Chapter 428 - An Outlet? (2/2)
“Yes, I’ve been collecting relevant information for ages now.” Chen Xing Yue was an able woman in the business world and was very sensitive to all kinds of information. But at this moment, she was rather curious. “Speaking of which, Dad, why are you suddenly interested in this? You, who have been in hiding for all these years? I doubt you’d even care if the world got destroyed.”
“Yeah, this is the first time you cared about something going on outside, Dad.”
“You girls really think of me like that?” Chen Jin glared at them sourly. “Stop fooling around. Hurry up and tell me everything you know. Of course I wouldn’t be indifferent toward such a thing.”
“Fine. I got these from a politician that I funded…” Chen Xing Yue said untiringly. “Those ‘Gods’ from an unknown universe are really coming back. When the concentration of the celestial particles rises above the minimum level, the first group of immigrants from the Heavenly Realm will arrive.
“This process would roughly take five years. After five years, those so-called Protoss will have returned.
“The preferred habitat that they value the most is, of course, the Earth that is underneath our feet.
“What’s even more, their appetite is shockingly huge. They have requested that we free up the entire planet by moving our tens of billions of people to other places, making the whole Earth a foothold for the Protoss.
“This kind of request was, naturally, directly rejected. The federation certainly can’t agree to this.
“However, the mental pressure unleashed by that negotiating representative of the Protoss caused many federal parliamentarians to faint and vomit blood. They seem to be telling them that, if they do not agree, the Protoss may go down a path toward barbaric means and directly rob us of our planet.
“In the end, it was because of a general of the federation, who went on explaining the power of our nuclear weapons despite the tremendous pressure, that the messenger from the Heavenly Realm soothed down a little.
“After a few days, the second group of messengers from the Heavenly Realm arrived. Perhaps intimidated by our nuclear weapons, their demands have loosened, kind of. They only requested for a third of the Earth’s land to be allocated to them as their settlement. Aside from that, they have demanded that we invest a huge sum of funds into building things that the Protoss immigrants want, such as houses, furniture, facilities… that we prepare everything in advance for them.
“The overall investment is calculated to be at least 100 billion dollars.
“The federal government will be responsible for a part of the land and money, and the rest will require donations from all families and consortia. After the immigrants of the Heavenly Realm settle down, those people will acquire a certain amount of return according to the proportion of the funds they have donated…
“They might even get to forge ties with the Protoss, and so the chance to cross paths with those from the Heavenly Realm.
“Although there are certain risks, most of the upper class have realized that this may be a new outlet—an opportunity to acquire massive interests,” said Chen Xing Yue faintly.
Chen Jin helplessly shook his head.
“Demanding a third of our land and tens of billions of investments for them to live a comfortable life… an extortion like that gets people fuming. Is this era, where money is king, becoming an era where power reigns?”
He then looked at Chen Xing Yue. “So… has the federation agreed to those conditions?”
“They couldn’t free up a third of all land all at once, but they’ve in principle agreed to everything else.”
After all, if they disagreed, even nuclear deterrence might not be able to daunt the Protoss.
Of course, the public did not know the inside stories mentioned above. Most ordinary people were indulging in the anticipation and the revelry of the dawn of a new era.
But for the entire upper class of Earth, the next decision they would have to make was: to be lapdog, or to not be a lapdog?