The room wasn't large, about a hundred square meters in total, but it was decorated quite luxuriously. The furniture was all made of wood, but the surface of the wood was as fine as human skin, feeling both like wood and metal to the touch. Jiang Ye thought the wood was excellent and decided to buy some similar furniture for his home, so he called the hotel front desk to inquire.
The hotel front desk's reply left him somewhat discouraged. This type of wood had extremely limited origins, growing on only a few forestry planets. The soil was rich in various metals, and the planets experienced either perpetual day or perpetual night. It took two hundred years for the trees to mature and four hundred years to become good lumber. Currently, this lumber was exclusively supplied to the military and was unavailable on ordinary planets.
Jiang Ye contacted the source of this wood online and inquired about ordering some furniture, stating that the price was negotiable.
The other party flatly refused Jiang Ye, even if he were a marshal.
However, there was room for negotiation. If Jiang Ye wanted this wood, he could pay to adopt a few saplings now, and once the trees had grown for four hundred years, the lumber would be delivered to him to make furniture.
The four-hundred-year adoption price for one sapling was 5.8 million yuan, and this was after a discount. It included four hundred years of land rent, four centuries of labor and maintenance costs, water and fertilizer fees, and 5% commercial insurance.
Jiang Ye thought about it. Since this thing had to wait four hundred years, he might as well adopt more. He decided to adopt a thousand trees at once. He figured this many trees should be absolutely sufficient. With inflation over four hundred years, he might even make a profit.
However, the origin of the trees disagreed, only allowing Jiang Ye to adopt a maximum of twenty trees.
Jiang Ye had no choice; twenty trees it was.
After all, it was for his own home's furniture, and these trees would be more than enough.
After finishing this matter, Jiang Ye suddenly felt like he had opened a new door to the world.
He realized that in this era, many seemingly ordinary things were actually extremely scarce.
He decided to invest in similar resources while he had plenty of money, using time to exchange for future wealth.
The journey by spaceship to Chongyang Star took a total of one week.
During this week, the couple almost never left their room, spending their days glued to the screen, searching for various resources to invest in.
With just a tap of the screen, orders were placed, and money was spent without them realizing it. Seven days later, upon arrival, the couple reviewed all the resources they had purchased online that week and found they had spent an average of twenty billion yuan per day.
"This is outrageous. We should stop. If we invest too much, we'll have no money left," Jiang Ye said, as if waking from a dream.
The spaceship remained in orbit around Chongyang Star for three hours for self-checks before slowly beginning its descent.
Jiang Ye and Cen Yemeng left their room and looked out from the observation window at the edge of the spaceship.
Ninety percent of Chongyang Star's surface was vast oceans, with the entire planet almost submerged in water.
The vast majority of the planet's citizens were merfolk, swimming freely in the seawater. The total merfolk population was 18.9 billion.
It sounded like an enormous population, but considering the underwater terrain, this population density was actually quite reasonable.
As the spaceship continued to descend, Jiang Ye's gaze was drawn to a small, glowing point on the ocean's surface.
The small point floated motionlessly on the sea.
But calculating from the spaceship's current altitude, the point's area was terrifyingly large, at least several times the size of Binhai City.
The spaceship continued to descend, getting closer and closer to the point.
Cen Yemeng also noticed it. She took out her phone and did a search, then suddenly gasped and showed the search results to Jiang Ye.
[Chongyang Star's Sky Garden City: A city suspended above the ocean using anti-gravity technology, a pilot demonstration city for floating city construction. Its appearance resembles a giant floating island with a land thickness of 800 meters. The total city area is 6,500 square kilometers. The city is one kilometer above the sea surface, with a current permanent population of 7.8 million and a floating population of 1 million.]
Jiang Ye was dumbfounded.
As far as he knew, although anti-gravity technology was not considered top-tier high technology now, it still required a lot of money to use.
Why would they choose to build a floating city instead of the cheaper option of land reclamation? It was simply unbelievable.
For such a large city, the daily floating costs would likely start at over a billion, or even more.
The spaceship continued its descent.
They could now see the sea surface clearly.
The sea within their line of sight was relatively calm, but large patches of bubbles could be seen emerging from time to time.
Areas of several square kilometers of bubbles would appear on the sea surface for tens of seconds before disappearing, creating a rather spectacular sight.
Jiang Ye speculated that it might be waste gas emitted from underwater cities or some large mining machines working on the seabed.
But he couldn't see the situation beneath the surface.
Soon, the spaceship landed at the Sky Garden City spaceport.
Jiang Ye and Cen Yemeng disembarked, and a dedicated car was waiting to take them to school.
The transportation in Sky Garden City was still two-dimensional. There were hardly any flying cars hovering over rooftops; they were all traditional four-wheeled vehicles running on roads along white lines. Jiang Ye and Cen Yemeng looked out the car windows the entire way, observing the pedestrians on the street.
Nearly half of the residents were merfolk.
The merfolk wore respirators resembling gas masks on their faces, revealing only the upper half of their faces.
Both men and women had short hair, as long hair would be too inconvenient after living in water. Their skin was astonishingly good. Even some older merfolk with graying hair had only slight wrinkles at the corners of their eyes and mouths, their skin as smooth and tender as a young girl's.
Their lower bodies were fish tails, as agile as human legs. Both men and women wore split skirts that revealed their tails. They walked around the streets using specially made small flippers, which were painted with various patterns. Some looked very expensive, similar to how ordinary people compare shoes.
"Will our teacher be a merfolk?" Cen Yemeng asked.
"Perhaps," Jiang Ye replied.
"Do you like beautiful merfolk women?" Cen Yemeng pressed.
"I don't. I won't get that kind of life-or-death question wrong," Jiang Ye answered without hesitation.
"Don't be so disingenuous. You're staring at their tails so intently, your eyes are about to pop out," Cen Yemeng said sarcastically. "You want to feel how they are, right?"
"Don't try that with me. Behave yourself," Jiang Ye said.
The car arrived at the school.
The school was entirely made of square glass buildings, so one could see inside from the outside.
The teaching buildings were still empty. Instead of desks and chairs, they were furnished with deep purple leather sofas and ceramic screen tables, all very luxurious.
The dormitory buildings were also made of glass, some frosted white and opaque, while others were completely transparent, allowing one to see the furniture and decorations inside. Some people stood by the windows eating and drinking, waving hello to Jiang Ye and his wife.
Jiang Ye and Cen Yemeng went upstairs, found their dormitory room, and entered by scanning their faces.
The accommodation conditions were decent, not luxurious but clean and tidy, with complete facilities.
Two tall stacks of books were placed on the bedside table.
Jiang Ye walked over and looked. "Good heavens, these are all textbooks. Let's start previewing them tonight."