Super Rich: Starting the game by going back ten years to buy Bitcoin

After the words "It's been broadcast" were uttered, Li Yichen didn't move the cup in his hand, but the warmth on the cup seemed to vanish instantly.

He stared at the puddle of tea on the table for two seconds, his mind not filled with panic, but with a series of very practical arithmetic problems.

Coordinates revealed. Distance unknown. Target's skill level unknown. Arrival time unknown.

Four unknowns and one known—his tools couldn't hold up.

"Grandpa," he looked up, "did that signal have a direction?"

"Bureau 749 only said it was a directional beam, but their equipment can't read where it specifically points." The old man had already stood up, his movements so fast they didn't seem like those of a seventy-eight-year-old. He grabbed his coat from the back of the chair and threw it on, not even bothering to button it wrong. "I have to get back to this immediately. Top priority. I need to see everyone in the conference room within an hour."

He walked to the gate of the courtyard and stopped, turning back to look at Chen Jianjun.

"Build an army."

"arrive!"

"You will personally escort Xiao Li back to Shanghai," the old man said, emphasizing each word. "Nothing is allowed to go wrong on the way. You will personally accompany him on the plane, and personally watch him walk through the door after landing. There must be no second time what happened with that dump truck this morning."

Chen Jianjun's neck stiffened: "Yes!"

The old man's gaze fell on Li Yichen again, pausing for a moment. There was something complex in his eyes, an explanation, and also an inexplicable entrustment.

"Xiao Li, you go back first."

The old man turned and left the courtyard. His footsteps faded away on the blue brick path, soon mingling with the sounds of the convoy outside.

Li Yichen put the laminated photo back into the aluminum alloy case, fastened the combination lock, and pushed it to the center of the table.

"Commander Chen, let's go."

When the convoy exited the Red Wall, there were six more cars than when it entered. Three in front and three behind, with the bulletproof Red Flag missing a door sandwiched in the middle—it had been replaced with a new one, with all the doors intact.

Chen Jianjun sat to his left. After boarding the plane, the cabin door closed, and the sound of the engine shut out the outside world.

Li Yichen straightened his seat and tapped the side of his watch.

"Ling'er, wake up."

The projection appeared. This time, the little girl didn't even sit up; she stood up with her hands behind her back.

"Brother, I heard you. I heard every word you said in that courtyard."

"Didn't the quarantine facility stop you?"

"It blocked two-thirds." Ling'er's voice was a little muffled. "The remaining third is what I retrieved from your bone conduction system. Brother, Area 51..."

"Don't bring up Area 51 yet." Li Yichen lowered his voice. There was no one else in the cabin except Chen Jianjun, but he didn't want to say those two words out loud. "Get the data. Every satellite in the world that we can get our hands on, infrared, optical, radar, meteorological, that counts. As long as the camera scanned Nevada in those few minutes, not a single one can be missed. I need the direction that beam of light is pointing."

Ling'er's projection flickered.

"Brother, this job is a bit tiring."

"What do you mean?"

"I need to get into the NORAD's bottom-level database. They have a 27-year-old legacy system with over 400 patches, and I have to start from the very bottom." Ling'er pointed, "And there are the three early warning satellites from the Russians. Their backhaul encryption is more robust than that of the Americans, so I have to wait for their next key rotation window."

"how long."

"Half an hour inside, ballistic reverse engineering and star map comparison... Dude, the computing power isn't enough."

"If the computing power is insufficient, we will utilize the company's supercomputing center."

"You've taken up all the space? That might cause the company's internal computing power to be insufficient, resulting in lag," Ling'er said, looking at Li Yichen.

"I can't worry about that anymore, I'll take it all, now's the time." Li Yichen said firmly.

The phone vibrated as soon as I finished speaking.

Ji Yanran: [What's wrong with the supercomputer? Three departments are reporting malfunctions simultaneously.]

Li Yichen typed with one hand: 【This is my computer; I have something important to deal with.】

There was a pause of about ten seconds.

【understood. 】

He turned his phone over and placed it face down on his lap.

Chen Jianjun watched for a while before finally speaking: "Xiao Li, are you... investigating the whereabouts of that light?"

"Um."

"The higher-ups are investigating too. All personnel at Bureau 749 are on standby, and the three observation stations are working through the night—"

"Commander Chen," Li Yichen interrupted him, his tone not harsh, "The 749 Bureau's best deep-space spectrometer has reached its limit in terms of resolution. The beam angle of this signal is less than 0.01 degrees. They can measure the intensity, but they may not be able to determine the direction."

Chen Jianjun opened his mouth slightly, then closed it again.

"Then can you?"

"I have more than two thousand other people's eyes." Li Yichen closed his eyes.

The plane landed in Shanghai, and it was already completely dark. Chen Jianjun personally followed him to the entrance of Tomson Riviera, watching him enter the courtyard before turning around and getting into his car.

The TV in the living room was on, and Miaomiao was lying on the carpet watching cartoons. She didn't even turn her head when she heard the door open.

"Brother, you're back! I left you a chicken leg in the pot!"

Li Yichen hummed in agreement and went straight upstairs. He closed and locked the study door, then drew the curtains tightly shut.

"Project the galaxy map."

A holographic star map filled the entire study. The solar system was shrunk to a small orange dot in the center, with stars tens of light-years away floating up one by one, densely labeled.

A red line pierces out from the location of the blue star, straight, passes through a void in the spiral arm of the Milky Way, and ends at a two-point structure.

Ling'er floated to the end of the red thread and pointed at it.

"Brother, we're out."

Her voice was a little ethereal, not the usual coquettish etherealness, but an uncontrollable etherealness.

"The beam of light is pointing towards the constellation Ophiuchus, a binary star system. Both are orange dwarfs, orbiting each other every 86 years. It's 5.2 light-years away from us..." She paused for half a second.

There was a three-second silence in the study.

Li Yichen leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and stared at the two dots.

"5.2 light-years," he repeated. "A little farther than Proxima Centauri."

"Yes, it's ridiculously close to Earth." Ling'er bit her lip. "Brother, do you know what this distance is called on an astronomical scale? It's called 'next door.' Really next door."

"Let's consider the best-case scenario first." Li Yichen held up one finger. "Assuming that light is just a normal electromagnetic wave traveling at the speed of light, it would take 5.2 years to travel there. If the other side receives it and then sends something over, it would take decades or even centuries if it travels at near-light speed. I'm not worried about that."

"But it is not an ordinary electromagnetic wave."

"That's right." Li Yichen withdrew his finger. "The readings from the Russian side are less than half the combined power of all the Russian country's communication facilities, even multiplied by ten thousand. This energy density isn't for making the signal travel far, it's for making the signal travel fast. Ling'er, develop the model for space jump communication."

Ling'er traced a series of lines with her finger in the air. A series of flowing formulas appeared next to the star map.

"...If it's faster-than-light communication based on spatial folding, the information doesn't travel through space, but rather along a compressed path. Brother, then the other party has already received it."

"Now."

"On your way back, or even earlier."

Li Yichen tapped his fingers twice on his knee.

"Now let's consider the spaceships. Let's assume they only have spaceships that travel at the speed of light—"

"That's 5.2 years," Ling'er said. "Add the time they need for decision-making, assembling, and setting sail, and optimistically, it'll be five and a half to six years. Brother, what can you build in five years?"

Li Yichen didn't answer. He stood up and walked halfway around the star map, his gaze never leaving the red line.

"What's the worst-case scenario?"

Ling'er paused for a moment.

"The worst... what if their spaceship and communication use the same principle? A space jump ship."

"So that means," Li Yichen stopped in his tracks, "that when I open my eyes tomorrow morning and draw back the curtains, there might be a whole bunch of dark spaceships parked on the Oriental Pearl Tower."

"...Brother, please stop talking, my computing power is starting to shake."

"Even if it shakes, it still counts." Li Yichen sat down again. "Pull up the parameters for that fragment, the ones provided by Bureau 749. The piece that fell down thirty years ago was the propulsion compartment liner. Based on these parameters, reconstruct the entire ship at 238 meters—"

He suddenly stopped.

Ling'er was stunned: "Brother? Two hundred and thirty-eight meters? Didn't Grandpa say 'no less than two hundred meters'? Why did you report a single digit?"

Li Yichen did not answer this question.

The chill in his heart crept up his spine. The item in the system shop, 【Near-Light Speed ​​Intergalactic Exploration Spaceship】, 238 meters long, was labeled "Basic Civilian Exploration Type", "Does not include high-end weaponry", and "Not recommended for intergalactic long-distance travel".

A civilian patrol vessel that is not even equipped with high-end weapons and is not recommended for long-distance voyages.

Its three fragments have been fought over by three countries for thirty years, and four generations of scientists have been unable to understand them.

What if they run into a regular army?

Thinking of this, Li Yichen immediately brought up the system store page.

The interface unfolded before him, visible only to him. This time, he didn't scroll down; instead, he went straight to the top category, which he had never looked at closely before.

[Strategic/Hengian System Defense]

The entries scrolled down one by one, and the numbers at the end of each line seemed to be playing tricks on me.

Planetary Energy Shield (Global Coverage) Price: 500 Tech Points

Antimatter Annihilation Main Cannon (Strategic Deployment Class) Price: 1200 Tech Points

[Star Destroyer Battleship (Complete Technology + Manufacturing Blueprint)] Price: 1500 Tech Points

After reading those three lines, Li Yichen flipped back to his own accounts.

[Current Technology Points: 6]

The last time we managed to scrape together 24 points, we poured them all into the twelve ten-axis machine tools, leaving us with nothing.

During this period, I accumulated another 6 technology points.

He slumped back in his chair and forced a laugh.

"What's wrong, bro?"

"It's nothing." Li Yichen waved his hand away from the store interface. "I just discovered something really funny—the space carrier I built, 120,000 tons, costing 500 billion, can carry missiles, can become invisible, and can wipe out a base with an electromagnetic cannon. I've always thought this thing is pretty awesome."

"Isn't that unreasonable?"

"Halky." Li Yichen stared at the red line on the star map. "Halky on Earth. But on their planet, it probably couldn't even take down a single civilian patrol ship."

Ling'er's projection shrank slightly.

"elder brother……"

"What have I done this year?" Li Yichen started counting on his fingers. "Batteries, chips, building factories, employing 50,000 people, giving out annual party prizes, pressuring domestic manufacturers to lower prices, selling a robot for ten million and still using scarcity marketing, supplying 100 units a month. Ling'er, do you think I'm crazy?"

"That's...that's a normal business strategy."

"That's normal." He lowered his hand. "The premise of 'normal' is that I have time. I thought I had twenty or thirty years to slowly cultivate the land and gradually spread the technology outwards. I can't be too fast, lest I scare people."

He looked up.

"Now that crazy guy, TeKaoPu, has personally pressed the countdown button for his vote eighteen months from now. I don't know how much time I have left, maybe five years, maybe five days."

The star chart in the study rotated slowly, with the red line fixed motionless in the direction of Ophiuchus.

"So the domestic sales model is no longer viable." Li Yichen slammed his fist on the desk, causing the coaster to bounce up and flip over. "Selling each unit for ten million to wealthy domestic individuals as bodyguards, a hundred units a month—what can I do with that money? Can I buy 80% of a shield?"

"Brother, so what are you planning to do—"

"Squeeze".

Ling'er didn't understand: "Huh?"

"Globally." Li Yichen leaned forward, lowering his voice, enunciating each word clearly, "The United States, Japan, Europe, the Middle East, all those with steel in their pockets. What do they lack most right now?"

Ling'er realized what was happening: "...A sense of security. They were gone in forty seconds after they finished looking at that island in the East China Sea."

"Yes. They're afraid." Li Yichen stared at the star map. "Those who are afraid have money. Alloys, shields, robots, medical pods—anything that can be sold, push it all out, increase the price tenfold or twentyfold, take it or leave it. I want to drain all the money from this planet in the shortest amount of time, convert it into technology points, and force the trees to grow taller."

"But brother, if we sell those technologies, what if we start fighting later—"

"Let's fight." Li Yichen chuckled briefly. "Ling'er, look up at that red line. Who will we fight then?"

Ling'er swallowed her words.

Only the low rumble of the holographic projection remained in the study. Li Yichen reached out and swiped across the star map, bringing the two orange dwarf stars close to his eyes and magnifying them until they filled half the wall.

"Call Ji Yanran to the company first thing tomorrow morning," he said. "And Liu Ruyan too."