With gains secured, Igor happily raised his glass and clinked it with the other man's. Only after drinking did he remember there was still one matter left unasked.
"Uh, Old Zhang, how will the remaining tens of billions of Credit Points be settled? This portion also falls under smuggling—can it be laundered?" Igor quietly inquired about Liu Hai's most pressing concern.
Zhang Tingyu chuckled lightly: "Igor, do you still not understand what a Grand Armament Merchant is? How could this even be considered a question?"
Igor looked at Zhang Tingyu blankly. If he knew these things, would he have spent decades running remote routes to earn that meager hard-earned money?
Seeing Igor's utterly confused expression, Zhang Tingyu immediately explained: "Tell your boss to use his company's name to create anything—a game, a film, any entertainment product that goes online will do. He could even start a livestream singing show himself. After that, there's no need to worry. The money will be directly deposited."
Igor was stunned by this explanation. So they were using entertainment media to launder money? No wonder he'd noticed so many terrible films still drawing massive box office numbers when he played games or watched projections—the source was you people?
Having gotten his answer, Igor drank with the man for a while longer before signing sales agreements and corresponding purchase contracts with a lawyer who arrived later. Only then did he stagger back to the ship to report the situation to Liu Hai.
After seeing Igor off, Zhang Tingyu smiled while holding the agreements and returned to his office to review Star Sea Group's documents—especially Liu Hai's personal file.
This dossier differed from citizen records on Kono Administrative Star. It meticulously recorded everything that had occurred since Liu Hai's appearance, starting from conflicts with scavengers. However, there was no intelligence about the Pyramid Core—the document listed it as merely a small Smelting Furnace.
The base beneath Garbage Star's surface was also documented, though specifics about factories and personnel were absent.
Zhang Tingyu frowned at Liu Hai's nearly blank personal file. Thunder God Company's intelligence network couldn't find any records of Liu Hai before his appearance on Garbage Star, let alone the technological origins of those Fighter Jet Mechs.
"Interesting. Not a single trace. Capable of producing Fighter Jet Mech technology, yet completely inconsistent with existing technical schools. Which family's young master has come out to make his fortune? Knowing nothing yet meddling everywhere, tsk!"
Zhang Tingyu shook his head while studying Liu Hai's image, unable to determine which faction he belonged to. But this didn't prevent him from offering some conveniences accordingly.
"Probably the same reason Shang Luo sent such an extravagant gift—hundreds of billions in metal materials. Truly generous indeed! Heh..."
Zhang Tingyu turned off the projection and gazed out the window at the starscape. A star burned fiercely, surrounded by hundreds of millions of Energy Collection Stations that swarmed like diligent bees, harvesting stellar energy and compressing it into Energy Blocks. Beyond stretched conspicuous High-Speed Channels, their Light Bands alive with shuttling spaceships, bringing a bustling atmosphere to this silent starry sky.
Liu Hai remained unaware that someone had thoroughly investigated his background. At this moment, he was still immersed in the pleasant surprise brought by Igor's report.
What delighted him wasn't the money laundering method, but rather the confirmed delivery date for the warships—October 12, 5023, Star River Federation's Expansion Era.
That would be one year and two months from now, and Liu Hai needed to recruit the necessary crew for the battleship and purchase the required supplies before delivery.
As for laundering Credit Points, there were plenty of legitimate ways—entertainment, gambling, even buying lottery tickets. The methods were endless. The only issue was that he lacked enough manpower to execute them, which highlighted the importance of having the right channels.
With all his problems now having solutions, Liu Hai was so overjoyed he could barely contain himself. The smooth progress meant that in two years, he could leave the Federation's jurisdiction and freely utilize the Pyramid Core's technology to build his own fleet.
Once freed from the Federation's constraints, Liu Hai was confident that with the Pyramid Core's capabilities, he would soon gain the ability to negotiate on equal footing with the Star Sea Overlord. After all, the Star River Federation was merely a fourth-tier civilization, while the Pyramid Core far surpassed that.
Free of worries, Liu Hai immersed himself in the StarNet again. He also instructed the Intelligent Nexus to recreate a game from his memory, optimizing and expanding it by drawing inspiration from StarNet games before releasing it into the market under the Star Sea Group's name, all while waiting for the trade to begin.
As time passed, Igor traveled to the Kono Administrative Star and returned with several of his subordinates, starting a cargo transport business together.
A month later, the first trade with Broli commenced.
The Underground Base opened its gates, and tens of thousands of Fighter Jets and Mecha, under the control of the Intelligent Nexus, ascended in batches toward the Smuggling Port to await the arrival of the cargo spaceships.
Before long, intense spatial fluctuations rippled beyond the Junk Star Gravity Well, growing from faint to strong before quickly subsiding.
Two massive cargo spaceships, each three kilometers long, appeared beyond the Gravity Well, their long exhaust trails blazing as they approached the Garbage Star.
Upon reaching the Garbage Star's far orbit, the cargo containers on the backs of the spaceships began detaching, held together by pre-positioned Landing Craft.
The two emptied cargo spaceships hovered above the Smuggling Port, their internal cargo bays rapidly transforming as partitions rose.
At Broli's signal, the Fighter Jets and Mecha took off, heading straight for the cargo spaceships. Under the Intelligent Nexus's control, they docked inside the bays, a process that took nearly two hours to complete.
With the transfer of control over the Fighter Mechs finalized, the first trade with Broli was officially done. The two cargo spaceships wasted no time, closing their bays and accelerating away from the Gravity Well before engaging their Warp Drives and vanishing from radar detection.
With the Intelligent Nexus handling the inspection of the metal materials, Liu Hai was satisfied and sent the arrival notice to Igor, letting him decide how to transport the goods to the Thunder God Shipyard.
The sheer volume—hundreds of millions of cubic meters of metal materials—left Igor feeling utterly miserable. He loved making money and wanted to earn more, but he hadn't signed up for a decade-long career as a cargo pilot!
To solve the transport dilemma, with Liu Hai's approval, two more large smuggling transport ships were brought in. With six ships now in operation, they could move over 200 million cubic meters in a single trip, significantly lightening Igor's burden. Otherwise, hauling mere hundreds of thousands of cubic meters per trip, three times a year, would have taken him an eternity to finish.
Several small Cargo Spaceships that had already received down payments were replaced by Igor with medium-sized ones, each capable of transporting five million cubic containers in a single trip.
The initial transportation inefficiencies caused by Liu Hai's oversight were finally resolved under Igor's arrangements, ensuring no delays in the warship delivery schedule.