Resurrection Empire

Chapter 644 - 242 Start-up

Ren Zhong no longer lacks money, at least in the short term.

During the short selling operation in days 96-104, thanks to the "help" from the Mengdu Group, the agricultural sector further plummeted, allowing Ren Zhong to gain excessive profits, earning a total of 44 billion.

His investment in Starfire Town has never stopped, continuously adding more.

At the same time, the combat videos he personally produced and the traffic dividends from interviews with Source Star TV continue to be credited. After calculating all expenditures and incoming funds, his liquidity reached 64.51 billion.

He never paid attention to the so-called wealth rankings, but after this round of operations, his ranking on the Yangsheng City wealth list skyrocketed from the edge of the top hundred to 29th place.

A mere 29th place may seem unremarkable, but one must know that this number is based on the nearly 3.5 million citizens of Yangsheng City.

Within the top hundred are many century-old or even several-century-old evergreen families that have never fallen.

Ren Zhong’s time to accumulate wealth "hasn’t even" reached four months.

This is no longer something that can be described as "phenomenal."

But his pursuit of wealth did not stop there.

On the day of the 104th, he took out 60 billion, maxed out fivefold leverage, mobilized 300 billion in capital, and spread it fully in the market, once again going all in.

Ren Zhong will not repeat Yang Bingzhong’s mistakes.

He split the 300 billion into nearly 700 parts, investing in nearly 700 companies in sectors like frozen storage manufacturing, aerospace, metallurgy and mining, and consumer and agriculture sectors that were rebounding sharply.

The capital was spread so thin that there was basically no chance of being completely wiped out.

After half a month of operation, when Ren Zhong returned to Starfire Town yesterday morning, he chose to liquidate in an orderly manner. Now, after the liquidation is complete, the 300 billion funds ultimately gained a total increase of 70%, totaling 510 billion in recovered funds.

He realized the lie he and Mr. Yang had spread.

He truly can move 500 billion in capital now, but unfortunately, Mr. Yang cannot see it.

After paying off 240 billion in financing loans and covering taxes and loan interest, Ren Zhong reclaimed 270 billion in funds.

His personal wealth officially reached the new height of 274.5 billion, directly soaring into the top ten of the Yangsheng City wealth ranking.

Logically, a fund freeze and stock market prohibition should have come, but the Securities and Exchange Commission was very sly and didn’t even give him a fund freeze notice.

Ren Zhong, however, found a way to test it.

He opened his personal account, used the transfer feature, selected Ju Qingmeng as the recipient, and then kept entering "9" in the amount column. When he reached the 11th "9", he couldn’t enter anymore.

Then, Ren Zhong deleted the numbers and changed it to start with "1" and added zeros behind it.

The maximum transfer amount appeared, which was indeed 100 billion.

This meant that although his account displayed more than 270 billion, in reality, he could only freely spend 100 billion.

The extra over 170 billion was frozen.

This time, Ren Zhong did not receive a suggestion to donate to improve his citizen level.

It was possible that some institutions considered that he was already a mature leek, knowing to proactively put his head under the scythe, to cut himself without reminders.

It could also be that it takes as high as 4 billion credit points to upgrade from Fourth Level to Fifth Level, requiring 80 billion in donations, a cut too harsh, an enormous fortune that ordinary families do not even dare to dream of for several generations, regardless of being wealthy, everyone would need to consider carefully, and it might even provoke strong resistance.

What someone like Yang Bingzhong spends a lifetime striving for is actually just the status of a Fifth Level Citizen and the wealth number of a hundred billion.

But when people like these truly touch the edge of hundreds of billions, they naturally crash into that thick class barrier.

These people face a dilemma.

A normal businessman, when accumulating a hundred billion in wealth, typically has slightly more than 1 billion in credit point scores based on the Source Star’s tax rate situation.

If they want to upgrade to Fifth Level immediately, they’d need to donate four to five hundred billion, nearly half of their assets.

This isn’t an easy decision.

Some will grit their teeth bitterly and immediately complete life’s advancement.

Others will choose to temporarily retreat, remain at the Fourth Level, and use continued taxation and other methods to continue accumulating more credit points until the donation amount drops below their psychological expectations before taking action.

This is a psychological game.

Ren Zhong realized that despite the digitalization and the virtualization of currency leading to a somewhat chaotic economy in this world, where transferring funds as high as a hundred billion can be as simple as a flick, yet there is objective psychological logic behind this subtle economic operation.

The people who established these rules may not understand economics or development, but they certainly understand human nature.

It has been tormenting everyone living under this system, yet it always leaves a little subtle hope.

This time, Ren Zhong will not choose to donate.

It’s too painful.

He has other plans.

The Securities and Exchange Commission hasn’t closed his stock trading rights, Ren Zhong speculated that some people wanted to secretly copy his strategies.

He only expressed regret.

Friends, my journey as a stock god ends here, you’re on your own.

...

It’s another new day, unremarkable yet bustling.

At 7 a.m., for once obediently heeding Sun Miao’s request, Ren Zhong, who had rested for a full 24 hours, finally donned his gear again.

In the previous timeline, the average level of Legion Beasts fighting Ruined Beasts today rose from 1.4 to 1.9 compared to yesterday.

Fifth Level Ruined Beasts appeared in large numbers, and the number of Third and Fourth Level Ruined Beasts also increased significantly.

The city walls became a meat grinder.

Starfire Town Scavengers suffered heavy casualties, with the death toll skyrocketing from hundreds to thousands from yesterday.

Some familiar to Ren Zhong also unfortunately perished in today’s battle.

But this time, Ren Zhong made much more preparation.

The anti-corrosion coating made the walls more stable under the bombardment of long-range Ruined Beasts, sparing experts from running around exhausted.

The additional automatic cannons greatly reduced the combat intensity for ordinary Scavengers, allowing warriors more shifts to rest.

The more abundant military resources allowed regular wastelanders to unleash their firepower without fearing a shortage of ammo.

More reliable shelters provided relatively safe havens for non-combat wastelanders, and frontline warriors didn’t have to worry about their families’ safety, allowing them to focus more on the battlefield.

The specially fortified houses offered better cover for armed Scavengers, sparing them from close-quarters combat with Ruined Beasts.

The streets were filled with automatic equipment, significantly reducing the risk for wastelanders dealing with Ruined Beasts that broke into town.

Moreover, thanks to the comprehensive training conducted earlier, the number of combat-capable wastelanders in town was far greater than last time.

In the regional battleground, humans always had a numerical advantage.

All these factors accumulated, transforming quantitative changes into qualitative ones.

By evening when the battle report was compiled, Ren Zhong was pleased to find that although the number of injured people had not changed much, the death toll had dropped significantly, plummeting from thousands to hundreds.

Looking at the long, cold list of names in the battle report, Ren Zhong sighed slightly.

Death is unavoidable.

This is war.

Let it be.

Do the best, seek the best outcome.

Regarding this result, he has no regrets.

That night, the underground of Starfire Town rumbled all night long.

This was the result of integrated subterranean sensors, supporting burrowing tracking bomb arrays, and Liu Sisi’s newly invented Tracking Bomb.

Despite the tremendous shaking, the two hundred thousand on night watch weren’t excessively frantic.

These Night Watchman even had time to use remote monitoring to check on their family members peacefully sleeping in the hibernation space.

Ultimately, that night’s casualties were still only in the hundreds, so much so that at five in the morning, reporter Xiao Xingyue calling it a miracle during her report in the hibernation space.

But Ren Zhong knew the true test was about to come.

On the third day, at 6:05 in the morning, the pile of Ruined Beast corpses outside the walls again stirred.

Ren Zhong, who awoke half an hour early, was already stationed below the Armored Laboratory, issuing an order to the hacker and Information Flow Shield Master.

"Activate!"