Surfacing

Four days passed silently.

Yang Tiancheng's assistant and bodyguard were still indulging in a life of pleasure and dissipation in the dock district, marveling at the extravagance of the rich.

They were completely unaware that their boss had now become meat on a chopping block, at Li Qingye's mercy.

Inside a specially modified underground interrogation room.

A Soldier and a female Manager were intensely questioning Yang Tiancheng, extracting all the memories from his mind.

Outside the one-way transparent glass window, Li Qingye sat on an ergonomic chair, flipping through the freshly printed interrogation records. He looked at the names on the pages, some of which were expected, while others were deeply hidden.

"Heh..." he chuckled lowly, leaning back in his chair and muttering to himself:

"Father, this is your good brother, your good partner."

He walked out of the basement and onto the villa's open-air balcony.

He let out a long breath, and the anger in his chest subsided considerably. Stars dotted the night sky. Gazing out at the pitch-black wilderness, he felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness and grief.

He pulled a harmonica from his pocket, and memories involuntarily flooded his mind.

A clear and ethereal harmonica melody echoed slowly across the mountaintop.

'Closing my eyes, my heart is filled with confusion.'

'Sadly looking up, my gaze reflects sorrow.'

'Only one road leads to the wilderness.'

'Where can I find the direction ahead?'

'Ah..., scattered stars, adorning the night sky, guiding destiny.'

'This was your favorite song, my father. Your life's journey has reached its end. Now, I will use my own life to compose the second movement of destiny.'

Li Qingye stopped playing, his heart filled with an immense peace. Yet, this calmness also signaled his absolute resolve at this moment.

He returned to the villa's study.

He opened the Biological Computer he carried with him, bringing up intelligence reports on the Yang family, New Nanyang Company, and Xin Xin Group.

Killing those people was very simple for him now. Even in China, where border control was extremely strict, Soldiers could carry certain items across the border.

After all, one of the characteristics of biological technology was its stealth.

Whether it was a Biological Computer or the Gu worm series, they could be hidden within a Soldier's body and safely pass through security checks.

But this kind of revenge was not what he wanted.

If he let those scumbags die so easily, it would be too kind to them.

Moreover, he wanted to appear openly as Li Qingye, to reclaim Xin Xin Group completely, to leave those scumbags with nothing, and to crush them bit by bit, making them live in constant fear.

What was the point of revenge through assassination?

He wanted everyone to know that it was Li Qingye who acted, but they could do nothing to him, only rage impotently.

'It's time to establish a second branch,' he thought to himself.

From the Spider Web database on his Biological Computer, he pulled up a list of all current Spider Web members. At present, there were 121 Managers in Spider Web.

Among them, 24 Managers were within Homo sapiens Company; 8 Managers were within the Fernando family; 5 Managers were within the Lopez family; and 6 Managers were within other families in Luzon.

The remaining 78 Managers included 3 in the Blood Blade Special Operations Team, 24 in the Security Department, and 51 in the Internal Affairs Department.

Among the Managers in the Blood Blade Special Operations Team, Security Department, and Internal Affairs Department, only a small portion officially appeared within Homo sapiens Company. The vast majority remained in a state of silent anonymity.

Especially in the Internal Affairs Department, the 51 Managers clearly exceeded the quota. However, these individuals were all reserves, ready to be deployed to Homo sapiens Company or other necessary positions at any time.

For this new second branch, Li Qingye planned to select a portion of these individuals and assign them to the second branch's hierarchy.

First, he chose a Manager whose height and facial features bore some resemblance to him, and had this Manager appear as Li Qingye.

The external name of the second branch would be Qingye Group.

It was important to note that the identity of Li Qingye was not dead, but missing. As long as it hadn't been four years, his identity would still possess civil rights.

He disappeared in June 2017, and it wouldn't be until June 2021 that a court could declare the natural person Li Qingye deceased.

And it was currently February 2019.

This meant that the shares of Xin Xin Group held by Li Qingye were still under his name.

As soon as the identity of Li Qingye reappeared, the parasites and rats within Xin Xin Group would inevitably react.

Qingye Group would serve as a decoy, designed to attract their attention. Meanwhile, Homo sapiens Company, with "Zhang Jack" as its core identity, would operate in tandem, one openly and one covertly, to handle matters that were inconvenient for the other.

In addition, he needed to find some profitable industries for Qingye Group.

Since Qingye Group and Homo sapiens Company were to be clearly separated, they naturally could not have overly direct financial or industrial ties.

The initial capital for Qingye Group would be around 150 million US dollars, funds he had obtained from his mother's secret account.

Regarding industries, he reviewed his list of research achievements, which contained dozens of biological technologies, large and small.

However, the technology related to Biological Computers could definitely not be given to Qingye Group, and some overly sensitive technologies were also unsuitable.

After much deliberation, he selected two technologies that he felt were most suitable for Qingye Group's initial ventures.

These two technologies were: low-temperature glass manufacturing technology and coral cement technology.

Many people know that glass is formed through high-temperature smelting, which is the technical foundation of the current glass industry.

However, in nature, there exists a glass manufacturing technology that defies common sense—low-temperature glass manufacturing technology.

This technology originates from a type of algae—diatoms.

Diatoms can synthesize products similar to glass components at room temperature. Their exoskeleton cell walls are composed of silicon and are similar to opaque glass.

Diatoms use silicon from water as raw material to produce this protective shell through an extremely simple chemical reaction:

They remove water molecules between silicon particles, followed by what chemists call "polycondensation"—atoms connect with each other with the help of oxygen atoms. Then, these silicon particles form extremely small silica beads, which are the material that makes up the cell wall.

Furthermore, different species of diatoms have different arrangements and combinations of the silica beads and silica cell walls they produce.

Although humans have developed the "sol-gel" process, mimicking diatoms' method, since the 1980s, this process still cannot match the precision of diatoms.

Li Qingye had studied the genes and characteristics of diatoms when he was researching biological computers.

Previously, he had planned to give the low-temperature glass manufacturing technology to Coral Building Materials, but now he had changed his mind and intended to give this technology to Qingye Group.

The advantage of low-temperature glass manufacturing technology lies in its low energy consumption. Li Qingye had tested it in the laboratory: producing a one-square-meter sheet of glass required only about one-eightieth of the energy consumption compared to high-temperature glass.

Cost is a huge advantage. Moreover, using genetically modified diatoms as a glass culture medium offers another significant benefit: production can be stopped at any time.

Try stopping the production line of high-temperature glass, and at best, the production line will be damaged; at worst, it will be scrapped directly.

This is also one of the pain points for many current glass factories: once a production line is started, it cannot be easily stopped.

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