novelraw Chapter 122: The Old Continent’s Layout
Chapter 122: The Old Continent’s Layout
The journey back from Dublin to London was completely opposite to the tense, unknown atmosphere of the trip there. The "Leinster" mail steamship crossing the Irish Sea seemed no longer so turbulent.
Even the perpetually gloomy cloud layer over England had thinned somewhat, with occasional sunlight piercing through the gaps to gild the vast fields with fleeting gold.
The Iron Triangle entered an unspoken period of vacation.
William took his leave upon arriving at Paddington Station. He needed to report to his superiors in person and handle the follow-up assessment within the Association regarding his removal of the "Mark of Death."
More importantly, he needed to go to the post office to send a letter and a substantial sum of living expenses to his daughter in the countryside, bidding farewell in this clumsy yet profound way.
Julian was even more eager to return home. Without staying a single night in London, he hurriedly boarded the "Continental Express" back to Paris. He had to ensure all affairs concerning his Louvre underground secret archives, which he cherished as his life, were properly handed over before embarking on their lengthy European hunt.
Lin Jie proposed a one-week limit for each to handle their personal affairs before departure. One week later, they would assemble at the port city of Calais in northern France, which would become the first stop for their rapid response team setting foot on the European continent.
Thus, Lin Jie returned alone to his apartment on Baker Street.
The familiar scent of black tea mixed with old books still lingered in the air.
Everything here was exactly as he had left it, orderly and tranquil.He was not in a hurry to rest, nor to plunge into a new round of study. The first thing he did was take the private ledger recording all income and expenses from the heavy steel safe in his study. He needed to conduct a detailed inventory of his current total assets.
This was an exhilarating process.
After the substantial bounty from the "Dartmoor Black Dog" and the generous team reward from the recently concluded "Banshee" incident, Lin Jie discovered that the number representing cash rewards in the bank account managed on his behalf by I.A.R.C. had reached an astonishing level.
This enormous sum, if converted into gold sovereigns, would be enough for him to rent a terraced house with a garden in a respectable London neighborhood.
But that was not all. Besides cash, the Association points in his account had also accumulated to a considerable amount, giving him the confidence to select a new Grotesque Armament in the exchange area of The Underground City.
Yet, looking at that dizzying string of numbers in the ledger, Lin Jie felt little joy in his heart. Instead, a deeper sense of crisis and urgency welled up.
He realized that all his current wealth was built upon a fragile foundation: continuously undertaking high-risk missions issued by the Association.
This was a path of no return. If he failed, was seriously injured, or died in a mission, all his wealth would vanish into thin air.
Furthermore, the noble hunter Ethan's enormous expenditure, where merely purchasing a few specialized "Saint Bullets" could potentially exhaust an ordinary hunter's savings accumulated over years, made Lin Jie understand the principle of depleting a finite resource.
He needed a source of passive income that could generate continuous cash flow, a sustainable treasury that would free him from excessive reliance on Association mission rewards, granting him greater operational freedom and financial security.
He decided to utilize his greatest advantage from the future: a god-like perspective of financial and technological foresight regarding the entire wave of the Second Industrial Revolution.
The next morning, Lin Jie changed into a low-profile dark suit tailored by a top London tailor, its fabric and cut exuding considerable expense. He rode in a rented private carriage into the City of London, known as the "Financial Heart of the Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets."
This was the center of England.
Narrow streets were lined with solemnly styled banks, exchanges, and insurance company headquarters.
Bankers, stockbrokers, and financial magnates dressed in black tailcoats and top hats hurried like worker ants through this forest constructed of wealth and desire.
Lin Jie finally stopped before a long-established and reputable private bank named "Barclays United Bank."
Using the identity of a "silk merchant" from the "Eastern Great Qing Empire," fabricated for him by I.A.R.C. through secret channels, and the substantial deposit in his account that served as a perfect door-opener, he successfully secured a meeting with a client manager specializing in private wealth management services for major clients.
That client manager, named Harrison, was a typical Victorian-era banker. He was around forty-something, slightly portly, dressed in impeccable black, with polished shoes showing no trace of dust.
Beneath his slightly receding hairline, a pair of shrewd, sharp little eyes were discreetly assessing this mysteriously young Eastern client before him.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Lin," Harrison's voice was warm and humble, yet behind it lay the scrutiny and arrogance of a money custodian. "It is a great honor to serve you. As per your request, I have prepared several investment portfolio options currently offering the highest returns and utmost security in the London market. Please review."
He slid a beautifully printed investment proposal across to Lin Jie.
Lin Jie merely glanced at it casually. Listed were all the hottest blue-chip stocks of the era, including the "Imperial East India Company" controlling the trade lifelines of India and the Far East, the "Great Western Railway Company" extending its steel tentacles to every corner of the empire, and the "De Beers United Mining" possessing vast diamond veins in South Africa.
These were undoubtedly the safest and most rational choices in the eyes of contemporary investors. Investing in them was equivalent to investing in the zenith of the Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets itself, with little possibility of loss.
But Lin Jie shook his head.
"Thank you very much for your suggestions, Mr. Harrison," Lin Jie said calmly. "However, I am not particularly interested in these overly 'traditional' industries."
"Oh?" Surprise and disdain flashed in Harrison's eyes. He was now convinced this young man was a know-nothing prodigal son from the backward East.
"I have an investment list I drafted myself here." Lin Jie took out a prepared letter from his pocket and pushed it over. "I wish for the bank to strictly follow this list and invest ninety percent of my available funds into the stocks or bonds of these companies."
Harrison accepted the letter with a professional, artificial smile. But the moment his gaze fell upon the paper, the muscles of his face, always wearing a perfect smile, twitched involuntarily.
In his nearly twenty-year career, he had never seen such a foolish, insane, amateurish, and suicidal investment portfolio.
The companies listed on this document completely avoided all the popular sectors of the time. They were all obscure, even perennially loss-making, emerging technology companies regarded by rational investors as junk and scams on the London Exchange.
The first category was electric power companies. Moreover, Lin Jie had specifically noted in red ink that the investments were not to be in the direct current companies led by the inventor Thomas Edison, which were then at their peak and backed by Wall Street consortia.
On the contrary, he demanded that one-third of his funds be invested entirely in those small American companies struggling domestically and tarnished by Edison's public suppression, which were dedicated to researching and promoting "alternating current" technology.
The second category was the chemical industry. Again, he did not choose the traditional chemical companies already generating massive profits.
Instead, he specifically designated several small chemical companies in the German Empire, led by a few rigid German professors in university laboratories, working on projects that seemed utterly devoid of commercial prospects at the time. Examples included fixing nitrogen from the air or extracting artificial dyes from coal tar—money-burning projects with distant horizons.
What left Harrison utterly bewildered was the third category: the rubber industry.
The list explicitly required avoiding all the natural rubber plantation stocks in Brazil or South America that investors were then frantically chasing. Instead, funds were to be invested in several small waterproof fabric or carriage tire factories located in Manchester or Liverpool.
These factories were struggling with early-stage explorations into improving vulcanized rubber formulas and creating synthetic rubber, which seemed utterly impractical at the time.
"Mr. Lin... Mr. Lin..." Harrison felt his professional ethics were being severely challenged. He felt obligated to prevent this ignorant Eastern magnate from proceeding with this suicidal investment that was bound to lose everything.
"Forgive my bluntness, but the companies on your list... they... most of them are on the brink of bankruptcy. Their technological paths are fraught with uncertainty and are considered scams by mainstream scientific circles. Investing such an enormous sum into them... it is tantamount to..."
"Tantamount to throwing gold into the Thames, is that it?" Lin Jie finished the sentence for him with a smile.
Looking at Harrison's face, etched with sincere "I-have-your-best-interests-at-heart," Lin Jie felt a sense of prophetic superiority.
Of course he knew how pathetic these companies appeared now. But only he knew that within the next ten to twenty years, as the wave of the Second Industrial Revolution swept the globe, these small companies, still in their seedling stage, would unleash terrifying growth power capable of overturning the entire world order.
Alternating current would replace direct current as the lifeblood of the new era. Synthetic ammonia technology would free Germany from dependence on imported fertilizers and indirectly trigger the future world war. The maturation of vulcanized and synthetic rubber would directly give birth to the "automobile"—a vast industrial empire that would transform human lifestyles.
What he was throwing into the Thames now was not gold, but a spark capable of igniting the future.
"I understand your concerns, Mr. Harrison. I do not expect these investments to yield returns in the short term."
He presented a long-term investment agreement drafted by his own lawyer.
"I am willing to relinquish all dividend rights from this investment for the next five years," Lin Jie stated calmly. "And I am also willing to pay your bank a management and custodial fee fifty percent higher than the conventional standard."
"I have only one requirement: from the moment this agreement is signed, for the next ten years, regardless of how the stock prices of these companies fluctuate or what rumors emerge in the market, your bank must strictly hold the stocks and bonds I have specified. You must not sell a single share arbitrarily for any reason."
This nearly gambling-like, one-sided contract blocked all avenues for Harrison's persuasion.
How else could you describe a client who not only forgoes short-term gains but even willingly pays higher fees for you to help him lose money in the long term, except as a madman?
Finally, after repeatedly confirming that Lin Jie was of sound mind and that the agreement complied with Imperial law, the shrewd banker's expression of profound dismay rapidly faded, replaced by the shrewd delight of a businessman.
To a priest whose sole duty was to collect fees, there was no essential difference between a God who insisted on jumping off a cliff and a God who insisted on buying safe blue-chip stocks.
When Lin Jie walked out of the bank, he felt his slightly uneasy heart finally settle.