Volume 10: Ancient Battleship Chapter 534: Blockade of the Entire Ship
"Why?" Qin Zhao was stunned for a moment and asked, "Isn't our current headquarters pretty good? The location is prosperous, the space is spacious, and there are all kinds of supporting civilian facilities. If we move here, won't we have to start from scratch?"
"The current headquarters is good, but the advantages you mentioned are also disadvantages." Ke Lan analyzed one by one, "First of all, the location is prosperous. Yes, East Fourth District, Shengtang Commercial District, can indeed be regarded as a prime location where every inch of land is worth a lot of money. The land price is even more expensive than most of the land in District 3. If we have too much money to spend, this is indeed a good choice."
"But it's too expensive. According to the original plan, we didn't intend to choose the current address for our headquarters. This building in Shengtang Commercial District was half-sold and half-given to us by the Ye Group. Otherwise , with our funds at that time, we couldn't afford to rent such an office building - let alone a whole building. With the rent in this contract, it is estimated that we can't even rent half a floor in Shengtang Commercial District as an office."
Ke Lan and the others knew clearly that the current headquarters building of the God Hunting Group was actually given to them by the Ye Group, and letting Thunder God Heavy Industries collect the rent was just a token of their appreciation.
"If the Ye Group knew that you would become the head of Yaguna Kotor, the contract would not be a lease but a sale." Thirty-three interrupted, "The people of the Ye Group have a sharp eye, but unfortunately they were a little petty when investing."
"Even if they gave it to us directly, we wouldn't dare to accept it. We would be indebted to them. Who knows what kind of price we would have to pay back such a big gift..." Ke Lan shook her head. "Although our relationship with the Ye Group is in the honeymoon period, no one can be sure of what the future will be like. An alliance maintained by interest is not reliable. We have to find a way out for ourselves."
"That makes sense." Thirty-three nodded, while Qin Zhao fell into silence, seeming to be thinking about something.
"Secondly, the land in Shengtang Commercial District is almost saturated. Although the supporting facilities are very complete, there is no room for further expansion." Ke Lan continued, "I have previously investigated all the shops within one kilometer of the headquarters. Without exception, all the shops are backed by powerful financial groups. With the support of continuous cash flow, these shops will not go bankrupt even if they operate at a loss... Even if the financial groups want to give up this store, they will not transfer the store and land, but digest it internally and let other companies under the financial group take over, or simply transform it directly."
Ke Lan smiled and said, "If the Ye Group wanted to give us a gift, how could Leishen Heavy Industry give up such a prime location? To be honest, when the news that Leishen Heavy Industry was going to sublease this building to us was first released, its stock price instantly dropped by four percentage points. This shows how important this store is to Leishen Heavy Industry."
"Indeed, we went to Shengtang Commercial District when we purchased equipment before. The store of Thor Heavy Industries there - which is also the current headquarters of your God Hunting Group - has a considerable flow of customers. At that time, all their new products were displayed there first. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is the offline flagship store of Thor Heavy Industries. Transferring the flagship store will definitely have an impact on the stock price." Thirty-three said in a deep voice.
Although he claimed that he knew nothing except fighting, this was obviously a self-deprecating statement.
"Yes, so we want to expand by acquiring other stores, and the funds required will be an astronomical figure." Ke Lan nodded, "Although the space in our current headquarters building is sufficient, you have to know that our entire hunting group now has less than ten hunters in total. When the hunting group expands, one building will definitely not be enough.
A standard consortium-level hunting group would need at least four or five football fields worth of land just for the "three major items" of a training camp, equipment warehouse, and workshop, not to mention buildings like staff dormitories. You know, the residences of the old Hounds are all in District 7 or even further back, and it takes them more than four hours to commute to get off work every day. In addition to the commercial district, the remaining residential areas in District 4 are all high-end residential areas, which are not affordable for us. "
"Uh... I roughly calculated that if we want to buy four football fields of land in Shengtang Commercial District, according to the current price per square meter, it will probably cost..." Qin Zhao took out his cell phone and dialed a number, then began to count the long string of zeros, "tens, hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands... uh, so far it's hundreds of millions... billions, billions... about... 47 billion..."
Even she herself was shocked by the number she calculated.
"Forty-seven billion is still a conservative estimate. This thing can't be calculated based on the average price." Ke Lan sighed, "As long as you show your intention to expand and acquire, the surrounding land will start to raise prices directly... Now no one wants to buy it, so it's priced this way. When someone really wants to buy it, it won't be available at this price. Not only that, the more area you acquire, the more expensive the remaining land will be. For example, if I want to acquire 50,000 square meters of land, and I acquire it in units of 5,000 square meters, the price of the last 5,000 square meters may increase to more than ten times that of the first 5,000 square meters. This is not an exaggeration at all."
Ke Lan paused, then continued, "According to my idea, the building in Shengtang Commercial District can be left as an office and liaison station, and the headquarters of the hunting group can be moved to the newly built East 9th District. By the way, we can invest in the construction of several residential areas to serve as dormitories for employees and their families... To be honest, although the Arasaka Group is our enemy, I quite like their original 'country within a country' business model. But I guess after this incident, the Ark officials should strengthen their control over each block."
"The expenses of a consortium-level hunting group are no joke. Only those large consortiums with strong financial resources can afford to spend this much money. Otherwise, they wouldn't use the name 'consortium-level'." Thirty-three sighed, "When my brothers and I were thinking about changing careers to become relic hunters, we also thought about registering a hunting group, but in the end, we decided to debut as independent hunters."
"Why? If there is a hunting group organization, they would have the right to choose first when accepting missions, right? Most of the missions that independent hunters can receive are the ones left over by those hunting groups." Qin Zhao couldn't help asking.
"We did some research at that time. We found that to set up a hunting group, the various fees we need to pay every month would be tens of thousands. Of course, if the hunters under the hunting group are very active, the 'activity points' earned from exploring ruins can offset most of the fees and taxes. This money was originally intended to prevent someone from using the name of an empty hunting group to obtain intelligence, but the problem is that we don't go on missions very often, and we don't want to absorb a large number of newcomers, so we had to give up in the end."
"If you choose to join someone else's hunting group, you will have exploration targets to meet every month. If you fail to meet them, you will be demoted or even fired... We prefer the feeling of freedom and don't want to be controlled by others, so we became lone hunters." Sanshisan continued, "I think most people who explore ruins as a hobby or a side job should also choose this."
"It will take at least ten to twenty years for any existing consortium-level hunting group to recover their initial investment and turn losses into profits," Ke Lan shrugged. "But for the sake of top-level ruins intelligence, we have no choice."
"You are the top elite hunters, and you accept the most difficult missions. The reward for one of your missions is enough to equal the harvest of a hundred mid-level hunters in several years... But your method also has obvious disadvantages, which is that it is too dangerous. If an accident happens once, the whole army will be wiped out. And this kind of accident is too common in S-level and A-level ruins."
"Ha, of course I know that. I've heard the employees say more than once that we are rushing to die." Ke Lan smiled, "But it's strange, since we started to form a team, we have never lost a single person. This can only be explained by good luck. After all, in the A-level and S-level ruins, humans are no different from ants. No matter how strong you are, any mechanism can take your life."
"Then why do you still want to explore the ruins yourself?" Thirty-three asked again, "According to the normal development trajectory, your hunting group is like walking on a tightrope all the time, relying entirely on the support of you few people. As long as you encounter an accident during the exploration process, the entire hunting group will naturally fall apart... and the occurrence of an accident is only a matter of time.
If you maintain the current status quo, I guarantee that your hunting group won’t last even five years.
But now, an opportunity that others only dream of is before you. This is an opportunity that can completely change the fate of the God Hunter Group. With the development rights of the new S-level ruins, you can recruit other people to work for you, accumulate a lot of wealth and resources, and put the hunting group on a healthy development track. There is no need for you to take risks at all!"
"You are different from us." Thirty-three sighed, "If we want to find out the truth of things, we have to go there ourselves, but if it were you, you would just sit on the sofa in the office and someone would deliver a detailed exploration report to your desk, right?"
"If you think so, you are totally wrong." Ke Lan stared at the other party and said word by word, "Practice makes perfect. Only what you see, hear, and touch with your own eyes can be considered the truth."
Thirty-three was stunned, and even his steps stopped. He paused for a moment, then took a step forward and followed, asking in a deep voice: "What kind of truth do you want to find out?"
"To be honest, I don't know myself." Ke Lan shook her head.
The four of them walked through a construction site full of building materials. This was already the edge of the New East District 9. Logically, these construction sites should be bustling with construction scenes at this time, but along the way, they didn't see even a single worker.
There were only unmanned construction machinery parked there - many lighting lines in the New East District 9 had not yet been powered on, and these machines looked like giant monsters lurking in the shadows.
On the road that has been completed, there are several no-entry signs.
"No passage? What's going on?" Qin Zhao glanced at the navigation software on his phone. "This road should be passable. Why is it closed?"
"Of course we can use this road. If this road is closed to traffic, the construction materials on the construction site cannot be transported in at all." Thirty-three said, pointing to several large trucks parked on the side of the road.
“Then these brands…”
"It was put there temporarily." Ke Lan said, "East District 8 has been blocked."
Just as he finished speaking, a team of soldiers from the garrison suddenly turned out from the corner of the street. As soon as they saw the four of them, a dazzling searchlight beam directly covered them on the heads.
"Who is that person there? Where did they come from?" a soldier shouted.
"We are relic hunters, coming from East District 10. We missed the train, so we plan to pass through here and go to East District 8 to find transportation." Ke Lan replied.
"Don't go any further, the front is blocked! Put your hands where we can see them and walk towards us slowly. We will take you to the nearest containment facility."
"Blocked? Did something happen in East District 8?" Ke Lan asked. He suddenly had a bad feeling.
"It's not just East District 8, the entire Ark is the same. The entire ship is under emergency blockade, so if you turn back, East District 10 will not let you in!" said the soldier.
"What's going on? The whole ship is blocked?" Ke Lan thought something was wrong - at first, he thought that another "container" of the seeds of erosion had sneaked onto the Ark, but even in this case, at most only a few areas would be blocked, and it was impossible to block the entire ship... In his memory, the entire ship had only been blocked once after the Ark landed on Alpha: that time was because a group of extremely ferocious flying creatures attacked the Ark from the air and invaded the interior of the Ark. In order to minimize civilian casualties, the parliament issued an order to blockade the entire ship.
After the Ark's several large fleets were established, this kind of thing never happened again.
Could it be that something else has invaded this time? And... it's something that even the Undead Crew can't deal with in a short time?
"It says it's an acute infectious disease with a high infection rate and mortality rate." The soldier had a good temper and patiently explained to Ke Lan and the others, "Don't ask so many questions. We don't know much more than you do."
"So where is the outbreak of the infectious disease? That should tell us, right?"
"I don't know." The soldier shook his head. "The order we received is to block the borders of each block... You are lucky. The isolation wall will probably be lowered soon. If you are trapped in the New East District 9, I am afraid you won't even have a way to eat."
