Chapter Ninety-One: Why Pay the Ransom?

Every possible hope is now something to seize and try.

With a touch of unease, Yang Dawei dialed the very ordinary number printed on Wu You’s card.

Wu You was discussing some newly added arrangements with Hu Lei and the others.

As time passed, the growth and scale of the mountain tree had long since surpassed the original plan for the first stage, and more elements had to be added on top of the existing layout.

At that moment, the phone rang.

Wu You took out his mobile and saw an unfamiliar number, though it was a rather elegant sequential one. He had almost hung up at once, but in the end he answered.

From the other end came a somewhat hesitant voice.

“Hello, is this Mr. Wu?”

Wu You did not think his memory was so poor that he would fail to recognize a voice—but who was this person, speaking with such obvious unease?

“I am Wu You. May I ask who you are?”

Yang Dawei, seated in his chair, loosened his tie.

“Mr. Wu, perhaps you simply have too many matters to remember. I’m Yang Dawei—the one who met you briefly at the Sofia Grand Hotel.”

“Oh, Mr. Yang. I still remember the taste of those two yellow-lipped fish very clearly!”

The moment he heard the name Yang Dawei, Wu You remembered immediately.

No wonder he had not recognized him at first. Back then, Yang Dawei had given Wu You the impression of someone confident, steady, courteous, and never ostentatious—a textbook example of a successful man in Wu You’s eyes.

But the man on the phone now sounded only anxious, lost, and deeply exhausted.

At the other end, seeing that Wu You still remembered him, Yang Dawei gathered himself a little.

“Then I’ll be frank, Mr. Wu. May I ask whether you are very familiar with the Saudi prince?”

Wu You felt a little conflicted. This sounded like someone asking him for help.

He hated this sort of thing most of all, and to put it plainly, he and the Saudi prince had only spoken once. They were not really familiar at all—one might even say they lived in entirely different worlds.

“Mr. Yang, just say what you need. But I am not very familiar with the Saudi prince.”

Yang Dawei’s heart sank, then somehow eased a little as well.

“Mr. Wu, to be honest, I’ve fallen this time. Inviting you to eat yellow-lipped fish last time was originally because I wanted to...”

As if confessing to a long-held burden, Yang Dawei told him everything—how he had seized the right opportunity to get into the fuel business, how he had managed to procure enough fuel abroad, only for his cargo ship to be hijacked by pirates, and how, driven to desperation, he had run into Da Wanghui’s outrageous demands.

He laid out the entire chain of events to Wu You.

When he finished, Yang Dawei felt much lighter in the chest.

Wu You listened patiently to the end of Yang Dawei’s miserable tale and felt as though he were hearing the opening half of a business film, the kind where the protagonist was surely about to turn things around because of some unexpected twist.

Still, Yang Dawei had left a decent impression on him. If he could help, he did not mind giving him a hand.

“Mr. Yang, your biggest crisis right now is that the goods can’t be delivered on time, correct? I’ll try contacting someone else for you. If I hear anything, I’ll call.”

“Very well, thank you, Mr. Wu...”

Looking at the phone showing the call had ended, Yang Dawei could not bring himself to feel much hope.

Someone like that—an acquaintance of one meal only—was already generous enough to listen to his troubles.

After hanging up with Yang Dawei, Wu You called Zhou Peng and asked whether he knew anyone in the fuel business who could help in an emergency.

Zhou Peng thought Wu You wanted to get into the fuel trade himself and took the matter seriously, making a few inquiries on his behalf.

The result was that, yes, there was a contact in the business, but the amount of fuel available to mobilize was less than ten thousand tons—far short of Yang Dawei’s shortage.

Zhou Peng suggested Wu You contact the Saudi prince. Perhaps it would work.

Wu You had a headache, but since it had come to this, he might as well leave a message under Prince Mohammed’s profile and count it as having tried.

Using a VPN on his phone, he logged into Twitter and left a message asking whether the fuel stored in the prince’s neighboring-country depot was for sale.

To his surprise, less than ten minutes later, his phone received another unfamiliar number.

This caller claimed to be the Asian public relations manager for Prince Mohammed and called to verify whether the Twitter message had indeed been sent by Wu You himself. If so, the prince felt that a small amount of fuel would not be a problem at all.

They could arrange a shipment from storage facilities in Hua, India, and Kazakhstan, and up to two hundred thousand tons would be no issue.

By the way, the manager also asked Wu You to contact him if he had any rare gemstones or formidable bodyguards.

Wu You had originally thought the other side might not even remember him, but he had not expected a reply to come so quickly.

It seemed that the luminous pearl and Garulu had left an extremely deep impression on that novelty-loving prince—one so deep that he still could not forget them.

After hanging up, Wu You realized for the first time how valuable his face was.

Of course, when there was good news, the first thing to do was contact the person involved.

Yang Dawei sat idly in his chair, absentmindedly picking at his nails.

The sudden ringing of his phone startled him.

When he saw that it was Wu You calling, a thread of hope surged once more in his otherwise deadened heart. In his view, Wu You’s last words had only been a brush-off.

But now that he was calling back, the situation was clearly different.

“Hello, Mr. Wu!”

“Hello, Mr. Yang. The money you need to buy fuel can still be raised, right? Forty thousand tons—shipped directly from the prince’s fuel depot in Saudi Arabia. The price will be the usual international rate. No problem, yes?”

“I... I...”

Yang Dawei could hardly believe it.

“Mr. Yang, do you not have enough money?” Wu You asked, hearing him stammer.

“No, no, there’s no problem. I can absolutely come up with that part of the money... Who should I contact?” He and Xu Maojun could still scrape it together.

Wu You could hear Yang Dawei’s excitement, and he did not keep him in suspense.

“The contact is named Xiao Lucheng. He’s Prince Mohammed’s Asian public relations manager. I’ll text you the details.”

...

Yang Dawei rushed to his hotel at top speed and immediately contacted Xiao Lucheng.

By the time all the verification steps and authenticity checks had been completed, Yang Dawei could not help but let out a shout of triumph in his office.

Forty thousand tons of fuel could be drawn directly from the domestic warehouse, so the timing would absolutely be sufficient.

And the fuel that came back after paying the ransom could serve as the next shipment. Though the money from these two deals might end up feeding the pirates, his entire game had been saved.

He dared not delay, and immediately called Wu You back to express his thanks.

Seeing Yang Dawei return the call, Wu You knew he must already have confirmed everything.

“Hello, Mr. Yang. The fuel matter is fine, then?”

“No problem, no problem at all. Mr. Wu, you saved my life—there’s nothing more to say. I’ll come personally to thank you.”

There it was again: a personal visit to give thanks.

“No need for all that trouble. By the way, how do you plan to handle the pirate situation?”

Yang Dawei was somewhat conflicted, but his tone had already become relaxed.

“I can only take out a loan first and pay the ransom. We’ll keep the cargo stored for the next use.”

Wu You laughed and said casually, “Why pay a ransom?”

The words left Yang Dawei stunned on the other end. If he did not pay the ransom, was he supposed to abandon the cargo and the crew?

“Mr. Wu is joking, of course. The crew’s safety is still the most important thing, and we have to recover the freighter.”

“Haha, just kidding, just kidding. By the way, Mr. Yang, this happened in the Gulf of Aden, didn’t it?”

“Where else could it be? The news reports all covered it in detail.”

After the call ended, Wu You’s mind began to turn over.

It was not that he truly wanted to help Yang Dawei to the end and solve his problem for him. Rather, he felt that those pirates might be rather useful material.

In fact, they seemed even more suitable than searching for human-shaped materials in the Eastern Domain.

Besides, it looked as though those men had plenty of weapons and military supplies on hand; skimming a little money from them should not be a problem either.

There were still too few humanoid monsters in his possession.