404 was itself tied to the New Alliance.

Nihark didn’t ask, either. Instead, he seriously considered what Li Minghui had said and found himself thinking that, somehow, it did seem to make a bit of sense. He still felt that something about it was deeply wrong, but he couldn’t quite identify what.

Using Silver wasn’t necessarily a problem anyway.

After Port Gallon reopened its borders, the inland river ports and coastal harbors connecting the Poro Province with Port Gallon had resumed trade, and their combined monthly throughput had even surpassed a million tons!

That was equivalent to every resident of Port Gallon, on average, exchanging a ton of goods with the Empire’s residents every single month!

Since the Port Gallon authorities had entrusted an agency to collect customs duties on behalf of the Xilande Empire, tariff revenue had also risen alongside trade volume. Over the past few months, it had unexpectedly accumulated a floating surplus of 70,000,000 to 80,000,000 Silver.

That was far more profitable than the old slave trade had ever been.

Still, while the money was certainly nice, the royal family had fewer uses for Silver than it did for Dinars.

Most of this foreign currency had been earned by merchants and nobles in Tiger State and Panther State, and most of it was spent by those same people. For instance, converting it into Silver to purchase New Alliance machinery, seeds, fertilizer, consumer goods, and so on.

However, those treacherous bastards were hardly good people. They spent all day pretending to be poor even while expanding their businesses, crying hardship to the court at every turn, making taxes almost impossible to collect.

Rather than let them squander all those Silver, Nihark figured it would be better to use the money for something that genuinely mattered to the Empire.

“All right. How do we pay the deposit?”

Suppressing the excitement and wild joy in his heart, Li Minghui answered with his voice trembling, “Same as before. Transfer the money to a bank in Port Gallon. The agency we’ve appointed can collect it on our behalf!”

...

On North Island in the southern seas, the north-facing beach was as lively as ever.

Ever since North Island had fallen in early October, the New Alliance had designated the beach as a military training zone and conducted more than ten amphibious landing exercises of varying scale.

Mid-November had rolled about and the fighting on the northern front had gradually fallen into a stalemate, and the Mutant Slime Mold Research Committee coalition urgently needed a new breakthrough in the south.

Naturally, the glorious and difficult mission fell to the New Alliance.

To ensure nothing went wrong and to minimize losses of expensive equipment in combat, the players of the Burning Corps treated the exercise with the utmost seriousness. One after another, Alligator amphibious armored vehicles painted in blue digital camouflage surged out of the shallows and onto the beach.

Farther offshore, six large landing ships rose and fell with the waves, looming like colossal beasts as they stared toward the shore.

The moment the armored vehicles hit the beachhead, they began laying smoke and launching smoke grenades forward.

Streams of smoke instantly engulfed the entire beach!

As the vehicles pushed into the middle section of the shore, their rear hatches suddenly sprang open to both sides. Infantry wearing exoskeletons poured out of the compartments in orderly succession, moving rapidly in three-man teams under the guidance of the visualized battlefield guidance system displayed on their helmet visors.

Coming on shore immediately behind them were the Emperor Crabs amphibious all-terrain infantry armors, their thick, long gun barrels gleaming with an icy menace beneath the sunlight.

From the landing ships coming to a halt to every combat unit reaching the shore, the entire operation took only 4 minutes and 31 seconds! The whole sequence flowed seamlessly, without even the slightest pause!

Besides the officers and staff from New Alliance Central Command, plenty of civilians had gathered beyond the cordon along the shore to watch.

The residents of North Island were already used to New Alliance exercises. After all, just over a month ago, these people had carried out a real one, liberating them from the tyranny of Chalas the madman.

Not to mention that the Alligator amphibious armored vehicles had originally been designed by their own engineers. The only major change was a redesigned turret from Goblin Technology for logistical reasons.

Some snack vendors had even pushed out food carts and ice cream trucks, preparing to sell things to the soldiers after they finished training. These soldiers from the New Alliance might behave strangely from time to time, and their language was often halting and awkward, but their discipline was impeccable and they carried none of the usual soldierly airs.

The locals weren’t particularly afraid of them. If anything, they were happy to interact with them.

But while the island’s residents had long since grown accustomed to the sight, the laborers from Mammoth State were all staring with their mouths hanging open.

What is this?! They’re just too damn strong! What the hell had their emperor been thinking, daring to provoke monsters like these?! No wonder he got beaten black and blue!

Among the crowd, Velu, the representative from Mammoth State, stood with his mouth open in astonishment, his eyes fixed on the murderous-looking armored machines.

So this was the New Alliance at full strength?

It was even more outrageous than he had imagined!

He had been one of the officers who left the Port Gallon militia with Laxi, and he was also among the Mammoth State officers with the deepest understanding of the New Alliance’s strength. After all, when the New Alliance had landed at Port Gallon, he had been there watching from the side.

He had seen the city defense forces get beaten senseless on their own turf! He had seen the Gray Wolf Army behind them driven into the Everflowing River and forced to swim for their lives...

Back then, he had only been struck by the power of technology. He had never formed a clear picture of the New Alliance’s actual combat strength. Only now did he realize that the New Alliance probably hadn’t even been using its full strength back then.

No, more accurately, the Burning Corps hadn’t used its full strength. Also, the New Alliance had far more than just a single elite corps.

Velu unconsciously gulped, forcing the shock in his heart down into his stomach.

If only we could invite that unit to Mammoth State...

Of course, that probably wasn’t realistic. But earning more Silver and buying similar equipment to take back should be perfectly possible.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.