"Also, there was a minor issue."
"When I went to Logan's office to get a stamp, I ran into someone in the hallway."
" Carter, Vice Director of the Hunters' Guild Commercial Development Committee. He is specifically responsible for approving business cooperation and investment in the high-end hunting areas of the entire Northwest Region."
Su Wei sat up straight.
Place your left hand flat on the computer keyboard area.
Emily slowed her speech.
"He looked at your approval documents for a minute, then stopped me and asked two questions."
"First, does your Throne of the North territory have any plans to sell hunting slots to outsiders in the near future?"
"Secondly, he has a list of the official recommended hunting areas for this year that is about to be released. He asked me if I was interested in adding this new territory to it."
Su Wei stared at the taskbar at the bottom of the screen.
There was a hidden, encrypted folder containing electronic copies of the test submission forms from the Anchorage Mineral Testing Laboratory.
A full three seconds.
In that brief moment, a storm raged through Su Wei's mind.
Official recommended list.
This is not an ordinary list; it is a top-tier shopping guide distributed by the Hunters' Guild to its high-end clients worldwide.
As soon as the name of the Throne of the North appears on this list, Wall Street fund managers and Silicon Valley tech elites will flock to it with their checks.
The massive influx of traffic can be instantly converted into cash flow, which is a hundred times more direct than leveraging resources privately through Charles.
But the other side of the coin is loss of control.
Step 1: After being included in the list, the guild's surveying team will arrive within a week to set up official boundary markers.
Step 2: The financial audit team will then conduct an on-site inspection to verify the flow of construction funds and assess the hospitality capacity.
The third step: The project supervision team moved in to conduct a geological safety review of the shooting range and ammunition depot pit at the foot of the mountain, which cost US$1.37 million to build.
Step 4: They will use heavy metal detectors to inspect the excavation section, which is up to two meters deep.
Step 5: 1.2 meters below the foundation, the dark red high-grade quartz vein, containing eight grams of gold per ton, will be exposed on the detector's screen.
There is no room for maneuver in this process.
If he makes just one wrong move, his undeveloped mineral vein will instantly become the focus of attention.
Faced with the multi-million dollar gold mine fortune, the exemption clause in the land purchase contract could not stop the joint attack from the state government and the mining conglomerate.
"Not considering it for now."
Su Wei made his decision into the phone's microphone.
"Currently, the territory consists of only an empty exhibition hall; all infrastructure exists only on paper. Its capacity to receive visitors is zero, and it is not ready to be opened to the public."
"Trying to squeeze into the official list at this stage, and then making a mistake in the reception, would only tarnish the reputation of the Throne of the North."
This is the perfect excuse.
All I could hear on the other end of the phone was the continuous sound of wind.
"OK."
Two seconds later, Emily gave a curt reply.
She didn't press for an explanation as to why they had turned down this lucrative opportunity, nor did she question this conservative strategy.
"I accept your decision completely. I'll draft the response to Carter for you."
"Has Cotton Candy been behaving well these past few days?"
Have you been feeding it high-calcium meat puree on time? Its forelimb joints are still developing, so you can't just feed it raw meat.
Su Wei shifted his gaze from the screen to the wool blanket in front of the fireplace.
The albino red fox was lying on its back with its four legs in the air, its pink little nose twitching rhythmically.
Her round belly was completely exposed to the air.
The food bowl next to its head was licked until it was even shinier than when it left the factory.
Half an hour ago, Su Wei mixed the beef scraps with high-calcium meat paste and stirred it.
The aroma drove the little fox into a frenzy of eating.
"It's bigger than you can eat."
Su Wei leaned back in his chair.
"Two large boxes of minced meat and half a pound of ground beef were devoured in less than two minutes."
Don't feed them too much at once! The little fox has a sensitive stomach and will get indigestion!
Protests came through the receiver.
"Your feeding method completely violates common sense of physiology."
"It's sleeping soundly now, with steady breathing and a stable heart rate."
Su Wei could clearly sense the extreme satisfaction the Cotton Candy was in at that moment.
Remember to take it for a check-up.
Emily muttered something, and the sound of the wind in the background almost disappeared.
"There's something else."
She seemed to have gone indoors, and her speech became clearer.
"The ferry service was suspended this afternoon, so I went to Anchorage's largest flea market. I was looking for some early data on brown bear activity."
"As a result, I found a very strange, thick-covered book in a pile of junk."
"The 'Handbook for Subsurface Geological Exploration of the Southwest Kodiak Island Plate,' published internally in the 1960s."
"More than two hundred pages, the paper is brittle, and the cover is covered with mold."
"I randomly flipped through a couple of pages; they were filled with hand-drawn stratigraphic diagrams and many abandoned exploration sites marked in red. This raw data couldn't be found in the library system at all."
"Although it's not my area of expertise, I think it would be quite suitable as a vintage decorative piece on your almost-repaired bookshelf."
The owner asked for fifteen dollars, so I bought it.
Su Wei's fingers, which were resting on the left side of the keyboard, froze instantly.
Hover your thumb over the space bar.
The laboratory's spectral analysis report will take another four to five days.
However, his biggest technical blind spot is the lack of comprehensive geological data on the area surrounding Pillar Mountain.
Is that high-grade quartz vein at the bottom of the pit an isolated, small branch, or the edge of a larger vein?
The state land administration's public data has always been vague about this sensitive subsurface information.
Even after the 1971 Act was enacted, a large number of original mining site records were hidden and falsified by the authorities.
And an unedited exploration manual from the 1960s, eleven years before the bill was enacted.
This means the raw geological coordinates are unfiltered.
This in itself is a top-secret coordinate table that could unlock the secrets of the Kodiak Island underground treasure.
Thanks.
Su Wei's right hand returned to the mouse.
"Put your things away safely, and make sure they don't get wet."
"You can add a dessert to the Manchu Han Imperial Feast menu."
"It's settled then. I need to reply to my advisor's email. I'll send it to you later."
"Goodbye."
The call was disconnected.
The room returned to silence.
The only sound was the occasional gust of cold wind whistling through the window.
Su Wei placed her phone face down on the table.
Use your right index finger to repeatedly click the left mouse button.
The hidden, encrypted folder was expanded.
Move the cursor to a text file named "Vessel Progress Memo" and double-click to open it.
Against a black background, densely packed white characters are arranged.
It was all his record of geological projection milestones and legal circumvention clauses.
Su Wei dragged the cursor to the very bottom of the document.
The crisp sound of keyboard typing echoed in the living room.