81: I can't guess what Yuan is thinking.

"Help me find evidence of Sihai Shipping's smuggling violations. I'll pay, name your price!"

Lan Zijun's message appeared on the computer screen again.

In the Intelligence Outpost, Su Yue looked at the screen, his eyebrows slightly raised.

As expected of the heir to Lans Group, a favored daughter born with a golden spoon in her mouth, her tone was truly domineering.

Straight to the point: name your price!

She's truly rich and willful, Su Yue couldn't help but sigh.

Rich people are just domineering.

However, Su Yue wasn't concerned about the money issue right now.

"Investigating Sihai Shipping's smuggling problem..."

To be honest, this answer surprised him a little.

He wasn't surprised that this Sihai Shipping had smuggling suspicions, because it wasn't strange at all.

Master Ma once said something very insightful: If capital has a fifty percent profit, it will take risks; if it has a hundred percent profit, it will dare to trample on all human laws; if it has a three hundred percent profit, it will dare to commit any crime, even risking being hanged.

The shipping industry itself has inherent advantages in smuggling and contraband. When huge profits are presented, very few people can resist the temptation.

For example, Su Yue knew that many captains, flight attendants, and other crew members on international routes for airlines would also use the aircraft to carry certain foreign cigarettes or perfumes, etc., back to the country for gifts or sale.

Of course, as long as this behavior does not exceed a certain limit, it is permitted by law and is not considered legal smuggling. However, this behavior itself is also driven by profit, and indeed, some people take risks; such incidents are not uncommon.

For example, it is an open secret that Russian flight attendants use international flights to bring goods from China back to Russia every day to sell to Russians.

Even crew members, who are strictly supervised throughout and cannot land during the flight, take risks, let alone the maritime industry. After all, compared to planes, sea transport has huge advantages.

Firstly, its cargo capacity is huge, making it inherently difficult to conduct detailed inspections of the goods it transports. Secondly, it is only inspected when clearing customs for entry and exit; at other times, it is under no supervision.

Many times, the smuggling of various goods can even be completed without entering the port, just by making the exchange at sea.

Therefore, Su Yue was not really surprised if a shipping company was involved in smuggling.

What truly surprised him was why Lan Zijun wanted to investigate this?

Su Yue's eyes narrowed slightly. He remembered the best friend beside Lan Zijun when he first contacted Lan Zijun as Yuan.

Lan Zijun's best friend's identity was a secret within the company. Very few people had seen this woman whose looks could rival Lan Zijun's. Su Yue was one of the very few people who had interacted with her face-to-face.

And he was also one of the very few people who knew her identity.

She was a Police Officer!

It seemed that Lan Zijun's best friend had a very unusual identity. Being able to get involved in major cases like smuggling, she was probably one of those with high status and power.

A sharp glint flashed in Su Yue's eyes.

Lan Zijun was indeed a person worth befriending. Although she appeared cold on the outside, she was truly willing to go through fire and water for a friend.

This intelligence, she must have been investigating it for her best friend.

For Su Yue, this was an opportunity to make money delivered to his doorstep.

But Su Yue didn't want it!

It wasn't because of the hot-blooded mentality of a law-abiding citizen helping Police eliminate these criminals. Although Su Yue didn't deny that he had a good impression of Police and didn't mind giving them a hand, this thought wasn't the main reason.

He wasn't too short on money right now. Lan Zijun's forty million had basically solved his recent financial problems. Before he upgraded the Intelligence Outpost again, he didn't have to worry about money.

What he truly needed was channels, channels to obtain intelligence!

The Intelligence Center System was a very powerful system; this had been proven many times. Using the Intelligence Outpost, Su Yue could continuously obtain confidential intelligence. This intelligence could almost be said to be unobtainable by human effort and was extremely crucial.

However, the Intelligence Outpost also had a problem, which was that the intelligence refresh frequency was too slow, and the intelligence types were relatively limited.

Su Yue was not someone who relied on the system for everything. To him, the Intelligence Outpost was just a platform for his abilities to be utilized. It was enough that it could provide the most crucial and confidential intelligence.

And daily intelligence collection still had to rely on the intelligence network he built himself, as well as various intelligence agents!

Use intelligence channels to build a large intelligence network, then use intelligence agents for targeted intelligence collection to determine the general direction, and then obtain the most core and crucial intelligence through the System. Su Yue would then use his own abilities to sort and connect this intelligence. Then, he would handle it according to the situation, either selling it or using it to seek certain benefits.

This was the operational model of the Intelligence Outpost that Su Yue envisioned.

"Sihai Shipping, is it related to Chuangtong Logistics?" Su Yue withdrew his thoughts and sent a message.

The next second, Lan Zijun's message popped up, even the punctuation marks conveying surprise: "They can be considered strategic allies, but how did you know?"

Su Yue smiled. It was just as he expected.

Chuangtong Logistics' business scope was originally concentrated in the maritime sector, and Sihai Shipping, as the name suggested, was related to maritime transport.

The business scopes of the two companies largely overlapped, and they were both in the same city. They were either sworn enemies or allies; there was nothing else to say.

Maritime transport is a project with huge investment. Calculated solely by cargo ship capacity, it's basically around two million per thousand tons.

And an ocean-going cargo ship is often tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of tons. Unless it's transporting high-value goods, a ship under a hundred thousand tons basically won't make much money.

Calculating this way, just the investment to build an entry-level ocean-going cargo ship requires over two hundred million. And a shipping company certainly cannot have only one cargo ship under its command.

Investment in cargo ships is a large expense, as are fuel costs and insurance fees. Su Yue had seen a statistic that for a hundred-thousand-ton cargo ship fully loaded, traveling from an East Asian port to Europe, the fuel cost was about thirty to forty million US dollars. Insurance fees were slightly lower, but still around two to three million US dollars.

This is a project that only top financial groups can afford to play. How many financial groups in a small city can invest this much?

Especially when both companies seemed to be involved in smuggling, a relationship between the two had almost become a certainty. Although Lin Jia hadn't figured out exactly when she had unintentionally obtained Chuangtong Logistics' handle, it was likely in the area of smuggling.

Only the huge profits from smuggling would make people take risks and target someone with such significant influence as Lin Jia.

After all, Lin Jia wasn't an unknown grassroots person. She herself was a goddess in many people's eyes, and she was also the Sales Director of Tiancheng International. Her position was considered middle to high-level, and she interacted with various business elites. If such a person were to disappear, there would definitely be many loose ends to clean up.

"Name your price, Yuan." Lan Zijun's desire to be a big spender was practically surging. Su Yue didn't reply, and she even started urging him.

"This time, I plan to change our cooperation model with you." Su Yue typed this sentence with a smile.

"I plan to conduct a second transaction with you, but the details of this transaction are not yet determined."

"However, I can still provide you with some intelligence now, as the beginning of our transaction."

He casually sent over a picture.

...

Lan Zijun frowned as she looked at her computer.

Yuan had disappeared, leaving behind a picture before leaving.

She carefully examined the slightly blurry picture in front of her. The image showed a man and a woman. The man was facing the camera, his face somewhat familiar. Lan Zijun seemed to have seen him somewhere.

The next second, her gaze slightly focused.

She had indeed seen this man, Wang Lin, the second son of Wang Jian, the city's richest man. She had seen him at an investment promotion conference held by the government.

Could this man be related to Sihai Shipping?

Shaking her head slightly, Lan Zijun's gaze fell on the woman.

The woman had her back to the camera. All that could be seen was her slightly curly long hair and a good figure.

Lan Zijun had never seen this woman; she was certain of that.

From Yuan's meaning, this woman's identity seemed very crucial. But where exactly she was crucial, Yuan didn't say.

Moreover, this wasn't the only thing that confused Lan Zijun. Just before disappearing, Yuan had said that he wanted to change the way they cooperated.

Lan Zijun had a vague bad feeling about this, but she couldn't pinpoint what was wrong.

Thinking of this, Lan Zijun felt a little depressed. She hated the feeling of being led by the nose, but she was completely helpless when facing Yuan.

She certainly preferred to trade directly with money; this was the most advantageous way for her.

After all, she wasn't short on money, and often, by obtaining crucial intelligence, she could gain dozens or even a hundred times the profit.

For example, the last time Yuan provided her with intelligence, allowing her to take control of Lans Group and even extend her influence into the Qians Group.

Putting Lans Group aside for now, as the sole first-in-line heir, Lans Group could originally be seen as Lan Zijun's; she was just taking over early.

Qians Group, however, was different. It was also a multi-billion dollar group, and it was also a family business that outsiders couldn't penetrate.

Lan Zijun used the matter of Qian Boda to directly cut a piece of cake from Qians Group. Although this piece of cake seemed very small at the moment, Lan Zijun was confident that she could make this cake bigger!

Until she took Qians Group into her pocket!

For this, she only paid a price of forty million. This deal was simply incredibly valuable.

But now, Yuan unexpectedly didn't want money.

So, what exactly was Yuan's purpose?

Never mind, Lan Zijun shook her head again.

She couldn't find the answer to this question now, but time would tell her.

As for the secret hidden in this picture, Lan Zijun certainly couldn't decipher it, but that didn't matter either.

After all, she wasn't doing this for herself, but for her best friend, Liang Yuzhu.

She casually picked up her phone and started calling Liang Yuzhu.

Perhaps, Liang Yuzhu would have some answers!

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