Chapter 19: Raiding the City of Tereese

Make money. I must make money. I must accomplish the small goal of making 15 million dollars. As soon as possible. No time to waste.

For the first time, after living at home with his parents for two years, Chen Jin felt his strong desire and motivation to make money. The cost of electricity alone for searching Haierfa made him realize how much he needed money.

There will always be costs, no matter what business.

He’d found a planet, yes, but if he wanted to benefit greatly from Haierfa, he would have to invest in it first. For just electricity, the bill for the month was almost $1,500. It was only going to get more expensive from there. And there were other expenditures too…

With all the previous expenses, Chen Jin estimated, even a $15,000 investment for each month wouldn’t be enough to search Haierfa. As for the income he’d made, well, he’d only earned roughly $4,500 so far. Therefore, in order to obtain profits, Chen Jin had to come up with a solution that would not only cut down on the expenses but also increase his earnings.

“I’m really using too much electricity…the maximum output power for domestic electrical circuits is 30 kilowatts, and I pretty much use all of it. This will cost me at least $1,500 a month…This ridiculous power consumption is going to raise a flag. The Department of Energy will come to check on me. Risky. Plus, the number of my robot squads will continue to grow, and there will be more repair work too for all sorts of electrical devices – 30 kilowatts a month for sure isn’t going to cut it. The time to build an independent power generating system in the other world is upon us.”

For instance, a wind turbine, or a mini diesel generator; they could both provide more electricity. Solar power would not be a good idea, as the amount of electricity it generates would be very little; besides, the sky was always covered in sand clouds, there wouldn’t be enough sunlight, and Chen Jin certainly would not have the time to clean all the dusty panels.

He could get the robots to do some cleaning, but then the solar power generated from those panels wouldn’t be enough to cover the amount of power robots lost from all the dusting; there wouldn’t be enough electricity to charge them. And he had to put Earth into consideration, too. Flammables like diesel and gasoline wouldn’t be easy to purchase.

It seemed like building a wind turbine system was his only option….Which would cost him a fortune. To make things worse, he was living on the rents he collected – $1,500 a month. It would never be enough.

“So…..needless to say, I must make a lot of money.”

…

The next morning, after the Blue Angel was fully charged, Chen Jin drove Da Li, Da Tou, and Da Bao on a bumpy road into the vast desert. It was bumpy the whole way there. According to the 3D navigation projected from Da Li, they needed to drive more than 100 kilometers towards the Northeast to get to the City of Tereese.

Two hours later, from the driver’s seat, Chen Jin could see the end of the abandoned roads; suddenly, there was a bunch of bulges with uneven, strange shapes in the far end of the overcast, flat field. There were rectangles, triangles, shell shapes, obelisks, etc. With all the shapes lining up, it was as if they were human shadows standing next to each other; under the dusky, yellow sky in this sand-covered city, they looked like an island in the middle of an ocean.

The City of Tereese, here we are.

…

They parked the car outside the city. One human and three robots; each carried a snakeskin bag, walking towards the city center. Chen Jin gazed around with tremendous excitement. On the main street in the city, a tall office building with at least 20 floors caught his attention.

“A high-rise like this in Shanghai City would probably be worth at least $150 million, right? Well, it’s mine now. And the one next to it. And that huge shopping mall to the right over there, too. One $150 million after another.”

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Then they walked a few hundred meters more. He saw a district with more than 20 luxurious residential buildings. Chen Jin stared at it, took a minute to let it all sink in, and said to himself, “In the real estate market, 10 square feet would cost at least $7,000. For a commercial house as big as 1,000 square feet, the price could be as high as $700,000…There are at least 7-800 apartments in this district, if not 1,000, and that number times $700,000, well, this area is worth 3 to 4 billion dollars. And I will be ‘the King of Houses’ with countless properties. Much cooler than freakin’ John Malone. I could get super rich with just these houses here.”

Chen Jin knew he was never going to sell any of them, but he just enjoyed the thought of it. Even though he had only $6,000 to his name, he felt like he was the wealthiest man in the world. There was no way he could move those houses, let alone take them back to Earth with him. He could only daydream about it.

Cars, trucks, and heavy-duty vehicles that were worth as much as those million-dollar luxurious cars on Earth were everywhere on the streets, too. He couldn’t bring them back to Earth whatsoever, but he could drive them on Haierfa.

Chen Jin had also seen numerous high-tech products. Things like TV’s with laser projectors, smart glasses for augmented reality, personal computers with the 8th generation graphene CPU, foldable phones with airplay features, and various intelligent robots, could all be found effortlessly in the City of Tereese.

He even found a super calculator that managed the whole city in the City Hall. Da Li told him that the calculating speed of this super calculator was 100 billion times per second, which was five times faster than that of the speed of the fastest super calculator called “Summit” on Earth.

He’d really love to take all these high technology items back to Earth, but… They were much too advanced for the society; bringing them back was like bringing a knife to a primitive tribe that only knew about wood sticks – there would be consequences. It would increase the chances of this planet being exposed to public. So he would try not to take any of the high-tech stuff.

Also, Chen Jin found a lot of ancient calligraphies in a local museum, which he believed to have great artistic values. Among all the paintings there were some oil paintings; even an amateur like Chen Jin knew how good they were. They should sell for a good price.

But the history background on Haierfa was a little different from that of the Earth’s. During the Han Dynasty, there was a man named “Wang Mang” who usurped the throne and changed the history completely. He then built Xin Dynasty, an extremely powerful one that lasted as long as 500 years, which would later reshape the entire history ultimately.

The names of all those literary authors and artists on Haierfa were very different from the ones on Earth; no matter how valuable they may be, they still wouldn’t be worth much because they were just totally unheard of. Therefore, due to the butterfly effect, even Chen Jin’s own country would not acknowledge items like these ancient calligraphies, let alone the Western countries. He might not even be able to sell just one piece of art.

After all the calculating and contemplating Chen Jin had done, all that was left to take with him back to Earth were: gold, platinum, iron, rubies, jade, and agate. All the other ones were either worthless, or not easy to carry. The problem was, the people of Tereese had already taken all the valuables with them before the war broke out; there really wasn’t much left for Chen Jin to take.

The research lasted seven days; Chen Jin sent both robot squads to search the city inside and out, completely and thoroughly. And here’s what he’d found:

Gold and gold jewelry, with a total weight of 1,415 grams, worth roughly $30k; Silver and silver products, weighed 28.6 kilograms, worth about $7k; and 155 pieces of platinum jewelry and 173 iron adornments worth at least $70k. There were also 359 pieces of all sorts of rubies and jades, but Chen Jin was no appraiser, he couldn’t tell how much they were worth. In addition, he’d found more than 1,000 watches, but he took only 50 of those that were either studded with gold, diamond, or ruby.

Among them all, there was one that had not only diamond studs, but also a giant, all natural blue ruby as big as a pigeon egg. It was lavishly gorgeous and could definitely sell for a great price.

Apart from all that, Chen Jin had also taken 53 ancient calligraphies. He didn’t even know why he took them. Probably because they looked nice. Finally, there were all kinds of random stuff. He’d also found more than 100 pairs of shoes, clothes, and bags for both men and women from the storage room in a high-end clothing store, and more than 20 bags of different sorts.

“These clothes and bags are so much nicer; they make you look more stylish too. The people here had a much better grasp for fashion than the people on Earth do. Some of the clothes seem a bit non-mainstream when you put them on, but at least I won’t ever have to buy any more clothes! I have a life supply of clothes, bags, and shoes.”

Especially bags. Back when I was in college, I bought a couple of low-end bags for my girlfriend at the time, which cost me a $600. She wasn’t too happy about it and thought they were humiliating. She tossed them away after a few days…it was my allowance for the month and my video game recharge.

Then they broke up. Actually, Chen Jin broke up with her. He felt nothing but free and relieved. No one would ever make any plans with his game recharge money anymore. But he was no longer scared of relationships now that he had everything he wanted. Clothes, shoes, bags, diamonds…you name it. He could even build a palace for all his girlfriends if he wanted to. However, Chen Jin was tired of having a girlfriend. It was better to be single.

“Let’s go. We’ve searched all the houses here. There’s really nothing else that’s worth taking back to Earth…This time, I should be able to make $150,000 with these.”

Having finished searching the city, Chen Jin returned to the huge crater camp.