5: Chapter 5 Night Out

The bioenergy produced by each plant varies, and plant bioenergy is far lower than that produced by animals. Furthermore, Zhongjiang Province is located inland, right next to the Yangtze River, but the fishing industry is not well-developed. If it were a coastal city, one could obtain large quantities of rotten fish and shrimp.

After resigning, I should experiment more to see if I can obtain large quantities of grain that contain high bioenergy but are not expensive, even if it's rotten or moldy. The bioenergy in such grain might even be higher than in normal grain, as it would contain more microorganisms.

He placed the game he caught in the trunk, lining it with a few plastic bags, and drove back toward the town.

The road conditions on this stretch were good, and it took him just over ten minutes to return to town. He bought some spices at the only large supermarket, thought for a moment, and also bought an extra-long stainless steel thermal container. Then, he returned to the entrance of his little home, found a place to park the car, and carried the game into the small courtyard. The lights in the room next door were off. Checking the time, it was already 8:30 PM. He Yueyou couldn't possibly be resting that early, so she must still be working overtime. He opened his door and set the game on the floor. There was no refrigerator at home, and the current temperature wasn't low, so the game couldn't be left out. It was still early, so there was time to process it and have a late-night snack. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten wild game years ago, and just thinking about it made his mouth water.

He boiled a pot of water on the induction cooker. First, he skinned the wild rabbit and the black-tailed snake, removed their internal organs, washed them, and chopped them on the cutting board. Once the water boiled, he plucked and chopped the pheasant. He put the pheasant and snake into a stew pot, added spices and seasonings, and let it simmer. The large pot was filled with meat. After removing the fur and organs, the remaining meat from the pheasant and snake weighed four or five pounds. Just a pot of this soup in a restaurant would sell for at least a thousand yuan, and even with money, one might not be able to get it. In the past, Cao Xiao might have sold it for a few hundred yuan to cover his living expenses for ten days or so, but now that he had the Intelligent Industrial Mother Machine, his life would no longer be so strained, and there was no need to mistreat himself anymore.

He threw the organs and skins into the energy space; even small bits of meat were still meat. He took a quick look at the digestion progress in the energy space; it was not bad, and it would only take a few hours for the stalks to be completely digested.

He lay on the bed and played with his phone, mainly checking the market for coal. After browsing online for a long while, he found that such a large amount of coal was actually quite difficult to handle. A small amount would be fine; having worked at the coal mine for several years, he knew many transport drivers. He could move and get rid of eighty to a hundred tons through these drivers. These drivers had their ways, and selling it cheaply to farmers he knew for household fuel would work, but the volume couldn't be large. Most of these drivers had ties to Hengyu. A small amount could be explained away as pocketing a little extra, which everyone understood, but a large amount would make people suspect that he, a minor employee of Hengyu, had a problem. There are no secrets in this world, and he wanted to avoid any suspicion of misconduct.

Cao Xiao also had some contact with the coal-using enterprises that collaborated with Hengyu. Similarly, a small amount was fine, but a large amount would test their relationship. What kind of significant relationship could a worthless minor employee like him have with others? He was afraid he'd be reported for stealing coal before he even managed to sell it.

It wasn't that it couldn't be sold; he could go out of town to sell it to other enterprises, but he didn't have a company background. Selling it to others in his own name wouldn't work. Bulk transactions were company-to-company, and taxes were a major issue.

With today's developed market economy, setting up a company wasn't a hassle, but he only had over a thousand yuan on him. What could that little money do? Registering a company would cost at least tens of thousands of yuan. He didn't want to borrow money again; in fact, it would be hard to borrow. Over the last few years, he had borrowed from everyone he could, and it was difficult to ask again.

Of course, coal had other uses. He had the processing space, which could do more than just decomposition and synthesis; it could also be used as a refining furnace. Moreover, it was more powerful than those outside; any temperature, pressure, or other processing conditions could be easily achieved. Processing coal was naturally possible, and it would be more efficient and faster because the processing space could reach ideal conditions for physical or chemical reactions, allowing for precise and rapid processing of raw materials.

Coal is an important energy source and a vital raw material for the metallurgical and chemical industries. It is mainly used for combustion, coking, gasification, low-temperature carbonization, and hydrogenation liquefaction. Combustion was out of the question, and gasification, low-temperature carbonization, and hydrogenation liquefaction were also quite troublesome because processing them required other raw materials, such as oil shale and catalysts. Furthermore, handling the resulting products was even more difficult. That left only coking.

Coking involves placing coal in a carbonization furnace and heating it in the absence of air. The organic matter in the coal gradually decomposes as the temperature rises. Volatile substances escape in a gaseous or vapor state, becoming coke oven gas and coal tar, while the non-volatile solid residue remains as coke. Coke oven gas is a fuel and an important chemical raw material. Coal tar can be used to produce fertilizers, pesticides, synthetic fibers, synthetic rubber, paint, dyes, medicine, explosives, and more. Coke is mainly used for blast furnace ironmaking and casting, and can also be used to manufacture nitrogen fertilizer and calcium carbide.

Generally, the raw material used by coking enterprises is bituminous coal. Bituminous coal is cheap, making it much more cost-effective for coking than anthracite. Anthracite is the coal with the highest degree of coalification. It has low volatility, high specific gravity, high hardness, and produces little smoke and short flames with strong heat when burned. Anthracite is usually used for civilian and power fuel. High-quality anthracite can be used as a gasification raw material, fuel for blast furnace injection and sintering iron ore, and casting fuel. Premium anthracite can also be used to manufacture silicon carbide, carbon sand, artificial corundum, artificial graphite, electrodes, calcium carbide, and carbon materials.

Under airtight conditions, bituminous coal is heated to 950-1050°C and goes through stages of drying, pyrolysis, melting, bonding, solidification, and shrinkage to finally produce coke. About 1.4 to 1.7 tons of bituminous coal can produce 1 ton of coke. If anthracite is used for coking, about a hundred tons of coal can yield eighty to ninety tons of coke, several tons of coal tar, and some coke oven gas. The price of coke is generally 1,500 to 2,000 yuan per ton, several times higher than the price of anthracite. The price of coal tar is also around 2,500 yuan per ton. Coke oven gas is a gas and difficult to handle, and processing it into other chemical raw materials is also very troublesome. The key was that Cao Xiao had no processing technology and couldn't find anything reliable online. Regardless, there wasn't much of it; even if all the anthracite was coked, the final coke oven gas would only be a few hundred tons, which wouldn't take up much space if compressed into liquid. Calculated this way, the value produced by those twenty thousand tons of anthracite after coking would be nearly thirty to forty million yuan. Moreover, selling it wouldn't make people associate it with the coal from Hengyu Coal Mine. He could completely register a company to act as an agent for selling the coke, allowing him to sell it openly in this region without worrying about Hengyu causing trouble.

Using the processing space for coking was not a problem at all, and sales channels could be opened gradually. At worst, he could set the price a bit lower than the market rate. He didn't have to worry about the quality of the coke; it went without saying it would be very high, and the selling price would be high as well. It would be most suitable to sell to large metallurgical enterprises; not only was the volume large, but they also had a demand for high-quality coke.

But the prerequisite was having the money to register a company, and using the processing space for coking required a large amount of energy. What he needed to do now was first get a sum of money to register the company, at least a hundred thousand yuan. Besides registering the company, he also needed to rent a hidden warehouse to store things and needed some money to purchase stalks or grain. A hundred thousand might not even be enough. Calculated this way, he would need to sell at least two hundred tons of coal. The thousand-plus yuan he had on him could at most rent a truck for two days.

Selling two hundred tons of coal wouldn't be easy; he could only sell it in small bits through people, and he couldn't sell it locally. Just thinking about it gave him a headache. Forget it, he would go home to see his parents tomorrow and then visit the neighboring city. It just so happened that his Second Aunt's family lived in the neighboring city, so he would visit her as well; he hadn't been there for two years. Maybe his uncle would have a way to sell it over there.

The dragon-phoenix soup was already finished, and the whole room was filled with a fragrant aroma. Cao Xiao's cooking skills weren't great, but the dishes he made were quite palatable. Over the years of working, he had always cooked at home. Although life was tight and he couldn't afford to buy expensive things to eat, he could only put effort into his cooking skills, so he had accumulated some insights into cooking.

He ladled out all the soup and divided it into two portions. He put the larger portion into the thermal container to take to his parents tomorrow and kept the rest for himself. But even after filling the thermal container, there was still a lot left, more than he could finish in several meals. After thinking about it, he separated another portion into a soup bowl to bring to Li Dongping's house tomorrow. He put the soup bowl and the thermal container into his personal space. The temperature in the space was constant, so they would still be hot when he took them out tomorrow.

He crushed some ginger and garlic and sliced some chili peppers. He poured rapeseed oil into the pot to heat it and then began to stir-fry the rabbit meat. The two rabbits filled a large pot. Once finished, he divided it into three portions. He checked the time and saw it was already 10:30 PM, but He Yueyou hadn't returned yet. Usually, working overtime wouldn't be this late. She had given him milk yesterday, so Cao Xiao planned to treat her to a meal of wild game today, but she still hadn't returned. The place he lived was a bit far from the government office, and it wasn't safe for a beautiful woman late at night. Cao Xiao hesitated for a moment and decided to give her a call to ask, as he now had the excuse of the wild game.

"Beep—beep... Hello, He Yueyou, this is Cao Xiao. Have you not finished work yet?" The call connected after a few rings, and Cao Xiao spoke first.

"Oh, Cao Xiao, is something wrong?" It was very noisy on He Yueyou's end; from the sound, she seemed to be in a KTV.

"I made some wild game today and thought I'd treat you to a meal. When will you be back?" Cao Xiao said.

"Oh, are you free now? Can you take a taxi over to pick me up? I'm at the Shengshi KTV. It's hard to get a taxi here at this hour. I'll pay for the fare." Hearing Cao Xiao's words, He Yueyou suddenly asked with some excitement.

"I see. Wait there, I'll take a taxi to pick you up right away." Cao Xiao felt a bit strange; He Yueyou's mood seemed off. Why was she so excited? She didn't have feelings for him, so even if he was treating her to wild game, there was no reason to be that excited.

"Okay, I'm in private room 666. Come up and get me when you arrive. I'm hanging up now." He Yueyou became even more excited when she heard Cao Xiao agree. A man's voice could clearly be heard calling her through the receiver, and then she hung up the phone before Cao Xiao could say anything else.

Cao Xiao thought to himself that it wasn't that He Yueyou didn't want to leave, but that she probably couldn't. Hearing that man's voice made Cao Xiao feel anxious, worried that something might happen to her there. Without thinking much, he immediately changed into his best clothes. He walked to the door but then went back to the bed, lifted the mattress, took out a dagger, and put it into his personal space. 'I hope nothing happens today,' Cao Xiao thought as he grabbed his car keys and walked out the door.

Shengshi KTV was on the outskirts of town and was the best entertainment venue in the county. Because it was high-end and occupied a large area, with a supporting holiday resort and bathing center, it was built by the scenic Jiudao River. Many wealthy people from the surrounding areas would go there to spend money. Cao Xiao knew where it was but had never been there; such a high-end place was not something he could afford.

In less than ten minutes, Cao Xiao arrived at the entrance of Shengshi at lightning speed. He parked the car, straightened his clothes, took a deep breath, and walked toward the lobby. Cao Xiao didn't even notice the change in himself. He now clearly possessed a confidence he didn't have before. When one has a sense of security, they also find the courage to fight when facing difficulties. In the past, he might have walked into such a place with his head down because he couldn't afford to offend anyone there. It wasn't self-abasement, but a form of self-preservation when lacking the ability to protect oneself.

"Good evening, sir, welcome!" As soon as he entered, a greeting girl spoke in standard Mandarin.

"Please take me to private room 666, thank you!" Cao Xiao did not respond to the greeting girl but spoke politely and properly to a waiter nearby.

"Certainly, sir, please follow me."

Without any extra words, the waiter politely led Cao Xiao to the second floor and arrived at the door of private room 666.