Chapter 4: A Loan of 20 Million
One day after the Dragon Boat Festival, 170 days remained until doomsday.
The national economy began to enter a period of immersion, with the economies of most parts of the country effectively controlled and basically returning to normal work and life.
In the south, in Xin City, in a forest of a surrounding rural area.
A construction site was bustling with activity
Li Hongyuan brought the professionally designed construction drawings to Li Yu.
Li's father said, "I've roughly calculated the cost estimate. The wall will be built with a combination of red bricks and reinforced concrete.
Five villas, 2 houses, and some surface hardening for the passages you mentioned."
"These add up to about 5 million. If the houses need to be decorated, it depends on how you want to decorate them," Li's father said.
——
Li Yu thought about the need to decorate the houses and was a bit worried about his father's aesthetics, so he made a phone call to a classmate who was engaged in villa design in M City. He asked her to help with the design, with the price calculated according to the market rate.
Since it didn't include construction, the design fee should have been cheaper. But this was still considered a private job for her, and Li Yu didn't want to take advantage of this. In the end, he still gave her a normal market price.
Li Yu opened his phone's electronic notebook and looked through the records he had made in recent days.
In the past few days, he had also been looking through various materials online, and then summarized some survival essentials:
1. Food Category: Prioritize foods with long shelf life, high energy, and easy to carry.
Including: military canned food, compressed biscuits, rice, flour, oil, salt, sugar, water, nuts, instant noodles, white wine, etc.
Items such as milk, meat, and vegetables to be replenished regularly.
Some can be homemade, like bean sprouts, so some seeds can be prepared.
2. Living Category:
Clothes, hats, gloves, shoes, socks, soap, toothbrush/toothpaste, towels, paper, family planning supplies, hammock/sleeping bag, blankets, umbrella/raincoat, sewing kit, plastic bags/cling film, etc.
Water purification equipment (such as direct drinking filters) and water purification tablets should also be included in the list.
3. Tool Category:
(1) Storage: Car/bicycle, backpack, boxes, tent, kayak, hammock/sleeping bag, disassembly/repair toolbox, water bottle/cutlery/lunch box/cup (metal), etc.;
(2) Protection: Knives, multi-functional knife, saw, military shovel, axe, stick, nylon rope, fishing line/hook/net/spear, map, slingshot.
Scissors, pliers, rain boots, life buoy, fire blanket, safety helmet, respirator, air pump, etc.;
(3) Energy: Lighter, magnifying glass, batteries, power bank, solar panels, hand-cranked generator, candles, fire extinguisher, etc.;
(4) Communication: Computer, USB drive/hard drive, tablet, mobile phone, walkie-talkie, radio, watch, compass, positioning equipment, whistle, flashlight, drone, etc.;
(5) Others: Measuring tape, mirror, sunglasses/diving goggles, telescope, map, stationery (pen/paper), etc.
4. Medicine Category:
Thermometer, masks, cold medicine, anti-inflammatory drugs, painkillers, anti-diarrheal medicine, bandages/gauze, band-aids, Yunnan Baiyao, alcohol, essential balm, cooling oil, vitamins, antibiotics, vaseline, tweezers, mosquito repellent/Florida water, etc.
5. Skill Category: Outdoor survival knowledge.
Such as: "Friend of Military and Civilian Dual-Use Talents", "Wiseman's Survival Manual", "Wilderness Survival Manual", "Barefoot Doctor's Manual", etc.
(PS: The above is excerpted from Zhihu, infringement contact for deletion)
Not only that, Li Yu also hoarded some things that might be useful in the future, such as various seeds, cloth...
Summarizing the above items, for Li Yu, several essential books were a must-have, especially the "Friend of Military and Civilian Dual-Use Talents" published by the Political Department Research Office of Shenyang Military Region, which was simply indispensable for doomsday preparation.
It teaches you how to milk cows, how to build houses, and even how to make braised pork, how to cut hair.
What's more impressive is that there was a sequel, teaching you how to sew, process vegetables, and make Chinese medicine
According to what's written in this book, if doomsday survival has progressed to the sequel, it can hardly be called doomsday anymore.
At this rate, it's probably already post-disaster reconstruction. It's likely approaching the industrial revolution.
Li Yu scratched his head and sighed: The task is heavy and the road is long.
The revolution has not yet succeeded, comrades still need to work hard.
For the construction of this base to be more solid and more suitable for survival.
So Li Yu thought about increasing the budget, and as soon as the idea came out, he thought of taking a loan. After all, when the apocalypse comes and social order collapses, money is just a piece of paper.
Whatever it takes to get money, just do it.
So he directly took his bank transaction record, along with the land use right certificate, and the construction site drawings.
He went to the bank to apply for a rural entrepreneurship loan.
Due to the large amount, it directly brought out the president of the county's Commercial Bank branch.
Fortunately, Li Yu's project was considered to be promoting the economic development of Xin City, and it was in the tourism industry. Plus, he had proof of funds and land certificates. The loan process was relatively smooth.
But it wasn't that simple, after all, it was a figure of 20 million.
So Li Yu took the bank staff to inspect the construction site in person.
As it was a mortgage loan, the process was a bit complicated, and it was expected to take two weeks before the money would be credited.
After completing the loan procedures in the county town, Li Yu returned to the construction site.
He happened to meet Lai Dongsheng, a worker from the small workshop set up by Li Hongyuan. In his 40s, he had been following Li Hongyuan for over a decade.
From the initial engineering contracting to later manufacturing of culverts, Lai Dongsheng had always been working with Li Hongyuan.
Over the years, he had always been diligent and conscientious, with an honest and simple personality, a typical humble man from the countryside.
"Uncle Dong, you're helping out too?" Li Yu said.
Lai Dongsheng looked up and saw it was Li Yu, and said, "Oh, it's Yuzi. Your dad stopped the culvert work and asked me to come help here."
"Little Yu, you've made it big, coming back and doing such a big business."
Li Yu looked at this man whose skin had turned dark from years of sun exposure, and smiled. Uncle Dong had always been good to him.
He was reliable and honest. Working for their family all these years, he might not have earned much money in the village, but at least he had a stable income.
Li Yu said, "Uncle Dong, there's a lot to do on the site, please keep an eye on things."
After chatting briefly, Li Yu walked towards the construction site.
Seeing that the foundation for the wall had already been laid and construction was starting to go up, the hundred-meter-long wall was already taking shape.
His heart was somewhat at ease. But looking at the site, there weren't too many people, only about a dozen, and he felt the progress might be a bit uncertain.
So he found his father to discuss adding more manpower. Get the wall built as quickly as possible, and then build the structures inside after the wall is completed.
Because of this big move, many villagers came to watch, and Li Yu didn't want others to see the series of constructions inside.
During the construction, there were even some villagers discussing among themselves. Some with poor character were saying that Li Yu was a fool, spending so much money on these things.
Li Yu, of course, didn't pay any attention to them. He just watched these people idling around, waiting for them to cry when the apocalypse finally breaks out.
So he wanted to build the wall first, and then start the construction inside. This way, outsiders wouldn't be able to see inside once the high wall was in place.
Although Li Hongyuan was a bit puzzled, he still followed Li Yu's idea and found some more manpower to speed up the wall construction.
10 days later, under the day and night construction of dozens of workers, they finally enclosed two mountains, a mountain pond, and a plain.
The 6-meter-high wall, several kilometers long, looked like an ancient beast when viewed from the mountain.
Fortunately, because this piece of land was in a hilly basin terrain, surrounded by many mountains, and the forests had been protected by government policies in recent years without any indiscriminate logging.
So with the obstruction of the two mountains, except for standing at extremely high places, it was actually very difficult for outsiders to see the whole picture at once.
Li Yu gave himself a thumbs up in his heart for his cleverness. It seemed that although this place was very large, it was well-hidden.
After the wall was built, Li Yu made a phone call to his younger brother Li Hang.
His brother was two years younger than him. He was naughty as a child, but at least he got into a junior college, mainly studying home appliance repair.
He had just graduated not long ago and was now looking for a job in the city.
Li Hongyuan and Liu Fanghua had three children in total: the eldest Li Yu, the second Li Hang, and the third Li Yuan.
Yes, Li Hongyuan was that casual with naming. After Yang Liwei went to space at the end of the last century, there was a space craze across the country.
Li Hongyuan followed the trend and gave the three children these names, expressing his infinite hope for the country's conquest of the stars and sea.
Coincidentally, Li Hang wasn't having much luck with his job search recently. This guy was usually very active, with an extremely lively personality.
Li Yu called: "Xiao Hang, what are you busy with now? Dad said you had a conflict with your leader after less than a month of internship."
There was some noise on Li Hang's end, probably on a busy street.
Li Hang answered impatiently, "Bro! It wasn't my fault, it was all that stupid supervisor, it wasn't my fault but they made me take the blame. They even deducted my internship salary, I'd be nice if I didn't beat him up."
Hearing his brother's impolite response, Li Yu said, "Then come back. I've done some things at home, you come and help me."
Li Hang was immediately interested. Since childhood, Li Hang had been naughty, but because Li Yu was two years older, he was always beaten up by Li Yu.
Although they grew up fighting, the brothers' relationship had always been good. As the two grew up, Li Yu became more steady, but Li Hang remained impulsive. He often got into fights outside.
"Alright, big bro, I'm in. I'll buy a ticket and come back right away." Li Hang didn't say much more, didn't even ask specifically what he would be doing. In his mind, his big brother would never do anything bad to him.
After hanging up the phone, Li Yu thought for a moment. He originally wanted to ask Li Yuan to come back too. But now that the base wasn't built yet, he just briefly asked about her situation.
Li Yuan was now studying medicine at a Traditional Chinese Medicine University in the neighboring province, currently in her sophomore year. Li Yu instructed her to come back for sure during the National Day holiday.
Li Yuan replied okay. From childhood to adulthood, she had always listened to her big brother. Unlike her second brother, she had never been beaten by her big brother when she was little.
But her personality was completely different from Li Hang's. Li Hang was bold and reckless, impulsive and fierce. Li Yuan was timid and gentle, with a mild temperament like water.
After roughly arranging things, Li Yu put purchasing supplies on the agenda.
(End of Chapter)