Players Invade Cyberpunk-Chapter 896 - 290: Dog Town Reconstruction Project_2

2. Take a Gamble: Bet That the Nuclear Waste Leak Is Fake, Stay to Develop, Bet on a Promising Future for Taiping Continent

Leave...

Handz was unwilling to give up. After operating here for over a decade, leaving in such a disgraced manner would mean all his investments going to waste.

Staying meant having to step into the spotlight to face risks. Taiping Continent would no longer be the stagnant pond where he could stir up chaos in the shadows, but rather he would be subordinate, just a glove doing errands.

He tapped the table with his cigar.

"Maybe... this could be a good investment."

"But over in Cuba... I hope there's still time."

Having made his decision, Handz didn't stop. Instead, he immediately instructed his subordinates to find out what those Horizon Mercenaries were up to.

He was already one step behind Gago. To get back to the starting line, paying some price was unavoidable.

————

[Construction Task: Rebuild Dog Town]

[Task Background: The Netherworld Dog that occupied Dog Town has been driven out by brave warriors, removing this abscess. However, the mess left behind still needs someone to clean up, allowing Taiping Continent to regain its prosperity from ten years ago.]

[Task Introduction: Please log on to the Horizon Corporation website—[Dog Town] page, assemble construction teams, choose engineering projects, participate in the construction activities...]

[Task Reward: Completion points rewards will be settled individually based on the completion degree of each block.]

[Note: Due to the large scale of this construction task, players are advised to hire local NPCs to participate in the construction to speed up the process.]

Unlike the construction task at Stone Ridge Mountain, where it was unclaimed land where you could divide it up and start the work however you want after contracting.

But Dog Town had a predecessor development project, with large stretches of hard concrete buildings standing among it, making it difficult for large-scale construction machinery to enter the site. Furthermore, surrounding engineering projects need consideration, making the construction difficulty significantly higher than outside.

The most important aspect is the financial investment.

The factory area uses three-story steel-structure factory buildings, and without building tall buildings, the foundation only needs to be sturdy and hard. The major cost lies in industrial production equipment.

While Dog Town mainly consists of commercial buildings, it's near the sea and prone to sinking, requiring strong foundation support with deep foundation piles and tall buildings, making the construction a substantial challenge, needing a huge influx of cash to get it running.

No other enterprise of the same scale as Horizon Corporation could possibly lead such a large-scale reconstruction project.

But Horizon Corporation is different.

Because other companies' money is held by the European Community, and they do not have the right to issue currency.

But Lin Miao indeed has the authority to issue currency.

The money in the players' hands is merely electronic currency named the same as Orokin, with an exchange rate of 1:1, backed by Lin Miao's personal credibility and the productivity of the players' enterprises.

As long as the outflow of this electronic currency from Horizon Corporation's scale does not exceed the Orokin reserve in Lin Miao's hands, and keeping a trade surplus controlled, Lin Miao can completely turn a blind eye within the permitted total economic output.

And rebuilding Dog Town, or rather rebuilding Taiping Continent, is a perfect opportunity.

Firstly, during the construction of Stone Ridge Mountain and the Big Sur industrial zone, players generally have developed a considerable level of civil engineering skills, perfectly capable of acting as the backbone of the construction teams.

Secondly, Lin Miao, while accumulating card draw points, has also drawn out quite some useful recycling technologies.

Including but not limited to:

[Construction Waste Recycled for Cement Production]

[Biomass Recycling for Composting]

[Flash-Melted Steel Refining]

[Nutrient Soil Improvement Agent]

And more like [Thermal Decomposition of Plastics], [Carbon Sequestration Starch], etc.

All of these are fairly mature technologies with almost no drawbacks besides high electricity consumption.

The good news is, in the cyber era, anything may be lacking, but there's no shortage of electricity.

Even if the reactor beneath Dog Town becomes unusable, there's still a thorium floating ship shot down by Hansen resting inside the stadium.

Long before Lin Miao entered Dog Town, Stone Ridge Mountain was constantly expanding production, establishing numerous waste recycling plants and desulfurization thermal power plants, drawing nutrition daily from the mountain of millions of tons of garbage on the edge of Night City.

In this world, nothing exists without utilization value; even a pile of excrement has its uses.

The trash left behind from human habitation actually has considerable utilitarian value, not garbage at all.

The main obstacle in waste recycling is classification, but in an era of intelligent automation, that isn't an issue at all.

The current situation arises fully because companies are unwilling to invest in R&D for environmental technology; even if someone achieves results, they receive no investment because they have readily available extraction technologies, so why recycle those wastes?

Isn't that merely increasing costs?

Just like factory waste water — why should I spend money to treat it?

Randomly dispose of it somewhere; it's society as a whole bearing the cost anyway.

Whether it's ten, a hundred, or a thousand times, so what?

Not a single penny is coming out from my pocket.

Capital will schemingly find the fastest and simplest method to enhance its own value, anything slowing down the process is unnecessary.

Now, the sins they've committed are instead favoring Lin Miao, obtaining vast amounts of industrial raw materials at near-zero cost, even including a large amount of high-value rare metals.

Lin Miao's [Vegetable Basket Project] has also officially entered the production phase after more than half a year's construction and cultivation.

It's not just raw vegetables, meat, but an abundance of processed [Artificial Industrial Foods] and household goods.

He aims for complete self-sufficiency.

And now, all the early investments are reaching the point where initial results become visible.