35: Chapter 35: Your money means nothing to me.
The price Qian Boan offered left the meeting room in a dead silence.
Ten billion in cash.
Chief Director of Huanyu Group.
A one percent share of the group's annual net profit.
Any one of these three conditions would be enough for an ordinary person to reach the heavens in a single bound. Now, bundled together, they weighed heavily on everyone's hearts.
Chief Engineer Wang Jianguo and Chief Engineer Wang Heshan exchanged glances, both seeing shock on the other's face. They had dealt with national projects their entire lives, but they had never seen money thrown around like this.
Director Zhao Lixin's face tightened. This old fox's calculations were too loud; he wanted to use money to poach Jiang Ning directly from the national team!
Everyone's eyes converged on Jiang Ning.
Mutterings filled their minds, a mix of nervousness and curiosity.
How would this seemingly otherworldly Chief Consultant react to such a direct and massive sum of money?
But Jiang Ning didn't even bat an eyelid, as if the numbers Qian Boan spoke of had absolutely nothing to do with her.
She looked up, glanced at the confident Qian Boan, and then scanned the proposal on the table.
Then, she spoke.
"Your money is useless to me."
Her voice wasn't loud—it was flat—but it struck Qian Boan's heart like a heavy hammer.
The smile on Qian Boan's face froze instantly.
He had imagined a hundred possibilities: Jiang Ning might haggle, or perhaps feign loftiness and decline before eventually accepting.
He never imagined she would refuse so bluntly and so thoroughly.
"Useless?" he subconsciously repeated, doubting his own ears.
"Yes," Jiang Ning nodded, her tone as calm as if they were just chatting. "Money is merely a voucher you use to exchange for things. In itself, it cannot become anything of value."
She paused and continued explaining with her engineer's logic:
"What I need are materials, equipment, and the manpower to turn my blueprints into reality. The state can provide these for me. Your so-called money cannot buy the Specialized Spiritual Materials I need, nor can it craft the Magical Artifacts I want. To me, it's no different from a pile of waste paper."
This speech left everyone else in the meeting room dumbfounded.
Wang Jianguo and Wang Heshan were even more stirred, their gazes toward Jiang Ning filled with nothing but admiration.
This is a pillar of the nation! This is what a master looks like!
The tension that had been gripping Zhao Lixin finally eased. He looked at Jiang Ning, the heavy stone in his heart finally dropping. He hadn't trusted the wrong person.
As for Chairman Qian Boan, after a moment of being stunned, his expression quickly darkened.
He felt Jiang Ning was just trying to drive up the price by acting intentionally aloof.
"Chief Consultant Jiang, don't be so sure of yourself." He let out a cold laugh, dropping his amiable facade. "Without the supply chain of my Huanyu Group, your so-called 'state' couldn't even transport a single screw into this desert right now."
"What use are your blueprints alone? Without materials, what will you use to build your 'Mountain Protection Array'?"
This was an overt threat.
But Jiang Ning only lifted her eyes to look at him briefly.
"Who told you that I need your materials?"
Qian Boan was taken aback. "What do you mean?"
Jiang Ning ignored him and turned to ask Zhao Lixin, "Director Zhao, how is the construction of our 'Artifact Refining Factory' coming along?"
Zhao Lixin immediately responded, straightening his back to report, "Reporting to the Chief Consultant! The main structure of the No. 1 Experimental Artifact Refining Factory has been completed. Power is being drawn directly from the core of the Water Diversion Array. The 'All-Things Furnace' you designed finished its final debugging yesterday."
"Very good," Jiang Ning nodded.
She stood up, not even looking at the increasingly grim-faced Qian Boan, and walked straight out of the meeting room.
"Let's go. Take Chairman Qian for a tour of our 'New Materials Production Line'."
Qian Boan felt uneasy, wondering what tricks this girl was playing. But he was bold and wanted to see what she could actually pull off.
He followed Jiang Ning's group to the edge of The Oasis, arriving in front of a strange, newly built building.
The factory was entirely pitch black with no windows, only a massive door covered in incomprehensible patterns.
"This is your... factory?" Qian Boan looked at the strange building, a bad premonition rising in his heart.
Jiang Ning didn't speak. She walked to the door and lightly tapped a specific pattern.
The door slid open silently to both sides.
A wave of heat rushed out from within.
When he saw the scene inside the factory, despite all the things he had seen in his life, Qian Boan couldn't help but widen his eyes, completely stunned.
The center of the factory wasn't a production line at all.
It was a massive sphere of light suspended in mid-air, filled with rotating golden symbols!
Below the sphere of light, a conveyor belt moved slowly. It didn't carry iron ore, but piles of... sand and stones that were everywhere in the desert.
These sand and stones were fed into the light sphere, and upon being illuminated by those golden symbols, they were instantly decomposed into the most primitive particles, then recombined in an incomprehensible way.
At the other end of the furnace, black metal rods of uniform specifications, their surfaces marked with strange patterns, were being "printed" out just like that.
"This... what is this?!" Qian Boan stammered, feeling the cognitive foundation he had built over his lifetime being smashed to pieces at this moment.
Creation out of thin air?
Turning stones into gold?!
"This is our new materials production line," Wang Jianguo stood nearby, his face full of pride as he explained loudly. "We call it 'Spiritual Energy Artifact Refining'."
"Using the spiritual energy of heaven and earth as power and the ubiquitous sand and stones as raw materials, we directly generate any alloy material we need."
He pointed at the freshly produced black metal rods and said to the dazed Qian Boan:
"Chairman Qian, the strength of this material is ten times that of your best specialty steel. The cost is near zero."
"Now, do you still think your supply chains can hold us by the throat?"
Qian Boan's mouth hung open; he couldn't say a single word.
He looked at that floating golden furnace, at the super alloys being continuously created. The business empire he took pride in, the capital barriers he used to threaten others—at this moment, they seemed like a ridiculous pile of sand.
This wasn't some technological innovation.
This was a dimensional strike.
He finally understood why Jiang Ning said his money was meaningless.
Before an "immortal" capable of turning stones into gold, a mortal's mountain of gold was indeed no different from waste paper.