Chapter 50: Another Investor

Chapter 50: Chapter 50: Another Investor

On the way home, Liam chatted with his brother while looking up information on the Cromwell and Santiago families.

The Cromwell line, exactly as he had guessed, was one of the four great families of the Lumina galaxy, one rank below the Halls. As for Logan Cromwell, the records didn’t mention him, but Liam guessed he was no ordinary member of the family.

A man who could get a grip on the black market’s information network was certainly no ordinary figure. Three livestock farms capable of making a dead planet the size of Earth stink were certainly not small.

If he could draw this man into the tourist planet project, then the road to success for him and Daniel would move a step faster.

As for Leonardo Santiago, he seemed far more famous than Logan, because his name was public in the papers. Leonardo was the illegitimate son of the current head of the Santiago family, and had declared himself cut off from the Santiago family at nineteen, which made it ten years by now.

Ordinary people knew him as the owner of the largest AI technology company in the Lyra star system, but his hidden identity as LS was probably known to only a few, Liam among them. To say he wasn’t moved would be a lie.

Liam messaged LS: [Leonardo, from today you are my bosom friend!]

LS: [?]

LS: [I thought we’d been friends all along? What the hell have you taken me for these past five years?]

Liam: [It was only because we’d never met, wasn’t it? On top of that you charged me an extortionate price every time, so I thought we were only customer and stall owner?]

LS: [...]

LS: [You’ve got nerve! Apart from the first two years when I charged full price, when have I ever not slashed it to rock bottom for you? Damn it, from next time I’m charging double!]

Liam laughed out loud, sending a voice message: "Good friend, dear friend, I was wrong. I’m very poor, don’t put my prices up..."

The other side sent a voice back: "If I believed you I’d be your son! I even had information I was going to give you free, and now forget it!"

Benjamin glanced over, and Liam said cheerfully: "He’s the friend I told you about." Then he sent another voice message: "All right, I apologize. Don’t be angry with me anymore. Didn’t you want to eat my cooking? I’ll bring some over in a few days."

LS: "Hmph, at least you have a conscience. I’m a magnanimous man, I won’t hold it against you."

Having sent that, LS placed a call directly, Liam signalling to Benjamin that he needed to take it. Benjamin nodded, turning back to concentrate on flying. Liam put a hand to the rim of his ear, his smart unit immediately transforming into an earpiece.

Leonardo’s ringing voice came from the other end:

"Three days ago somebody paid to hire us to find your whereabouts. I blocked it in time through my own channel, and I intend to drag it out until they give up hope."

Liam narrowed his eyes: "The Hall family?"

"No." Leonardo sounded puzzled: "This person is very mysterious, even my boss couldn’t dig up anything on him. He asked us to find you and confirm that you’re safe, nothing else, no demand to establish your background."

Leonardo said carefully: "What’s more, he demanded we investigate in absolute secrecy, to keep other powers from discovering your existence. Liam, who would care about you like that? Could it have to do with the Hall family’s real young master?"

Liam fell into thought. After a while, as though touching on something, his heart began pounding in his chest. He said quickly:

"Leonardo, can you hack the security system of the Royal City Hotel? I need all the surveillance footage from every floor of the hotel from four in the afternoon on the 23rd of August to seven in the morning on the 24th of August."

Leonardo went blank for a moment: "It’s only been a month, hacking it is possible but there’s a great deal of footage, I’d need at least ten days."

Liam drew a deep breath: "Ten days it is. I’ll pay double the market rate!" 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

Leonardo: "No need for that, the market rate of three million silver stars will do. So do you want me to answer the other party?"

"Until I say so, kindly go on knowing nothing."

"All right."

After Liam hung up with LS, Benjamin looked at him anxiously, wanting to ask and not daring to. Liam told him only one short thing:

"That Alpha is looking for me. My friend’s side has blocked it."

Benjamin’s face turned rather ugly: "What is he looking for you for? A whole month has gone by and only now he looks, does he want to take responsibility or to silence you? Liam, you have to keep your head, don’t let him deceive you!"

Liam smirked: "You’re reading far too much into it. Even if the man himself appeared in front of me, I’d drive a digger at him and shovel him clean out of the meteor belt!"

The original owner had been crushed to death by that man’s pheromone pressure, and only then had he appeared in this place. Whether from the original owner’s side or his own, he absolutely would not let that Alpha off lightly.

So what if the Alpha hadn’t meant it? He had also left immediately after what happened, leaving Liam alone to face those people. Now Liam faced the pregnancy and the birth alone as well, and with all of it heaped together, that Alpha’s crime deserved to be thrown to the insectoid race to be torn apart.

Seeing the state of Liam’s face, Benjamin said nothing more. He pressed his lips together, weighing it for a while, then opened his smart watch, finding a smart number he hadn’t contacted in a long time.

[Eldest uncle, could we meet?]

There was no answer from the other side for a long time, and Benjamin didn’t hope for much. They had torn their faces at each other for so many years, and that side hardly needed such treacherous nephews and niece.

Nirvana the blue cat sat in front of Liam, saying hesitantly: [Host, may I know what happened to you? We’re one body now, and if I knew something, perhaps I could share it with you.]

It had realized its host’s mood was genuinely not right. This person’s soul resonance stayed steady to an extraordinary degree, as flat as a mirror. Since contracting with him it had seen his soul resonance shift only twice. Once when he learned he was pregnant, once when he had the mango allergy.

Both were directly connected to the child. This time was the same. The resonance was not a peak but a trough, showing that the host’s mood was deeply low. It was afraid he would drive himself into depression.

Liam blinked at Nirvana, looking at its bushy tail flicking back and forth, his mood lifting a little. He said:

[Do you know something? I’m not the true owner of this body. A month ago he died on that Alpha’s bed, then I came in his place. I spent the whole night playing the adult game with the man, by morning he had disappeared while I got two slaps that sent me straight to hospital.

Tell me, how could I not be angry? What face does he have to come looking for me? And only caring whether I’m safe? By what right?]

Nirvana was startled: [No wonder I searched for a compatible soul every few years before and never found one, then the moment you arrived I found you straight away!] That said it stamped its feet in fury: [Host, I’ll help you find that bastard, then we’ll trade for a tube of impotence medicine and turn him into a eunuch on the spot!]

Liam, in the middle of his angry indignation, was startled into laughing by the blue cat’s words, his expression easing a little. He closed his eyes to go into the soul space, poking a finger at it:

"All right, stop being angry. They say the best thing to do under pressure is go shopping. Let’s see what we got today."

Nirvana shook off its temper at once. It opened the system storage bag for Liam to see: "Host, the other side sent nine items in repayment, and every one of them is useful."

Liam immediately examined each with great interest, and once he had finished he broke into a grin:

"How did he know I needed this many ancient Earth seeds. Look, these green tea cuttings are all mature wood suitable for striking, aren’t they? And here, are these chestnuts? There are coffee beans and fresh cashews as well. Climbing green bean seed, yardlong bean seed, mustard green seed, dryland water spinach seed. He’s even sent me a whole twenty-kilogram crate of Dinh tea. Has he struck it rich?"

Nirvana’s eyes turned into running lines of code, after which it recounted heavily to Liam: "The other system says its host has gone dark. He’s joined an underground organization in XXX, becoming their private doctor. A gifted cardiologist devoted to his work, hunted by his own country, now a member of a criminal gang, it really is very sad."

Liam’s face darkened: "A private doctor or a butcher? If it’s the latter, then things really are serious. With the Trading Hall system helping him, he’ll turn into a demon that eats people!"

Nirvana waggled its ears: "He won’t, host. The Trading Hall system has strict rules, and if a host exploits the system stall for illicit gain or commits acts of great wickedness, they are certain to be judged non-compliant, the contract forcibly dissolved."

Liam let out a breath: "Then that’s good. Sometimes hatred turns a person into something more terrifying than a demon."

He didn’t raise the subject again, opening the system to see what could be traded today. There was still no rice cooker, and what Liam could trade for came round to the same low-grade seeds. He scrolled through, trading for plain rice along with a few flower varieties suited to a tropical climate.

Besides that he found a length of mature bamboo cutting with its nodes intact, and if he took it home to soak in restoration fluid then planted it, the chance of it growing into bamboo was over eighty percent.

Having used up all ten of today’s exchanges, Liam’s mood had improved a great deal. He left the system space.

Outside, in Benjamin’s eyes, he had only blinked once.

Liam said cheerfully to Benjamin: "Brother, my friend gave me a lot of things today, let’s get home and soak them in restoration fluid then start the seedbeds!"

Seeing his brother’s mood improved, Benjamin quietly let out a breath of relief. He laughed, stroking his head fondly:

"All right, whatever you say."

The two brothers got home to find Isabella already waiting at the ship’s landing spot. Seeing Liam step down, she hurried over to put her arms round his shoulders, looking him over from head to foot. Finding not a scratch on her brother, she let out a breath of relief.

Liam laughed: "Sister, I’ve only been gone a day, and with Daniel there what could possibly have happened to me?"

Isabella glared: "Can’t I worry about my own brother? All right, get home quickly, what if you get heatstroke."

That said she pushed Liam into the utility vehicle, waiting for Benjamin to get in before she drove off at speed. She had plainly been worried no small amount.

Home again, Liam took out everything he had traded for that day including the repayment items, handing them to Isabella to soak. Benjamin said:

"These seeds draw the energy out of the restoration fluid so strongly, we’re nearly through half the spare barrel."

Liam shrugged: "If it runs out it runs out, later I’ll ask my friend to buy a few more barrels for improving seeds. As for the soil, we certainly won’t need it anymore."

At five in the afternoon, the sky went black, a light rain coming down that quickly dispelled the heat of the day. It rained a little over an hour, and once it had stopped the sky cleared again. Liam went out to the edge of the field, carefully lifting the dried thorny weeds to inspect the seeds. Only a day had passed, and the seeds had already begun to sprout, white shoots pushing up about half a finger joint above the soil.

Liam and his brother and sister gently lifted all the thorny weeds away, so the shoots could take the night dew.

"Tomorrow morning if the shoots haven’t put out green leaves yet, cover them again. Just be careful not to crush them."

Over the next two days Liam had to stay home to prepare for attaching the shopping cart, along with drawing up a specific restoration plan for Logan’s planet, so he handed all the field work to Benjamin and Isabella.

The two of them nodded to show they understood.