Chapter 197: The Burning Savanna
Translator: TeamTWO
Editor: Nora
In the end, the 120 secret manuals that Ouyang Shuo held all turned into 85,300 gold. After the reduction of the 10% taxation, he was left with 76,000 gold, while the 120 manuals only cost 6,000 gold in total.
The obtained a profit of tens of times from this deal.
Ouyang Shuo had thought of sending a batch of secret manuals to his little aunt to avoid the taxes. However, he knew that his little aunt would surely negotiate with him, so he gave up on doing so.
According to his plans, he would only find a secret manual of the emperor-level for his little aunt. As for the gold-level secret manuals, even if he had sold it to the Snow-War Rose mercenary group, only the core members would use them.
After all, Ouyang Shuo did not have any feeling toward the core members.
Throughout Ouyang Shuo’s whole secret manual selling spree, the most torn person was not the players that did not get any secret manuals but Feng Qingyang.
……
Swordsman City, Lord Manor Office.
“Little sister, are we really not going to sell any? Look at that guy. He sold the last batch of secret manuals at 750 gold per manual. If we don’t sell them now, I am afraid that the market will get saturated.”
Sitting in front of Feng Qingyang was naturally his sister, Feng Qingyue.
Different from her brother, she was calm, “Brother need not worry much. According to my predictions, the price of a secret manual will eventually rise to 800 gold. As for the market saturation you mentioned, there is no need to worry about it. Didn’t you see it, 120 secret manuals were sold within a day, which clearly denotes the demand for secret manuals in China.”
“Moreover, even if the market was really saturated, that would only happen because the available funds at the moment had all been used to purchase the 120 manuals. After a period of time, when people ready funds again, the price of secret manuals would rise along with it. You have to know, gold-level secret manuals denote an important boundary. Below gold-level, the manual levels are too low, so players aren’t satisfied with it; above gold-level, players can’t afford it, and they are low in numbers too. Therefore, for a long period of time, it will not stale.”
If only Ouyang Shuo was here to listen to her analysis, he would take her as a confidant. Her vision and insight were simply impressive and unique, beyond the reaches of ordinary players.
“Alright, I trust you.” Feng Qingyang chose to compromise. Clearly, he had immense trust in his sister.
……
In his hands, Ouyang Shuo held the largest funds ever since the game was launched. Naturally, he wouldn’t allow the funds to get rusty and collect dust in his storage bag.
He first took out 5,000 gold as reserve funds for the Four Seas Bank Xunlong Town Branch. Then, he took the odd lots of 1,770 gold as reserve funds for Four Seas Bank Headquarters.
That’s right, gold in the unit of thousands were now odd lots in his eyes.
Other than leaving 10,000 gold as spare funds, he used all of the 60,000 gold left to purchase foods.
His business partner was no doubt the Cui Chamber of Commerce. Their representative was a cousin brother of Cui Yingyu, and his name was Cui Shouren.
Even for the Cui Chamber of Commerce, such a business deal was already not a small matter. Cui Shouren couldn’t imagine that a small territory like Shanhai City could have such strong financial resources. They were only business partners for a month, yet the total transaction amounts had already exceeded 70,000 gold, which was truly incredible.
Initially, Cui Chamber of Commerce was only willing to cooperate because of Cui Yingyu. But now, Cui Chamber of Commerce was starting to look squarely at their business partner as equals.
According to Cui Shouren’s words, he couldn’t say for sure, but the quiet Shanhai City might be the opportunity for Cui Chamber of Commerce to soar high and rise again in the future.
The incident that happened to Cui Yingyu had an impact on them. The family business caravan was robbed. Although the goods lost were nothing much, the bigger issue was that the reputation of Cui Chamber of Commerce had taken a huge blow.
In that incident, Cui Chamber of Commerce had suffered the losses of hundreds of core members, tens of top management personnel, and needless to say, the Cui family young lady went missing.
Her reappearance was a turning point for the Cui Chamber of Commerce.
In order to repay the Cui Chamber of Commerce and also to deepen the sincerity of the cooperation between the two sides, Ouyang Shuo had obscurely revealed his prediction on the food market in the next three months to Cui Shouren.
As for how much the Cui Chamber of Commerce could profit from this, that would depend on how much confidence they had in Ouyang Shuo and their own courage and resolution. It was simply something that Ouyang Shuo couldn’t decide for them.
Sixty million units of food. This quantity took a full three days for the Resource Department to transfer them from the market to the massive granary built on the outskirts of the city west.
Such a decision and move puzzled Ouyang Shuo’s people in the territory. No one could understand why their lord had purchase such a massive amount of food. What use did it have?
For this, Ouyang Shuo couldn’t explain much. As the funds used to purchase the food wasn’t from the territory’s revenue, they did not try to obstruct him even though his actions puzzled them.
Well for the player community like Sun Xiaoyue, they had little understandings toward territory management. Hence, they simply had no idea what this large amount of food meant.
As the saying goes, the insider knows the ropes, while the outsider just comes along for the ride.
In the meantime, Ouyang Shuo brought along a thousand Tang swords and a thousand composite bows salvaged from the operation Wildfire to Xunlong Town, while he also personally attended the opening ceremony of Four Seas Bank Xunlong Branch.
With Ouyang Shuo’s support and help, Xunlong Dianxue immediately expanded his military to 2,000 soldiers.
The following day, he applied for the promotion request to the system. On August 10, Xunlong Town will face the bandit siege.
During this period of time, Xunlong Dianxue ordered Qin Qiong to lead the troops and exterminate the bandits within the territory. The purpose of this order was to forge the newly established military so that they would not be powerless during the siege.
Of course, Wang Yuanfeng and his triple-bow arcuballista belonged to free support from Ouyang Shuo. It was a support that every Shanhai Alliance member could enjoy. As of now, Shanhai City had already manufactured 5 triple-bow arcuballista, so these arcuballista were the source of confidence for Xunlong Dianxue.
While Xulong Dianxue’s territory promotion occupied him, Ouyang Shuo was keeping an eye on the nomadic tribes and also another big event.
According to his past life events, the birth of the tenth grade 1 city would trigger the second battlefield event.
For the battlefield, Ouyang Shuo had been preparing himself. He was now at the final stage of preparation.
Lei Xun had continuously sent intelligence regarding the movements of nomadic tribes to Ouyang Shuo.
A week since operation Wildfire, the genocide of Tian Qi ZhenXi camp had spread throughout the nomadic tribes, blowing a hurricane in the savanna.
Regarding the culprit, the tribes had many different opinions.
Some said it was the raiders. Whether it was the lucky survivors of the Tian Qi warriors or those who were lucky enough to witness the raiders traveling through the savanna, they all said that the culprit dressed in clothes of raiders and were rampant.
Some said it was one of the tribes and claimed that the raiders outfits were merely a simple disguise. The tribes carefully investigated this extremely tragic war that wiped out the nomad warriors, Most of the tribal chiefs agreed that ordinary raiders would not have such well-planned tactical arrangements.
Additionally, a single man said that it was the territory lord. Thi man was naturally the former commander of ZhenXi camp, Lhakhshen. He was now a prisoner under Mengke’s orders. At any time, he could be sentenced to death.
The day Lhakhshen returned to Tian Qi tribes main camp, Mengke the Khan took off his role and threw him into the death row prison. Whether he could still walk out of the prison alive would depend on the Khan’s frame of mind.
Faced with such a tragic defeat, although his foe had employed the element of surprise, Lhakhshen’s reckless act and terrible command were undeniable. Therefore, he confessed to his wrongdoings himself, and he was willing to wash away his sins with his death. That night, no one other than the two knew what happened in the Khan’s tent.
People only knew that Lhakhshen was thrown onto the death row, yet Mengke the Khan had yet to give his words about the exact time he would sentence Lhakhshen to death, so the matter just stopped and clung there.
ZhenXi camp’s destruction had slowly shown its influence through the savanna. This time, it wasn’t anything like operation Dawn that had tepid and little effects.
The most direct impact was the few middle-sized tribes in the west. Their hearts started to boil in excitement. Without ZhenXi camp holding them back, they no longer wanted to allow the Tian Qi tribe to contain them.
The small tribes were terrified. Tian Qi tribe was their biggest backing. Now, it had lost an arm without even knowing the identity of the enemy.
Such a backer, could it still protect them?
If the small tribes were taken as herds of sheep, the middle-sized tribes would be hungry wolves. As for the Tian Qi tribe, it would be the lion king of the savanna. The lion king contained the wolves and protected the sheep.
But now, the king was injured, and the wolves were eyeing their prey. Even though the wolves did not dare to defy and attack the lion, they could show the sheep what their sharp teeth and claws could do.
Even within the Tian Qi tribe, the enthusiasm to rage a war soared high.
The Tian Qi tribe had acted as the lion for tens of years, crowned as the king of the great savanna, so they could stand any parties’ provocations. The tragic defeat of ZhenXi camp pointed directly to the few middle-sized tribes in the west. They started to think these middle-sized tribes had colluded with the raiders and directed the tragic incident of ZhenXi camp.
The reason was simple. The raiders had left toward the west.
After the incident, Mengke had sent his Khan royal guards to track the enemies.
However, the royal commander Boraktyna reported that the tracks ended at the wilderness in the west. The tracks and the enemies had disappeared into thin air.
Such a large army of raiders, along with tens of thousands of horses, how could they disappear just like that? Needless to say, there must be one or even a few middle-sized tribes covering their whereabouts.
The hatred within the tribe, even Mengke the Khan could not suppress it for long. On the contrary, the medium-sized tribes in the south, east, and north, all lost their words and kept a total silence.
Mengke knew that such a dead silence was merely just the calm before the raging storm.
Therefore, he could only try and suppress the warhawks in the tribe and prevent the war between them and the tribes in the west. Otherwise, if another incident or mishap occurred, things would only drift sideways beyond redemption.
