kingnovel Chapter 511 Bribery
Chapter 511 Bribery
That’s right, rotten wood.
Marquez felt that there was no more appropriate word to describe the man lying in the chair.
The person on the recliner was withered and thin, her body hunched over, with brown and black rotten skin hanging on her shriveled muscles, as if it would fall off if pulled by hand. In her ribs, the implanted mechanical bones pierced through the skin and were exposed, but there was no bleeding, probably because there was not much blood left in this body.
This person's face was even more terrifying. Her hair had completely fallen out, and the wrinkles on her face were so deep that it was difficult to distinguish which were wrinkles and which were facial features. Her left eyelid drooped loosely, almost sticking to her lower eyelid, and her right eye had been replaced with a mechanical prosthetic eye.
He felt a sense of sadness. Although this guy's survival was of no benefit to him and his family, what had he experienced to become like this? If there was something in this world that could destroy her like this, and if that thing found him one day, how would he deal with it?
"The head of the family said that you are welcome."
Just as Marquez was stunned by the shock, the young man was the first to greet him.
"It is an honor for me and my family to meet Lord Hildra." Years of speaking the truth to different people had conditioned Marquez to instinctively respond to flattery. This response flowed out of his mouth without a second thought. Only then did his mind react and begin to examine the words. Once he was sure there was something wrong with them, he continued.
"On behalf of myself and the Campbell family, I extend my condolences to you."
The rotten wood on the recliner didn't move at all, but the young man smiled politely and said:
"You've gone through so much trouble to come here, which shows your sincerity. It's a shame for us to not be able to treat every guest here well." The young man said, raising his hand and gesturing behind Marquez: "Please sit down."
At some point, a chair appeared behind Marquez. The chair was made of wood and blended harmoniously with the surrounding retro decorations.
This little trick was not enough to surprise Marquez, and he sat on it calmly.
The boy still stood beside the rotten wood. When Marquez sat down, he bent down to help the rotten wood tuck in the exposed corners of the blanket. When Marquez was done, he said:
"I heard that the Campbell family has encountered some troubles recently."
"Indeed." Marquez had no intention of concealing anything. Since the other party had brought up the topic, it meant they were confident. There was no point in hiding it. "The ecology of Ambos has collapsed. It's the family's most important industrial planet. We can continue production despite the collapse of the ecology, but this production will continue to affect the atmosphere and geology, which in turn will increase production costs, creating a vicious cycle. We can only hope that this collapse will gradually cease after reaching a certain extreme, but the resulting loss of production capacity and increased costs are unimaginable."
Marquez was also not surprised by the ecological collapse. This was something that every industrial world in the empire had to go through. The so-called ecological collapse was not the disappearance of a few species, but global extinction caused by ocean evaporation and atmospheric escape. In the end, the entire planet would become a desolate dead star, and only humans could produce and live in closed super cities, like a nest of termites.
"You're joking." But to Marquez's surprise, the young man burst out laughing. "A fluctuation in the production capacity of an industrial planet is a matter of concern, even to a sector governor. That's not the minor inconvenience I'm talking about."
After saying this, the boy handed a document to Marquez:
"Please take a look at this."
Although Marquez guessed that something bad was going to happen, he still opened the document calmly.
There are a lot of data and tables in the document, which would be confusing to someone who has no knowledge of them, but Marquez can understand them.
The document provides a detailed analysis of the territories controlled by various factions within the Campbell family and where these territories overlap, as well as a lot of content that should only appear in documents that are destroyed after reading.
Simply put, the current Campbell family is facing the risk of splitting. Due to different policies and interests for family development, the Campbell family is roughly divided into two factions, and Marquez happens to belong to the faction with higher reputation but less actual power.
It would be easy if the boundaries between the two factions were clear. At worst, they could just split up peacefully. In any case, the interests of the other faction would not be shared with the other faction. If the faction split up, everyone would just eat from different pots, but everyone would still get the same amount of food.
However, the problem is that the vague area between the two factions is too large, so no matter how it is divided, some people will be dissatisfied. If the division continues, violent conflict may not be far away.
In fact, in terms of practical impact, even if the top nobles all died in the fighting, the lower-level factories would continue to produce, and this would have little impact on the fluctuation of production. Therefore, from an outsider's perspective, the ecological collapse that can seriously affect production is a real major event compared to the infighting among the nobles.
But for Marquez, the situation was completely the opposite. He was the top aristocrat. Even if the output of the lower-level factories decreased, his share of the profits would not and dared not be reduced by a single cent. He let the people below fight for the losses and did not have to worry about them at all.
And if his faction loses the struggle, he may not only eat less in the future, but may even vomit out everything he has eaten before, which would be a real big trouble for him.
Marquez instantly realized that this was a demonstration and solicitation by the Helverson family.
Things like ecological collapse cannot be concealed. Any sane person, seeing the increasingly frequent natural disasters on Ambos and looking at which industrial cities on the planet belong to which company, can probably tell which company is in trouble.
However, no matter which faction they belonged to, they all tacitly kept the internal struggle secret from outsiders. Marquez originally thought that the people from Helivinsen could only hear a little rumor at most, but he didn't expect that they understood the matter more deeply than he, the person involved. This was how they showed their strength.
The demonstration has been completed. Marquez admitted that Helivenson's intelligence was indeed powerful, and then it was time to win him over. Generally speaking, according to this development, the next process would be to support one faction and suppress the other, and then gain their loyalty.