Chapter 68

Originally it was a banquet hosted by Steel King Huo Ke Li, and he should have been the main.

But after Su Qing arrived, the main character of the banquet instantly changed.

Those rich nobles gathered around him, either toasting Su Qing or shaking hands to thank him for saving their lives, all saying that if he ever needed anything, they would be happy to help.

Su Qing received them one by one with a light smile, and only left the manor to return to Lu Si's house after eleven at night.

Afterward, he declined all banquets and focused entirely on company affairs.

With Su Qing's current reputation, registering a company was extremely easy—just a word and relevant staff would come to handle the paperwork.

After the company was registered, he gathered Jie Ke, Fedeli, and others stationed on the Morris at the port, and simply announced the upcoming plans.

Regarding the crew switching to oil work, Fedeli and the other sailors initially found it hard to accept, but seeing their boss's firm attitude, they could only nod.

From his memory, Su Qing learned that Arkansas, Texas (TX), and California (CA) all had undiscovered oil fields.

They each calculated the distances from Niu Yue to the three states: over 2,200 kilometers, over 2,500 kilometers, and over 4,000 kilometers.

Following the principle of near before far, he chose Arkansas.

Since the target was set, Su Qing didn't delay, taking Lu Si, Jie Ke and other employees onto the train to Arkansas.

After seven days and nights on trains and cars, the group finally arrived at a small town called Magnolia in Arkansas.

After reaching the destination, with funds nearly exhausted, Su Qing could only take out his hidden jewelry, exchange it for a large sum, and buy the entire area of the oil field from the farmers.

Afterward, Su Qing spent money to buy a set of drilling equipment and began his drilling life.

Due to technical limitations, in the first half month they drilled dozens of holes but still saw no sign of oil.

Fortunately, Su Qing did not give up, and finally struck oil five days later.

After striking oil and confirming the location, Su Qing immediately prepared to extract it.

But extracting oil is a technical job; Su Qing didn't know how, nor did his men—at most they could just drill.

So he had no choice but to spend heavily to hire some technical talent.

During this process, oil merchants kept coming to his door, wanting to buy his land to extract oil, but he refused them all.

In his memory, this oil field was the largest-producing oil field in Mei Jian during WWII, and selling it was out of the question.

Many oil merchants came eagerly and left disappointed, but some were unwilling to give up, thinking of playing dirty—yet mere ordinary people were no match for Su Qing, who gave them a sound thrashing and sent them all to meet their maker.

Thus, with Su Qing's deterrent methods and his strong network, the oil field soon calmed down and officially began production on August 1.

After selling the produced oil, Su Qing finally made money.

Having earned money and reaped a harvest, Su Qing immediately took Lu Si on a spur-of-the-moment trip, running from Arkansas to California and Texas.

After reaching the two states, he first spent a few days playing with Lu Si, then, according to his memory, spent money to buy the entire area of the oil field.

After finishing those, he did not choose to immediately extract oil, but instead accompanied Lu Si on a playful return to Arkansas.

In the days that followed, Su Qing took no further action, focusing on managing the oil field.

And so, time arrived at December.

However, at noon that day, in the Arkansas branch office of Umbrella...

"This is true, but no one believes me."

Fedeli looked noticeably thinner, but his eyes were bright and full of spirit, his vigor far improved over before.

Su Qing sat in a chair, holding coffee, his eyes flashing with a probing light as he said, "You said a huge tentacle rose from the water and swept away all your cargo."

Fedeli's eyes dimmed as he seemed to recall that hard time: "Back then I went bankrupt and sold the Mosli because I lost that shipment."

Saying this, his expression returned to normal, and he said gratefully, "Fortunately I met you, boss; otherwise I still couldn't have paid off my debts, and could follow you..."

"Alright, tell me the whole process in detail!" Su Qing hadn't expected that a casual chat would yield such a gain; he waved his hand to cut off the flattery and urged him on.

"Okay." Fedeli nodded, thought a moment, and began: "It was last November; I was hauling sixty head of cattle... On a stormy night, the crew were busy, only I saw a tentacle like an octopus's stretch from the sea, and in just a few minutes it devoured all the cattle."

Su Qing, recalling movies he'd seen, found several similar ones, but having never seen the real thing, he felt uncertain.

"Perhaps I should go take a look."

This thought flashed in his mind; he lowered his brows and saw before him the information: Primal Bloodline (already devoured and merged high-grade vampire bloodline, ancestral vampire source blood, currently devouring and merging perfect source blood, progress 95%).

In November, the fusion progress of the perfect source blood had already reached 95%, but for some reason it stalled at 95% and wouldn't move.

After waiting over a month, Su Qing felt anxious but had no clue.

Now was a good chance to go out and see if he could find a way to solve this problem.

Thinking this, Su Qing acted on it, directly finding Lu Si and telling her his idea of going out for a walk.

At first Lu Si was unwilling to agree, but Su Qing's teaching prowess had recently grown; a four‑character output succeeded in putting her to sleep.

After several more confirmations of location and time with Fedeli, Su Qing then left Arkansas alone.

Along the way he first took a train, then rode a horse, and finally took a boat to reach the San Francisco Peninsula on California's west coast.

After the arduous journey, Su Qing was exhausted; he first found a room and rested for two days.

Only on the third day did he get up, spend a lot of money to hire a fishing boat with a terrible reputation and a crew of scoundrels, and set sail from the port.

According to Fedeli's account, it was on a night in a certain area of the Pacific that they encountered a huge tentacle.

That area was three hundred kilometers from the San Francisco Peninsula.

The fishing boat ran nonstop for five days, only reaching the sea area Fedeli mentioned on the sixth night.

"This looks like nothing, just a few scattered reefs." Su Qing stood at the bow, his pupils contracting as he quickly scanned the surrounding waters, but after half a day nothing strange occurred.

After thinking it over and still having no clue, he simply waved his hand; the crew, who had been waiting behind him, immediately pushed the two head of cattle they had prepared into the water.

Splash—

As soon as the cattle hit the water, they immediately began to swim.

Now in the Pacific, with nothing but those scattered reefs to rest on, the cattle, after swimming around and realizing this, began to madly swim toward the reefs.

The two cattle swam quickly, reaching the reefs in just a few minutes.

But suddenly, Su Qing noticed something odd.

The reef stone moved.

Under his gaze, the seawater around the reef stone frenziedly sank, then formed a vortex about ten meters wide.

Two beef cattle had no chance to react; they fell into the vortex and vanished instantly.

"Damn!" A bad feeling rose in his heart; Su Qing stepped back behind the crowd.

"What is that?"

"Hurry up, get the boat moving!"

"......"

The crew on deck saw this, their legs went weak, and they all shouted in alarm.

But it was already too late; a tentacle shot out from underwater, sweeping sideways and directly overturning the fishing boat.

Meanwhile, Su Qing, quick-eyed and quick-handed, had already leapt onto the lifeboat.