Chapter 441

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Protagonist:

Chen Yi

Tibetan Buddhism's influence abroad is greater than in China; many people, when Buddhism is mentioned, first think of the red lama robes and the solemn, dignified Living Buddhas.

The Living Buddha is roughly the most powerful weapon Tibetan Buddhism has to hold its ground and grow.

Chen Yi doesn't understand Buddhism, but when speaking of it, he has no good feeling for those monks who sit and debate while wasting grain; toward Living Buddhas he maintains a baseline respect — respect for the faith does not equal respect for the individual, but from another angle, a Living Buddha who can inspire respect naturally elevates the faith's stature.

People are always willing to believe what they want to believe; the same goes for Living Buddhas.

China has 1,700 Living Buddhas, far more than people imagine, even more than the number of abbots in Chinese Buddhism; they live without worry and possess stronger moral and spiritual attributes, fully able to manifest a stronger sense of morality and spiritual education.

As long as 100 Living Buddhas do what they ought to do, people will willingly believe in Buddhism's beauty and ignore the 1,600 who are merely supported and do nothing.

The government actually has the same advantage: if 10% of them can maintain above-baseline morality and spiritual attributes, and 90% can achieve wu-wei governance, a harmonious society can be expected — of course, this is hard to happen unless most government officials share a unified faith.

A world of chaotic faith can also be understood as a free world, at least a relatively free world.

By comparison, the unity of faith in Tibetan areas benefits Chen Yi; he only needs to contact one reputable Living Buddha to easily find faithful willing to attend the ceremony, without having to desperately run ads and whip up propaganda like in Jiangning.

In the economically underdeveloped Tibetan areas, what limits ceremony attendance is transportation; this is no different from the West Continent's situation. When conditions permit, the faithful, who have few entertainments, are very willing to attend all kinds of ceremonies, as seen in the festive atmosphere of Tibetan areas every year.

"Creating" about three more Divine Art Knights requires a gathering of roughly 300,000 to 600,000 people, which Chen Yi cannot organize himself, and the Chen Family's power in the west is near zero, so he entrusted his paternal cousin Chen Ye in Xijing to inquire with relevant departments. Given his age and fame, no Living Buddha would give him treatment comparable to Jiangning, especially those Great Living Buddhas who can organize hundreds of thousands; but if he opens an "introduction letter from the relevant department," that is simply an Imperial Sword that makes even Buddhas ascend — no Living Buddha would dare give him the cold shoulder.

While pulling strings in Xijing, the 50,000 tons of ore were also fully unloaded at Jiangbei Port; the Yin Sen Family's Knights worked hard 20 hours a day, as admirable as workers voluntarily doing overtime — everyone's eyes are on the future, and only this mindset lets them work without complaint or regret.

The fast unloading owes much to the Japanese's hard work and careful design at the port; if it were the old Jiangbei Wharf, just the traffic lights on the road would be unbearable; only the constant flow on dedicated lanes can greatly increase transport speed and solve the bottleneck during unloading.

During this period, Chen Yi supplied the West Continent with another 10,000 tons of fuel and over 3,000 tons of arms, including 40 tanks. The arms were obtained by Mo Shaoqiu; the fuel was peeled from Liu Shouyi's hide. The contract price from back then, calculated to today, is only 3,300 yuan, while the market price has soared to 4,200 yuan; for every 10,000 tons of fuel Liu Shouyi sells, he loses nearly ten million, regretting it so much his skin is about to burst.

He had no choice but to use the method of letting the parent company take the loss, and signed a new contract with Southeast Oil and Gas Company, shifting all the loss outward; but doing so, a slight check from above would reveal the problem — only Liu Shouyi can't afford to care about that anymore.

With miscellaneous matters settled, the Knights went to the Martial Arts Hall as temporary instructors, awaiting the Tibetan Buddhism ceremony; Chen Yi separately invited the Jiangning Bank Presidents of the domestic Four Major Banks, demanding loans collateralized with "high-grade platinum ore."

Apart from the Spanish colonial South Africa period, when natural platinum was exposed on the surface, today's Earth no longer has dedicated platinum mines. All the world's platinum group metals are derivative ores of other metal deposits, with content relative to ore below one part per million; high-grade platinum ore simply does not exist, so the four Bank Presidents took Chen Yi for a liar and braggart, all unwilling to come.

However, they still came.

Anyone wanting to operate on Chen Yi's turf in Jiangning must at least not offend the Chen Family, especially the Chen Family at the height of its power. In an official-centric society, Chen Yi pinching a bank is even easier than a bank pinching an enterprise. For example, bank auction prices are often controlled by a few insiders; if Chen Yi speaks, he can immediately make all a bank's auction items fail to sell, generating countless non-performing loans.

Precisely because of this, the four not-so-harmonious Bank Presidents secretly met before coming to the wharf and agreed on a minimum collateral amount — in their thinking, even if Chen Yi piled a bunch of rocks there, they'd still provide a few tens of millions in loans just for show.

The Bank of China and Agricultural Bank didn't even bring an ore appraisal expert, adopting a "take the money or take my life" posture, going alone to the meeting. Construction Bank and Industrial and Commercial Bank were slightly better, each having a secretary-looking person standing by for appearances, but facing the mountain-high ore piles, neither mentioned inspection, let alone loans.

The four arriving together was a silent protest; Chen Yi had no time to waste on them. After three sentences of pleasantries, he said himself: "My ore mainly contains copper, gold, and platinum, plus some tin, lead, and zinc; tin quantity is relatively high, lead and zinc aren't very suitable for refining. Total 50,000 tons, platinum content over 5 tons, gold content over 1.5 tons, copper content at least 10,000 tons; you decide how to loan appropriately."

The Bank Presidents didn't believe it at all, but they didn't voice belief or disbelief. Agricultural Bank's Liang Xingzhang spoke first: "50,000 tons is too much; we can't swallow it."

Bank of China's Miao Xingzhang immediately followed: "Indeed, with Q2 ending, even if a loan is approved it'll take a while; better to smelt into gold and platinum, that's easier to handle."

By principle, any bank loan first sends people to appraise the collateral's value, then signs the contract in the office; a Bank President showing up at the dinner table once is already good. This time, four Bank Presidents personally rolled up their sleeves; besides the Chen Family's prestige, the main reason was fear that subordinates couldn't withstand the pressure.

If some guy wanting promotion went crazy and agreed to Chen Yi's request, they'd have a hard time speaking up later.

Chen Yi knew their worries, stretched out a hand, and smiled: "I see you didn't bring appraisal personnel today; how about this — temporarily hire someone now to appraise these ores."

"No need, no need." Miao Xingzhang shook his head repeatedly: "Mr. Chen, honestly, we do want to lend to you, but lending isn't worthwhile. Never mind that we have no quota right now; even if we did, inspecting 50,000 tons of ore isn't a one-or-two-day matter."

Listening to him, it sounded like he was being considerate for Chen Yi, but the last sentence gave it away — still the same delaying tactic.

Agricultural Bank's Liang Xingzhang immediately seconded; the remaining two hesitated slightly but were secretly pinched by Miao Xingzhang, recalled the united-front talking points, and also seconded.

Seeing them like this, Chen Yi simply laid it bare: "I don't want to smelt the ore now, so I truly must trouble you; actually the quantity isn't large — 5 tons of platinum is 1.5 billion, 1.5 tons of gold about 400 million, 10,000 tons of copper just under 500 million, total 2.5 billion; you jointly lend me 2 billion and that's it."

Chen Yi just wants to tie the banks to his chariot, so he's willing to pay interest. If it were empty talk, the Four Major Banks together couldn't give the Chen Family 100 million, and he'd still owe them a favor; but flip it, if he borrows 1 billion from them, Old Master Yang Bailao's words carry 1 billion weight, and the borrowing favor easily offsets in the repayment favor.

Miao Xingzhang sucked in a cold breath, thinking: your appetite is truly huge. The other three simply watched their noses with their eyes and their hearts with their noses, pretending to know nothing.

Chen Yi looked, showed displeasure: "You're too lazy to even do an appraisal?"

"Where would that be."

"How could that be!"

Liang Xingzhang cleared himself: "It's not that we won't look; there's not enough time."

"I'll wait; you go find people." Chen Yi waved his hand, and Lu Xiong brought a Grand Master Chair.

The four had no choice, conferred, and dispatched Construction Bank Liu Xingzhang's secretary to hire smelting experts.

Chen Yi narrowed his eyes, entered a meditation state, not even knowing when the experts arrived.

After a while, a senior engineer from Jiangsu Nonferrous Metals General Corporation shouted out, then was suppressed by his leader.

The four Bank Presidents immediately joined the inquiry circle and fell into intense ideological struggle.

Platinum content of one in ten thousand is over a hundred times that of ordinary mines. The senior engineer guaranteed emphatically: "With ore like this, we'd have struck it rich long ago; this is the best-quality platinum ore I've ever seen."

Miao Xingzhang carefully asked: "Is it from China?"

"Never heard of it."

"Then... could it be fake?" Before him stood mountains of piled ore; no need to say, it was obvious.

The senior engineer pinched a piece of ore, looked left and right, finally said: "I've never seen platinum ore faked."

Miao Xingzhang's heart stirred, asked: "Meaning, you don't know if these ores are real or fake?"

"The one-in-ten-thousand platinum content won't be wrong. If it's all this quality, then one-in-ten-thousand platinum can be refined."

"What about gold and copper?" Liang Xingzhang intercepted to ask.

"About the same."

They still dared not decide, so requested continued appraisal; Construction Bank Liu Xingzhang brought his secretary to dig around the ore piles, selecting ore from different spots for the engineer to appraise.

Until dusk, Miao Xingzhang exhaled, smiled: "Mr. Chen, how about we stop here for today?"

"Bright as day, what's the rush." Chen Yi pointed overhead; lights bright as hundreds of bald heads bathing — car headlights — already illuminated the mining area down to the last detail.

"Still have matters at home."

"Once the loan is settled, I'll personally take you back." Chen Yi blocked the road, speaking in an overbearing tone: "Rest assured, I won't force loans on you. I'll make sure you're satisfied first, then I'll lend only if you volunteer. So feel free to have someone inspect the ore—no need to mention pulling strings."

He's just a young man; how many people could pull strings to the point of making the Chen Family suffer?

The four bank presidents gritted their teeth and went back to conduct the tests. A unified loan of several billion yuan isn't something you can just arrange on a whim.

They were busy for three days, delaying several important loans.

Other merchants pressed them hard as well, and in the end the appraisal was hastily concluded, granting Chen Yi a unified loan of 1.2 billion RMB—300 million each, which made Bank President Miao wince.

Chen Yi immediately wired the money to Germany to order new mining machinery.

An untapped open-pit mine—almost every additional machine meant additional output.

... (Unfinished. If you enjoy this work, welcome to Qidian (qidian. com) to cast recommendation votes and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation.)