49: Chapter 49 Six Million Tons of Reserves

He took a bottle of frozen mineral water from the space, which he had generated using the Synthesis and Decomposition Furnace to create a low-temperature freeze. He gulped it down in one breath, then took out several more bottles to drench his entire body, immediately feeling much less hot. With a huge surprise to motivate him, his whole body was full of energy, and he immediately began the great task of digging. He circled around the edge of the ore layer, the expression on his face growing more excited. Then, he descended vertically to the bottom of the ore layer. At this point, he had a rough estimate of the reserves of this titanium concentrate; conservatively, the ore reserves here were over six million tons, which could fully be called a massive mine.

Six million tons of titanium concentrate—if sold as ore, calculated at the recent international trading price of two hundred us dollars per ton, that would be 1.2 billion us dollars. Converted into huaxia currency at an exchange rate of 6.5, that would be... 7.8 billion huaxia currency! With extraction costs near zero, this meant Cao Xiao had picked up 7.8 billion huaxia currency for free. Even if he couldn't manufacture the atomic energy reactor, just selling this ore would allow him to buy countless amounts of grain to replenish his energy.

This was only the price of the ore; if the ore were smelted into metal, the value would increase several times over. Because the industrial smelting cost of titanium concentrate is very high, plus the manufacturer's profit, the price of the finished metal is even higher. However, Cao Xiao didn't need any smelting costs—or rather, the cost was so low it could be almost ignored—because smelting ore with the Synthesis and Decomposition Furnace didn't involve many complex processes. It had multiple functions that could completely separate the elements in the mineral at once to form elemental substances. The most energy-efficient method among them was superthermal decomposition. The Synthesis and Decomposition Furnace could generate high-temperature environments below one billion degrees, which is the upper limit of the highest temperatures inside stars in the universe. The temperature at the center of the sun is fifteen million degrees, and humans have created high temperatures of 510 million degrees in laboratories using nuclear fusion reactors. Of course, humans cannot yet master or utilize such high temperatures, and nuclear fusion reactors remain in the theoretical experimental stage in laboratories. Super-temperature decomposition of minerals doesn't need to reach one billion degrees; heating the ore to a certain temperature can break the stable chemical bonds between atoms, causing them to appear in an elemental state without further chemical reactions. Under the influence of gravity, they turn into liquids where similar elements gather and different ones layer, allowing pure single metals to be obtained through classified extraction.

In addition to super-temperature decomposition, the Synthesis and Decomposition Furnace also had mineral decomposition methods such as optical frequency decomposition, radiation decomposition, and vibration decomposition. The metals obtained were purer than those from high-temperature decomposition, but the energy consumed was not something he could currently afford. Even for high-temperature decomposition, he had to control the temperature carefully; otherwise, operating the Synthesis and Decomposition Furnace at its maximum temperature once would exhaust his current full energy supply.

The volume of several million tons of titanium concentrate wasn't that large. Generally, iron ore with a grade of thirty percent has a density of around 4.8, and titanium concentrate is even denser. The volume of these six million tons of ore was at most over one million cubic meters, which the space could completely accommodate. It was truly getting unbearably hot; if he stayed here any longer, his body would start to dehydrate. So, he stopped overthinking and began collecting the ore while releasing the Lava Stone from the space to fill the void.

After taking all the ore into the space, it only filled the collection space and a quarter of the processing space. The amount of ore obtained was slightly more than estimated, totaling over 7.2 million tons. The Lava Stone in the space had been completely emptied, so he didn't need to find a place to dump it anymore.

Panting, he went up to the wine cellar and used that five-meter-sided cube of Lava Stone to seal the entrance. He sighed inwardly at how poor his physical fitness was; he couldn't handle even a bit of heavy exertion. From now on, he had to exercise every day or go learn martial arts, which could not only strengthen his body but also allow him to protect himself and kill enemies. However, although one could learn some things in current martial arts halls, it was limited to fitness or performance. What he wanted to learn was true National Martial Arts—martial arts meant only for killing enemies, not for performance. Although he didn't know if it was as miraculous as the legends said, having practical value was enough.

He wondered if he could find a successor of National Martial Arts; if not, he would go learn Military Boxing. After being attacked by the python last time, he knew that even if he could use his powerful space-cutting ability, he could only protect himself within a certain range and was essentially a sitting duck. To forge iron, one needs to be strong themselves; having personal strength is the fundamental basis for standing one's ground.

He didn't know any such extraordinary people who possessed National Martial Arts; his only hope was that his teacher might have a way. Furthermore, he had already passed the optimal age for practicing martial arts, and others might not necessarily teach him. But if there really were such an extraordinary person, it would be worth it to take them as a master even at a great cost, because that would open up another magical world for him.

After coming up from the wine cellar, his phone kept chiming with SMS notifications. He opened them to see several missed call alerts and a message asking him to call back. It was an unfamiliar number from Huanghe City. Cao Xiao didn't know who it was, but since they had called several times, it wasn't a harassment call. He dialed back, and it was picked up in less than two seconds. It turned out to be the truck driver sent by the grain merchant, who had been waiting at the main gate for a long time. After apologizing, Cao Xiao went to open the gate. More than ten heavy-duty trucks drove into Tianxing Garden and parked at the warehouse entrance. Cao Xiao quickly called the village chief of Wujia Village, asking him to organize some villagers to help unload. Since there were no tools to help and no lifting equipment in the warehouse, it relied entirely on manual labor. This first batch of over a thousand tons of grain wasn't finished being unloaded until past eight in the evening. He didn't settle the wages for the Wujia Village villagers yet; large quantities of grain would be delivered daily for a while, and he would settle everything once it was all loaded and unloaded. Cao Xiao also commissioned Village Chief Wu to help purchase a batch of loading and unloading tools, which would greatly increase efficiency. In a few days, they could get the initial twenty thousand tons of grain into the warehouse.

Cao Xiao was in no hurry to collect the grain into the space; otherwise, it would be hard to explain when the workers arrived the next day and saw an empty warehouse. His energy was currently at 1.5 percent, which was completely insufficient for refining the ore. He would start smelting only after the eighty thousand tons of corn he ordered had all arrived. According to his estimate, about ten percent energy would be enough to refine all the ore, but he didn't want to sell the metal directly. Processing it into alloys or directly producing machinery would have much higher added value, and this could also add a stable line of business to the company.

He hadn't eaten dinner and was starving. He didn't return to the Biyuntian Villa; he just made something to eat and then went to his room to shower and rest.

The next day, he was woken up early by a phone call. Village Chief Wu had brought over a hundred women to wait at the main gate. Cao Xiao quickly opened the gate to let them in, then organized them to start picking fruit using their own tools. Fortunately, there were several small truck drivers in Wujia Village who used their trucks to transport the fruit from the orchard to the cold storage. There was no packaging, so it could only be piled on the ground for now. In the afternoon, Hou Jin delivered the empty packaging boxes. Over the course of the day, the hundred or so women only picked less than a thousand tons of fruit. At this rate, it would take more than twenty days to finish, so Cao Xiao went to several other nearby villages and found hundreds more helpers, both men and women. On the second day, plus the arrival of the tools ordered by the company and the addition of ten small trucks, efficiency became much faster. It could be finished within five days. On the third day, Hou Jin, the sales manager, finally pulled through and secured orders for over ten thousand tons of fruit at prices similar to market rates. Honey peaches were over two yuan per half-kilogram, cherries over fifty, and others were around three to five yuan per half-kilogram. This was the wholesale price; if others sold them on the market, the price would be even higher. Calculated this way, it would be no problem for Cao Xiao to bring in forty to fifty million. In his excitement, Cao Xiao gave Hou Jin a five percent commission. Of course, this five percent was a commission on the sales profit of Dizang Company, but it was still quite substantial. Cao Xiao planned to set the wholesale price at seventy percent of the retail price. If Hou Jin sold all this fruit, it would be very easy for him to pocket hundreds of thousands.