69: Chapter 69 Buying Hollywood Hills in Full

Joshua stood up from the sofa, walked to the panoramic photo of the Starship Base that covered the entire wall of the meeting room, and stood with his back to Musk.

His tone was flat, as if he were stating a theorem of astrophysics that had been verified repeatedly.

"The solar system is just our backyard."

"The Local Interstellar Cloud, the Orion Arm, the Norma Arm, the Perseus Arm, all the way to the entire Milky Way—how much resource, how many civilizations, and how many unoccupied territories are in there?"

"Since the interstellar anti-gravity technology and energy cores have been in our grasp for so long, we should be conquering outward, expanding our power as the Deep State, rather than cowering on this tiny planet, guarding those few old spaceships hidden underground."

He turned around to look at Musk. There was no excitement or agitation in his blue eyes, only the matter-of-factness of someone who had already calculated everything.

Musk was silent for about ten seconds.

Then he let out a long sigh, flipped his new left hand over to rest on his knee, and curled the corners of his mouth into a complex, ambiguous smile.

"I thought I was crazy enough for wanting to colonize Mars..."

"You guys even skipped Mars and went straight to claiming territory in the Orion Arm."

"You're not doing aerospace; you're building an interstellar empire."

"And..."

He paused, looked up at Joshua, his tone shifting from emotional to calm, even carrying a hint of self-deprecating sharpness.

"Thanks for satisfying another instinct trained into me by capitalism, besides starship colonization: telling me all this probably means I'm one step closer to being silenced."

"That depends on whether you have the qualifications to keep your life."

Joshua sat back down on the sofa, his right hand in a blue glove resting casually on the armrest, his left hand in a black glove hanging at his side. His tone was as flat as if he were evaluating an investment proposal.

Musk looked up, waiting for him to continue.

"Longevity Faction are sending people to silence you and Edward."

"If you can withstand their pursuit and find the secret base under the Hoover Dam during this time, then your Long Live Alliance will be qualified to hear my next instructions."

"If you die during this time, or fail to find that base..."

He pressed the fingertips of his blue glove down gently, leaving the sentence unfinished.

Musk did not ask for the second half of that sentence; he understood, no need to ask.

His mind automatically followed the chain of information Joshua had handed him:

This official from Tech Faction was not pressuring him with the unified will of the Deep State, but acting on behalf of one faction within the Deep State.

Longevity Faction wanted his life; Tech Faction was waiting to see if he could survive and find the target on his own before deciding whether to let him hear the next instructions.

This was essentially a test of ability.

If he could hold on, he could obtain more confidential intelligence from Joshua, the next path that Tech Faction was unwilling to explain directly but was willing to provide to him.

If he couldn't hold on, he wasn't worth being chosen by Tech Faction, and there was only one ending for knowing too many secrets.

Did he have any room to refuse?

No.

The Deep State could send someone casually who could pierce through underground concrete with lightning, take out over a hundred retired Navy SEALs, and dismantle his most secure communication system he was so proud of.

If this group was divided into Longevity Faction and Tech Faction, then he wasn't just walking a tightrope between two factions; he was already on the tightrope, and there was no net below.

But even so, he still had a line of defense in his heart:

The logic of Tech Faction trying to hold this entire galaxy in their palm and spread it across the entire Milky Way was actually running on the same orbit as his obsession as a rocket maniac, having spent the last few decades testing, blowing up, redesigning, and blowing up Starship again and again, from Zurich all the way to Mars.

Musk looked up at Joshua.

"Longevity Faction cannot wipe out the Long Live Alliance."

His voice was not loud, but every word was firm, like signing a contract with no way back.

Joshua stood up from the sofa, tightened his black glove, and clenched his fingers gently.

Then he looked at Musk and said calmly: "Then prove it to me."

Then a bolt of lightning struck down from the ceiling of the meeting room, a blue-white arc of light swallowing him whole, then contracting and disappearing.

Only a faint electric arc remained in the air, bursting like the head of a burnt match.

Musk sat alone on the sofa. There were no scorch marks on the coffee table, no cracks on the ceiling, as if no one had been there at all.

...

Inside the tent, Zhang Yi sat cross-legged on his sleeping bag, watching the dense scrolling notification logs on the system interface, the curve of his mouth rising higher and higher.

Joshua striking into the second basement level of the Starship Base with a bolt of lightning, taking out over a hundred retired special forces, and then sitting in Musk's private meeting room, chatting with him about the Orion Arm and the colonization plan for the entire Milky Way—after this set of operations landed, the incoming emotional points didn't stop.

Musk's own shock, the fear of those hundred armed men after waking up from their coma, the collective cognitive collapse of other employees at the Starship Base after seeing the incident report on the internal encrypted channel—the emotional fluctuations of hundreds of people poured into his account like opening a floodgate.

Final number: sixty thousand.

A stable income of sixty thousand, about what he had estimated.

Zhang Yi scrolled through the notification logs from beginning to end, confirming that no entry information had been missed, then leaned back against the tent support pole, stretched his legs out, and began to review the recent two waves of harvesting.

On Diana's side, the five hundred people at Casablanca Manor plus the Colt Association, the collective emotional explosion earned him one hundred thousand.

On Musk's side, the cognitive impact on the hundreds of people at the Starship Base plus the boss himself, earned another sixty thousand.

Two plays, one hundred and sixty thousand earned, not counting the small, scattered amounts of emotional points in between.

He thought carefully, and these two harvests had one thing in common: lots of people.

The five hundred armed dead soldiers at the estate plus the perimeter sentries and the elites of the Colt Association—the base number of people was there; on the Starship Base side, the hundred-plus tactical personnel plus the technical staff of the entire base were also gains piled up by headcounts.

Emotional points are the kind of thing where no matter how high the quality of a single individual is, it can't withstand the crushing weight of quantity.

The collapse of one person's worldview versus the collapse of five hundred people's worldviews—that's not the same magnitude of account.

He looked at the balance on the system interface: previously, ten thousand had been deducted for Joshua, five thousand for bionic construction units, twenty-five hundred for renting ion gloves, twenty-five hundred for renting tractor gloves, leaving one hundred and forty thousand.

Adding the one hundred thousand harvested from Diana's side and the sixty thousand harvested from Musk's side, minus the five thousand spent on fixing the Leo loophole, he now had one hundred and ninety-five thousand emotional points in hand.

Nearly two hundred thousand.

The wealthiest moment since transmigrating.

The feeling of having money was back.

He opened the system's currency exchange interface with almost no hesitation.

[Current exchange rate: 10,000 emotional points for 100,000 USD.]

[Host's current available balance: 195,000 points.]

[Confirm exchange?]

"Exchange one million, solve the housing problem first." Zhang Yi said concisely.

He had lived in the tent long enough; no matter how good the optical camouflage was, it was still a tent.

He wanted a real bed, a door that could be locked, and a water heater where he could stand and shower.

[Confirmed.]

[100,000 emotional points deducted, 1,000,000 USD transferred to the host's designated account.]

[The funds come with complete federal tax records and legitimate source documentation, which can be verified at any bank counter at any time.]

Zhang Yi looked at the bank card balance on the system interface: 1,000,000.00 USD, neat and clean.

In his previous life, what he earned in a month delivering food wasn't even enough to cover the tax on this number.

He stared at that number, suddenly shook his head, and laughed.

There was no self-deprecation in this laugh, only the relief of having finally turned things around after being crushed back and forth by reality.

When he first transmigrated, he was squatting at the entrance of a Los Angeles relief station, queuing with a group of homeless people for whole-wheat bread and low-fat milk, with an influencer livestreaming nearby shouting "God bless you."

At that time, he had zero emotional points in his pocket, and the most valuable thing on him was his sleeping bag.

Now, he was about to buy a villa, not with a loan, but in full.

After crawling out of the tent, he first pulled the invisible tent that had accompanied him for nearly a month from the grass, folded it, and stuffed it into the system's inventory.

Then, carrying the old backpack that only contained a change of clothes and a few bottles of mineral water, he left Silver Lake Park.

The Los Angeles real estate agent was someone he had arranged online.

The other party was a white woman in her forties with chestnut curly hair, wearing a gray professional suit. She was polite when they met.

Although her expression paused imperceptibly when she scanned his old T-shirt and semi-old backpack, it was quickly covered up by a professional smile.

It wasn't until she personally verified the million-dollar cash balance at the bank counter, with legitimate sources, complete tax records, and no traces of loans or guarantees, that the professional fake smile on her face was instantly replaced by another kind of extremely warm sincerity.

He looked at five houses in three days.

In the end, he chose a modern-style detached villa with a private pool in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles.

The house wasn't big—three bedrooms and two living rooms. The floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the city skyline of the Los Angeles basin, there were a few lemon trees in the backyard, and the garage could park two cars.

Paid in full, keys in hand, the paperwork was clean and efficient.

Then came the renovation, buying furniture, buying daily necessities, buying clothes.

A few days later, the new home was fully furnished.

He was wearing a newly bought casual shirt and soft-soled house slippers, standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room, watching the winding traffic of the Hollywood Hills and the silhouette of the distant mountains outside the window, holding a latte he had made himself with a newly bought espresso machine.

The taste was average, but at least he didn't have to drink filtered water from the park's public water fountain anymore.

The touch of the slippers on the solid wood floor felt more solid than any rental he had lived in in his previous life.

He let out a long breath, found the most comfortable position on the sofa, curled up, and brought up the system interface again.

And before he could finish enjoying the remaining warmth of his first cup of coffee, a change in the corner of the screen made him set the cup back down.