The current leader of the Zhalabang family was not particularly gifted, but he was barely a competent caretaker. Under his management, the income from their various industries had remained fairly stable. Over the years, they had amassed a considerable sum of money—substantial even by upper-class standards, and an astronomical figure to ordinary people.
Industrial conglomerates had another advantage: whenever they wanted to raise liquid capital, they had assets they could sell. They did not need to rely on financial methods with long repayment cycles to quickly gather funds. An emergency sale might affect the price, but they could not afford to worry about that now.
At first, they still held out hope. Gordon did not know much about the chemical industry, so perhaps his asking price would not be too high. Schiller had also pounded his chest and promised that he would help drive the price down.
What they did not know was that this had brought Schiller back into familiar territory. If he caught a frog, he would squeeze every last drop out of it. Forget plucking feathers from a passing goose—if Doomsday showed up today, Schiller would strip every scale off it before letting it leave.
After conducting some investigation, Schiller estimated the absolute limit of the cash Zhalabang could produce, then quoted that price to Gordon and the Zhalabang family at the same time.
Gordon nearly fainted when he saw the string of zeroes after that number.
Put simply, the highest offer in the first round of bidding so far was merely a fraction of that figure.
The Zhalabang family had nothing to say. They thought that old police commissioner had an expert backing him. The price landed exactly on their bottom line; one dollar higher, and they would start to waver.
But they truly needed that