Six Months

After spending several days in Hartford City, William returned to New York under the protection of Hunk and the other USS members. New York's latitude was only slightly lower than Halifax City's.

Because William was a time traveler, he naturally knew about the subprime financial crisis that would sweep across the world in 2007.

As well as the company that triggered the crisis—the investment bank Lehman Brothers.

This time, he went to Wall Street on Manhattan Island and used Umbrella's existing good reputation to borrow all the Lehman Brothers shares from every securities firm there.

For a period of two years.

In other words, once the time was up, William would have to return the same number of shares, plus interest, to the securities firms.

As far as the securities firms were concerned, William was simply a fool with too much money.

Lehman Brothers' highest trading price was now sixty-nine dollars, and it was slowly rising every day. Those securities firms also knew that William wanted to short-sell Lehman Brothers.

But the situation in the United States was currently excellent, and the economy had reached unprecedented prosperity.

Lehman Brothers in particular was an investment giant. It was impossible for its stock price to suddenly plunge.

When 2008 arrived, they would have to spend even more money buying the shares back.

They would suffer a devastating loss.

The securities dealers did not ask, and William did not explain.

He knew one formula very well:

One person's expenditure equals another person's income.

Setting aside all other factors, consider a simple example:

Little A earned 2,000 a month, but had a monthly credit limit of 1,000.

Then Little A's monthly expenditure would be 3,000.

Little B's income would be 3,000, while the credit limit remained 1,000.

Then Little B's monthly expenditure would be 4,000.

And so on.

Everything was flourishing.

Everything was tied to lending.

The reason the situation in the United States was so favorable was that everyone believed they could repay their debts.

Even the banks became blind. They stopped investigating whether borrowers had good credit and began lowering interest rates and issuing loans.

Once lending took shape, it would form a cycle.

The cycle would rise, and eventually it would fall.

If some special event occurred that prevented people from repaying their debts, the banks would be unable to recover their money.

Then everything would collapse with a thunderous crash, like a row of dominoes.

And the United States was currently at the peak of that cycle.

Those in the middle of things could not see clearly.

Most people on Wall Street had not noticed at all. Those who had noticed did not say anything, merely keeping their heads down and quietly waiting.

That was because they had the same thoughts as William and were eagerly awaiting a financial crisis so they could make a fortune.

Crisis, crisis.

Where there was danger, there was opportunity.

That was also why William had been so disgusted with capitalists before he traveled through time.

But in the end, he had become one of them.

The dragon slayer ultimately becomes the dragon.

However, William had goals of his own.

He needed money—vast amounts of money—to control capital and ensure that he could act without restraint when special events occurred later.

There was one last stop on his Wall Street trip: buying into Apple Inc.

Apple Inc.'s highest trading price was only eighteen dollars. Compared with the price of over three hundred dollars in the Original World, the difference was like heaven and earth.

Apple Stock had a current total issue of 1.5 billion shares. If the average price was fifteen dollars per share, William had more than enough to become the sole shareholder.

Of course, doing so was highly unrealistic, but becoming the largest shareholder was absolutely no problem.

Moreover, Steve Jobs was still alive.

He was also developing the iOS system and the latest smartphones. Becoming a trillion-dollar company was merely a matter of time.

Apple Inc.'s board of directors was completely stunned by this sudden and most powerful shareholder.

They invited him to attend a board meeting, but this mysterious shareholder only said:

"Carry on as usual. As long as Jobs is still in charge, that's all that matters."

William also contacted Steve Jobs privately and arranged a time for Halsey to treat him.

He knew that this "godfather" was battling a pancreatic tumor, so William placed his hopes in Halsey.

As it turned out, this genius female medical doctor really did have a way to prolong his life.

Although she could not cure him completely, she ensured that Jobs' condition would not suddenly take a sharp turn for the worse.

During William's time in the United States, he and Umbrella caused quite a stir, drawing the attention of capitalists everywhere.

He was not afraid of anything now. The money the system had given him was perfectly reasonable. After all, the former Russell family had been one of the largest families in England, if not the world.

On top of that, Sears Russell had been a prominent figure in the twentieth century.

Everyone in every field simply assumed that William Russell had inherited his grandfather's will and was beginning to revitalize the family once again.

While William was busy in the United States, Umbrella's other departments were not idle either.

The Engineering Team led by Wang Zhaofeng rapidly completed construction of the private base with the boost from the special effects, without delaying the progress of The Hive or the shelter.

Andre also had a group of undercover personnel travel throughout the Americas, searching for suitable people to recruit.

Because of William's previously boundaryless rules, Halsey extracted the genes of everyone in the armed departments.

In the end, she also used Andre's genes to clone a mindless body for T-Virus and vaccine experiments.

Further research had to wait until The Hive was completed, but the wait would not be long.

Dimaco was officially renamed Umbrella Armament Company, and all its equipment and more than a hundred employees were moved from Ontario to Nova Scotia.

Under the "friendly" greetings of Andre and a group of UBCS members, they signed contracts with generous benefits.

From then on, the employees of the armament company had no complaints at all. They even felt that Andre and the UBCS members looked genuinely kind and amiable.

Halsey took some time to visit the armament company and handed over the concept and design blueprints for the Optical Camouflage technology.

She also remodeled the production workshop while she was there, enabling it to produce more equipment besides guns.

As for William, he was still under the protection of Hunk and the other USS members when he traveled to Toulouse, France, in Europe.

From Airbus, he spent "a little" extra money to purchase a ready-made A380 and also hired an exclusive crew.

He also signed a series of maintenance contracts.

After getting a private plane, William felt that there was only one word to describe it...

Amazing!

He could sleep however he wanted on international flights. It was simply incomparable to first class.

After spending half a month in France, William headed to his final destination: Ukraine.

That place had an enormous quantity of armaments for sale.

A treasure trove!

After arriving in Ukraine, William was successfully introduced to Europe's largest arms dealer through Andre's connections...

Nikolai Victor Ogryvsky.

From Nikolai, he purchased several tons of military equipment. That was right—at this point, it had to be calculated in tons.

He also purchased five An-124 heavy transport aircraft and even obtained the original design manuscript for the world's largest transport aircraft, the An-225.

In Nikolai's Russian-accented words:

"Oh ho ho, my dear friend, as long as you pay enough, I can even get you nuclear warheads."

Hearing this, William could only give a thumbs-up and sigh inwardly: The Warrior Nation's reputation wasn't just for show.

In any case, Umbrella had been unable to sit still during those six months. It had been expanding wildly.