With 400 billion in assets, he was ready to spend money to boost his combat power.
Once he had settled on his plans for the future, Lin Ze began putting them into action.
First came the rollout of the currency system within Gates to Heavens Mall.
This was easy enough. At present, the entire world's survivors, plus the Gates to Heavens Mall employees Lin Ze had brought over, numbered just over two thousand.
With such a small market, standardizing prices was simple.
Lin Ze first mobilized a large number of robots as laborers to renovate a residential area in East River City not far from the factory. They cleaned away the damage wrought by wind and frost and reinforced the walls around the community with reinforced concrete.
They installed dense arrays of surveillance cameras and set drones to patrol, ensuring public safety.
He made the area Gates to Heavens Mall's new base in this world and named it Hope Community.
After that, Lin Ze began setting up all the amenities for an intelligent, automated lifestyle and entertainment within the community: supermarkets, restaurants, cinemas, clothing stores, cafés, internet cafés, sports centers, furniture malls, schools, hospitals, Silicone Products Stores, and more.
When all this was done, Lin Ze assigned homes to all Gates to Heavens Mall employees on a household basis and gave each person 10,000 Value Points as a basic living allowance.
They would no longer be given meals as part of a communal living arrangement. They could cook for themselves or eat at restaurants, spending the corresponding number of Value Points.
The assigned homes weren't luxuriously furnished; some were even rather spartan. The restaurant robots weren't exactly master chefs either. Yet people still felt content living in the community.
Because it had what the apocalypse lacked most: safety!
The people lived in Hope Community, getting used to their new lives. They went shopping, furnished their new homes, and stocked up on food and clothes.
Then they ran into a problem: they were running out of Value Points.
Before the apocalypse, these survivors had all been wealthy and had never lacked money. Afterward, they had to provide for themselves, and money had ceased to mean anything.
Now, when they wanted to buy things, they found they didn't have enough Value Points.
That was when they began to realize that Value Points were a form of currency, and that they needed to find ways to earn them.
At this point, Lin Ze introduced several jobs that would let people earn Value Points.
The first was going out to collect resources—gold, silver, copper, iron, discarded electronic components, and anything else—or working on an assembly line in a factory.
Although Lin Ze's intelligent industrial system could handle resource collection and production automatically, having people participate at this early stage would effectively accelerate the snowballing growth in productivity.
So these jobs were all worth doing.
In theory, the whole world belonged to Lin Ze. The only property the Gates to Heavens Mall employees could dispose of was their own lives.
So their wages were calculated by the hour: twenty Value Points per hour, plus a performance bonus.
In total, they were selling their own labor for eight hours a day, earning five to six thousand Value Points a month.
The second type of job was working within Hope Community.
For now, the only positions needed were cooks and Enlightenment Teachers. Intelligent Industry could just about manage those two jobs, but the results would be pretty terrible, so it made more sense to have people do them.
Given the current population, these were easy, respectable jobs. But there were only five positions altogether, with monthly earnings of 10,000 to 20,000 Value Points depending on performance.
The third type of job was soldier.
Soldiers would train in military skills for eight hours a day. Training included using all kinds of firearms, practicing Martial Arts, and perhaps other forms of exercise in the future.
The rest of their time was free to use as they pleased. Any adult could join.
Depending on performance, their monthly salary ranged from 10,000 to 15,000 Value Points. Becoming an advanced combatant would bring higher pay, but they would have to go to the battlefield when fighting broke out, and might lose their lives.
Compared with the jobs above, it was less secure.
The fourth type of job was scholar.
Scholars could earn an income simply by taking part in their studies.
For example, they could take the Twelve-Year Compulsory Education Curriculum. For each class they attended and its corresponding exam they passed, they would earn a Value Point reward equivalent to an hourly wage of 30 Value Points.
After completing compulsory education and moving on to university-level studies, they would receive 50 Value Points per hour for each class and corresponding exam they passed. Then came graduate students, doctoral students, and professors.
Their hourly wages would be 100, 200, and 500 Value Points, respectively.
Becoming a professor meant they had more or less caught up with the cutting edge of research in their field. At that point, they would receive the benefits of a Level 2 Gates to Heavens Mall employee, including a monthly salary of at least 500,000 Value Points. That was before they produced any corresponding research results.
Once they made research breakthroughs, they would not only receive hefty monetary rewards but also build up professional-rank experience. Over the years, they could grow into Level 3 employees or even higher.
Before officially beginning their studies, everyone would first take a proficiency test to determine their current level.
Then they would receive a large, one-time payout of Value Points corresponding to their level of education.
Artificial intelligence was quite powerful. It could handle all these fairly uncomplicated tasks according to the rules Lin Ze had laid out.
For all the Gates to Heavens Mall employees living in Hope Community, how could they not see what Lin Ze was getting at with these jobs?
If you didn't want to work hard, you could go out and sell your labor collecting trash.
If you had a skill, you could get a more respectable job. But if you wanted to get rich and live in comfort, then you'd better study and become a scholar.
The survivors of World No. 3 who had lived through the chaos of the apocalypse had at least some education.
Of course, their first reaction was to see whether they could become scholars. It wasn't just about improving their living standards; it was also about immortality.
As they had recently wandered around the community and explored its facilities, they had clearly seen a treatment called Aging Treatment at the hospital.
According to its description, it was based on Chu Ge's Immortality Technology. Anyone who made outstanding contributions to the development of Gates to Heavens Mall would be able to receive this life-extending treatment.
Since Lin Ze wanted them to become scholars, then if they wanted to make contributions and gain immortality, naturally they should strive in that direction.
Of course, it turned out that not everyone had what it took to become a scholar.
Some learned at a snail's pace, while others felt miserable the moment they started studying and couldn't focus.
The most typical examples were the guards Lin Ze had recruited from World No. 2. With no other choice, they had to do their jobs as soldiers and study a little whenever they had spare time.
Others who didn't want to become soldiers tried to learn a skill so they could find a line of work that suited them.
There weren't any people going out to collect trash. There might be loafers like that in the future, but for now, there certainly weren't any.
After struggling through the apocalypse, they understood just how wonderful it was to be able to study in peace.
Lin Ze's requirement for these employees was that they all become capable, elite members of society. Aside from that, he wanted to cultivate their discipline and their sense of belonging to the Gates to Heavens Mall organization.
So the school taught not only professional skills but also lessons in values, outlook on life, and worldview, training them to become talent who could help Gates to Heavens Mall grow stronger.
As time passed, life in Hope Community gradually settled down.
Every day, people spent eight hours on their main responsibilities: studying, military training, or working as cooks.
Lin Ze watched Hope Community change. Seeing it filled with a love of learning and brimming with an upbeat, forward-looking spirit, he smiled.
This would become his reserve base for talent. As time went by, it would eventually produce enough loyal and capable employees.
In the future, whenever he took an interest in someone, he could simply toss them into this community, so steeped in the spirit of learning, and have them trained.
Meanwhile, Intelligent Industry was also continuing to expand, rapidly building up its industrial system. From this point on, the development of Lin Ze's Gates to Heavens Mall could be said to have gotten onto the right track.
For a while after that, Lin Ze continued studying the technical materials Chu Ge had left behind while gradually shifting his attention back to World No. 1 and World No. 2.
By then, it was already August.
Over the past few months, Lin Ze had devoted most of his attention to World No. 03, which had become his new base.
But that didn't mean he had neglected World No. 1 and World No. 2.
In World No. 1, the restaurant group, the foreign trade group, the gold mines on the Golden Continent, the Copper Coins Factory, and the shipping company were all continuing to make money. Lin Ze occasionally went back to spend time with his girlfriend and family, but otherwise hadn't made any major moves.
In World No. 2, the textile industry he'd partnered with Ji Kan on, the railway industry he'd partnered with Ji Qingyan on, and the fertilizer plant were all operating steadily. On top of that, the restaurant business he'd partnered with Longevity Palace on had begun expanding on a large scale.
Lin Ze had still managed to make quite a few noteworthy moves here.
First, he used copper coins produced in World No. 1 to buy up gold and silver in World No. 2. Before, it had only been a small operation, bringing in just around two thousand taels of gold a day.
But now Lin Ze had formed partnerships with both the Great Zhou Dynasty, the biggest official power in World No. 2, and Longevity Palace, its biggest secret organization behind the scenes. That had brought the amount of gold and silver he could collect up to its absolute limit.
Basically, he could trade any number of copper coins he produced in the Main World for an equivalent amount of gold and silver.
Starting in April, to reap even greater profits, Lin Ze had expanded the Copper Coins Factory's output tenfold. After all, the area around Yulin City, where major infrastructure projects were underway, had plenty of electricity to spare.
Besides that, the collaboration he had discussed earlier with Longevity Palace to produce Fierce Strength Pills had also gotten on track. Using World No. 2's medicine for boosting virility and strengthening the kidneys, Lin Ze had set up a pharmaceutical company in World No. 1.
At present, this medicine was being patented in the Main World and going through clinical trials, while stocks were being built up on a large scale.
Once it hit the market, it would be a money-spinner.
All in all, Lin Ze's current monthly income had reached a truly outrageous level.
The newly built Fufeng Princess Manor in Fufeng County, World No. 2.
Lin Ze patted Ji Qingyan on the head as she received Spare the rod, spoil the child, signaling for her to keep a proper attitude and obediently absorb the essence. Otherwise, she couldn't make the most of her personal growth.
In his mind, he began tallying up the figures for the businesses under his command.
"Over six months, after costs, taxes, and dividends, Delicious Forest Group has averaged 1.5 billion in net profit per month. That's 9 billion in income. After accounting for the costs and taxes of both the shell companies and the parent company, the foreign trade group has averaged 8 billion in net profit per month. That's 48 billion."
"The shipping company is still expanding and isn't making a profit yet. Next, the gold mines on the Golden Continent made 2 billion over six months after costs."
"Now for the Other World. The fertilizer plant earns around 3 million taels a month, so it made about 18 million taels over six months. Then there's the recent expansion of fertilizer production, which cost a lot of money. The increased output has more or less covered the costs, but hasn't generated any profit yet."
"The Coal Factory made nearly 2 million taels of silver in profit, and the textile industry earned 4 million taels of silver. Ji Kan has paid the full amount."
"Qing Yan's project is still recouping its investment, so it hasn't made much money yet. We can ignore it for now. The same goes for Longevity Palace's restaurants and the Fierce Strength Pills."
"And now for the big money-maker: the gold and silver trade. Over the past six months, I've lent or given away 60 billion copper coins. But my Copper Coins Factory produced a total of 150 billion, and I exchanged all 90 billion of the remainder for gold in World No. 2."
"That's 9 million taels of gold. Adding in the silver I'd earned earlier, which I also converted entirely into gold, I've got 2.4 million taels of gold in total. That means I've acquired a total of 11.4 million taels of gold over six months."
"At the current gold price, that's worth 256.5 billion in total."
"Add the 50 billion I made in the Main World and the 112.5 billion in assets I already had, and my total wealth, without counting illiquid assets or assets in World No. 03, is already 419 billion."
"Now that's truly terrifying."
Lin Ze clicked his tongue as he did the math.
His money was growing ridiculously fast—faster even than sending an army out to rob people.
"What are you thinking about?"
Ji Qingyan lay in Lin Ze's arms and looked at him as he settled into a sage-like contemplative state. She spoke up to ask.
"I'm thinking about how to spend the money."
Lin Ze answered honestly.
More than 400 billion was a huge sum, but there was no point in keeping it in his hands.
So next, Lin Ze planned to spend it all on buying the various raw materials needed for industrial production in the Main World and recruiting labor in World No. 2 to help him build up World No. 03, his main base, faster and more effectively.
Besides spending all the money he had on hand in exchange for tangible resources, Lin Ze would also gather up the gold accumulated by human society in World No. 03 before its collapse, spend all of it on tangible resources, and send those resources back to World No. 03.
Then he would turn those resources in World No. 03 into tangible combat power he could use.
The original plan was to rebuild the industrial system in more than three years. But with the raw materials from World No. 1 and the labor from World No. 2, Intelligent Industry would no longer have to waste so much productive capacity on unnecessary collection and smelting. That would indirectly speed up its development.
Perhaps he could cut the time it took to build a complete industrial system down to just one or two years.
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