280: Chapter 280 The Final Farewell

The night wind rustled the grapevines. The leaves rubbed together with a soft, whispering sound. Chen Fan stood on the stone slab outside the study.

The blue system panel on his retina shifted. The coordinates for the Alpha Centauri System that had just appeared did not linger for long. The edges of the blue font began to dissipate. Lines of data streams peeled away from the coordinates. Dense code darted rapidly across his field of vision. The old data structure completely disintegrated.

These garbled codes did not vanish. They rearranged themselves in the center of his vision. The blue light faded, replaced by a layer of soft golden light.

Finally, the data stream condensed into two lines of clear Chinese characters.

[Notification: The host has perfectly altered the fate of himself and his family, and has propelled the leap of human civilization.]

[The mission of the god-level investment system has completely ended.]

The golden characters remained in the center of his vision. There was no task countdown. No forced options. And no instructions for the next step.

Chen Fan stared at these two lines of text. Decades of experiences churned in his mind.

He saw the pothole-ridden dirt roads in the south of Yunzhou City. On rainy days, the soup in his delivery box would spill. He would push his dead electric scooter through the mud and water. Rainwater streamed down his helmet, blurring his vision. A customer's call would come in, cursing him as a loser over the receiver.

He saw Wang Hao driving a sports car, throwing money in his face. Dozens of red banknotes floated in the air, landing in a mud puddle. The cold gaze of his gold-digging ex-girlfriend, Old Zhao's sighs in the noodle shop.

Then came the arrival of the system. That night when the electronic voice sounded in his mind. The first investment capital arrived, the numbers jumping in his bank account.

He used money to secure the night market storefront. He bought that broken pocket watch from the Jubao Pawnshop for one million, and obtained the deed to No. 8 Changning Street. Step by step, he crushed the Beijing Chen Family's hundreds of billions in assets. Until today, standing on the Gobi Desert in the Northwest, he forced one hundred and ninety countries around the world to bow their heads and sign the Sky Patching Agreement.

The system gave him the first bit of capital to turn the tables. It provided information advantages that others could not obtain.

But every subsequent leap in social class, every time he trampled a competitor underfoot, every life-or-death decision—it was all his own choice.

In this game of chess, he had long since become the true player.

Chen Fan looked up, watching the stars in the night sky.

"Thank you." Chen Fan spoke. His voice was very soft, drifting away with the wind.

The golden panel flickered twice. After Chen Fan finished speaking, the panel disintegrated directly.

Countless golden specks of light drifted into the air without a sound. The specks faded, vanishing into nothingness within two seconds.

Chen Fan sensed something loosening deep within his brain. That system data cable, which had long been connected to his nerve endings, disconnected completely. Clean and crisp. Without a trace of residue.

A feeling of loss emerged. The trump card that had accompanied him for most of his life was gone.

This emotion only lasted for a very short time. Chen Fan straightened his back. Air entered his lungs. His breathing became exceptionally clear. His soul was no longer bound, reaching a state of true freedom.

He no longer needed the system.

The Huihuang Group controlled the highest authority of the Earth Federation. Industry, technology, and military—all were under the name of the Chen Family. The Chen Family itself had already become the ultimate rule of this planet. Facing cosmic laws next, he would have to rely on his own body and brain to confront them head-on.

The secure phone in his pocket vibrated.

Chen Fan took it out and pressed the answer button.

"Dad." Chen Muyang's voice came through, speaking quickly and without any nonsense, "The Northwest base has completed the initial resource integration."

Chen Fan listened without interrupting.

"The four main mining areas of the Northwest base have all stopped production for retrofitting. The existing civilian smelting equipment has been dismantled," Chen Muyang continued his report. "I have reviewed and signed the material list for the Pangu System IV weapon system. There is no room for negotiation on this list. I have used the federal network to directly and forcibly issue it to three hundred heavy industrial centers worldwide."

Chen Fan walked a few steps with the phone, stopping by the stone table.

"Within twelve hours, all factories must halt their existing civilian production lines and fully transition to military manufacturing," Chen Muyang concluded. "Those who disobey will have their energy supply cut off immediately. The progress of the shipbuilding plan has been recalculated. With unlimited funding and materials, plus the breakthrough in the second-generation superconducting core, the timeline can be cut in half. Within three years, the first interstellar fleet can launch."

Less than a day after taking over supreme power, his eldest son, Chen Muyang, displayed extremely formidable leadership. His methods were tough and left no blind spots. All the resources on Earth were being reshaped by him as if he were molding clay.

"Go ahead and do it." Chen Fan only said those four words.

He pressed the end call button and put the phone back in his pocket. The transfer of power was perfect; he could completely retreat behind the scenes.

The wooden door of the study was pushed open. Su Wanqing walked out. She was holding a long black coat.

Su Wanqing walked to Chen Fan's side. She shook out the coat and draped it over Chen Fan's shoulders. She reached forward and straightened his collar.

"It's late, let's rest." Su Wanqing reminded him softly.

Chen Fan reached back and took Su Wanqing's hand. Her fingers were slightly cool. Chen Fan held her hand in his palm, wrapping it tightly.

The two stood side by side in the courtyard. They looked up at the boundless starry sky. The stars were very bright. There lay the interstellar predators hinted at by the system's final notification, and the neutron star energy matrix.

After watching for a while, Chen Fan took Su Wanqing's hand and turned around. He walked to the study window, closed it, and drew the curtains.

At the same time, thousands of kilometers away, at the Northwest Aerospace Launch Base.

The Glorious Academy dormitory building. This place practiced semi-military management, and the schedule was extremely strict.

Green emergency lights were lit in the corridor.

Inside an independent dormitory, a computer screen flickered with a faint light.

Chen Xingchen was wearing a thin black physical training suit, sitting at the desk. He was not sleeping. His hands were on the mechanical keyboard, typing rapidly. The keyboard emitted a soft clacking sound.

He was accessing the hidden registration system of the federal commercial network. Ordinary people could not find this entry point at all. Only those with core authorization could establish an independent interstellar commercial entity on this port.

An asset verification interface popped up on the screen. A red warning box indicated that the minimum registered capital required was ten million Star Coins.

Chen Xingchen pulled open the drawer. From the very back, he fished out a dismantled, obsolete communicator. He picked up a pair of tweezers and pried a black micro-SD card from the communicator's motherboard.

He inserted the storage card into the computer's reading interface.

The progress bar loaded rapidly. The account balance appeared on the screen.

Fifteen million Star Coins.

This money had come very secretly. He had never once asked his family for help. He had utilized discarded laboratory parts from the Glorious Academy, rewritten the underlying code, and assembled high-precision micro-geological detectors. Then, he sold them on the black market to independent exploration teams to earn it.

Every single cent was clean and earned cleanly. It was completely detached from the vast resource network of the Huihuang Group. He had not used the identity of a young master of the Chen Family. Others didn't even know who the seller behind the mask was. He still remembered the time when he was punished by Chen Fan to sweep the streets for reselling cards for a profit. He wanted to prove that without relying on his family's background, he could still take his business into the universe.

Chen Xingchen transferred all this money into the verification account as registered capital.

The federal system connected to major banking nodes to conduct an anti-money laundering audit. Two minutes later, the green light for passed audit lit up.

The interface jumped. It requested the company name and legal representative information.

Chen Xingchen placed his hands on the keyboard. Without hesitation.

"Spark."

He pressed the Enter key.

The holographic registration interface turned green. The electronic business license was generated and highlighted in the center of the screen.

Company Name: Spark Interstellar Resource Development Unlimited Liability Company.

Legal Representative: Chen Xingchen.

Chen Xingchen leaned back against his ergonomic chair. He picked up the half-bottle of mineral water on the table, unscrewed it, and took a sip. The cold water flowed into his stomach.

His gaze crossed the computer screen and cast toward the window. Outside the dormitory building was the massive launch gantry of the Nuwa rocket, pointing directly toward the vast universe.

His father had conquered Earth. He would use this company named Spark to conquer that starry sky.

A notification sound came from the computer speakers.

The exclusive internal email of the newly registered Spark company received an email.

The email had no subject. The sender's IP address jumped through thirty Earth synchronous satellites in just one second, employing the highest level of military encryption.

Chen Xingchen sat up straight. He gripped the mouse.

He clicked to open the email.

The body of the email contained only one image. It was an extremely blurry optical deep-space detection image. Against the pitch-black cosmic background, there was a blue spot of light the size of a fingernail.

Next to the light spot, a line of red coordinate data was marked. It was exactly the same as the coordinates hinted at before Chen Fan's system disappeared.