BXBX NOVEL Chapter 113: Settlement Agreement
Chapter 113: Settlement Agreement
Under Chen Chen’s operation, even with a large number of opposing forces, he was still able to amass more supporters. The National Assembly of Namibia had passed Chen Chen’s land lease agreement without any further complications.
However, to appease the Ministry of Environment Protection, the assembly had raised the matter of increasing the cost of the lease. Chen Chen was also held responsible for the construction and resettlement costs of the local villagers that were to be relocated.
Naturally, Chen Chen did not oppose that.
In the end, Chen Chen had obtained the rights to 50,000 hectares of land for 40 years for a grand sum of 350 million U.S. dollars.
,000 hectares translated to 500 square kilometers of land. It was roughly the area of a square land spanning 22.4 kilometers on each side. There was only one village located in this plot of land designated to Chen Chen.
This was the Gorob Village which they previously had a conflict with.
After Chen Chen’s recent establishment of the Black Security Service B.S.S., the daily training schedule was met with constant complaints from the local guards. This was coupled with Qian Wenhuan’s implicitly instructing the mercenaries to give the local guards a hard time.
For example, some of the mercenaries who liked gambling would forcibly drag the local guards into their gambling activities. They started by giving them a taste of victory before raising the stakes drastically.
In terms of scheming abilities and cunningness, how were these mercenaries supposed to rival these mercenaries who were surrounded by death day in and out? It only took a few days for them to accumulate a mountain worth of debt on top of losing all of their assets.
As for the ones who had objected to partaking in gambling, the mercenaries had them serve them as waiters. Any objections were met with rounds of beating.
In the world of mercenaries, the strong reigned supreme. What all these local guards did was eat, sleep, and laze about throughout the day. Even without Qian Wenhuan’s suggestions, these mercenaries were not going to allow these natives to assume the same position as them.
Within a week of the two groups merging, a particular incident happened where a local guard was sick of being toyed with and decided he was going to stab the mercenaries harassing him. It ended with him being the one who was killed instead.
This particular incident had catalyzed the conflict between the local guards and the mercenaries.
The entirety of Gorob Village decided they were going to make a statement and came out in force to cause trouble. This time around, Chen Chen did not hold back anymore. He immediately had all of the staff from Gorob Village fired. He also had the mercenaries put on bomb suits and employed the usage of explosive weapons to suppress the villagers.
Due to the extreme forces used by the mercenaries during the operation, two more lives were taken in the process.
The government of the city of Walvis Bay stepped in when it saw that things were slowly getting out of hand. In the end, Chen Chen compensated Gorob Village with a payment of 300,000 Namibian dollars.
These events had occurred two months ago.
Over this period, the villagers of Gorob never stopped their plots and schemes. They occasionally had their members sneak into the vicinity of the research center and destroy the solar panels several kilometers away from the center.
Even if they had never managed to inflict major damage, they continued to stick around like flies and pester them endlessly.
There was very little Chen Chen could do about their pestering. Even the photovoltaic power generation equipment only numbered in the thousands, they were spread across several square kilometers of land. Thirty men alone were not going to be able to defend them all.
Chen Chen decided that he was going to get rid of this village for good.
The site of Gorob Village was included in the vast plot of land Chen Chen had purchased.
Gorob Village had a unique geographical advantage as it was set up by the coastline. Not only did they have access to a vast amount of nautical resources, several old houses in the village also doubled as a tourism attraction for them to generate income.
This meant that it was very unlikely for the villagers to comply with relocation.
This was not a problem Chen Chen had to concern himself with as the officials would deal with it themselves. All Chen Chen had to do was construct a residence for the villagers in a newly designated site.
During the construction of the new residence area, Chen Chen decided to cut corners wherever he could. Within a month, hundreds of standard modern concrete bungalows were constructed in the new resettlement site.
Despite cutting costs, they still proved to be less of an eyesore than the iron-clad houses that looked like they were built in the slums.
The problems continued even after the houses were constructed. It turned out that the officials had greatly underestimated the spirit of the Gorob villagers as the police forces they had dispatched were chased out with sticks and batons each time. There was no progress to be seen even one month after the settlement was made official.
After exhausting their options, they came back to the research center to ask for help.
As the head of the research center in charge of external affairs, Qian Wenhuan immediately went to Chen Chen’s office after hearing the requests of the officials.
“Boss?”
The fifth office building in the research center. Qian Wenhuan knocked on the door with a sign that read “Chairman Office”.
“It’s unlocked, come in.”
Qian Wenhuan pushed the door open after receiving permission. He was greeted with the sight of Chen Chen sitting on the chair with its back facing the door. He seemed to be admiring the view outside.
“Boss, the people in charge of the relocation and resettlement spoke to me. They say they want to enlist the help of our B.S.S. department.” Qian Wenhuan began.
“I assume that this is about Gorob Village.”
Chen Chen spoke softly, “No need to dispatch the B.S.S. department. Head over to the resource department and get ten full coverage chemical suits and a bottle of ethyl mercaptan. Get ten bulldozers as well.”
“Ethyl mercaptan?” Qian Wenhuan was unsure about Chen Chen’s intentions.
“Just pass the message to the resource department.”
Chen Chen made a waving gesture with his hands. “Have the ones in charge of the operation put on the suits, that includes the bulldozer operators. Have someone spray diluted ethyl mercaptan in the village and proceed with bulldozing the entire village after the villagers evacuate it.”
“...”
Qian Wenhuan began to understand what the bottle of ethyl mercaptan was for.
“Understood.” Qian Wenhuan promptly assured Chen Chen with a nod. He allowed himself to mourn for the villagers of Gorob before he turned around and left the office.
Chen Chen slowly turned the chair around after Qian Wenhuan’s departure. It appeared that he was not admiring the sight outside the window. There was a printed map in his hands.
The map appeared to be drawn by hand before it was digitized and printed out. There were countless scribbled notes written in English sprayed across the map.
The map was far from any ordinary map. It looked more like a picture for reference which was drawn by a poor painter. The map showed the location of Gorob Village which was five kilometers away.
The text on the map described a cliff by the sea located in the area. At approximately the level of ten meters below sea meter, there was a cave that was only wide enough to fit a child no more than ten.
Upon swimming more than ten meters into the cave, there should be an exit located right above.
Due to the exit being leveled right above sea level, it was not filled with seawater.
The exit led to a small cave in rocky terrain.
This was not all there was to it. At the end of the cave was yet another long and narrow tunnel. The tunnel was incredibly long and it would take almost an hour-long walk to reach the other end.
The tunnel led to a natural cave several hundred meters underground. It was almost the size of a football field!
This map was discovered by Little X while investigating the Gorob Village. It was found in a folder inside the computer of a person who had left the village decades ago...