192 Operation Wildfire 1 / 3 (1/2)
Lin Yi’s proposed plan was officially given the code name Operation ‘Wildfire’. This was because the operation would lead to the destruction of the savanna. It would lighten the flames of war and burn the grassland into ashes.
The operation’s success was directly linked to Shanhai County’s future governing policy toward the nomadic tribes as well as the future of Shanhai’s cavalries. Therefore, its importance did not need to be repeated twice.
Military Affairs Department and Lin Yi would discuss the plan. They would forge it into a perfect plan in order to be as foolproof as possible.
Right after Ouyang Shuo returned from Friendship County, he once again dived into the sea of governing affairs.
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July 20th, they completed the establishment of Qiushui County’s cavalry unit. Lai Kai was officially promoted to the rank of major, and he led the cavalry unit. The class change fees were of course taken from the profits made in the first half month of July.
Three days ago, Ouyang Shuo and the Chui Chamber of Commerce from Dali signed off their first deal on the trading platform.
Northern Saltworks had produced 2.5 million units of consumable salts in the first half month of July. According to the market price of 20 copper per unit of salts, Chui Chamber of Commerce would have to pay 5,000 gold. After the 10% system tax deduction, Ouyang Shuo was left with 4,500 gold. After the further reducing the cost of salt production, the amount that handed to Shuo was actually 4,100 gold.
After the system update, the taxes were halved, so the Northern Saltworks could save a thousand gold every month from the taxes alone.
As for Langshan mining field, they turned over 4,000 gold without fail.
Since he stationed the mineral expert from the professional group in the mining field, they were taught to further enhance the production line and mine with more logical and scientific techniques. In the preliminary estimates for August, the production efficiency would increase by 10%. A mineral expert’s technical advice could help generate at least an additional 800 gold for Shanhai County. This was exactly where the value of an expert laid. Their contribution to the territory was an overall enhancement.
The initial 8,100 gold from first the half month, after the deduction of the cavalry unit class change fees of 750 gold and Four Sea Bank’s payment for teleportation formation fees of 4,400 gold, there was only 2,950 gold leftover.
Through the teleportation formation, the cost to recruit a player was immensely high. Including the player and the family, it would cost an average of 5 gold for teleportation fees.
This didn’t include the cost of the basic accommodations for the players.
For the likes of Di Chen and others, they had previously recruited new players from the real-world and arranged for them to directly spawn in the territory. Only those from the rich and powerful family or clans could have the resources to do so.
However, after the interplanetary immigration, they would have lost their resources and could only pay the teleportation fees like Ouyang Shuo. This would in turn be a large expense and a burden to them.
According to Feng Qiuhuang, before the immigration, they had already recruited a large batch of new players in their territories. As for the precise amount of players, only they knew themselves.
The 2,950 golds didn’t last long in Ouyang Shuo’s hands. Through the Chui Chamber of Commerce, he bought 2.95 million units of food.
Hence, for the next half of the year, Shanhai would be free from the risk of food shortage. The price was nearly a total of 9,000 gold spent solely on food.
Ouyang Shuo couldn’t imagine the price that the other lords would have to pay when the food prices soared high in the future. After all, the other territories weren’t like Shanhai. They didn’t have 40,000 acres of fertile farmland to provide grains, so they would have to purchase more food.
Probably the only thing worthy of rejoice was that the other territories didn’t have such a big population like Shanhai County or Shanhai’s high refugee spawn rate.
If Ouyang Shuo had enough funds, he would even consider purchasing more food and profit by reselling it when the price went up.
As for his assumptions about the prices of food, Ouyang Shuo had informed his allies, including Song Wen. However, it was up to them whether they had sufficient funds to hoard enough food. It was not something Ouyang Shuo could help.
Shanhai County was strong, but it was not strong enough to provide financial aid to five or sive lord territories.
Moreover, they were allies and only allies. Ouyang Shuo was not a philanthropist. Any territory that required Shanhai’s financial aid would have to allow Four Seas Bank to establish a branch in their territory with no exceptions.
Whereas for Mulan Town, Ouyang Shuo was waiting for the end of the month. When the profits for the next half month came, he would add more funds to the Four Seas Bank branch in Mulan Town.
As for the acquisition of grains from the farmers, Yingyu’s idea was to utilize the funds from Four Seas Bank and acquire the grains. The acquisition would not be a one-off deal. Instead, they would be traded in batches. They would sell them off before acquiring another batch of grains. Otherwise, to complete the deal in one blow would require tens of thousands of gold, which was literally a waste of funds.
On average, a farmer could plow and manage 10 mu of land. A mu can grow 350 units of grains. Hence, it would produce 3,500 units of grains. They had to turn over 117 units to the lord. After they stored half a year of grains, there would still be 3,200 units of grains available for sale, which would be three gold 20 silver. After the tax deduction, it would still be three gold and 10 silver. A year had two farming seasons, minus the cost, the final annual income for a farmer would be around five golds.