Ch 112: My Multiverse Supermarket

Newborn Island, in the forest encampment.

After Qi Jiayu steered the conversation firmly back to heavy oil, Su Wujun’s face turned dark as iron. He left the tent without another word.

“These people from Newborn Island are utterly uncivilized,” he growled to his aide.

In his mind, a negotiation should be a slow, deliberate dance—yet Newborn Island’s side had talked only about the trade itself, shutting him out completely.

“They’re all young,” the aide said cautiously. “They don’t know proper etiquette.”

“We’re not the ones lacking etiquette,” came a cool, sharp voice from behind them. “We just don’t care for bureaucratic nonsense—or empty formalities.”

Both men froze and turned around. Somehow, someone had appeared behind them without either of them noticing.

Thick-skinned as he was, Su Wujun quickly recovered. “And you are?”

“Newborn Island’s Head of Security—Fengxuan,” she said evenly.

Su Wujun narrowed his eyes, now paying her more attention.

If she oversaw the island’s security, perhaps she knew the truth behind how those Li family escort ships had been sunk.

“So the island’s military force is under your command, then?” he probed.

Fengxuan smiled faintly. “I only manage public order.”

Su Wujun shot a look at his aide. The man caught the cue and feigned confusion. “But… there don’t seem to be many guards here at all.”

Fengxuan’s tone turned cryptic. “If you can see them, they aren’t security—they’re just guards.”

That line alone made Su Wujun’s eyes narrow further.

He took the hint through his own thick-skinned cunning: Newborn Island’s elite force must be hidden in the shadows.

Realizing he’d get no secrets out of her and unwilling to risk his safety, he quickly left and returned to his fleet.

Back aboard, the ship’s captain handed him the latest intelligence report.

“Sir, new intel—Newborn Island possesses sonic weapons.”

“Sonic weapons?” Su Wujun was stunned. “You’re not joking?”

“Our agent on Lonewind Island confirmed it. The Li family’s elite troops were dissected after death—their injuries match those caused by sonic attacks.”

Su Wujun silently thanked himself for leaving when he did. If the negotiations had gone south and Newborn Island decided to trap them, those same weapons could have been turned on them.

“Should we inform President Su?” the aide asked.

Su Wujun said coldly, “She’s still talking business. What’s the point?”

If Su Qingyi and her party died, that would simply give him a perfect excuse to retaliate.

*

Inside the negotiation tent, the atmosphere was tense and heated.

Su Qingyi and Qi Jiayu were locked in a fierce exchange, each slicing at the other’s prices like blades.

“One gold coin per ton of heavy oil.”

Qi Jiayu calculated swiftly. “A gold coin weighs fifteen grams. At sixty-eight percent purity, that’s 450 points per gram. That makes 6,750 points per ton—too expensive. I’ll only accept twelve grams per ton.”

“Transportation has costs,” Su Qingyi countered.

Qi Jiayu muttered, glancing toward Xu Jiayi, “Maybe it’s time to start collecting a ten percent tariff.”

Xu Jiayi: …

Why did it feel like Lonewind Island was the one getting punished for their negotiations?

If Newborn Island started taxing trades at ten percent, Lonewind’s 7.8-billion-credit trade volume would owe seventy-eight million in taxes.

Still, since the tariff wouldn’t fall on the Su family, Su Qingyi wasn’t bothered.

Xu Jiayi tried to smooth things over. “Really, this partnership could be mutually beneficial. President Su, why not reconsider?”

Su Qingyi smiled faintly. “As the corpses evolve, oil extraction becomes harder. Heavy oil may not be as valuable as diesel or gasoline, but it’s still rare. High price or not, it’ll sell.”

She wasn’t lying—and that was her leverage.

From the Su family’s perspective, Newborn Island had little to offer. But Newborn Island needed Su’s heavy oil.

That made them the buyers—and buyers couldn’t dictate terms.

Still, Su Qingyi was a businesswoman, not a politician. She believed in profit over pride. If she hadn’t, she would have walked out like Su Wujun had.

Xu Jiayi asked, “Are you saying the Su family lacks nothing?”

Su Qingyi hesitated. Of course they weren’t self-sufficient.

Qi Jiayu said calmly, “Except for weapons, we can get almost anything.”

Su Qingyi pounced. “If that’s true, why buy heavy oil from us at all?”

Qi Jiayu’s eyes glinted. “Because there’s no reason to pay more domestically for what we can get cheaper abroad. And tell me—if the Su family truly produces every material it needs, why are you still scavenging pre-apocalypse alcohol, despite all your brewing crops?”

Su Qingyi fell silent.

She couldn’t deny it. Post-apocalyptic water sources were contaminated. Over half their crops were diseased.

No matter how many raw ingredients they grew, they couldn’t brew decent alcohol without clean water. What little they managed tasted foul.

Yet the elite of Anhai still demanded fine liquor—so the Su family had to scavenge old-world stockpiles.

She forced a light tone. “Then what if I asked for solar photovoltaic equipment? Do you have that too?”

Xu Jiayi answered before Qi Jiayu could. “We do.”

She was confident because she had personally handled the purchase and assembly of solar components for Zhou Li’s earlier orders.

Su Qingyi went quiet again.

Before the apocalypse, the Anxi Archipelago had relied entirely on diesel power thanks to its oil fields.

Five years later, their stored fuel was long gone, new refining was limited, and blackouts were common.

Only then did the Su family realize the value of solar energy—but it was too late. They lacked engineers, parts, and infrastructure.

Newborn Island’s offer was undeniably tempting.

“How much for a full set?” she asked.

“It depends on scale,” Qi Jiayu said. “For a small household system, about fifty thousand points. A large one for a Su family villa—four to five hundred thousand. For factories, over a million.”

Factories were the backbone of the Su family’s power over the archipelago. This was no small deal.

But with this shift, the balance of power between them and Newborn Island might start to turn.

…

Su Qingyi couldn’t make the final decision alone.

As night fell, she and Su Baichun returned to their vessel—not to the fleet’s warship, but to the Su family’s pride: The Su Explorer, a 160-meter superyacht, eight decks high.

It had a pool, sports courts, parking bays, a helipad, and seven speedboats.

Once they had sailed beyond Lonewind’s waters, Su Qingyi contacted her parents to report the negotiations.

When Su Baichun later came knocking with a bottle of wine, she overheard her cousin inside saying, “This deal’s ours to decide. No need to wait for their approval. I just want our factories prioritized for power supply.”

Su Baichun smiled faintly to herself.

As expected—her aunt had sensed opportunity.

The family patriarch had never intended to finalize the heavy oil trade. He’d only wanted to test Newborn Island’s strength.

But seeing the leverage Newborn Island held, her aunt was now pushing to close the deal.

Once the room fell silent, Su Baichun waited a few moments, then knocked lightly as if she’d just arrived.

Su Qingyi wasn’t surprised to see her but raised a brow at the bottle in her hands. “Where’d you get that?”

“From Newborn Island’s supermarket,” Su Baichun said. “A brand I’ve never heard of—but it’s real alcohol.”

Su Qingyi fetched two glasses.

After a sip, she admitted, “Cheap taste, but these days even that counts as good wine.”

“What else did you buy?”

“When we left, your boat was packed full.”

“Wine, drinks, and snacks,” Su Baichun said simply.

The Su factories produced many essentials—but not luxuries like these. Even as a Su heiress, she rarely got to enjoy a soda or snack.

Then she told her aunt how the islanders rushed to the supermarket for supplies, yet the owner never ran out of stock.

But she said nothing about the ambergris.

At last, Su Qingyi looked at her young niece—barely eighteen—with newfound seriousness.

“So, in your view… does Newborn Island hold vast hidden reserves?”

“I don’t know,” Su Baichun replied. “But I’m sure Uncle Wujun already had the island scanned.”

“Unfortunately,” Su Qingyi said, “he told me it’s useless. The island’s equipped with laser radar jamming—it can’t be mapped or penetrated.”

“Which means their tech level is higher than ours. Working with them brings more benefit than risk.”

“I agree,” Su Qingyi said softly.

“I can convince my mother to support the deal,” Su Baichun offered.

Her aunt’s gaze sharpened. “What do you want in return?”

“I want the uninhabited island beside Susan Port’s channel.”

It wasn’t large, but its deed belonged to Su Qingyi—and owning her own island would be the first step in Su Baichun’s larger ambitions.

*

Two days later, Zhou Li sealed another massive contract worth thirty million yuan.

Su Qingyi had officially ordered four full solar power station systems.

Each would provide 3.2 megawatts of capacity—roughly 3.84 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year.

At the same time, Zhou Li purchased three thousand tons of heavy oil from Su Oil Group at 5,400 yuan per ton.

Since the heavy oil was for use on the artificial island, the payment couldn’t come from the supermarket’s account—and Zhou Li didn’t have enough personal funds.

So she acted as a middlewoman: buying ambergris at 25,000 yuan per gram (below the 28,000 market price) and reselling it at auction.

After a five percent fee (about 1,400 yuan per gram), she earned roughly 1,600 yuan per gram in profit.

All of it went straight into buying heavy oil—she didn’t keep a single yuan.

But that would be a one-time move. From now on, she wouldn’t spend her own money for Newborn Island’s operations.

The island would soon belong to Qi Jiayu and her team to manage—and when they proposed collecting tariffs from foreign traders, Zhou Li agreed without objection.

[Author’s Note]

Next up: a new world—Magic and Technology [dog-head emoji] (about two chapters away!)

The photovoltaic system prices were sourced online.

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