Jiang Ye dealt with them one by one, first adding Antang, the agent for Squid Skewers, as a friend.
Both sides were straightforward, and the cooperation was quickly settled in less than five minutes. Antang provided the funds and staff for the Squid Skewers shop, while Jiang Ye only needed to ensure the shop's safety and normal operation. Jiang Ye would receive 40% of the daily profit.
Next, Jiang Ye added Takekawa Hanai from Tokugawa Ieyasu Sushi.
Jiang Ye immediately asked what a "city partner" meant.
Takekawa Hanai's reply was filled with Japanese-style reserved politeness, and after more than five minutes of rambling, Jiang Ye finally grasped the main idea.
Jiang Ye would provide the money and personnel, while Takekawa Hanai would only provide the recipes and various production standards, and serve as an opening consultant, available for any questions. Jiang Ye would receive 80% of the daily profit.
The cost of opening a shop wasn't high; a standard medium-sized storefront only required two million.
Jiang Ye hesitated for a moment, then decided to take on this project.
The previous Chicken King Fast Food and Squid Skewers shops were essentially building success for others, like a surrogate pregnancy, with most of the profit going to the merchants and himself only receiving a small portion.
However, with Tokugawa Ieyasu Sushi, once it was established, most of the profit would belong to him. The storefront and personnel would also be his, making it a shop in the truest sense of the word.
The two million for opening the shop was as easy as playing a game for Jiang Ye.
If that was the case, why not play?
Takekawa Hanai sent over the shop's floor plan. The entire diagram was extremely detailed, giving a sense of a Japanese spy map. The shop's layout was thoroughly researched, considering factors like the optimal spacing between tables and the most efficient placement of kitchen equipment.
Jiang Ye directly sent the blueprints to Xu Yan, asking her to dispatch a construction team to build according to the plan.
The shop had only two floors and was 600 square meters in total. Construction took only an afternoon to complete. By evening, the brand new Tokugawa Ieyasu Sushi shop stood at the intersection, with a wooden sign indicating its imminent opening hanging on the glass door.
Simultaneously, the Squid Skewers shop was also completed. This one was larger, spanning 800 square meters, quite impressive.
Making squid skewers was a rather intricate process, so Antang, the agent for Squid Skewers, sent a total of 19 staff members and one manager. They reported for duty in the town at ten o'clock at night, transported by a giant spaceship.
These staff members actually emerged from the spaceship driving mobile base units. Jiang Ye inquired carefully and learned that all the staff members were colonial administrators from a certain planet. Their planet had been hit by an asteroid, causing their ecosystem to completely collapse. The dust clouds would take many years to dissipate, so the colonial administrators had fled to seek new livelihoods.
The town's population was growing daily, currently reaching 740 people. Including the employees of Squid Skewers, the number immediately jumped to 760.
The scale was already quite grand, with large areas of houses and even more mobile base units. Unfortunately, most people currently lacked housing.
Jiang Ye recruited employees for the sushi shop through the town's group chat.
There was a town resident named Ono Jiro, who claimed to have been a sushi chef for five years.
Upon hearing this, Jiang Ye thought, "This is perfect!"
He immediately hired him as the manager and instructed him to recruit staff himself.
The salary and benefits were also simple: 20% of the sushi shop's daily profit would go to the brand, 60% to Jiang Ye, and the remaining 20% would be at Ono Jiro's discretion.
Jiang Ye felt this arrangement was excellent, giving employees more freedom and motivating them to work hard, as more earnings meant higher salaries. He never imagined that this decision would lead to a tragedy later on.
After finalizing the staff, Jiang Ye checked the time; it was already one in the morning.
Jiang Ye got up and went upstairs, collapsing onto his bed to sleep.
As he was falling asleep, gunshots rang out.
The dense gunfire came from the direction of the coast.
He hugged his blanket and remained still, expecting, based on past experience, that the gunfire would last at most two to three minutes before subsiding.
One minute.
Three minutes.
Five minutes.
The gunfire didn't stop; instead, it grew more intense, mixed with the deafening explosions of rocket-propelled grenades.
Jiang Ye began to feel uneasy. He sat up in bed and quickly got dressed.
Halfway through dressing, the door of his mobile base unit was violently pounded.
Jiang Ye was startled, a bad premonition surging through him. He hurried downstairs to open the door.
Shizue Tomoko, her face a mask of panic, gasped for breath as she quickly reported, "The water ghosts have just broken through a defensive line! Two soldiers are injured. The sheriff wants your approval to arm the townspeople, so they can go forward and hold the line!"
Jiang Ye was shocked. "I approve! Go quickly!"
Shizue Tomoko pulled out a walkie-talkie from her pocket, shouting as she ran, her assault rifle swaying on her back.
Jiang Ye drove his mobile base unit towards the coast. The closer he got, the more intense the gunfire became. The flashes of fire on the beach illuminated the night sky, visible from miles away. Many frightened townspeople were running around the town, and some auxiliary police officers were driving mobile base units into the town, their vehicles packed with assault rifles just brought from the armory.
Upon reaching the coastal defense line, Jiang Ye shouldered a rocket launcher and took up a firing position.
He was stunned for a moment.
Seeing the scene on the beach, he felt as if he were in the middle of the Huaihai Campaign. The beach was swarming with water ghosts, surging forward in layers like waves, almost covering the entire beach. Golden bullets rained down, and rows of water ghosts sprayed blood and fell, with those behind stepping over their corpses to continue their advance. The ground was already covered with a thick layer of dead bodies.
At least three thousand had landed, and in the distance, more and more blue-glowing whales were rapidly approaching. The whales were densely packed with water ghosts, numbering at least two thousand more!
Jiang Ye pulled the trigger and fired a rocket. In such a battlefield, aiming was unnecessary; any shot would kill a circle of water ghosts. After firing more than a dozen rounds, he heard someone nearby shout that their ammunition was depleted.
Dropping the rocket launcher, Jiang Ye sprinted back to the mobile base unit near the fortifications.
He desperately placed an order, frantically buying a thousand rounds of rockets and 280 six-barreled Gatling gun ammunition belts.
The transaction warehouse spewed out ammunition, quickly filling the mobile base unit almost to capacity.
Just as the first batch of townspeople arrived to provide support and jumped into the fortifications, Jiang Ye opened the window and shouted for them to come in and help carry the ammunition.
An hour later, the gunfire finally ceased.
Four Gatling guns failed to cool down in time, their barrels melting and drooping like noodles. The ammunition belts snapped, rendering them completely useless. Fortunately, no shooters were injured.
The entire fortification was filled with shell casings, reaching up to the calves when stepped on, and the sound of clattering shell casings accompanied every movement.
The seaside was as hot as an oven. All the weapons were hot enough to fry an egg, the shell casings were warm, and the beach was covered in hot blood.
Jiang Ye first checked on the two injured soldiers. Fortunately, their injuries were not severe, only superficial head abrasions. When the water ghosts had lunged into the fortifications, they had struck them hard, but the soldiers were wearing stab-proof vests, so they were merely knocked down, hitting their heads on the edge of the fortifications.
They were not the only ones knocked down by the water ghosts, but the other soldiers were wearing helmets and were unharmed.
Jiang Ye ordered the clearing of shell casings from the fortifications, the battlefield cleanup, and the counting of the number of water ghosts that had landed this time.
A few minutes later, the count was complete.
The water ghost corpses were intertwined everywhere, making counting difficult. However, by counting the whale corpses, they could be tallied. A total of 820 whales had arrived, meaning 8,200 water ghosts.
The numerous whale corpses piled up to form a spectacular sight, almost like land reclamation. The beach extended tens of meters into the sea, with giant whale carcasses like floating islands crowded together, bleeding and dyeing the entire sea and a large part of the beach red. Jiang Ye stepped over two layers of water ghost corpses to reach the sea. He bent down, scooped up some sand, and squeezed it hard, causing blood water to drip out.
Immense pressure weighed down on him. Yesterday, only two thousand water ghosts had landed, spread out over the entire day. Today, the number had surged to over eight thousand, a fourfold increase in one go!
If it quadrupled again tomorrow, it would be thirty-two thousand, and they would be unable to defend.
Jiang Ye looked at the soldiers. Every face was tired and terrified, their eyes hiding immense unease.
When Jiang Ye returned to the mobile base unit, the thing he feared most had finally happened.
Shao Wan was waiting for him at the entrance, smoking a cigarette with a heavy heart. Upon seeing him, he immediately stepped forward:
"Town Mayor, ten people have gone to the police station to cancel their identification cards. They want to leave the town and seek new livelihoods."