2026-08-15 05:06:09Chapter 7: The Embargo Shattered
At 8:00 AM, the glass-walled board room of the Regional Banking Consortium sat in suffocating silence.
At the head of the long mahogany table sat Long Tian, the patriarch of the Long Conglomerate, a silver-haired man whose cold, calculated decisions had crushed dozens of rival corporations over thirty years. Flanking him were his son, Long Wei, whose face was pale and dark-circled from a sleepless night, and six senior directors of the province's largest raw material conglomerates.
"The border incident was a security breach, nothing more," Long Tian spoke, his voice deep and deliberate, cutting through the low murmur in the room. "Han Qing is using illegal third-party smuggling channels to hide his assets. But without raw materials, a hole in a mountain is just a tomb."
Long Tian slid a signed document across the table.
"As of five minutes ago, all member suppliers have signed the unified restriction contract," Long Tian continued, a cold smile touching his lips. "No concrete, no structural steel, no electrical wiring, and no industrial filtration units will be sold, transported, or delivered to the Western Valley. We will dry him out until he runs out of cash and comes begging to surrender his land deeds."
Long Wei leaned back, a bitter, vicious smirk returning to his face. "He thought he was clever, vanishing those trucks. Let's see him build a fortress out of bare dirt."
Meanwhile, forty miles away at the Western Valley Iron Mine, the mood was tense.
Su Lin stood near the perimeter gates, watching three heavy commercial cement mixers turn around and drive away. The drivers had refused to offload, citing sudden supply contract revocations from their parent company.
"That's the fifth supplier today," Su Lin said, walking briskly into Shaft 1 where Han and Old Man Chen were inspecting the lower tunnels. "Long Tian's embargo is total. Every major concrete plant and steel distributor within five hundred miles has blacklisted our accounts."
Old Man Chen cursed under his breath, kicking a loose rock. "Without forty thousand tons of industrial-grade composite concrete, we can't seal the outer thermal barrier for Shafts 4 through 12! The whole construction schedule is dead in the water!"
Han didn't panic. He walked slowly to the center of Shaft 1's massive subterranean staging cavern, a cavern nearly three hundred feet wide and fifty feet high.
"Su Lin, call all our construction foremen," Han instructed smoothly. "Tell them to pull every crew inside the central mountain cavern and clear a hundred-meter clearance perimeter."
Su Lin blinked. "Clear a perimeter? For what?"
"For our raw materials," Han said.
Ten minutes later, over two hundred engineers, welders, and foremen stood along the elevated catwalks of Shaft 1, whispering in confusion. The ground below was completely clear.
Han walked into the center of the floor alone. He closed his eyes and summoned the Level 3 System Interface floating in his vision:
[Subspace Crafting Engine: Active]
[Selected Recipe: Molecular Composite Blast Concrete (Grade S)]
[Required Materials: Standard Stone Aggregate + Spatial Mana-Alloy Trace]
[Conversion Cost: 10,000 Trade Points per 20,000 Tons]
[Execute Mass Synthesis & Extraction?]
System: Craft & Materialize.
[Trade Points Expended: 10,000]
[Trade Points Remaining: 10,000]
[Synthesis Complete! Dispensing Materials...]
RUMBLE!
A low, thunderous vibration shook the entire granite structure of the mountain.
Before the eyes of the two hundred stunned workers on the catwalks, the air in the center of the cavern warped and twisted violently. A massive, shimmering rift of dark blue light expanded across the cavern floor.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Block after giant block of jet-black, metallic-sheened structural composite material materialized out of thin air, stacking neatly in massive, perfectly uniform rows that reached almost to the cavern ceiling.
The air in the cavern instantly filled with the heavy, rich scent of freshly processed, ultra-dense composite material.
Old Man Chen dropped his digital tablet. It shattered on the metal catwalk, but he didn't even notice. He sprinted down the iron stairs like a man half his age, rushing up to the nearest stack of material. He pulled a heavy testing hammer from his belt and slammed it against the dark surface with all his strength.
CLANG!
The heavy steel hammer bounced back so hard it nearly tore out of Chen’s grip, leaving not even a microscopic scratch on the dark block.
"What... what kind of material is this?!" Old Man Chen stammered, his hands shaking as he touched the cold, vibration-absorbing surface. "The density... the stress resistance... this isn't commercial concrete! This is orbital-grade bunker plating! Where did this come from?!"
The hundreds of workers along the catwalks erupted into shocked shouts and chaotic murmurs.
"Did you see that?!"
"It just materialized out of thin air!"
"Mr. Han isn't just rich... he's connected to top-tier black-tech!"
Han walked up beside Old Man Chen, his expression serene.
"Old Man Chen, is this enough material to seal the thermal barriers?" Han asked softly.
"Enough?!" Chen shouted, laughing like a madman. "Boy, with twenty thousand tons of this composite, we don't just build thermal barriers, we can build a subterranean citadel that can withstand direct seismic shattering! We don't need the Long Group's trash suppliers! We’re fifty years ahead of them!"
Han turned to Su Lin, who was staring at the mountain of black alloy-concrete with her hand over her mouth.
"Su Lin," Han said, his voice cold and precise. "Leak a picture of our raw material stockpiles to the financial press. Let Long Tian know that his embargo didn't even slow us down for a single minute."
Su Lin looked at Han, a rare, fierce spark of admiration shining in her eyes. "Consider it done."
[Fortress Progress Update: Subterranean Outer Wall Material Secured!]
[System Reward: Base Defense Rating Increased to Level 2!]
[Trade Point Engine: Generating +500 Passive Points Daily!]
[Global Cataclysm Countdown: 178 Days, 18 Hours, 30 Minutes.]
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