Chapter 680: 680

Chapter 680: Meng Chao’s Tactical Foresight

He seized the chance of an era and responded to a few ten million normal citizens’ calls, so Meng Chao did not face a lot of obstacles when it came to reconstructing the lair.

Of course, reconstructing the lair was not as easy as demolishing the squatter areas and building pretty skyscrapers.

Instead, he had to activate the stale manpower in the lair and the other slums so that they could be used in the construction of the new areas at the borders of Dragon City and other emerging industries.

One, it could make all those of suitable working age earn their own living and even become rich. Two, it could stimulate the city’s economy and have it enter a positive cycle.

When it came to this, Broken Star Club and Blue Home were especially helpful, because they had a lot of medium-sized and small firms at their disposal.

The lair had a lot of manpower, and even if the lair citizens were not used to doing dangerous work, they were willing to work hard and had fought in multiple battles before. They could work while beating up enemies, making them good-quality workers.

Construction in the boundless land around Dragon City must start from zero. The working conditions would definitely not be pleasant, and the work was rather stale and hard.

But to the lair citizens who had lived in suffering for decades, it was still very attractive work.

After Meng Chao served as the middlemen, the owners of the medium-sized and small firms from the two organizations and the lair’s skilled workers came to a deal.

In just one short month, the lair sent more than two hundred thousand good-quality workers outside.

There were even more workers of a suitable age who were going through labor training and were ready to lend a hand to Dragon City’s second Great Construction Era.

Aside from its labor force, the lair also had its own capital.

The gangs in the lair, including Golden Tooth, Poison Scorpion, and Black Bone had their own legal, gray industries.

Since the Underground Emperor had already passed away and they wanted to fully merge the lair with Dragon City, then they must listen to Meng Chao’s opinions. Many of the gray industries were destined to be unable to last in the long run, and it was time for them to bring some of their businesses down.

If that were the case, they must use the capital that had been accumulating from the gray industries in new projects and profitable businesses. This was where Meng Chao came into play.

After all, if a ruthless person like Phantom Bear Xiong Wei had reluctantly acknowledged Meng Chao as the master of the lair, then it wasn’t because he acknowledged Meng Chao’s charisma. Instead, he hoped that Meng Chao could help everyone become rich.

Meng Chao knew nothing about business, but he had the foresight that surpassed his generation. He had a general idea as to which industries would be successful for the future decades, and which industries would suffer so many losses that they would not even know what money looked like in the end.

For example, automatic underground exploration and construction machinery projects were really popular right now, and all the investors favored them greatly.

Dragon City seemed like it was about to enter the path of using runic symbol machines to explore and mine spirit energy ley lines, create underground cities and forts as well as automatizing all of its facilities.

Once the technology was developed, this would be a really profitable business.

It was just like the driverless cars on Earth. They were floating capital that investors poured their money into.

However, Meng Chao knew that once Dragon City was truly connected with the races of the Other World and faced the dwarves who were born with the skill of creating caves, modifying stones, refining metal, and worked hard and at the cost of practically nothing, the expensive and complicated underground exploration and construction machines that had a high cost of maintenance and broke down once every few days were nothing and could not have a stance in the export market.

Dragon City only had a few ten million people. Not all industries could survive on domestic demand alone.

It was an absolute must for them to go for an export-oriented market.

Plus, those accursed dwarves seemed to have realized that the underground machines from Earthlings served as a major threat to their means of income, so they often dug near the Earthlings’ tunnel boring machines and underground runic symbol machines to destroy them despicably so that they could ruin Earth’s technology.

Aside from the dark elves and a handful of other races, no one could win against the dwarves when it came to a game of tag underground.

While the dark elves did not like the dwarves, they disliked the loud Earth machines that could destroy their nests at any moment even more.

As a result, Dragon City could not sell its fully automatized underground machines. The investors who spent their entire fortunes in it suffered major losses without earning anything.

Meng Chao would naturally not spend a single penny in this dumpster fire.

Speaking of which, he was pretty rich now.

Among the Underground Emperor’s treasures were quite a number of blank bonds and currency for the black market in the deep web.

They were all carefully prepared by A’Ji so that he could get them without showing his face after he regained his youth.

After Meng Chao and Lu Siya patiently convinced him, A’Ji finally admitted while weeping that he was still too young and should not spend this money carelessly. He should let Big Brother Chao and Big Sis Ya help him take care of the money and use it for investment.

Besides, as the leader of Golden Tooth, Meng Chao had great authority over Golden Tooth’s flow of funds.

Superstar had been developing really rapidly over the past two years. Even though it did not have a lot of money for flow funds, it had plenty of investors who were willing to participate in Superstar’s projects.

Meng Chao killed a lot of monsters, so he definitely had a lot of funds accumulated.

In fact, quite a number of investors were willing to dump loads of investment into Superstar’s projects and help him get full leverage over his projects solely because of his potential.

Among them, the investor who trusted him the most was, of course, Lu Siya.

Based on Lu Siya’s words, she had already invested her whole fortune in Meng Chao, and she needed to take this path until the end.

Meng Chao would definitely not disappoint Lu Siya.

For the sake of Dragon City’s future and to have greater authority, he definitely had to have more than full leverage over certain situations to invest in golden projects, complete the tactical setup of the market, and become one of the biggest benefactors from Dragon City when it conquered the Other World!

After considering things carefully based on his previous life, Meng Chao set up these few projects.

One of them was weapons development.

Since they were about to face a colonization war and Other World war, the firearms trade was definitely going to be a profitable market.

Of course, Meng Chao did not have the skills nor the capital to venture into high-end weapons development, such as projects regarding super armored airships and using Huge Dragon’s Might Cannon to fire nuclear weapons and the likes. He never dreamed of doing such things either.

Meng Chao invested in low-end weapons development for individuals such as sabers, automatic guns, grenades, and armor.

Besides, they were even more low-end and cheaper than the low-end products Dragon City had now.

Basically, they were specializing in providing monkey models.

The lair and Leprosy Village had always had the tradition of using illegal workshops to produce special weapons.

This chapter is scrapped from readlightnovel.org

Now, the illegal workshops were destroyed, but the skilled workers still remained, and they retained the skills needed to create weapons.

During the process of crushing the super monster horde, humans discovered quite a number of crystals and metal mines at the borders of Dragon City. Of course, most of them were mines with lean ores full of impurities and were not of high quality.

By using the schematics produced during mid 20th century on Earth, the craftsmen in the lair, the metals and crystals full of impurities, and the lowest capital to create these weapons, they were basically crude weapons with such ridiculous recoil that their accuracy was practically zero.

These guns could be considered to be modified Other World versions of the AK-47.

In any case, even the militia formed of middle-aged ladies would not consider such rubbish. Yet, Meng Chao was really pleased with them because the models that were created fit his criteria perfectly.

The most important thing was, they were cheap.

The second most important thing was that they were durable. Even if they were gnawed by pests, dunked in water, and burned by fire, it would not stop anyone from grabbing them to shoot at someone.

The third most important thing was that they were easy to use and maintain. In fact, some of them needed no maintenance. The users could just pull the trigger and shoot.

The creation process was also very simple. When necessary, the modified Other World version of the AK-47’s production line could move outside Monster Mountain Range and could be created nonstop the moment they found scrap metal.

Indeed, what Meng Chao fancied was not just the tiny market in Dragon City.

Instead, it was the entire market in the boundless Other World filled with intelligent races.

Among the Other World’s races, the number of orcs alone were already several times the number of Dragon Citizens.

To Dragon Citizens, problems such as low shooting accuracy, high recoil, and interference as well as radiation brought by low-quality crystal bullets did not exist on orcs, and even if it did, they did not care.

They were basically the perfect clients.

Of course, Meng Chao regarded money as nothing, and he was not thinking about only earning money.

What weighed down on his mind more was how to have Dragon City join the Other World war as the outsider who could balance the situation by manipulating it while having the last laugh.

Based on his previous life’s experience, Dragon City’s fatal weakness was its population.

Casting a few ten million people into the boundless Other World was like spilling salt into a lake. They just did not have enough people.

In his previous life, Dragon City suppressed the Other World with its steel army that used advanced machines and technology.

In the beginning, they advanced boldly and won every battle they encountered.

When they faced the vast number of Other World races, though, they soon sank into the mud and were in a dilemma. During the trench warfares, guerilla warfares, and unrestricted warfares that were forced on them, they wasted the tens upon millions of civilians’ valuable lives.

When Dragon Citizens finally understood what was going on and wanted to find a puppet army, it was already too late.

One, Dragon City’s strength was already largely diminished, and it was not enough to suppress the ambitious Other World locals.

Two, since the Survival Committee was controlled by the mega corporations, they lacked sufficient tactical foresight and judgment. The puppet armies they supported were all traitorous bastards and would turn to bite the hand that fed them at any moment.

Since he returned from the apocalypse, he definitely wanted to help Dragon City find the right strategy and look for the correct puppet army from the moment it walked out of Monster Mountain Range.

The modified monsters were a pretty decent puppet army.

But monsters only had limited intelligence and could not help Dragon City conquer the Other World.

Based on Meng Chao’s previous life, he remembered that some of the intelligent races in the Other World were relatively weak but had a burning hatred for some of the stronger races. Even though their fighting power was not great at the time being, they had a vast population. Once they were equipped with Earth’s weapons, they could fight at the frontlines for them.

Once he filtered out those ambitious but traitorous races, all that was left were pretty decent puppet armies.

These monkey model weapons were specifically created for the puppet armies.

By selling weapons to other races, they could earn a huge profit and also develop an Earth party among the Other World races. They could help the people whom they supported to become the leaders of their races, and from there, these races would become affiliated to Dragon City.

This was killing two birds with one stone, and it was the project that Meng Chao prioritized.