Chapter 22 - Planning

Tobacco was an absolutely scarce luxury in the apocalypse. Even if some large and medium-sized bases had factories in the apocalypse, almost all of them were used to produce military and building materials. After all, that was the fundamentals for survival. Moreover, even if the cigarettes are sold at a more expensive rate, there were no production lines and no raw materials to make it there. So, the ones that are sold at such an expensive rate, what were they actually made of?

In the apocalypse, the pressure for survival was great. For the zombie hunters whose heads were tied to their waistband at any time, smoking was the best decompressor. There were two kinds of cigarettes sold in the apocalypse, one was the stock before the apocalypse happened, and the other were the local cigarettes made by the survivors after the apocalypse happened. The former only had a small amount of stock left.

In any case, Wu Ye had been in Lan Cheng's base for so many days, but he had only seen it in a store that specializes in rare goods. He didn't actually know those tobacco brands that were created in the apocalyptic world. Anyway, the cheapest cigarettes pack which contained 20 sticks was sold for no less than 200 crystals. The slightly more expensive ones were priced at no less than thousands of crystals. Homemade local cigarettes were not cheap either, usually selling for around 3-5 crystals.

The system also had cigarettes that could be exchanged for, but the system only had one 'made-in-system' brand of cigarettes, and the quality was unknown. That combined with the thousands of points and crystal nuclei that was needed to get them dispelled all curiosity Wu Ye had.

Therefore, the alternative choice were the counterfeit cigarettes. Firstly, it was cheap and convenient. Furthermore, the insides also contained traces of real tobacco. Secondly, the counterfeit cigarettes could be customized. He could ask the manufacturer not to print any words on the package. Otherwise, how could he explain the brand of cigarettes that didn't exist at all to the people in the zombie's world?

Using the system to exchange salt with, and make use of the difference in price to earn crystal nuclei really made one's income huge. However, the points consumption was not small. The cost for 1000 grams of salt was 10 points and 2 transparent crystal nuclei. After successful sales to the others, one could earn 128 transparent crystal nuclei. According to this cost calculation, the consumption of 1000 points, 200 transparent crystal nuclei, Wu Ye could earn 12800 transparent crystal nuclei.

With 1000 points and 1000 transparent crystal nuclei, Wu Ye could go back to his world. Then, using the transmission rules, he could bring a sack of bulk cigarettes of at least 10000. That way, even if he wholesaled them at the price of homemade local cigarettes, he could still earn at least 30000 transparent crystal nuclei. At the very least. As for the cost of buying those counterfeit cigarettes? With the apocalypse gold being as cheap as cabbages, the cost was almost negligible.

Of course, 1000 points was only enough for a one-way travel 'fare', but even with buying round-trip tickets, it was still much more cost-effective than simply selling salt. Furthermore, the situation at home is different now. The group had changed owners, and the family was heavily in debt. Let alone a comeback, even Ah Li's medicine expenses in the hospital every day were not a small amount. He must bring back more gold from the apocalypse world to solve the current emergency.

As for the artificial intelligence, the 'prince' was a perfect finished product. But, the program framework behind the 'prince' could not be deciphered, therefore, regardless of how perfect it was, it was a pointless existence currently. In order to really develop the artificial intelligence, you needed to firmly grasp the patent, and it also needed to be promoted as well. But, which of these activities did not require you to spend money?

If it had been a month ago, Wu Ye wouldn't have considered this so much. However, now after he saw his parents looking old and haggard, and after he saw his little brother lying weak in the bed, he only hated that he had been too laid-back before and put all the responsibilities he should bear on others. Now, he didn't have any other choice but to pick up the responsibilities he should shoulder. There was simply no other choice anymore.

After all, Wu Sen, his eldest brother, shout was not in vain. Now, it didn't matter anymore whether he was good or bad to himself, those things should be buried with the car accident. That's why in the future he won't deliberately retaliate against him. Wu Sen had taken what he wanted. They didn't owe each other anymore. However, if he still wanted to provoke him in the future, then don't blame him for not thinking about their kinship!

After negotiating with the counterfeit tobacco boss, Wu Ye paid the deposit and walked home slowly. He thought about a lot of matters along the way home. As the sun crossed the horizon, little by little the sky brightened, and there were more and more pedestrians on the road, Wu Ye's mood suddenly brightened. No matter what, he was still alive. Although his world was filled with all kinds of setbacks and injustices. It was still peaceful here, here where there's no zombies and monsters. There was no chaos and war.

The future was still full of hope.

When Mother Wu got up, she found that Wu Ye was not at home and immediately became anxious and agitated. At that moment, Wu Ye had come back from the outside with a bag of steamed buns. He still had one in his mouth before he spoke in an inarticulate manner, "Mom, I specially went to An Huai Street to buy these obscure steamed buns. The taste is still the same, delicious. It's still hot, you and the old man should eat it while it's still hot. After eating, we'll go see Ah Li. He likes to eat the steamed bun from that store. We can tease him with this later."

Mother Wu was so angry that she became speechless. Yesterday, she thought that her son had grown up and became sensible. Nevertheless, after sleeping, she felt like her son was still the same young man he was in the past.

"You only know how to eat. Don't you know how to inform us if you go out? Will you die if you don't inform us with your cell phone?"

"Mom, you're a very smart intellectual who came from a scholarly family. How could you curse people easily? You're not still going through menopause, are you?" Mother Wu was an early overseas returnee from the United states. A lot of her relatives worked as lecturers and professors, and had taught a lot of people. It was not an exaggeration to call her family a scholar family.

"Son of a b*tch, you're still full of enthusiasm, aren't you? Your mother didn't see you in the morning, of course she will be worried to death. Yet, you still provoke her." Father Wu scolded.

"The big bullying the many and the many bullying the few." Wu Ye murmured. He who rarely went to the kitchen, went there to get a big bowl for the steamed buns. He poured the hot steamed buns into the bowl. When he saw the eight treasures porridge being stewed on the usually unused gas stove, he immediately drooled.

Mother Wu's cooking skill was not very good. However, her ability to simmer soup that was passed down from her ancestors was very commendable. Incidentally, that particular cooking skill also included porridge.

Wu Ye ate no less than two big bowls before he was satisfied and his forehead was covered in sweat, only slipping away when his stomach became round. He put some of the food into the heat-insulated lunch box. He planned to bring it to the hospital to give to Wu Li, accompanied by their parents.

Wu Li's psychological strength was much better than what Wu Yi expected. Even when he saw his brother who had been missing for a month, there was no sign of being shocked to the point his illness relapsed. Instead he looked excited. Before they came in, the doctor had already examined him and saw that his condition had stabilized and his consciousness was clear. So, the doctor didn't mind removing his oxygen mask for him when he first asked for it.

"Second brother, I knew that you'd be alright! I've said time and time again that 'fortune favors the fools' and you obviously qualify as a fool, but mom and dad don't believe in me." Wu Li was too thin, so his eyes looked particularly big, though when he smiled, it looked as beautiful as the crescent moon. He didn't sound worried at all. However, it was his hand that showed Wu Ye what he truly felt. His hands were as thin as a chicken's paw, and when they clung tightly onto Wu Ye's hand, he could feel the gently quivering fingertips that revealed his fear.

"There is no ivory in the dog's mouth," Wu Ye scolded as he gently rubbed Wu Li's soft hair, and sighed, "Well, it's not going to be easy trying to fatten you up again. You really don't look like a tiger at all right now. I only sees a little kitten."

Wu Li glared at Wu Ye, hitting his claws: "You look like a cat, and your dog can't spit ivory out of its mouth."

"Your brother is just getting better, don't tease him." Mother Wu poured the stewed porridge into the bowl and was about to feed Ah Li, but he disliked it.

"I want second brother to feed me." Wu Li had very limited contact with other people, and was well-protected by his family. So, although he was 16 years old, he was still childish and willful, especially in front of Wu Ye.

Second master Wu could do nothing else except to comply with his younger brother's wish. His skill in serving his little brother was absolutely first-class, so he soon fed Wu Li.

"Ah Li, look, I brought you something good." Wu Ye took out the tablet from his backpack, and raised it proudly.

Under Ah Li's surprised eyes, Wu Ye turned on the power switch. A few seconds later, the chubby prince sat in the middle of the screen, his fat claws rubbing his fluffy eyes, before speaking with a milky voice, "Good morning, master."

"What is this?" Ah Li asked with surprise, and he was not the only one. Even Father Wu and Mother Wu looked at it in surprise.

"Prince, introduce yourself to them." Wu Ye had an ostentatious smile on his face as he said this.

Prince nodded and stood up, looking very humanized. He was wearing a beautiful little suit, and made a standard bow. "My name is Prince," he said in his milky voice. "I am the third generation of artificial intelligence launched by the Qing Yu Group. I can do many things other artificial intelligence can't do, and for the things that other artificial intelligence can do, I can do it too."

Wu Li asked him: "What else can you do?"

Prince solemnly said with a small chubby face: "Act cute."

"Pu——" In that instant, Ah Li broke into loud laughter. The little guy was so funny.

Soon, under Prince's guidance, not only Wu Li, but also Father Wu and Mother Wu were able to learn the basic operation of the tablet.

After second young master Wu bought prince, he basically didn't pay any attention to its other functions. He just used it to play the games in there.

On the contrary, it was Father Wu who first discovered that prince was powerful enough to replace Microsoft's office software. It had a powerful enough voice recognition operating system, perfect data processing ability, and an intelligent assistant which was a humanized artificial intelligence. Even a person who couldn't use a computer at all, as long as he could hit the power button, it wouldn't be a problem to use it to compile a financial analysis of a listed company.

If you really wanted to speak of its shortcomings, the only deficiency he could see was that the prince used traditional chinese characters. So, for people who were used to reading simplified chinese characters, they would have to guess the meaning of the words. This was the only troublesome aspect.

However, as long as we mastered the artificial intelligence programming language, and wrote and loaded a simplified word program, it was not a big problem at all.

Ah Li was fond of holding a tablet computer. Under prince's instructions, he started a single player ranch farming game and had a lot of fun with it.

Father Wu had already predicted what kind of storm this junior artificial intelligence would set off on Earth. "With our current technology, can we decipher prince's program?" He asked excitedly.

Wu Ye shook his head: "I'm not majoring in computer science. How would I know? Anyway, there's no need to rush in researching and developing artificial intelligence. First thing we should do is solve the group's affairs and then we should discuss our long-term plan."

Previously, what Wu Ye wanted to do after returning was to find some professionals to decipher the artificial intelligence program's structure. Now that he still had to return to the zombie world, why did he have to go that far? He only needed to find some senior program engineers directly over there, have them write the program, and bring it back to his original world. That way, it'd be much more safe, and also eliminated the risk of the secret leaking to others.

On this side, even if you offered a salary of one million a year to hire a senior engineer, they were not going to necessarily be willing to come and produce results. Besides, in the future, whether they could control the patent under their own hands was still up in the air, which meant that it was not certain if they'd be making a wedding dress for others in vain.

However, on the zombie's world, Wu Ye dared to pat his chest and promised that as long as they could eat three meals a day, a large number of people would cry and beg to work for him. If you could add two extra meals of meat for them, then there'd be no shortage of high level talented people to choose from. That would treat him like a monarch. Why would he be afraid that he wouldn't be able to produce artificial intelligence?

In the past, Wu Ye was hell bent on going back home to his world to live as a carefree silk-worm bug. So he only wanted to kill zombies and earn points, but he never thought of anything else in the zombie's world at all. Now, after a series of events, he could really see the huge business opportunities buried in the zombie's world.

Of course, Second young master Wu was not greedy. As long as he could save enough to exchange for the gene repair solution so he could treat his brother, and got the core program of artificial intelligence, he would never return back to the zombie world.

There were many people in the hospital. From time to time, doctors and nurses would come in to check Wu Li's condition and change his medicine. However, Wu Ye was concentrating on playing games with his little brother and didn't mention anything else.

In the afternoon, after Wu Li fell asleep, Wu Ye and their father went home to deal with things, while Mother Wu decided to stay in the hospital to accompany Wu Li.

All the funds available to Father Wu were used to find out Wu Ye's location, and to cure Wu Li. Now that he only had around ten thousand dollars in cash left in his hand, the most urgent task was to sell of all the gold that Wu Ye had brought back. Since Father Wu had started his business from scratch, he had made many friends during his journey to this point in time, and he was also a kind person. So, even if he was down now, there were still many people willing to give him face.

Therefore, after a few phone calls, he quickly found a friend who's willing to help him sell all of the gold. Therefore, he told Wu Ye before he went out with the things on his back.

Not having anything to do, Wu Ye took a taxi to the apartment he owned, to check whether Lian Yu, irrespective of her willingness, had moved out or not. Laughably, before she left, she also left a letter on the coffee table in the living room. Shaking his head, Wu Ye simply threw the letter into the dustbin without ever reading it.

Wu Ye then took out the previously backed up address book, before calling his friends one by one. He made it clear to them that he had an apartment to sell. So, if they wanted to buy it, they would need to come and have a look.

After a round of phone calls, Wu Ye finally realized the true meaning of 'Tiger fell in Ping Yang'. Those guys who he treated like his own brothers now avoided him like the plague. Some who were more courteous would refuse him in a roundabout way, while others would impolitely hang up on him before he could even finish his sentence.

T/N: 'Tiger fell in Ping Yang' is incomplete idiom. The complete idiom means that when the tiger left its mountain, it fell into a ditch and was trapped. At that state even a dog could bully the tiger. A metaphor for a powerful person who has lost his power or advantage.

"Motherf***er, bunch of bastards, Lao zi finally saw through your character."

Wu Ye touched his nose, dejected. Fortunately, he had several close male friends who are willing to provide help when he needed it. Half an hour later, there were four people in the apartment, all of them were ones who were closest to him.

Pang Zhi was the first to arrive, he was about the same height as Wu Ye. However, his body was three to four times bigger than Wu Ye's. His nickname was Fatty. Pang Zhi and Wu Ye had been in the same class since they were in kindergarten all the way until they were in high school. Occasionally, they also shared the same table with each other. Thus, their bond was the strongest.

Fatty's family ran supermarkets and dozens of large and small chain stores, but their development was limited in the province. So, compared with Wu Ye's other friends, his family was not that rich. However, Wu Ye still included him into his circle and played with him. Pang Zhi was happy, but his mind was more astute than Wu Ye's in regards to money matters. Through Wu Ye, he made a lot of connections, and completely shocked the illegitimate children his father brought back from the outside.

Wu Ye disappeared when something happened to the Wu family. This was an irrefutable fact. And, when that happened, regardless of the reason, he was definitely the one who was most worried about him besides his own family.

Hua Peng was three years older than Wu Ye. He was the son of Wu Yong's friend. He worked in foreign trade from home. He was an only child who had grown up and whose parents were deeply in love with each other. So, his home life was relatively clean with not much disturbance. In that way, he grew up riding the tail wind and sailing along the currents.

A few years ago, he was also like Wu Ye, a lazy second-generation young master who only knew to play and not work at all. However, after graduating from college, he was thrown into the company by his old man to start at the entry level. After two or three years of working, he obviously had grown up a lot.

Qiu Xiao Hao is Hua Peng's cousin, and his family made electronic components. He always had a cooperative relationship with the Wu family. He was born half a month earlier than Wu Ye, and always regarded himself as Wu Ye's brother. When he was a child, he often had fights with Wu Ye, and they often beat each other to pieces. After the fight, they would have a good time playing with each other. He also chased after Lian Yu with Wu Ye.

However, unlike Wu Ye, Qiu Xiao Hao had no attachment to beautiful woman, so he only chased after Lian Yu for half a semester in high school. Since Lian Yu didn't respond to him, he turned around and extended his claws to a beautiful junior sister. After graduating from high school, he went directly to the United States to gold-plate himself. Now, he was studying for a master's degree in business at an Ivy League University. When he heard that Wu Ye had disappeared from Wu family, he hurried back and returned.

Li Jing Zhou was Wu Ye's college classmate. He was originally in the same dormitory as Wu Ye before Wu Ye bought a house outside. So, after freshman year, Wu Ye never went back to the dormitory to live there. Li Jing Zhou's academic performance was good. He was also popular and served as class monitor. Wu Ye often asked him for help like copying homework, helped answer some questions, helped asked for leave, and so on.

Wu Ye accidentally learned that his family was not well off, so to return the favor Wu Ye begged his eldest brother to arrange Li Jing Zhou to enter the company for an internship after he helped with his work-study program in the school cafeteria. At first, Wu Ye didn't think that he'd make any achievements, but Li Jing Zhou did have the ability. Within the two years of college, he unexpectedly advanced from being the handyman of the logistic department to becoming the deputy director of the logistics department.

There were so many things that had happened in this month that Wu Ye had to be more thoughtful, no matter how careless he was before. Pang Zhi, Hua Peng, and Qiu Xiao Hao, these three didn't count. They could be called childhood friends who played together in open crotch pants after all. Li Jing Zhou was different. Although he himself had recommended him to join the company, he had been working under Wu Sen for the past two or three years. Furthermore, at such a young age, he got into the position of deputy director, Wu Ye really couldn't help but be suspicious of him.

In the face of everyone's curiosity, Wu Ye said nonsense. He said that he had met an expert who must get him as an apprentice to teach him the way of the immortal. Unfortunately, he was reluctant to leave the mortal world, especially his beautiful friends, so he snuck back.

"Little Ye, you braggart. I think you're obsessed with novels. Why didn't you say that you met a thousand-year-old vixen who insisted on marrying you?" Qiu Xiao Hao scoffed at the bullshit that Wu Ye was trying to feed them.

"Do you think everyone's like you? All day long, are women the only ones on your mind? When you die during s*xual intercourse, don't say that you knew me. We can't afford that, man." Wu Ye said positively.

"Anyway, let's not talk about that. I'm inviting you here to sell this apartment today. I bought and decorated this apartment, which cost more than 12 million yuan in total. Yesterday, I saw a flat in the property management center, which is similar to my area's apartment type and decoration. The listing price is 14 million yuan. You should have heard about my family. Right now I need money urgently, so I'll sell the apartment to you for 10 million yuan. Please spend some time and think before turning away. Consider the money earned as a reward for helping your brother."