Wasteland Border Inspector - Chapter 939

Chapter 939: Chapter 300: Temporal Aberration, Life Forbidden Zone! (Part 2)

Lu Zheng also glanced slightly, clearly curious about how he would respond.

As they say, “reveal your true nature,” there’s no right or wrong answer to this question.

Whether indifferent, absolutely confident, or making excuses to divert the topic, it all reflects a person’s fundamental character.

“Commander Wang just mentioned the word ‘sincerity,’ this is my sincerity to the corps.”

Cheng Ye lightly tapped his finger on the table, speaking calmly, “For me, making money has never been difficult. The hard part is persuading others to believe I can make money and be willing to share it with them.”

“So you want to bet with the corps, using the future profits from your economic planning in exchange for our support now?”

Wang Rui smirked, “With all due respect, what you offer is merely an elusive future, while we provide tangible resources. These contributions seem hardly equal, don’t you think?”

If it were three days ago, Cheng Ye would surely have retorted whether any other satellite cities could currently offer the same level of tangible support?

But sitting at the negotiation table now, those retorts were meaningless.

Since Wang Rui put it this way, he obviously wanted more solid stakes to drive the negotiation into deeper layers of interest exchange.

Cheng Ye chuckled, immediately switching his tone, no longer discussing the nebulous future but diving into tangible profit distribution.

It’s both difficult and easy.

From the support ratio of military expenses, placement policies for personnel, to the team’s construction plans, Cheng Ye’s deep understanding of the corps’ internal composition left Wang Rui and Lu Zheng secretly amazed.

The three of them dove into increasingly detailed discussions, with initial probing and observation gradually turning into pragmatic negotiations and the settling of specific issues.

They even designed terms for wagering on the winter infection wave rating; the better the corps performed, the higher the funding.

Before anyone realized it, three hours had quietly slipped by.

When the meeting room door opened again, dusk was near. Returning from a meeting in the Buffer Zone, Liu Bi was stretching in a nearby open area.

Seeing Wang Rui and Lu Zheng walk out with smiles, he paused briefly before approaching them slowly.

“Commander Wang, long time no see.”

“Inspector Liu!” Wang Rui’s smile broadened, extending his hand for a virtual shake, “I heard you’re being reassigned to Dongping Town to oversee affairs. Congratulations!”

Although they knew each other, their acquaintance was clearly not deep.

After a few simple pleasantries, Wang Rui turned to Cheng Ye, “Inspector Cheng, I hope the consensus we reached today will lay a solid foundation for in-depth cooperation in the future.”

“I also look forward to it.”

Cheng Ye nodded slightly, continuously watching the two board a military pickup, the vehicle gradually disappearing down the asphalt road. Only then did he breathe a sigh of relief.

“Didn’t reach an agreement?” Liu Bi stood by, curious about the reaction.

“Not exactly, let’s say we reached halfway. Undoubtedly, some more rounds of negotiation are needed to finalize it. I didn’t expect the Heavy Machinery Faction to be this complex, but it’s given me some new insights.”

Cheng Ye shook his head, turned around, and spoke in a somewhat reflective tone.

Previously viewing the relationship between the Satellite City and the corps with a modern perspective indeed appeared overly simplistic.

The two are not merely simple collaborations but deeply intertwined symbiotic relationships.

Since they are intertwined, vicarious liabilities are inevitable: if something happens in Dapo Town, the Heavy Machinery Faction bears responsibility; conversely, if the Heavy Machinery Faction encounters difficulties, the Satellite City cannot stay unaffected.

Most of the questions Wang Rui asked, Cheng Ye could provide at least a passable response after brief thinking, yet inevitably, a few sharp questions left him momentarily stumped.

“Brother B, he asked me a critical question.”

Cheng Ye paused, then said, “He asked if someone within the Heavy Machinery Faction supports me while others explicitly oppose me, how would I deal with those who oppose me?”

“Of course, send them as far away as possible!”

Liu Bi answered straightforwardly, “The corps’ reformation is arranged by the higher-ups and endorsed by the Elders. We’re not pleading with the corps to station Shelter City. It’s normal to have dissenters, but in handling them? Are we supposed to pamper them like ancestors?”

“Haha, that’s something we can say privately but certainly not to Wang Rui and the others, right?”

Cheng Ye couldn’t help but smile; indeed, it was superfluous to ask Liu Bi this.

If it were strictly business, merely letting the corps handle the Satellite City’s defense work, there’s no need to worry about internal factional differences.

Even if it ended with the lowest-ranking corps, he was confident in slowly cultivating it to stand out.

However, the key issue lies in that he desires the corps to undertake tasks way beyond its normal duties.

For example, the core goal: opening up the waterways and connecting the Lin River upstream and downstream routes.

Yue Ye, though having navigated it several times back in the day, paid a thousand lives in casualties at an enormous cost.

Thereafter, it was abandoned due to being jointly suppressed by the surrounding Shelter Cities and the exorbitant risk of the route itself, not to mention increasing internal conflict.

The Heavy Machinery Faction is inherently one of the conservative factions. Even if tempted by the potential profits post-route opening, they are deeply wary of the risks involved.

Adding to this, with Dapo Town located by the river, and Dongping Town being the Satellite City’s outermost area, this winter’s danger level is bound to be higher than other satellite cities.

Getting a conservative faction to voluntarily take risks appears nearly impossible.

However, Ding Yishan did not choose to start with the High-Tech Faction without reason, with Wang Rui and Lu Zheng being prime examples.

Despite the two being in the conservative faction, they possess considerable ambition.

Especially Lu Zheng, not everyone can get the terrifying existence of Tan Ming’s assistance after being exposed to an A-level infection source.