Completion

Year 17, November 27.

The Calamian Islands in Luzon were still scorching hot. The personnel from the professional inspection company completed the final inspection of the laboratory.

Li Qingye had found no major problems, so he had Fang Xin Cheng pay Xinhai Company the completion payment. However, according to the contract, 5% of the final payment was still outstanding.

This was actually standard industry practice. The final payment was usually settled only after the project had been in official use for some time.

The contract between Homo sapiens Company and Xinhai Company stipulated that the final payment would be made only if no major problems arose within 18 months of the facility entering official use.

After returning to Calagua Island, Li Qingye gathered the management team.

"Our shrimp and pomfret farming operations made a total profit of just US$420,000 this year. It's not much, but at least we didn't lose money. Zaxi, thanks for all your hard work."

Zaxi grinned, showing a row of white teeth. "The weather was pretty good this year, and we were pretty lucky."

Li Qingye turned to Li Jinglan and instructed him, "Jing Lan, discuss it with Zaxi and arrange some bonuses for the staff at the farming base."

Li Jinglan stopped taking notes and nodded. "OK, I'll arrange it as soon as possible."

"Then let's move on to the second matter." Li Qingye grew serious. "You should all understand that the company can't go on like this. We have to find new lines of business, or we'll go bankrupt sooner or later."

Li Jinglan and the others felt the same way.

Kang Nan, a man of few words, was worried his department might be cut. He spoke up for once. "Boss, how about I take a boat down south and scout around the Solomon Islands?"

Li Qingye waved a hand. "There's no need. I have plans for the fleet."

Hearing that Li Qingye had plans, the others fell silent and waited for him to continue.

"You should understand that fishery resources in the Pacific, especially in the northwestern Pacific, are becoming increasingly scarce. Deep-sea fishing is a dead end, so aquaculture is the way forward."

Li Jinglan stopped taking notes. He had previously put a lot of effort into understanding Li Qingye's thinking, and he knew exactly what he meant. Still, aquaculture wouldn't be easy either.

After all, Homo sapiens Company was already raising shrimp and pomfret. These were low-tech species farmed everywhere, and the most they could earn from them was a hard day's pay.

Li Qingye continued, "There's no point in expanding our shrimp and pomfret operations. We can maintain the status quo. The next species our company will develop is..."

The projector behind him immediately displayed an image of a fish.

"Eel?" Zaxi frowned and blurted out, "Boss, eel farming is very expensive. And eel fry catches have been declining in recent years. It'll be difficult for us to buy large quantities."

Kang Nan added, "Boss, Zaxi is right. Eel fry can only be caught in the wild; they can't be bred artificially. Our company has already tried catching them near the Luzon Trench, and there are too few wild eels now."

But Li Qingye was confident. He smiled and asked, "It's precisely because they can't be bred artificially that this is worth investing in. What did you think I'd use a laboratory that cost fifty million US dollars to build for? Making bioweapons?"

"Uh..." Li Jinglan immediately understood. A biological laboratory with such a huge investment was obviously meant for research.

"I plan to research artificial eel breeding. If we can breed eel fry at low cost, we'll gain access to a huge market.

"Do you know that at its peak, global eel consumption reached 220,000 tons? Eels sold for an average of fifteen to thirty US dollars per kilogram, with a total output value of 3.3 to 6.6 billion US dollars. That wasn't the limit of the eel industry; it was held back by the depletion of wild stocks. If we can achieve low-cost artificial breeding, this could become an industry worth tens of billions."

Hearing Li Qingye's grand vision, everyone's breathing quickened. The eel industry really was a tempting opportunity.

"And over the past six months, I've studied the research on artificial eel breeding and found that the Japanese already have related technology. It's just that their production costs are high. Our goal is to find a way to mass-produce them at low cost. I already have some ideas."

At that, Li Jinglan immediately voiced his support. Li Qingye had made his intentions clear, and the company belonged to him anyway. If the investment failed, Li Jinglan could always find another job.

The others had no objections either.

Li Qingye then assigned everyone their tasks.

First, he had Li Jinglan take a team to Min Nan Province in China to buy a batch of partially grown or fully grown farmed eels and transport them back to Calagua Island.

Zaxi would clear out six of the shrimp ponds and convert them into eel farms.

Kang Nan would take a fishing boat to the area around the Luzon Trench and try to catch some glass eels, which were juvenile eels.

As one task after another was assigned, the entire company grew busy.

That was exactly what Li Qingye wanted. After all, with such a large project under way, it would look strange if there were no visible research initiatives.

Of course, the eel research project wasn't a cover story. He genuinely intended to make it real.

On the one hand, it would help conceal what was really happening in the biological laboratory. On the other, it would give Homo sapiens Company a source of revenue so it wouldn't burn through its savings.

Inside the research base,

after passing through layer upon layer of security, he didn't immediately begin experimenting. Instead, he checked the base's computer systems again.

After pulling up the low-level data, Li Qingye adjusted his glasses. "Just as I expected."

The system contained quite a few hidden backdoors. Some could even make the computer send signals on its own, secretly transmitting information through nearby devices such as phones or laptops.

These system backdoors had most likely been secretly installed by the computer manufacturers. Xinhai Company itself might not even know about them.

He reprogrammed and modified the backdoors, but didn't block them completely. Instead, he created a fake database, so even if the backdoors transmitted information, it would all be false.

Meanwhile, he reconfigured the servers, leaving one small server as an apparent vulnerability while sealing the rest completely and cutting them off from the network.

He even locked the cooling fans to a handful of fixed frequencies, eliminating every possible way they could transmit signals outside.

He also carefully inspected the operating systems on the other equipment several times and found plenty of backdoors there too. Some were designed to steal secrets; others were meant to make the equipment "break down sooner."

Thinking of the hidden schemes these scientific-instrument manufacturers were up to, he felt very fortunate that he had completely destroyed the data storage devices and computers from the Jiangcheng laboratory.

If he hadn't been so cautious, the manufacturers might have recovered the Jiangcheng lab's equipment or inspected it closely, potentially exposing some of the Jianmu Factor data.

He recorded the equipment where he'd found problems and quickly removed the backdoors. Only then could he work on his experiments with peace of mind.

But when he thought about how many of those manufacturers also supplied parts for computers and phones, Li Qingye started worrying about phones and laptops again.

He had Chen Jianxiong, who was in charge of security, adjust the security measures inside and outside the research base.

For example, they had planned to use Walkie-talkies to communicate between the inside and outside, but Li Qingye now felt that even Walkie-talkies were unsafe.

He sent people to Huaqiangbei in Pengcheng to buy a batch of loose electronic components, planning to build wired telephones himself and lay internal phone lines across Calagua Island.

As for wireless radios, mobile phones, and the like, they could only be used in the dock area. Before entering any other area, people had to remove their communication devices and hand them over to security staff.

By completely keeping phones and similar devices away from the research base, they could largely prevent information from leaking out under these strict security measures.

Of course, these measures still weren't enough.

Because there was another way to steal secrets in this world: "a forced assault."