Chapter 2149 - 2149: 2149

The bumper harvest of Wale Capital, no doubt about it, was taken right at the peak; both state-owned and private sectors made a killing.

You could say that the people in this line of work could sit on their hands for a hundred years and still never starve; on the contrary, they'd be dressed to the nines and living it up.

Those sneaky, under‑the‑table overseas state capital funds from the Great East Pot were green with regret, forced to watch others rake it in while they themselves ended up earning a full fifteen percent less.

That gap is really massive.

And they know just how short of cash the Great East Pot is right now. Sigh…

As for the capital windfall, that doesn't count for much in Mark and Liu Zhizhong's eyes; the real big harvest is the huge leap in human technology!

The stainless‑steel rocket body slashes launch costs and can be reused. This test proved that its recovery tech is now mature and reliable, controllable, and operable.

In launch history, this is a huge step forward, laying a solid foundation for humanity's future voyage to the stars and seas. It provides strong practical data support for feasibility, and the prospects are tremendous.

Next up will still be a long stretch of launch tests—on rocket body materials, circuits, and payload units and so on. It'll take at least another ten years before we can pull off manned flights and travel like civil aviation.

Honestly, that's just a small step forward—but a small step in technology is a giant step for humanity, right?

After Mark and Liu Zhizhong briefly celebrated the success of the test launch, they went their separate ways, each busy with their own business.

People who pursue truth and progress never get hung up on ceremony or pleasantries; what needs doing still has to get done!

Meanwhile, in the Great East Pot, the million‑strong aerospace sector was dumbfounded. They'd been slapped in the face; their faces were swollen; they were cursing under their breath, yet they still had to concede defeat—even if their mouths could still spin a win.

They shifted attention and began secret R&D. In their view, stainless‑steel reusable rocket technology is still viable; they must catch up, must overtake, must make a huge, huge splash.

In reality, that takes time. Some catch‑ups aren't accomplished by lip service; they take time—and may be almost impossible.

Technological barriers aren't something you crack without decades of accumulation and experience, without global exchange and interaction. Shut the door and slog away, and all you get is endless hardship.

Which advance in human civilization hasn't come from exchange and learning? When has a leap in civilization come from some group tinkering behind closed doors?

Of course, some rich and colorful disgusting stuff has indeed been "innovated" behind closed doors—that you can't deny, heh heh…

And the Great East Pot's stainless‑steel rocket R&D not only fails to save costs, it's actually become a prime excuse to ask the higher‑ups for more funding.

All beginnings are hard, right? The West is choking us by the throat; everything has to rely on ourselves; that all takes money! If we don't catch up now, there'll be no place for us in the future stars and seas. The vastness of space won't have our share—wouldn't that be a huge loss of face for a Great Country?

Fortunately, the Great East Pot cares about face. So for the sake of face, with one big flourish of the pen, more and more support funds are just poured in.

This time, that little bit of money the state‑owned capital secretly made overseas really isn't enough to throw in, yet it still all got dumped in.

Anyway, they've got to move that core base again and again, stir their emotions again and again: Look, we've got our own stainless‑steel reusable rockets and tech now! We can also do real global rapid flights! We too can head for the stars and seas and kick off cosmic‑scale colonization!

Of course, if technology and civilization were in the hands of Pot Family countries like the Great East Pot and Evil Luo Country, you can imagine—the whole Earth would bear their surname. They'd have long since become the legitimate global overlords, the rightful village chief and deputy village chief of the Earth Village, hehe… Then you ordinary folks would be in for some "great days", heh heh…

But in reality, that's impossible—forever impossible. Those who get it, get it.

After the successful launch, Liu Zhizhong's special plane took off straight for Europe on a visit. He'd also been invited to a conference of the Voluntary Aid to Kekistan Alliance, to specifically discuss Kekistan's post‑war reconstruction—including how to divvy up reconstruction quotas.

This allocation covers infrastructure rebuilding, electronic and information tech rebuilding, industrial and agricultural rebuilding, and so on. All big investments, all high returns—really tempting.

At times like this, the so‑called "infrastructure madman" basically doesn't get a turn. Those projects the madman's been doing in recent years—those infrastructure tofu‑dregs—everyone's scared of them!

This time, Little Japan was also invited. Quite an honor, and they really threw themselves into it, extremely willing to fully support the effort. Ever since that war, after some deep soul‑searching, Little Japan walked a different path and built a pretty good international image—really popular, sigh…

Little Japan's citizens going abroad and Great East Pot citizens going abroad—those situations are really worlds apart! And Great East Pot people going out can truly feel that, aside from their own folks, no one's bullying them anymore; of course, some regular citizens' utterly bottomless behavior overseas is genuinely repulsive.

Right now, the Kekistan reconstruction conference has nothing to do with Mi Guo people; even Trump is hopping mad. Failing to secure benefits for his Pot Family means he's failed—and of course he's not happy.

Trump even declared that he must ramp up tariffs on Europe, shut their products out of United States markets, bring manufacturing back, bring technology back.

Once Trump goes crazy, boom, the whole world suffers with him; the Great East Pot also gets shot while lying down—miserable as hell.

Trump has likewise slapped sanctions on Great East Pot students going to study in the United States, imposing all kinds of restrictions—basically, he just doesn't want them learning tech over there.

At the same time, Trump launched massive reviews and deportations of all kinds of immigrants from the Great East Pot, stirring up huge storms in cities and leaving people on edge.

Trump even, for the sake of his Peace Prize, went so far as to propose a bill—a "Bend Island Peace" bill—and it actually passed.

The gist of it? If the Great East Pot once activates a plan to use force to "unite" Bend Island, the United States will disclose the assets that Great East Pot elites hold in the United States and in other major developed countries around the world.

Holy shit…

That's some serious firepower!

More powerful than a nuke!

Who are the Great East Pot elites? In any case, it's not you, not me, and certainly not some assembly‑line worker, right?

Under these circumstances, those idiot warmongers were stunned. It felt like Trump had totally secured his seat as the Earth‑Era Central Discipline Committee Secretary, ha!

The Great East Pot's Inflamed Man merely advised the United States not to deliberately stir up trouble out of nothing, saying that the Great East Pot elites' privacy is a human right and cannot be casually exploited; the accusations are pure fabrication, hahaha!

And just while Liu Zhizhong was attending the conference, Trump sent over an invitation…