Chapter 1576: Chapter 1576: Retaliation (Part 1)
Feng Jun felt that Xiao Caixin was making a fuss over nothing; the land in Australia won’t be put to use for quite some time.
The roads haven’t even started construction, and the design for the Daoist temple isn’t out yet. Once all this is finished, it’ll take at least a year.
As for enhancing the earth vein, it’s because doing it earlier is better; if you enhance it after the building is completed, it might damage the structure.
However, it’s a thing that Xiao Caixin is concerned about, and that should be encouraged after all. He hoped everyone could be independent in the future.
He pulled out a tablet from his Storage Bag and started searching. Shortly after, he laughed, "This island is located between Australia and Indonesia. Look... Why worry about it?"
He zoomed out the map and pointed to the place where Sofia bought the land. Although he didn’t speak, the meaning was clear—it’s far between the two, roughly as far as from Yang City to Beijing.
Zhang Caixin blushed a little. Her sense of directions wasn’t great; girls’ sense of direction tends to be poor, and hers was average at best. She wouldn’t forget familiar routes but couldn’t distinguish north from south or east from west on unfamiliar roads.
The crux is, she wasn’t familiar with Australia either. She knew Feng Jun wanted to open a branch there, but she hadn’t cared about the specific location.
But still, she gestured for Feng Jun to put away the tablet and then spoke, "You know about plates and regions connecting; if a volcano erupts there, this side might also be affected... At least there’d be volcanic ash, right?"
"You’re right," Feng Jun said with a wry smile and nodded. In fact, when he discovered the possibility of a volcanic eruption there, he also felt a bit uneasy. "So, what do you want me to do?"
What I really hope is that you won’t venture overseas, Zhang Caixin thought. She didn’t like Sofia and didn’t want to be stationed there—even with the Teleportation Formation, she wasn’t willing to leave Luohua. However, as Luohua’s second-in-command, she had her own sense of duty.
But as much as she thought about it, she had to admit that Feng Jun wasn’t wrong—why consume your own resources when you can use external ones first?
So, she was conflicted. Upon hearing his question, she thought for a moment before answering, "I feel there are quite a few volcanoes there. Shouldn’t we... come up with a contingency plan?"
Ultimately, she didn’t say to give up that overseas land and just quietly cultivate in Luohua?
However, even if she didn’t say it, Feng Jun could vaguely sense her intentions—in fact, this mindset is prevalent among cultivators. It’s common even among the ancient Qi Refiners of the Earth Realm.
Even Feng Jun himself tended to hide away and quietly cultivate.
But the problem was, he had discovered a really good earth vein, and such things naturally wear down over time—just look at the Xuande Cave Heaven on Mount Taibai, it was restructured at least to the Golden Core level, but now it isn’t what it used to be.
As a type of resource, earth vein depletion is relatively slow, making overseas earth veins seem less valuable, but that’s not the case. Every type of resource depletes according to certain patterns.
Take the earth vein for example. Currently, only Feng Jun is at the Out-of-Dust level in Luohua. Excluding him, there’s Hua Hua, Chen Shengwang, Shen Qingyi, and Zhang Caixin at the Qi Refinement stage, along with many at the Mundane Transformation stage and martial masters.
Their current cultivation doesn’t impact Luohua’s earth vein much, but if there were seven or eight at the Out-of-Dust level, even the Chaoyang earth vein’s wear and tear would increase.
Therefore, the location in Australia is definitely something Feng Jun wants to secure. When multiple cultivators above the Out-of-Dust level cultivate, having a "Spirit Land" becomes necessary; without it, the Spirit Stone consumption would be terrifying.
Just think about the daily rent for cultivation caves on the mobile phone platform, and you understand what that means.
Feng Jun also liked to lay low, but such resources had to be competed for, even if they couldn’t be used yet—they must be secured. Considering the future of Luohua, having a dozen Out-of-Dust stages isn’t a big deal, is it?
So after thinking for a moment, he nodded, "A contingency plan might be a bit troublesome, but I’ll go investigate now."
Zhengyang is quite a distance from that little island, so he first set foot in Amstan to check on how the earth vein upgrade was progressing.
At this point, enhancing the earth vein was a meticulous task. Without any surprises, in another month or so, the earth vein could become relatively stable, and the Traction Formation could be withdrawn.
The Traction Formation was normal here; Feng Jun picked up a tablet to casually check the surrounding map.
With the construction site just starting, everything was quite rudimentary, but WIFI was installed—courtesy of Huaxia construction personnel.
The WIFI coverage was significant; Sofia’s purchased five square kilometers had pretty good signal coverage, and with over a hundred people on the site, identifying who was online wasn’t easy.
Feng Jun picked up a tablet that someone left behind and began operating it. Before long, Sofia came over, and it turned out that the tablet was hers. "Once I saw this tablet being used, I knew you were back."
Feng Jun nodded, "Hmm, wanted to confirm some things, anything up?"
"There is," Sofia answered seriously. "I wanted to contact you, but it’s not very convenient... Though it’s not urgent."
Once Feng Jun returned to Luohua, indeed, contacting him had some issues. Similarly, if Luohua needed to reach him, they had to go through Elder Lin of the Hongmen Sect for relatively prompt communication.
Of course, when Feng Jun returned to Luohua, it was akin to being on home turf, making communication a bit easier. If Sofia had urgent matters, she could call someone else—worst-case scenario, she could even leave comments in the "Cancer is Not as Fierce as a Tiger" live stream chat.
But she didn’t think it was a big deal, so she wasn’t in a hurry to get in touch; she only mentioned it after he arrived.
Actually, "it’s not a big deal" was her perspective; Director Wolf of the Immigration Bureau thought it was a significant issue—because there were problems at the schools where both his son and daughter were studying.
Director Wolf’s daughter was attending college, and her grades in high school were not very good. She got into college because he donated a sum of money to the school—500,000 Mai dollars, allowing his daughter to fulfill her wish to enter the academy.
Such things are quite common in Mai Nation, but his daughter felt a bit embarrassed—after all, the family isn’t a billionaire, so there’s no right to throw money at people. Thus, matters like donations should be kept low-key.
The classmates vaguely heard about her buying her way in, but generally, people didn’t mention it much—those who couldn’t get into college might be jealous, but once you’re in, why care about how others got in?
However, recently, people frequently brought up that she bought her way in, even bringing it up at two recent parties.
Parties are an essential component of social activities on Mai Nation’s college campuses, so doing this seemed downright malicious.
Especially at the latest party, someone actually said—It’s easy to get into college, but graduating is quite difficult.
How about you follow Gates’ example, take a break midway to start a business, and even if you can’t graduate, no one will laugh at you.
Someone else chimed in, saying it would be easy for her to start a business anyway, since her family has money.
Wolf’s daughter was genuinely unable to take it anymore—she was already sensitive about this issue, and she almost got into a fight.
Then the school notified the parents: You’d better control your daughter; at this rate, she might be expelled.
Schools in Mai Nation are different from those in Huaxia; they rarely call in parents, mostly just informing them about situations. And with the girl being over eighteen, there’s even less need to consider calling parents.
Now that the school has contacted the parents, it’s basically saying—your 500,000 Mai dollars’ worth of consideration is not enough. If this continues, expulsion will be the only option.
Wolf, however, sensed a strong air of conspiracy.
The evidence for this was that his son also encountered trouble at school; a few bullies targeted him—such punks typically wouldn’t dare to hassle kids from rich families.
His son naturally fought back. Being an outsider from Australia and not very strong, he chose to spend money to hire classmates to beat up the bullies that were harassing him.
The school’s final decision was—drop out!
If what happens among children doesn’t count as significant, then the biggest issue was—the infamous Mai Nation’s tax bureau was stirred and investigated Wolf’s wife’s taxes.
The director’s wife didn’t have a fixed job in Mai Nation. In fact, with Wolf being the director of the Australian Immigration Bureau, his various incomes were enough to support the family. Still, she wanted to earn a little more to supplement the family finances.
Then the problem arose. She took on some temp jobs without thinking about taxes, but the temp jobs she could get wouldn’t be cheap, so when the tax bureau came knocking, she was in trouble.
Wolf realized—these things were strange, as if they were coming for him.
He remembered clearly that a Mai Nation person who came to him for a favor said: If you don’t take care of this matter, I have ways to deal with you—believe me, I will succeed.
As the sole superpower in the Earth Realm, people from Mai Nation would say this kind of thing with no hesitation.
Wolf, being the head of the Immigration Bureau and having witnessed many international upheavals, couldn’t believe that the other party was incapable, but most times—it should be mainly intimidation, right?
But he really didn’t expect them to take action, and he... was powerless to fight back.
The tax bureau’s actions were extremely egregious; his son was about to be expelled, and his daughter... might also be unable to continue her college education.
Was it just because I didn’t listen to you that you want to destroy my entire family?
Wolf refused to give in, wanting to retaliate, but when he looked at the candidates around him—damn, I don’t have the capability to fight back!
It’s quite normal; the FBI also carries out missions overseas and knows exactly who they can afford to provoke and who they can’t.
Mai Nation people have come to Australia several times but never dared to approach Sofia because they know this little girl isn’t someone to mess with—just those words, "I declare," make no one dare to provoke her.
But a mere director of the immigration bureau dares to feign agreement and oppose in secret; without punishing you, how would the FBI’s overseas operations be carried out?
Wolf could roughly understand the other party’s reasoning, but he couldn’t just sit and wait for death, thinking to himself that everyone knows a couple of powerful people.
(First update, congratulating master Meng’s Tongtian road, calling for monthly tickets in the middle of the month.)