Forced to marry a disabled man in the countryside? I'll repay you tenfold!

The list details:

Steel: 2.3 tons

Silver: 142 kg

Gold: 3.6 kg

Copper: 200 kg

Aluminum ingots: 150 kg

Su Wanqing glanced at the package and was overjoyed—she was rich! She had enough steel to upgrade, and almost enough silver too; all she needed now was the beryllium ore.

"Okay." She turned to Zhou Yanshen and said, "I'm going in to check the goods. You wait here for me, I'll be out in a bit."

Zhou Yanshen stood straight in the night, only feeling the heat subside when the cold wind blew in. He simply nodded and said, "Call me if you need anything."

Su Wanqing followed Director Li deeper into the poplar grove.

Zhou Yanshen watched her retreating figure and sighed inwardly. He knew his wife had her own secrets and didn't want to pry, but her safety always weighed on his mind. He touched the gun at his waist and then the dagger strapped to his leg; if anything happened to his wife, he could rush in immediately.

·

Deep in the poplar grove, various materials were piled up like a small mountain. Don't be fooled by the fact that the previous six hundred sets of bearings were only exchanged for a little over a hundred kilograms of gold, which one person could carry away. This time, the steel, copper, and aluminum they were exchanging for totaled several tons.

Director Li said somewhat embarrassedly, "This steel is recycled scrap steel, so it has a lot of impurities, but it's heavy enough, a solid two and a half tons. Xiao Su, take a look, is it usable?"

Steel is hard to come by these days, even scrap steel is scarce, so she was already quite satisfied with getting any. Su Wanqing nodded in satisfaction: "No problem, it meets the delivery standards. Director Li, I look forward to our next cooperation."

Working with Director Li is so convenient and hassle-free, and there's no risk involved. As long as these things are of good quality or not, as long as they can be upgraded, it doesn't matter. She doesn't care anyway.

Director Li then seemed relieved, but then rubbed his hands together, as if there was something he was reluctant to say: "Well, I have been having some headaches lately—"

Su Wanqing raised an eyebrow. Another big order?

"What could be causing Director Li such a headache? Aren't all the supplies being allocated by you now?"

Director Li smiled wryly: "Sigh, we're short of things again. Anyway, there's nothing we don't lack these days, but it's really tough right now. You know we have a lot of oil here, right? Xinjiang is the richest place in the country in terms of oil and other energy resources. There are huge deposits of oil underground waiting for us to extract."

Su Wanqing nodded: "This is a good thing." Xinjiang is a major energy province; they can just mine and make money without lifting a finger!

"That's the problem. The best carbide drill bits in China need to be replaced after eight hours, and they can't even get core samples, so it's like drilling blindly without being able to determine the oil layer location. But the special diamond drill bits smuggled from the West and West Germany can drill continuously for over seventy hours, doubling the efficiency, and crucially, they can get core samples!"

Director Li grew increasingly worried as he spoke: "This year's extraction targets are very tight, and the higher-ups have directly shifted the blame to me—saying that I can't get good drill bits and that I'm delaying the national oil strategy. If this continues, I'm afraid I won't be able to keep my position."

Su Wanqing understood; what they lacked was a special diamond drill bit, a consumable item. But she didn't have any of those; she could only copy and upgrade them, not conjure them out of thin air.

"Director Li, do you have a sample or model of this drill bit? I might be able to ask around about it."

Director Li shook his head and sighed, "How could we possibly have that here? If we did, we would have taken it back to study it long ago."

Su Wanqing: "..."

Undeterred, she asked again, "Were there any broken ones that were replaced before?" She figured she could upgrade these consumables tenfold first, then for free, then for a fee, and then tenfold again—even the broken ones could be repaired. After all, it's an upgrade, so repairing is perfectly normal, right?

Director Li waved his hands repeatedly: "Those things are extremely precious; we've never even touched one. A domestically made drill bit costs over 800 yuan, but on the black market abroad, it sells for 3,000 to 5,000 yuan, and you still need a whole drilling rig. You know what a mess this is. For the past few decades, we've been making do with domestically made drill bits, and now that it's my turn, they can't mine and they're blaming me. Oh well, never mind."

He patted Su Wanqing on the shoulder, his voice weary: "I'm telling you this because I'm desperate. This thing doesn't exist anywhere in Xinjiang. The only complete machine with drill bit is in the Urumqi Industrial Exhibition Hall, treated like a treasure. They won't even let you touch it, let alone use it for drilling. Su, don't take it to heart. Help me find out if you can find it; if you can't, that's fine too. Anyway, I've come to terms with it. If I really lose my position, I'll just go back to being the Party Secretary!"

After Director Li finished speaking, he turned to leave.

Su Wanqing suddenly called out to him, "Director Li, could you possibly borrow the set from the Wucheng exhibition for me to take a look at? As long as I have the specific model number, my friend can get it from somewhere else."

Director Li shook his head with a wry smile: "Those people treasure it like the apple of their eye, how could they possibly lend it out? Forget it, I've figured it out, this is the higher-ups deliberately making things difficult for us. It's a technical problem that the whole country hasn't solved, what can I, a mere member of the Materials Bureau, do? Let's just leave it at that." He paused, then added, "But on another note, if your friend really has connections to get it, we'll not only buy it at a high price, we'll even exchange it for gold or oil—the oil sector has no shortage of materials and money."

Su Wanqing nodded, but her mind was already racing: Wucheng would eventually come asking for rhizobium, and she could use that as leverage to borrow a drill bit for a quick look. A set of drill bits cost three to five thousand on the black market; if she could get a hundred or eighty sets, she could first multiply it tenfold, then upgrade for free, then upgrade for a fee, then randomly multiply it a hundredfold… wouldn't that be a meteoric rise?

Director Li left dejectedly, but before he left, he instructed, "This shipment is quite large. Tell your friend to be careful; things haven't been safe on the streets lately." With that, he disappeared into the night.

While waiting for Director Li to walk away before collecting the supplies, Su Wanqing continued to calculate: If she could really get the drill bit, she could first use it at ten times the normal rate, then upgrade it for free, then upgrade it for a fee, and then randomly get a hundred times the normal rate—that would be an astronomical sum. Not only could she sell it here, but she could also sell it again back in the city. She would have all the materials for the next upgrade; it would be perfect.

Just wishful thinking—

There was a rustling sound all around, and suddenly more than a dozen people rushed out! Some were carrying sticks, some were pushing carts, and some were carrying sacks; they were clearly after the supplies.

"Hurry, hurry! Move all this stuff out before their people arrive!"

"What should we do with that woman?"

"Knock her out and leave her alone! I've been keeping an eye on things twice already. Each time, this woman comes to inspect the goods first, then leaves them here to wait for that group. They're incredibly elusive; they arrive super fast!"

Drop drop-

Su Wanqing's "Eye of Insight" suddenly emitted a piercing alarm, and more than a dozen red dots frantically approached her, 50 meters, 30 meters, 10 meters—

Su Wanqing snapped back to reality instantly.

Oops!

Tonight, relying on Zhou Yanshen guarding outside and Director Li's dozen or so trucks nearby, she didn't take security seriously at all, assuming no one would be so foolish as to steal her things. Furthermore, the passive detection range of her "Eye of Insight" was too small; she hadn't actively searched and had no idea that so many people were hiding a hundred meters away. These people had clearly already figured out the pattern of the transaction.