Reggie was waiting hard in Broken Snow City for news, news from the royal capital, news from the enemy, and news from Old Hill.
In the blink of an eye, five days passed, and Reggie didn't receive any news.
Of course, he also did a lot of things. He asked Calaf to help him build three huge kilns. These three kilns were all different, and even Calaf didn't know their purpose.
Reggie also built a foundry. In addition, he also repaired an abandoned house in the west of the city as a gunpowder processing factory, and asked Calaf to make a large number of tools for weighing, grinding and drying.
No matter how thorough the preparations are, without the materials, everything is in vain.
The eager Reggie looked forward to the return of old Hill every day, and finally one sunny morning he saw the figure he had dreamed of.
Old Hill brought back seven merchants and their caravans, and Reggie welcomed them into the castle enthusiastically. After a rather sumptuous lunch, Old Hill called Reggie aside alone.
Whispered a few words quietly.
"Lord, the situation may be different from what you thought. I really tried my best, but the situation has changed too much."
Reggie looked back at the group of businessmen, and seeing their calm smiles, a bad premonition immediately enveloped his heart.
The leader of the businessman was called Nelson, and his huge appetite was well proportioned to his fat body. He ate two pounds of beef and four loaves of bread, and drank a whole can of ale. After two loud belches, he took out the
his price list.
Twenty copper coins a pound of wheat.
Reggie's vision went dark.
Ten copper coins a pound of charcoal.
Reggie's veins jumped.
Fifty coppers a pound of bacon...
Reggie wanted to tear up his price list immediately.
"You are all well-known businessmen, don't you even have the basic sincerity?" Reggie pointed at the price list angrily and said, "This is robbery, you know? This is blatant robbery!"
"Calm down, Lord," Nelson smiled. "You know, we are facing a war now, and every city is hoarding food. This is the situation. We are not forcing you to do our business."
Reggie pointed to the charcoal on the price list and said, "What is this? Is this also food? The price of charcoal is twice as expensive as last year!"
"The weather is very cold this year. My lord, the winter may be longer than in previous years. Both Zhilin City and Drawsha City are stocking up on charcoal. The price there may be even more shocking," Nielsen wiped the sauce from his mouth and pointed.
Pointing to the price list, he said, "Not everything is increasing in price. Frost stone and iron stone are very cheap. Winter is coming. We don't need so much ice. The price of charcoal is too high. Jinguang City
It’s time for the furnace to be turned off.”
Two hundred pounds of frost stone for one silver coin, which was indeed better than Reggie expected. Five copper coins for one pound of iron stone, which was also a big surprise. But when Reggie saw the price of yellow stone, he seemed to fall into despair.
abyss.
"Two pounds of yellow stone for one gold coin? Are you selling gold or stone?"
"What I sell is a holy medicine that is more precious than gold," Nelson said with a smile. "Sir, you can go to other cities to see how high-quality yellow stones are already in demand. I still say the same thing, we are not forcing
When you do our business, the market conditions are like this. For the sake of your hospitality, we can also make some concessions, but your expectations should not be too high. At most, we can save you some change."
Taking the merchants' price lists, Reggie began to recalculate his demand for goods. His heart was bleeding every time he made a calculation.
Food is indispensable, 400,000 pounds of wheat and 800 gold coins.
Four hundred thousand pounds of charcoal, four hundred gold coins.
Sixty thousand pounds of bacon, three hundred gold coins.
Then……
There seems to be no hope, the budget of 1,500 gold coins has been spent.
Iron stone, frost stone, wood, cotton cloth, paper... Where does the money for these things come from?
Maybe you can buy less bacon. After all, it's war time and we can't guarantee that everyone has meat to eat.
Maybe you can buy less charcoal. There is already a lush forest on the Lost Mountain, and you can take the residents to cut down the wood and burn some charcoal.
But I heard that the Lost Mountain is very dangerous and there are a lot of wild beasts there. Is it worth taking the risk?
All of this is fine, but what about the damn sulfur?
The price of one gold coin for two pounds made the dream of producing gunpowder come to nothing.
Reggie scratched his scalp, thinking about how he could save an extra gold coin. Old Hill looked at his list and reminded him: "Sir, you forgot the salt."
"I forgot..."
Damn it, I forgot the salt again.
When he saw the price of salt, Reggie sat silently like a clay sculpture for a long time. A drop of ink fell from the tip of his pen, staining his white sleeves red.
Three silver coins to a pound of salt.
Reggie had a bold idea.
Simply kill these merchants and steal their goods.
Hill expressed strong opposition to this idea.
"Sir, if we do this, we will offend all the merchants, and Broken Snow City will not be able to obtain any goods in the future."
As Nelson said, the market is what it is, and no matter how angry Reggie is, it can't change the outcome of the matter.
It seems that emergency funds must be used.
After careful calculation, Reggie was ready to pay these merchants two thousand gold coins to purchase the necessary goods, including four hundred pounds of yellowstone.
If the purity of sulfur can reach 80%, according to the ratio for making black powder, 400 pounds of yellowstone is enough to make 4,000 pounds of gunpowder.
After spending such a large price, Reggie had to verify the quality of the goods, especially the purity of the yellow stone.
The merchants' goods were left outside the city. Reggie was about to leave the castle when Nelson smiled attentively and said, "Lord, your cuffs seem to be dirty."
Reggie looked at his sleeve and saw an ink stain on it.
"Ignore him," Reggie rolled up his sleeves. "This kind of ink is difficult to wash off."
Nelson laughed and said: "If you just wash it with water, it might be really difficult to clean it, but if you use white stone, it's not that difficult."
Reggie was startled: "What is white stone?"
Nelson took out a stone from his pocket. The gray-yellow stone was riddled with holes, like a piece of slag.
He lit a candle, placed the stone under Reggie's cuff, and began to burn the stone with the candle.
After a while, the ink on the cuffs faded a lot. Nelson got water and helped Reggie scrub it, and the cuffs turned clean white again.
Reggie stared at the stone for a long time and asked, "What is this thing called?"
Nelson smiled and said: "This is a specialty of Golden Light City, the magical white stone. No matter what color of clothing, after being fumigated with it, it will turn into bright white."
"Don't listen to his nonsense," Old Hill said aside, "This is the waste left over from iron smelting. Clothes whitened by it will quickly change color and become extremely ugly in the sun!"
It is really slag, slag with bleaching effect.
Why does it have bleaching effect?
Why does it change color when exposed to the sun?
This is obviously a characteristic of sulfur dioxide.
Sulfur dioxide can be produced after burning, which proves that these slags contain a large amount of sulfur and should be iron sulfide.
"Is white stone expensive? This thing seems very interesting."
Nelson said: "Sir, this thing is not expensive, ten copper coins per pound. If it is just for cleaning clothes, only one pound a month is enough."
"Damn Nelson, are you talking in your sleep?" Old Hill was very annoyed. "No one wants this thing even if it is thrown on the roadside in Golden Light City! How can slag be more expensive than ore?"
Nelson shrugged and said: "There are always some transportation costs. Well, if adults want to buy in large quantities, I think five copper coins per pound can be considered."
"Two, two copper coins a pound, what do you think?"
"That depends on how much you need, sir." Nielsen was in a dilemma. Two copper coins per pound had reached the limit of profit.
Reggie held out two fingers.
"Two thousand pounds? I'm afraid..."
"It's not two thousand pounds," Reggie shook his head and said, "It's two hundred thousand pounds. What do you think?"
Nelson smiled: "Deal, my lord."
"Very good," Reggie also smiled, very happily, "I don't want Yellow Stone. There shouldn't be any parasites this season. I think White Stone is more interesting."
Nelson felt that he shouldn't talk too much, as Huangshi's profits were much greater than those of Whitestone.
But then I thought about it, the yellow stone is indeed easy to sell, but these damn white stones are not easy to sell.
Nelson has hoarded a lot of white stones in his hands. As Old Hill said, this stuff is really worthless. It was given to him by Golden Light City for free. Not only is it worthless, but it also takes up a lot of space.
The density of white stone is very small. At the same weight, its volume is almost three times that of iron stone. The transportation cost is much higher than other commodities. He should have thrown these slags halfway, but due to the nature of a businessman, he still firmly believes in these things.
How much value can be created?
It seems that his choice was right.
Reggie followed Nelson to the outside of the city. To be honest, he didn't know much about the commodities of this era. The inspection mainly relied on the experience of old Hill. But when he saw Nelson's wheat, Reggie frowned and said: "This
Can it be 400,000 pounds?"
"Of course it's not 400,000 pounds, my lord," Nelson said with a smile. "You can't expect us to carry 400,000 pounds of wheat around for business. There are only 20,000 pounds of wheat here. Old Hill has paid the deposit for these goods, and the rest is
The goods will be delivered in five batches."
"Five times? Why bother?" Reggie didn't want to delay the matter for too long. He was worried that the enemy might besiege Broken Snow City at any time.
"Sir, the best carriage can only transport 1,200 pounds of goods at a time, and the best ox-cart can only transport 2,000 pounds," Nelson said. "We have a total of seven caravans, and each caravan can find up to
Thirty horse-drawn carriages or ox-carts, sir, we cannot transport all the goods at once."
Reggie pouted and said, "In this case, it's impossible for me to pay you all the money."
Old Nelson said: "Well... I think as a lord, you should be more generous."
"Don't talk nonsense, Nelson!" Old Hill yelled, "Are you bullying our young lord? Pay how much you pay for the goods you bring, these are the rules of business!"
Nelson shrugged and said with a smile: "It's just a joke, why should you take it seriously."
Reggie paid the price for the goods and paid the deposit for the next batch of goods. To celebrate the successful cooperation, Nelson decided to finish dinner before leaving.
"Did you see, this shameless businessman wants to give me two meals? Do you know how good he is?" Reggie complained to Old Hill, "Let's kill this shameless businessman and only rob."
His family’s goods should not have too bad an impact.”