The waters of the Gulf of Aqaba shone darkly like oil in the dark night, and Osa's private yacht "Sarah" slipped silently into Jordanian territorial waters.
Inside the cabin, Odin, dressed in a custom-made suit, was peeling an apple with a dagger. The blade brushed past the shocking headline on the Russian newspaper - "Street fighting in Kiev continues to intensify."
"Brother, those guys east of the Black Soil Land have placed an additional order for 200,000 tons of ammonium nitrate." Odin tossed the apple to Osa, who was slumped on the leather sofa. The gold chain on the latter's chest was embedded in his thick chest hair. "Now they not only want the fertilizer plant, but they're also converting the sewers into arsenals."
The sound of Osa biting into an apple was mixed with a vague sneer. "Where is the freighter from the Huasheng Petrochemical Base?"
"Fly the Liberian flag and enter the Black Sea via the Suez Canal." Odin pulled up the route map on his tablet. The red dot was moving towards the Husky Channel. "However, Atlantic reconnaissance aircraft have been flying frequently in Damascus' airspace recently. Should we split Lao Wu's fleet into two groups..."
Before he could finish his words, a blinding white light suddenly exploded outside the porthole. Osa rolled over behind the wine cabinet, his Browning loaded—but then he saw three F-16 fighter jets flying over the sea, the six-pointed star of the American flag beneath their wings flashing in the searchlights.
"Damn those Hexagonal Stars!" Odin spat, wiping off the champagne that had splattered on his custom-made suit. "The batch of seamless steel pipes we sold to Lebanon last month must have been targeted by the Mossad."
Osa narrowed his eyes as he stared at the direction where the fighter plane disappeared. "Call Zhenxi and have the new cracking plant at Huasheng Petrochemical in the Bay Area start production ahead of schedule. Since the Atlantic Ocean requires the Suez Canal, we can take the land route through Iraq to Turkey!"
At the same moment, the Huasheng Petrochemical Base at the northern foot of the Tianshan Mountains was spewing white smoke that obscured the sky. Zhenxi, wearing smart goggles, walked into the central control room. A holographic projection of a network of pipelines intertwined into a glowing bramble before his eyes.
"Mr. Xiao, the catalyst activity in the No. 3 cracking tower has dropped again!" Chief Engineer Lao Chen, sweat dripping from his forehead, pointed at the flickering red dot on the screen. "If we follow the indicators set by the academician..."
"Raise the reaction pressure from 3.5 MPa to 4.2 MPa," Zhenxi suddenly interrupted, his finger drawing a steep curve on the holographic screen. "And use liquid nitrogen to cool the feed inlet—the sulfur content of Middle Eastern crude oil is 27% higher than the design value. The original parameters are already outdated."
The room erupted in an uproar. Several white-haired technicians exchanged glances. When they'd been building up their empire with Xiao Zhen, this young man was still playing with Transformers. Old Chen's Adam's apple rolled, "This... I need to ask Mr. Xiao..."
"I have the final say here now." Zhenxi untied his tie, revealing a fresh tattoo on his neck—a Möbius strip entwined with chemical formulas. He pulled up drone footage from the Russian-Ukrainian front: sacks of ammonium nitrate marked with the Washington logo piled like shelters on the scorched earth, and bullet casings glowed blue in the charred wheat fields.
"In 48 hours, Ukraine needs 300 tons of aviation kerosene." Zhenxi's voice was as cold as a pipeline valve. "Either we solve the catalyst problem tonight, or we wait and watch NATO missiles flatten the freighter—your choice."
At 3 a.m. Kyiv time, the Dnieper River was shrouded in a leaden-gray mist. The Cambodian-flagged cargo ship, the Phnom Penh, slowly approached the shore, its waterline suspiciously high.
As soon as the bearded Ukrainian officer stepped onto the deck, he was choked by the strong smell of lemongrass and frowned - this was Odin's idea. The twenty modified T-72 tanks in the cabin were soaked in Southeast Asian spices, which perfectly fooled the noses of drug-sniffing dogs.
"Where's the diesel?" the officer asked in stiff Chinese, his fingers tapping anxiously on the butt of the AK-74.
The Chinese captain smiled and handed over the tablet: "In the clouds."
The officer's eyes widened as numbers popped up on the encrypted account on the screen: 30,000 tons of light crude oil were being transported directly from Iran's Abadan refinery to the Ukrainian military's underground oil depot via a virtual pipeline. This was the "shadow logistics system" Zhenxi had built after taking over: physical goods were constantly transshipped on the high seas, but ownership was traded in real time on the blockchain.
Suddenly, a blinding fire lit up across the river. The officer's face paled, and he grabbed the satellite phone and started yelling. Then, through the receiver, he heard Odin's smiling Russian voice: "Don't worry, that opposition member of your parliament just got an extra 20 million euros in his Swiss account."
Inside the National Space Command Center, Xiao Zhen stared at the real-time images transmitted back from the lunar base, his coffee already cold.
An encrypted message suddenly popped up in the lower right corner of the screen - it was the petrochemical base renovation plan sent by Zhenxi.
He scanned the radical parameter adjustments and suddenly noticed a crooked smiley face drawn in the corner of the drawing: exactly the same as the one drawn by the astronauts in the lunar module.
"You little brat..." Xiao Zhen cursed with a smile and clicked to approve. Suddenly, Lao Zhang's voice came from behind him.
"Are you really confident in handing over the family business to your child?" Old Zhang stared at Zhenxi's tattoo in the picture. "He's much wilder than you were back then."
Xiao Zhen turned his chair, revealing the newly formed white hair at his temples. Outside the window, the Raptor 5 super-heavy carrier rocket was being hoisted. It was about to transport the module for the Guanghan Palace Base Phase II project—built from a new cryogenically resistant material developed by Zhenxi.
"Only wild horses can outrun a sandstorm." Xiao Zhen tossed the encrypted tablet into the crusher, the fluorescent blue light reflecting in his eyes. "Just like when you and I were transporting machine tools back then, weren't we also carrying the fertilizer factory sign?"
As the two exchanged laughter, the alarm in the command room suddenly blared. On the surveillance screen, the Damao family's Black Sea Fleet suddenly turned, slicing through the waves toward the freighter chartered by the Huasheng Group. Xiao Zhen grabbed the red phone and heard Zhenxi's electric voice: "Dad, give me five million as a bribe—in Bitcoin."
"Right away! Feng Yi, come in." Xiao Zhen walked out of the command room and came to his office, pressing the intercom to greet him.
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