[Confucian Seat Offering: Bro, you talk a lot, I’m sticking with you]
[Youzi Chef Get Out: What’s the use of talking so much, the developers better give me an account number (Zhuge Liang cries for Zhou Yu)]
Lin Miao nodded silently at Brother Ni’s analysis. After only two or three days of experience, this guy could explain everything coherently. If none of the four players that day understood English, who knows, he might have even leaked the big action planned for Saturday.
However, the only disappointment today was that even though he completed the power system side quest, it was unclear whether it was because the 300-square-meter photovoltaic power output only reached the mission’s minimum completion threshold, or if there was an issue with the reward of five card-drawing tickets for the side quest itself. He drew three cans of canned food, a handgun, and a waste recycling separator, not a single cybernetic body part.
Anyway, it couldn’t be because he had bad luck.
Only today’s salary barely comforted him, a [Employee Dormitory Blueprint], which could be used to increase the number of logged-in players but couldn’t increase the number of transformation pods. It couldn’t be said to be completely useless, though; it was better than nothing.
Furthermore, unlike equipment cards, the blueprint had no usage limit, so he could build as many as he wanted, whenever he wanted.
But every logged-in player was another mouth to feed and a heart eager for slaughter. If too many were let in, Lin Miao couldn’t afford to throw them all out to fend for themselves, which could lead to quite the situation.
"Please be kind, spare some change for an old soldier."
A homeless man, reeking and cowering by the roadside, had a cardboard box and several sheets of paper covered with text in front of him, mostly detailing his participation in wars and how the current government abandoned them.
These types of people were everywhere in Night City, generally leftover from the First Unification War, but of various original allegiances.
There were soldiers abandoned by the United States after giving up the conquest of Night City, there were those from the Free State Government, and even those from Night City itself.
The military compensation had become nothing but empty promises. They couldn’t return home, and their valuable cybernetic parts had long been dismantled and sold due to lack of maintenance funds, leaving only a body that even scavengers wouldn’t want, riddled with steroids and specialized drugs.
Nobody could help them, as they didn’t even qualify to become cyberpsychos.
Lin Miao walked past these beggars without looking back. This city kept lowering the bar on his perception of it daily, and now he was used to it.
Rather than playing the saint, Lin Miao was more concerned about money matters now.
Starting a business was very cash-strapped. At first, he could rely on robbery, smuggling, or other means to maintain the situation, but it couldn’t go on like that forever.
Moreover, he had no capital to compete with big corporations in the real industry. This wasn’t a problem that could be solved by the system handing out a few high-tech devices. The cutthroat nature of business competition in this world far exceeded the understanding of his previous life.
In his past life, the most outrageous business battles involved stealing seals, scalding your money tree with boiling water, or smearing you by hiring a service worker that anyone with eyes wouldn’t choose.
But here, airstrikes, assassinating corporate executives, blowing up buildings, or even throwing nukes and starting world wars were all parts of business warfare.
Lin Miao flaunting high technology in front of these people was akin to an eight-year-old stepping into a monastery, with elder sister nuns standing on both sides and an elderly priest on stage, with all eyes on him.
A big ’Danger’ sign loomed overhead.
So he had to find a less conspicuous, profitable industry that wouldn’t get the attention of big corporations.
But damn, where do you find such a good deal?
While deep in thought, Lin Miao suddenly felt his foot go soft, as if he had stepped on something.
A half-eaten slice of pizza from the garbage had been crushed under his foot, completely disgusting.
Lin Miao just couldn’t understand it. He was currently pacing around the company square, the most prosperous area in Night City, beneath the towering corporate buildings. Not that the streets needed to be spotless, but they shouldn’t be littered like in Santo Domingo.
He was just about to curse about Night City not having a single garbage recycling station or sewage treatment plant??
"Hmm..... seems like there really aren’t any."
Suddenly feeling a spark of inspiration in his mind, Lin Miao quickly found a park bench to sit on, trying to seize the fleeting idea.
The polluted appearance inside and outside Night City was simply because there was no profit in waste management; wrapping them up and throwing them outside the city was already the most the municipal government could do.
The cost of recycling a piece of scrap steel often exceeded its production cost, and it’s the same for waste. Sorting or recycling the massive pile of urban refuse, mixed together, was a thankless task, not to mention the large amount of toxic substances inside. Even if your body was made of iron, working there for two years would rot you inside and out.
So from both manpower cost and material or technological cost perspectives, it was a losing business, one that no company would undertake.
After all, how could there be people unafraid of pain, disease, and smell willing to work in the dirty, stinky garbage yards with extremely low pay and no health insurance?
How could such people exist in the world?
But as fortune would have it, Lin Miao did know such people, and they were plentiful. If he could think of a method, he could have hundreds or even thousands of players swarming into the garbage yard to work for him.
Technology wasn’t a problem either. At least on the construction tree diagram, he clearly saw similar technologies; although he had almost returned all his science and engineering knowledge to school, he could still see the entire construction tree diagram as a complete industrial recycling system.
From smelting production to consumer use, and finally to waste gas recovery, it was all included. Plus, the associated building blueprints maxed out at the Intermediate level. Combined with modern highly intelligent factory designs, with a bit of effort, it might be possible to produce something in one or two years.
But all of this couldn’t be resolved now; to establish an industrial foothold in the dangerous Night City, one must first secure a military foothold.
The Night Wanderers, Kurt Hansen, and his hounds in Dog Town, might all be a good choice.