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

The next morning at eight o'clock, when Ji Yanran pushed open the door and came in, Li Yichen was already sitting behind his desk.

Ji Yanran thought to herself, "Is the sun rising in the west again today?"

She'd been working at Future Tech for a year and had almost never seen him show up in the office before 8 a.m. Usually, she had to remind him three times and make two phone calls before he'd leisurely stroll in.

"Did you take the wrong medicine today?" Ji Yanran put the folder on the table, but stopped herself as soon as she said it.

Li Yichen's eyes were bloodshot. Not the kind of red from staying up all night playing games, but the kind from not sleeping for days—there was a dark circle under his eyes, his lips were dry and chapped, and he was slumped in the back of his chair, but his back was straight.

Ji Yanran swallowed back the retort that was about to come out.

"Where's Ruyan?" Li Yichen asked, his voice a little hoarse.

"They're on their way, they said they'd be there in ten minutes. You—"

"Wait for her to come along."

Ji Yanran seemed to want to say something, but then remained silent. She sat down on the sofa, opened her tablet, and pretended to look at yesterday's revised contract. Her eyes kept drifting towards the desk.

Li Yichen didn't look at her. He placed his hands, fingers interlaced, on the table and stared out the window. The sun had just risen, and the light shone on his profile, making the lines of his face look taut as if they were about to snap.

Seven minutes later, Liu Ruyan knocked on the door and came in.

She was wearing the gray-blue work jacket from the space base, her hair tied in a neat ponytail, and carrying a stack of rocket schedules. As soon as she entered, she said, "President Li, I've checked the second lunar landing window for Lingxiao-3, and it's the earliest—"

"sit."

Liu Ruyan's words were cut off. She glanced at Ji Yanran, who shook her head slightly at her.

The two sat side by side on the sofa.

Li Yichen turned his chair around to face them. He didn't take any documents or turn on the projector; he rested his hands on the armrests and leaned forward.

"Liu Ruyan".

"exist."

"The development of the Lingxiao series rockets will be fully launched starting today."

Liu Ruyan's finger stopped on the schedule.

"What do you mean?"

"Literal meaning. Carrying capacity, go all out. The current Lingxiao-3 rocket has a single payload of 3,000 tons, which is not enough. I want 4,000 tons, 5,000 tons, 10,000 tons—money is not a problem. List out the technical bottlenecks, and I will solve them for you personally. There is only one goal: I want to build a rocket that can move a mountain into the sky."

Liu Ruyan opened her mouth slightly.

Having worked with Li Yichen for so long, she'd seen all sorts of outrageous requests—launching three rockets simultaneously to the moon, launching before New Year's Eve, stuffing over four hundred robots into a rocket—but "moving a mountain into the sky" was something she'd never heard of before.

Li Yichen didn't give her time to process it.

"The second thing. Future Aerospace is now accepting orders. For commercial satellite launches, regardless of the country or company, as long as you pay, we'll handle everything. We'll offer prices at one-third of our competitors' and cut delivery times in half."

Liu Ruyan frowned: "President Li, we don't lack this launch fee, do we? If we do this, SpaceX, Ariane—the entire industry will be crushed by us."

"So what if I get wrecked?" Li Yichen flicked his finger on the armrest. "Every little bit helps. The global space launch market is worth hundreds of billions of dollars every year, and I want it all."

He paused for a moment.

"The third thing. Prepare for the next lunar landing of Lingxiao-3. This time it won't be 8,000 tons."

Liu Ruyan gripped the schedule tightly in her hand.

"Ten thousand tons. The mining speed on the moon must be increased tenfold. Give me a plan by this afternoon outlining the specific schedule."

Liu Ruyan's Adam's apple bobbed slightly, and her lips pressed into a thin line. She folded up the schedule and stuffed it into her pocket, nodding, "Understood."

There was no unnecessary talk. This was what Li Yichen admired about Liu Ruyan—her mind never dwelled on "why," but only on "how."

Li Yichen turned his gaze and it fell on Ji Yanran.

Ji Yanran had already sat up straight on the sofa. She was also frightened by Li Yichen's state this morning.

"Go ahead and say it." She set up the tablet, her finger hovering over the screen, ready to take notes.

"First, we'll acquire all the land within a one-kilometer radius of the scrap yard."

Ji Yanran drew a crooked line on the screen with her finger.

"Factory, residential buildings, warehouses—whatever it is, throw money at it. After you buy them, demolish them all, pave the ground, and build a row of makeshift factory buildings. The faster the better. I'll give you a month."

"Wait, wait, wait." Ji Yanran looked up. "One kilometer? That's a diameter of two kilometers. Are you sure you mean one kilometer? Not one hundred meters?"

"Confirmed, a radius of one kilometer and a diameter of two kilometers."

Ji Yanran placed the tablet on her lap: "Boss, that area may be remote, but it's still part of Shanghai. Within a one-kilometer radius, the land alone would cost—"

"I told you, throw money at it."

"Let me finish." Ji Yanran raised her voice by half an octave. "I remember there are two operational logistics parks, an electronic component processing zone, and a residential resettlement area in that area. If you demolish them all, the relocation fees, land fees, and breach of contract compensation will easily exceed 150 billion yuan."

"Then 150 billion, or 200 billion if that's not enough."

Ji Yanran stared at him for three seconds.

"Secondly," Li Yichen interrupted her, "we're buying up all the raw materials for superconducting tungsten-gold fusion alloys globally without any limits. Especially tungsten concentrate and high-purity rhenium—we're using up as much as we can from our domestic stocks, and if that's not enough, we'll buy from Australia, South America, and Africa. There's no price ceiling, and the more the better."

"The warehouses in Shanghai can't hold it all—"

"If you can't fit it all in, just buy some empty land nearby and pile it up. As long as the ground is flat, it doesn't matter if it's open-air."

Ji Yanran had stopped writing. She stopped because every single one of them was too absurd; writing them down and looking back would make her feel like she was crazy.

"Third, the scarcity marketing strategy for security robots has been cancelled."

This sentence made Ji Yanran jump up from her chair: "What?"

"Increase the monthly supply from 100 units to 1,000 units. I'll arrange the production capacity; you're responsible for filling the order book. The price remains the same, 10 million per unit. Take it or leave it."

"One thousand—you were saying last month you wanted to control supply to maintain prices!"

"Last month is last month."

Ji Yanran's temples throbbed twice. She forced herself to sit back down, crossing her arms over her chest: "Anything else?"

"Yes," Li Yichen said. "Go and acquire a large shipyard."

The office was silent for a full four seconds.

Liu Ruyan was the first to react, turning to look at Ji Yanran. Ji Yanran's expression was no longer one of shock, but rather closer to a calm breakdown.

"Shipyard." Ji Yanran repeated the three words in a flat tone, "We make batteries, we make chips, we make rockets, we make robots, and now you're telling me you want to build ships."

"I meant acquiring a shipyard, not building ships."

"Then why did you acquire the shipyard?"

"You don't need to worry about what it's for. The bigger the better. The kind of dock that can fit a 300,000-ton cargo ship. If they won't sell, just raise the price until they agree."

Ji Yanran closed the tablet with a "snap".

"Li Yichen".

She called him by his full name. This, within the context of futuristic technology, signifies wartime-level discontent.

"Were you drunk last night? Or did someone trick you? You sat here all night, waiting for us, just to smash this bunch of bombs? Buying land, sweeping up mines, opening up production capacity, acquiring shipyards—are you trying to buy out the entire planet?"

Li Yichen ignored her anger.

"How much money is left in the account?"

Ji Yanran hesitated for two seconds, then flipped open her tablet and checked: "The group's public account plus the free cash flow of each subsidiary is approximately 430 billion. But if you spend it the way you just did—"

He hadn't finished speaking.

Li Yichen took out his phone and swiped his thumb across the screen a few times.

A notification popped up on Ji Yanran's tablet that her account had been credited. She looked down at it, her pupils dilating slightly.

310 billion.

Li Yichen's personal account was transferred in full to the group's public account.

Not a single penny was left.

Ji Yanran raised her head, her lips moved slightly, but she didn't make a sound.

Liu Ruyan watched this scene from the side, her back pressed against the sofa cushion. She hadn't known Li Yichen for the longest time, but she understood his style well enough—he never hesitated to spend money, but he had never wiped out his entire fortune in one go.

"Over seven hundred billion." Li Yichen tossed his phone back onto the table. "That's enough for you to live on for a few days. If you run out, take out a loan from the bank. Future Technology's credit line is enough for you to borrow a mountain of gold."

Ji Yanran stared at the entry record for a long time.

She'd known Li Yichen for a year. This man was always frivolous, and everything he did seemed like a joke.

But she had also seen him when he was serious.

When developing cold nuclear fusion, he didn't leave the lab for eight days. When rescuing Commander Xiao, he was in seclusion for twenty-eight days and came out noticeably thinner.

The resolute look on his face now was even more ruthless than before.

"Can you tell me why?" Ji Yanran lowered her voice. It wasn't a sarcastic tone anymore; it was a question.

Li Yichen looked at her without saying anything.

The silence lasted for a few seconds.

"Don't ask why," he said, his voice softer than before. "It's better if you don't know the reason for this. You can think I'm stupid and rich, or that I'm crazy, but I'll just tell you one thing: time is more valuable than money right now. Every day wasted is a matter of life and death."

Ji Yanran frowned slightly, then relaxed.

She stood up, tucked the tablet under her arm, and walked to the door in her high heels. After taking a couple of steps, she turned back: "I put yesterday's contract approval in your drawer. Get it signed before noon."

"understood."

The door closed.

Liu Ruyan also stood up, holding the crumpled schedule: "The plan for the 10,000-ton lunar landing will be sent to your email before 4 p.m. this afternoon."

"Thanks for your hard work."

"It's no trouble at all." Liu Ruyan walked to the door, placed her hand on the doorknob, hesitated for a moment, and said, "President Li."

"Um?"

"No matter what you're in a hurry for, I won't let you down when it comes to things on the aerospace front."

The door closed.

The only sound in the office was the air conditioning.

Li Yichen leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. Ling'er's projection peeked out from the edge of the watch, kicking her short legs twice but remaining silent.

He stood up and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window.

From the 60th floor, you can see half of Shanghai. The sun hangs in the east, its rays bathing the glass curtain walls of Lujiazui. Cargo ships are sailing on the Huangpu River, their horns faintly audible.

He had his hands in his pockets and tilted his head back.

The sky was very blue. So blue that you couldn't see anything.

"Ling'er".

"exist."

"Five years, I'll see—" He turned his gaze from the horizon to the city below, "and see if we can arm Blue Star into a hedgehog covered in thorns."

Ling'er, do you think I can do it?

Upon hearing Li Yichen's words, Ling'er, in her virtual form, looked at him with a determined expression, "I believe in you, brother. You can do it. Keep going!"

After saying that, Ling'er even made a cheering gesture, which looked very cute.