The edge of the ship was still some distance from the shore.
Jiang Ye manipulated the excavator's mechanical arm, piling up earth. It took him half an hour to create a dirt path leading to the deck.
After compacting the road, he let out a long breath.
Thank heavens!
The joystick lurched forward, and the excavator started, slowly climbing uphill!
The edges of the dirt road kept collapsing, with clumps of soil falling down.
But it was a close call, and the excavator successfully drove onto the deck!
Jiang Ye jumped down from the excavator and headed straight for the captain's cabin.
He tapped the screen, ordered an immediate departure, and set course for the mining area!
Encountering schools of fish along the way, Jiang Ye cast his nets to catch them.
However, he didn't sell the fish after catching them; instead, he piled them up in the cargo hold.
By the fourth net, the cargo hold was full.
A message popped up on the screen: "Cargo hold capacity 0%, please clear promptly."
Jiang Ye ignored it and kept steering the ship forward.
Finally, he reached the other side of the strait.
He steered the ship along the shore, searching for a moment, and found a high sandy beach. He docked the ship.
There was still a two-meter height difference between the ship's edge and the shore.
Jiang Ye climbed into the excavator's cockpit and carefully drove forward.
Rumble!
With a loud bang, Jiang Ye was thrown about, and the excavator crashed from the ship's edge onto the shore.
If it had been a car, the airbags would have deployed, and the bumper would have been knocked off.
Fortunately, the excavator was well-built and was fine after landing. Jiang Ye recovered and tried operating it; it still worked normally.
The beach where he docked was precisely the fluorite mining area.
Opening the driver's seat window, he could smell the strong scent of ore in the air.
Jiang Ye operated skillfully, and the excavator began to dig on the spot.
The surface sand was cleared in two bucket loads. With the third bucket load, a large pile of fluorite was excavated.
What the heck? This is amazing? Jiang Ye was taken aback.
The fluorite in the bucket was colorful and vibrant, with at least four colors visible.
There was bamboo-shoot green, cold-cream white, bee-butt black and yellow stripes, and a faint purple.
Fluorite was truly a magical substance, with so many colors from the same composition.
Jiang Ye was curious if there was a price difference between the different colored fluorite. So he jumped off the excavator, picked out a few stones of different colors and similar sizes from the bucket.
He ran to the trading bay in the cargo hold and threw them in one by one to test.
Green fluorite: 98 yuan
White fluorite: 102 yuan
Yellow fluorite: 110 yuan
Purple fluorite: 103 yuan
After testing them all, he could confirm. Different colored fluorite had the same price. The fluctuations of a few yuan were all due to differences in weight.
He got back onto the excavator and continued working.
Bucket after bucket of fluorite was fiercely dug out from under the sand.
The efficiency was dozens of times faster than using a shovel!
He dug until sunset.
After several hours of excavation, a long row of fluorite piles had accumulated on the beach.
Jiang Ye began the final steps, shoveling the fluorite into sacks and then carrying them to the fishing boat to sell.
The price of one sack of fluorite fluctuated around 150,000 yuan.
After working hard for over two hours, he sold a total of 48 sacks of fluorite.
In one afternoon, he earned 7,239,000 yuan from mining!
This speed was quite impressive. If he had started in the morning, he could have earned over ten million a day, and a hundred million in less than ten days!
Jiang Ye decided to leave the excavator on this beach. He could use it directly when he came tomorrow, saving the trouble of getting on and off the ship.
Since it was an uninhabited area, he didn't expect it to be stolen.
As a precaution, he drew a circle around the excavator with his shovel and wrote on the beach:
"Private excavator, please do not use."
He boarded the fishing boat, returned to the captain's cabin, turned around, and set sail.
The sea, shrouded in darkness, looked very mysterious. The wind picked up at night, and the waves were quite large. Occasionally, eerie lights flickered from the seabed.
At half-past eleven, he finally returned to the dock.
Jiang Ye disembarked, and Xu Yan was indeed waiting on the shore.
She had changed back into her black suit, but her round-rimmed gold-wire glasses had been replaced with square-rimmed ones. She tilted her chin, looking at the construction site with an air of arrogant superiority, as if to say, "I am an elite."
"Good evening, President Xu!" Jiang Ye walked over and greeted her.
"The express center is almost complete. We plan to work overtime tonight so it can be put into use tomorrow. Xu Yan turned her head and nodded, acknowledging the greeting. It should be completed around six in the morning. I hope you and the couriers can come for acceptance."
"Okay, okay, I'll notify the couriers," Jiang Ye replied.
"No need. I've already found the designated courier for this planet, Isabelle, and have sent her a message. She'll be here on time tomorrow morning. Xu Yan said, "Let me show you the facilities completed today."
"Please," Jiang Ye said.
The two walked forward along the asphalt road. As usual, they were detected by the warning posts, and a blue light scanned them. This time, there was even a voice prompt:
"Unregistered security personnel, granted entry."
"Wow, there's a voice now?" Jiang Ye exclaimed in surprise.
"Let's go to the central building to register first and archive your identity," Xu Yan said.
The two walked directly to the central building. Its black iron exterior and curved appearance made it look like a giant black bottle cap embedded in the ground.
There was no door; the front was completely open. As soon as they entered, blue lights illuminated the walls on both sides.
The interior space was larger than it appeared, with display screens embedded in the walls and a central control console. The overall layout resembled a rocket launch center.
"This is the central control center. All information and cargo are commanded and viewed from here," Xu Yan said, reaching out to tap the central display screen.
The black display screen immediately lit up:
"Welcome to the Express Center Control Room."
"Please complete the initialization setup."
"Please press the screen with both palms."
"You go ahead," Xu Yan gestured to the side.
Jiang Ye reached out and placed both palms on the screen.
"Palmprint recorded. Please face the screen and turn your head left and right, then blink."
Jiang Ye followed the instructions.
"Identity confirmed successfully! Express Center Head Jiang Ye, current identity is Colony Governor."
"Alright, that's done," Xu Yan nodded. "From now on, you just need to scan your face, and you'll have access to all the data."
Jiang Ye blinked. "Can I check it now?"
"Not yet. The database isn't built yet; it'll be ready tomorrow morning," Xu Yan smiled.
The two left the central control center and visited the hazardous material warehouses. There were two in total, with signs on the doors indicating "Biochemical Pollutant Storage" and "Nuclear Pollutant Storage."
"Okay, only the database and the underground pipelines are left. They'll be completed around midnight. All facilities have been shown to you; this is the entire express center," Xu Yan said. "There will also be a batch of work robots responsible for transporting express items back and forth."
"How many people can this express center serve?" Jiang Ye suddenly thought of the crucial question. "How much income can it bring me per day?"