209: Chapter 209 Extreme Overload

The black off-road vehicle's four wide tires skidded wildly in the mud. The front end reared up violently, charging out of the flood control embankment at the edge of the foundation pit with an acrid, burnt smell.

Wu Dong clutched the all-red military communicator tightly to his chest. His body swayed violently with the vehicle.

Lu Chen held the steering wheel with one hand, his eyes fixed on the massive array in the rearview mirror.

"Boss, one million people!" Wu Dong swallowed hard. "Even if we covered all eight thousand acres of land with bunk beds, we couldn't fit that many people."

Lu Chen pressed the accelerator: "The keel can be cast automatically. Machines can't do the rest."

Wu Dong didn't dare to respond.

"We aren't just building a flying metal shell," Lu Chen said calmly. "The auxiliary combat components, the final assembly of the anti-gravity engines, and the dense network of internal pipelines—this requires a massive amount of skilled workers and laborers to fill in."

The off-road vehicle charged into the main gate of Chenguang Factory. When the security guards saw the license plate, they didn't even have time to lift the barrier before the car swept inside like a gust of wind.

The car came to a halt in front of the office building.

Lu Chen pushed open the door and walked up. Wu Dong followed closely behind, clutching the red communicator.

The two pushed open the iron door of the second-floor control room. Lu Chen kicked the broken sofa to straighten it and sat down.

"Notify Lao Zhou. Tell him to come over immediately." Lu Chen pulled out his transparent plastic lighter.

Less than two minutes later, Lao Zhou ran in, sweating profusely, carrying a chipped enamel tea mug. He fished a ballpoint pen and a half-ruined notebook out of his pocket.

"Boss, what's the urgent task?" Lao Zhou gasped for air.

Lu Chen clicked his lighter and lit a crushed double happiness cigarette: "The thirty billion USD we seized from Steven. Withdraw it all for me."

Wu Dong's wrist trembled. The heavy red communicator nearly dropped onto his foot.

Lao Zhou's eyes widened like copper bells: "Withdraw all thirty billion USD? What is it for?"

Lu Chen exhaled a cloud of thick smoke: "As advertising and relocation fees. I'm going to recruit workers globally."

"Within thirty days, I want to push the number of registered employees in the factory to over one million."

Wu Dong felt his scalp tingle. Giving away thirty billion USD just like that as wages? Even the richest landlords weren't this wasteful.

"Save the money to breed more money? We can't afford to delay the construction schedule even for a day." Lu Chen flicked the ash. "Use the money to smash through the obstacles."

Lao Zhou licked his finger to turn the page of the blank notebook: "Boss, what kind of people are we recruiting? What are the requirements? Do they need a degree?"

Lu Chen tapped his fingers on the table: "First, I only want hardworking blue-collar workers, entry-level technicians, and engineers. Anyone who can weld steel plates or understands mechanical maintenance is welcome. I won't take a single one of those elites who just sit in offices writing proposals."

Lao Zhou nodded and drew a circle on the paper.

"Second," Lu Chen looked at Lao Zhou. "Chinese citizens first. Impoverished foreign miners who are honest and willing to sign a contract pledging loyalty to the factory come second."

Wu Dong wiped sweat from his brow: "What about the compensation?"

"Offer them ten times their current salary," Lu Chen sneered. "Include food, housing, and transportation. As long as they sign a legal labor contract, the factory will cover all their breach-of-contract penalties. Even if they are held back for debt, Da Biao will take people to throw the money in their faces and take them back."

Lao Zhou gasped.

This was basically kidnapping people. Using a mountain of gold to crush the resolve of the poor. Who could resist such temptation?

Lu Chen's voice sank instantly: "Third, conduct a three-generation background check. Anyone with Sakura Country ancestry, or anyone who has worked for enterprises like Mitsui and has a bad record, is absolutely rejected. They aren't even worthy of cleaning the toilets at Chenguang Factory."

Lao Zhou closed the notebook: "Understood. I'll get it done right away."

Lu Chen looked at Wu Dong: "Use those one hundred thousand stealth accounts you have. Within half an hour, I want every single factory worker in the world to receive this message on their phones."

Wu Dong immediately ran to the console, put on his headset, and his fingers turned into a blur on the keyboard.

The instructions turned into countless data packets, breaking directly through the firewalls of all international networks and aggressively hacking into global communication base stations.

North America. A certain abandoned car recycling plant in Detroit.

Several oil-stained workers sat by rusted iron barrels, sharing two cold, hard sandwiches.

The phones in their pockets vibrated simultaneously with a harsh buzz.

A fat black man pulled out his phone, took one look, and jumped up violently. Half of his sandwich fell to the ground.

"Ten times the salary? They cover breach-of-contract penalties? And provide chartered flight tickets?" The fat man's eyes went wide.

The white old man next to him cursed: "Scam texts are getting more and more ridiculous. What kind of company pays off loan shark debts?"

The fat man's fingers trembled as he clicked the link: "Old man, it has an endorsement statement from the Chinese East Sea Fleet. And a screenshot of fund verification jointly issued by twelve Wall Street banks. This is the factory that just turned Manhattan upside down."

The fat man clicked the button to express interest in signing.

Two seconds later, the fat man's phone received a bank transfer notification.

"Fifty thousand USD relocation fee received." The fat man read the number, his voice cracking completely.

The old man kicked the rusted iron barrel away.

"Damn it all!" The old man slammed his wrench onto the ground. "I've worked here for thirty years and haven't even managed to get health insurance. I'm going to buy a ticket to China right now."

Sakura Country. A certain high-end precision machine tool foundry in Nagoya.

The roar of the assembly line was deafening. Over the loudspeaker, a pot-bellied supervisor was hitting the iron railings with a whip, roaring loudly, demanding all workers to work overtime.

A Chinese expatriate welder stared fixedly at his phone screen.

He turned around, ripped off his high-voltage insulated gloves, and slammed them hard into the supervisor's fat face.

"Baka! Do you want to rebel?" The supervisor roared, covering his face.

The welder sneered: "I'm done serving you. The base salary at Chenguang Factory in Jiangcheng is fifteen times what I get here. Full social security and housing fund. You shorties can stay here and hammer your sheet metal yourselves."

The news exploded in the workshop instantly.

All the Chinese workers and laborers from Southeast Asia stopped their work. Tools were dropped all over the floor.

Dozens of people converged into a stream and surged toward the gate. The security guards at the door were so scared they couldn't even hold their batons steady, let alone stop them.

Similar scenes were playing out simultaneously in major coastal industrial zones across the country.

In the dormitory areas of countless sweatshops, blinding lights turned on in the middle of the night. The sound of suitcase wheels rolling echoed through the night sky.

Bosses in their pajamas stumbled out of their offices, falling and scrambling. Seeing the empty assembly lines, their legs went weak.

"Where are the people? I haven't finished the ten-million-dollar foreign trade order I just took!" A bald boss grabbed the HR manager by the collar.

The HR manager said with a mournful face: "They all ran, boss. The other side is offering a monthly salary of one hundred thousand, and the relocation fee is deposited directly into their cards. Even the two security guards at our gate packed their buckets and ran to Jiangcheng. Who can stop that?"

Second-floor control room.

Wu Dong stared at the huge LCD screen in front of him. The data on the screen was cascading down like a waterfall.

"Boss. The system's exclusive employee entry port is about to crash." Wu Dong's face was flushed with excitement, his voice trembling. "Thousands of people are signing online labor contracts every second. The East Sea Fleet reports that the high seas are now densely packed with ocean-going passenger ships heading toward the Jiangcheng Deepwater Port."

The electronic notifications in Lu Chen's mind were also ringing incessantly.

The number of registered employees with legal contracts was skyrocketing.

Three hundred thousand. Four hundred thousand. Six hundred thousand.

The class defection smashed out by thirty billion USD had a power that exceeded everyone's imagination.

Lu Chen leaned back in his swivel chair.

This rate of burning money was truly terrifying. The one-million-person quota for thirty days would be filled in less than three days at this rate. As long as the system upgraded to the next ultimate level, the interstellar industrial system in his hands would be completely finished.

Wu Dong tapped the keyboard a few times: "Boss, the capital pool is depleting very quickly. But once all these people arrive, our entire logistics supply line in Jiangcheng will face tremendous pressure. Food and housing issues must be solved immediately."

Lu Chen glanced at his watch.

"Spend money to buy out all the building materials and instant food factories in the surrounding five provinces and cities. Set up thirty thousand military prefabricated houses for me around the perimeter of the eight thousand acres. As long as they dare to come, I dare to feed them."

Just as Wu Dong was about to make the call to issue the procurement instructions.

A loud "bang" came from the heavy iron door of the control room. The door hinge was deformed by a massive force.

Wei Jianguo rushed in.

He was shirtless. His head and face were completely covered in black carbon ash. His eyes were bloodshot with extreme panic. There were even several obvious burn wounds on his body.

He was gripping the wreckage of a completely burnt and deformed metal valve. His chest heaved violently. He was gasping for air.

"Boss. Something went wrong." Wei Jianguo's voice was completely hoarse, carrying a trace of desperate trembling.

Lu Chen immediately sat up straight, his brows slightly furrowed: "What's going on?"

Wei Jianguo slammed the red-hot scrap metal onto the table, scorching a black mark onto the surface.

"The smelting furnace." Wei Jianguo took a deep breath. "After replacing the superconducting bearings, the rotation speed really has no upper limit. The output has also increased tenfold. But the furnace body itself simply cannot withstand this high pressure."

Wei Jianguo pointed toward Underground Level 3.

"The demand for the fully automatic array to pour special molten iron in the foundation pit is too high. I pushed the power to two hundred percent. The cracks on the outer perimeter of the furnace body can no longer be suppressed."

Wei Jianguo pulled his hair hard.

"The high-pressure valve on the No. 4 main pipeline on Underground Level 3 just burst. Three-thousand-degree molten iron, carrying fusion energy slag, is leaking crazily into the No. 1 clean room. The entire line is about to collapse."