The Last 299 Days of Humanity

What Yu Qing did next left everyone in Yadu completely baffled.

Everyone originally thought that he must have rented so many warehouses to store something valuable, but who knew that he was actually using them to store the most worthless kind of straw.

Even in ancient times, when productivity was extremely low, straw, as a byproduct of agriculture, was worth very little. In fact, straw has had little use, both in ancient and modern times.

Although a few places in the eastern region still grow a small amount of rice for supplementary purposes, the straw is mostly chopped up and scattered on the ground. What value is there in Yu Qing buying up this useless stuff at a high price at this time? Is he betting that it's not widely cultivated?
Someone did the math and found that the warehouse rental cost was dozens of times greater than the cost of the straw. Although Yu Qing had the straw compressed into hard blocks to reduce its space, it was still not enough to cover the rental cost.

And you can never drive the price of straw sky-high. There is a vast amount of land in the east that can be quickly converted to intelligent rice cultivation, yielding billions of kilograms per season. If needed, production can be increased several times over.

Yu Qing hoarded a grain of straw that had no speculative value or supply potential. Wasn't that just plain stupid?
He bought up almost all the hay in the entire eastern region. This hay was compressed into ultra-high-density boards and piled in a very few warehouses, while most warehouses remained empty. This became another topic of ridicule.

Yu Qing also placed large orders for rice straw for the next season, raising the price of rice straw to twenty times that of rice, making rice cultivation a highly profitable industry.

He even agreed to pay the full amount in advance for the pre-ordered quantity. However, the signatory could also choose to pay only 10%, 30%, or even 100% of the pre-order amount, but would have to pay a penalty of ten times the deposit if the goods could not be delivered on time.

Of course, everyone was afraid he would renege on his promise, so almost everyone chose to receive the full payment in advance. The sheer size of his order prompted many people in Yadu to begin investigating whether the straw had any unknown, mysterious uses.

Someone did the math: based on his order quantity, 99% of the arable land in the eastern region would have to be used to grow rice. But the people here only need energy bars; they don't need crops to sustain their lives, so what they grow won't affect their livelihoods.

In fact, most of the land here has been left to lie fallow. Now that some fool wants to buy hay at a high price, let's just dig up those fields and plant them for him.

The authorities in Asia were also happy to see this happen. This is an era of extreme oversupply of goods; you can get whatever you want with ease, so it won't cause any ripples.

But straw is different. There has been no demand for it for hundreds of years. Suddenly, such a huge demand has created an overwhelming surge in the production capacity of related industries.

But that's not a big deal; it's simply a matter of operating at full capacity. Manufacturing systems are all intelligent and flexible; manufacturing a car and a combine harvester are just different blueprints. The same press used to compress steel can also be used to compress straw.

In any case, the pre-order payments received were sufficient to cover the costs of ordering the equipment and other production expenses. Therefore, it was a risk-free deal, and it suddenly boosted economic activity across the entire society.

If anyone might end up losing even their underwear, it would definitely be that inexplicable ancient human. However, the people of Yadu have started to like fools like Yu Qing and all want to do business with him.

Some people who don't grow rice at all also wanted to join this lucrative business. They hoped to buy rice straw and resell it to Yu Qing. Yu Qing, with limited energy, was happy to let them handle the process, and the contract stipulated a fixed handling fee for each kilogram of rice straw.

For example, if they receive 10,000 coins for one ton of hay, and Yu Qing pays a handling fee of 1,000 coins per ton, then Yu Qing will ultimately pay them a total of 11,000 coins. However, the 10,000 coins can only be paid upon delivery, while the 1,000 coins, as an advance payment, are paid in advance when the contract is signed.

To the delight of the middlemen, Yu Qing, that fool, ordered straw from the straw grower for only 5,000 coins per ton. How could someone with such low intelligence survive in Yadu! As a result, people signed contracts with Yu Qing one after another, each contract for more than 100,000 tons.

These people were also afraid that they wouldn't be able to buy enough hay, so they subcontracted the contract to more middlemen at below-cost prices, but increased the penalty for breach of contract from ten times to one hundred times.

There are so many middlemen that each rice farmer receives tens of thousands of order requests. They simply cannot supply that much straw, and the vast majority of farmers cannot close deals, so they have to raise prices to compete for the orders.

At first, someone quickly offered six thousand, then seven thousand, eight thousand, nine thousand, ten thousand... Soon, a middleman broke through his cost price of eleven thousand and found that he couldn't make a penny. But the most worried were those middlemen who couldn't buy hay at all.

According to the agreement, if some intermediaries fail to deliver the hay on time, they should pay compensation equal to one hundred times the advance payment. That is to say, for every ton of hay not delivered, they will be compensated 100,000 coins, and 100,000 tons would be 10 billion coins.

To minimize losses, shrewd merchants quickly offered to buy it at 50,000 coins per ton. But by then, even at 100,000 coins per ton, no one was willing to sell.

In fact, even at this point, one million coins per ton wouldn't be enough to buy hay from every middleman. The total amount of hay Yu Qing agreed to purchase was roughly equal to the sum of the largest production in the eastern region over the past seventy years.

With the final delivery deadline fast approaching, most people still didn't have a single straw in their hands.

If this continues, it means that half the people of Yadu will be Yuqing's debtors. The authorities calculated that this is equivalent to giving one-tenth of the wealth of the eastern region, including Yadu, to Yuqing.

People were outraged and demanded that Yu Qing explain the uses of the straw, accusing him of malicious hype.

However, Yu Qing's explanation left all the people of Yadu speechless. Since Yadu stipulated that all Yu Qing coins would be reset to zero after he left, why couldn't he use them to buy hay before leaving?
The technology involved in the production of straw is low, and it is not prohibited from being transported out of Yadu. After being repeatedly pressed into plates, it can be transported to the west to build city walls.

The people of Yadu were both angry and amused. Building a city with straw bricks was a technology that was even more backward than that of people hundreds of years ago. It was neither fire-resistant nor durable, and it was of no use except to keep wild animals out.

Yu Qing replied, "Yadu's urban defense system is the best in the world, but did you agree to sell it to us? We in the west can only use such outdated technology."

The astute residents of Yadu saw through the scheme. It seemed that if they didn't sell him a complete city defense system, he was willing to bankrupt tens of thousands of Yadu residents.

Therefore, under pressure from many residents of Yadu, the authorities began to negotiate with Yuqing to exchange all the grain and grass contracts for the city defense system contracts on an equal basis.

In other words, Yadu will construct a complete urban defense system for Yuqing at Wengshan, at a price equal to the value of all of Yuqing's grain and grass contracts. Yadu also agrees that Yuqing can use its remaining Yuqing coins to purchase any goods and transport them to Wengshan without restriction.

The people of Yadu all agreed with the plan, because the entire system was only worth 300 billion, while Yu Qing spent at least 500 billion Yu Qing coins to sign those grain and grass contracts, but those contracts are now worth as much as 12 trillion. In any case, the people of Yadu saw this as a huge bargain, proving that the wisdom of ancient humans ultimately couldn't surpass that of the ancients. For a weak ancient human like Yu Qing, offering some assistance was perfectly acceptable.

Furthermore, building a defense system for Yuqing in such a remote area as Wengshan in the west wouldn't pose any threat to Yadu. The people of Yadu even packaged this as some kind of aid for an endangered species.

Yu Qing was actually afraid that they would change their minds halfway through, so he was happy to go with the flow and publicize the matter as a gift from the people of Yadu, so that they would be embarrassed to step down from the moral high ground.

In fact, Yu Qing had calculated correctly. Even without replacing the contract, he would never actually live to see the day the grain and grass contract was fulfilled. They had plenty of ways to ensure he ended up with nothing. They could simply raise the income tax to 99.9999999% temporarily, and he would end up with nothing.

This isn't absurd; some people have actually suggested it to the authorities. However, it looks like robbery and would indeed damage the reputation of the residents of Yadu. Comparatively, the contract swap option is a more secure and beneficial solution, offering both prestige and financial reward.

In matters of immense interest, even life and death, never gamble that someone won't lose face. Yu Qing dared not harbor the slightest wishful thinking in this regard.

Moreover, the Yadu people played a clever trick. They dismantled all their old defense systems, packed them up, and installed them at Wengshan, replacing all the existing, upgraded systems with new ones. Their original plan was to replace these systems within the next three or four years anyway.

For someone like Yu Qing who started from scratch, this is still acceptable.

The defense system built by the Yadu people at Wengshan was completed in just 21 days. Yu Qing felt both joy and worry about this. He was happy that he had built the first city where he and his kind could live, but worried that they were too far behind the world and had to depend on others for survival.

Yao Dan was sent to Wengshan to take control of the temporarily deserted city, and Yu Qing once again found himself without anyone he could have a deep conversation with.

He was also hesitant about whether to relocate Dangui and the others to Wengshan now. After all, the Third Paradise was still relatively safe, and sending them there over such a long distance was too risky. He decided to wait and see.

At this point, Yu Qing counted on his fingers and realized that he only had 199 days left to operate.

In Yadu, Yu Qing is already a transparent figure. Although no one dares to openly take any adverse actions against him for the time being, he can hardly accomplish anything.

So he replaced the Yadu Ship with a new mode of transportation. This behemoth, called the Air-Ground Fortress, has a maximum flight altitude of 50000 meters and a maximum range of 20000 kilometers. It also possesses extremely strong conventional defensive capabilities.

However, under current technological conditions, it is far from impregnable; in fact, a single decoy sniffer could destroy it, although it is difficult for ground weapons to detect. Its relative safety stems from the convention prohibiting attacks on civilian aircraft.

The flight from Yadu to Dongbang took only eighteen minutes from takeoff to landing. However, registering for this flight took him three days.

Entry and exit at high altitudes between Yadu and Dongbang requires prior approval to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings. Most city-states do not allow entry from the air; you must land on the ground first. Whether you taxi across or transfer to other means depends on local conditions.

Yu Qing decided to take the airborne fortress to Wengshan to see how things were progressing. But Yu Wa hadn't seen him for so long and insisted on spending time with him.

So he slowed down and used the aerial fortress to transport some humanoid girls to assist Yao Dan's work, along with a considerable amount of daily necessities that might be needed in the future. After more than a dozen round trips, he delivered a total of over six hundred humanoid girls engaged in various professions.

Wengshan was originally well-preserved with complete infrastructure. After this upgrade and improvement, Wengshan now possesses relatively good conditions for human survival and reproduction, and it will not need to expand its settlement for at least the next thirty to forty years.

By this time, Yu Qing had squandered all his assets. He was now a veritable debtor, with liabilities reaching a staggering 2.3 trillion RB. To repay those debts, he had no choice but to recklessly seize control of Shengtian's financial resources.

To protect Yu Wa from being implicated by these debts, he had to distance himself from her in any public setting. But when Yu Qing had everything prepared and was about to go to Wengshan, Yu Wa insisted on going with him.

To ensure the safety of her hundreds of billions of yen in assets, it was best not to let him get too close to her at this time. In case she couldn't repay her debts in the future, she could at least protect herself. Therefore, before setting off, Yu Qing made an excuse that he still had some things to take care of and postponed the trip for a few more days.

So he had Donghao load a cart full of supplies and send it to the empty fortress, then to Wengshan. Yuwa then insisted on sending some of her things to Wengshan as well. After several more trips back and forth like this, the empty fortress was finally left idle.

That day, seeing that Yu Wa and E Ying were studying intently, he quietly slipped out, intending to secretly fly to Wengshan alone.

Just as he was about to set up the fortress, Yu Wa rushed out like an arrow, stood not far in front of him with her hands on her hips, and shouted, "Big brother, you're a big liar!"

Yu Qing said awkwardly, "Wow, our little princess speaks Mandarin so fluently now."

Yu Wa pointed at him and said, "What's going on here!"

Yu Qing had no choice but to go back and pick her up, saying, "Ah, I just wanted to check if the fortress had enough energy. We still need to transport some things to Wengshan today."

"But it's...empty...what is it carrying?"

Yu Qing opened the car door, pointed inside, and said, "Let me see if there's enough space..."

Suddenly, his face turned deathly pale, and he grabbed Yu Wa and ran into the house… (End of Chapter)