Resurrection Empire

Chapter 1545: Chapter 580: Long River of Trash Stars, Misfortune Never Comes Alone

Nowadays, the Marquis Zhenjiang Mansion and the Red Peak Earl Mansion are as close as one family across a narrow strait.

Although Marvell Louis was puzzled by the sudden request from the descendants of the Gao family, he ultimately did not set up barriers for the Red Peak Earl Mansion. After a brief consideration, he personally decided to agree to the matter.

However, despite the close relationship between the two families, even brothers need to settle accounts clearly. Marvell himself is getting old and doesn’t know when he might die.

Now he has also accepted Ren Zhong’s proposal, staying prepared for battle, with expenses in the Marquis Mansion growing ever larger.

Marvell also needs to leave more capital for his brother Bourbon, to prevent him from inheriting nothing but an empty shell if Marvell passes away unexpectedly.

Therefore, both parties engaged in rigorous negotiations at the table concerning the sale price of this junk planet, who would bear the transport costs, and the expenses for occupying the transport routes during transit.

Once the negotiations were concluded, and the final contract terms were presented to Marvell, he became even more puzzled and frowned as he said to his brother Bourbon beside him, "Something’s not right. Everyone knows that these non-renewable metals are already utterly obsolete. The Materials Institute of the Far Border Branch has long established a consensus, with technology having reached a bottleneck, unable to make any progress. Yet, they are still willing to offer a price one-tenth of new minerals. Moreover, it is reasonable for the Red Peak Earl Mansion to bear the transport costs, but the clearing costs of the junk star domain can offset some of the expenses for occupying the transport routes. The terms they’re offering are too generous."

Bourbon was also puzzled, "At the time, I had our negotiators just try offering a quote, and to my surprise, they barely had any objections and agreed with ease."

Marvell Louis grew increasingly bewildered, but unfortunately, Earl Red Blade was still "asleep" at the time; otherwise, he would have wanted to ask this good brother of his.

"Forget it, let’s leave it at that for now. Maybe the Red Peak Earl Mansion has earned a lot of money over the years. After all, the star systems controlled by brother Ren Zhong are limited in scale. They understand the difficulty we face with the massive expenses of war preparations, so they’re intentionally giving us some benefits."

Bourbon pondered for a moment, "Makes sense."

...

Elsewhere, the group of three smugglers also faced only minor setbacks under the acquisition efforts led by the Duke Wenle Mansion, but in the end, everything went smoothly.

Tang Tu, Mao Jin, and Wu You spent eight years crafting their junker personas, and this concept has long since taken root deeply, becoming ingrained.

Now, they have suddenly expanded their scale, no longer content with buying up bits of shoddy metal products wasted in multiple recycling cycles from inhabited, prosperous planets. Instead, they have set their sights on the metal junk planets viewed as eyesores and tumors by numerous governors under the Duke Mansions.

The higher the intensity of human activity, the more energy is consumed, and the more waste is produced. This fact has never changed throughout the ages.

Even in the technologically advanced Empire Core areas, they have not escaped this pattern.

Moreover, in the Empire Core, with superior technology and more robust production resources, humanity is no longer satisfied with merely developing planetary resources. Numerous Constant Star Wind Catchers orbit various stars at high latitudes to collect the plasma from stellar winds, especially hydrogen isotopes. They also gather elements with atomic weights ranging from low to high, with varying quantities.

This technique of capturing stellar wind almost provides the humans of the Empire with an inexhaustible supply of material resources.

As long as the stars do not perish, resources will not be exhausted.

Over long periods of iterative resource utilization, the elements from stellar wind ultimately transform into various metals and their isotopes with relatively high atomic weights, which then become true waste after multiple recycling cycles.

Millions of years ago, the Empire humans already figured out the concept of depositing waste in space.

After that, the junk planets naturally piled up more and more, growing larger and larger.

Later on, with the continuous improvement of metal recycling technology, junk planets composed of discarded metals were also subjected to multiple recycling cycles.

However, in the recent million years, as metal recycling technology hit a bottleneck and showed no progress, the junk planets surrounding many star domains, star clusters, in the gaps between star clusters, and outside of planet systems grew in number and became increasingly cumbersome.

The ever-growing number of junk planets created a more complex gravitational environment, affecting the stability of stellar gravity in the Empire Core area and even occasionally breeding disasters, requiring the expenditure of extensive resources for prevention and management.