Volume 1: The Rise of Elanhill Chapter 0047 New Spokesperson
Inside the Higgs Kingdom, a middle-aged businessman blew a breath of hot air onto his hands, wrapped himself tightly in the fur from the grassland, looked up at the plaque above his head, and walked into the rice shop.
The guys inside hurried over to greet him. Anyone who came to buy rice at this time must be a very wealthy businessman. After all, the current price of rice in Higgs Kingdom is really not cheap.
As long as we wait until next year's harvest season and the new grain is harvested, the price of rice will drop immediately. If you are not in a hurry to use it, it is obviously more beneficial to consider purchasing grain next year.
However, since the beginning of autumn, the price of rice, which should have fallen, has become incomprehensible due to the crazy purchases of Ailan Hill. Now, these grains are really valuable, and there are still countless Ailan Hill merchants coming to buy them. People really don't know what they are thinking.
"How much grain do you have left for sale in your store? I want it all." As soon as the merchant came in, he didn't say anything nonsense and directly stated his purpose.
When the guy heard this, the smile on his face froze. There have been more and more merchants from Elanhill coming to "ruin the place" recently. As soon as they arrived, they said they wanted to buy all the food, as if they were leaving no way for others to survive.
But guests are welcome, and this guy doesn't want to offend these big merchants. After all, by this time next year, the price of grain may fall, and he still has to rely on these merchants who purchase grain for his livelihood.
So he forced a smile and explained, "Sir, you may not know that because of the sharp decline in food reserves, our King has issued a purchase restriction order. You can only purchase 50 barrels of food at a time..."
The barrel is actually the same as the hu, both of which use volume to measure grain, which is inaccurate and unscientific. However, since each country has its own measurement system, we can only put up with this.
Now, Ailan Hill has begun to popularize new weights and measures, various units of length and weight, which make people feel more convenient. In addition, with the widespread application of new numbers, all the territories under Chris's rule have made great progress in calculation.
“Can’t you be flexible?” The businessman placed a gold coin on the coffee table beside him. The golden light was so bright that people couldn’t open their eyes.
"100 barrels, this is the biggest deal we dare to do." The clerk looked around and put the gold coin in his pocket, saying, "Based on the price this morning, this is the biggest discount."
Everyone knows that there is no shortage of food now, and everyone is keeping an eye on this area. Locals are driving up prices, and outsiders are frantically buying. The food stored in rice shops is decreasing rapidly, and the Higgs Kingdom is even beginning to fall into a state of partial shortage.
"Okay!" The merchant was also easy to talk to. He nodded and agreed to the deal. He stood up and said, "Then please pack up all the grain. I will transport it away right away."
There was no other way. Although he felt bad, he could only take out his money bag from his pocket and put a pile of gold coins on the table for the other party to examine carefully. One hundred barrels of grain might not be worth even 20 silver coins in previous years, but now it is worth 7 gold coins.
The thirty-five-fold increase sounded incredible. Not only that, in addition to racking their brains to purchase a large amount of food, Ailan Hill was also frantically purchasing meat products from the grassland: not only fresh, living cattle and sheep, but even dried meat.
After all, the population of Elan Hill is growing exponentially, and there has never been such an unnatural population expansion in history. Because of the gradual popularization of modern medical technology, the risk of childbirth is decreasing, and the birth rate remains high.
On the other hand, Ireland Hill implemented a one-year "population subsidy welfare" policy. The principality stipulated that all babies born within this year can receive government subsidies: half a sheep, 200 kilograms of food, and 50 liters of goat's milk or cow's milk.
At the same time, as long as the children go to school to learn knowledge and sign an agreement to guarantee that they will obey the government's job assignment after graduation, they can get free lunch and 100 kilograms of food subsidized by the school government...
This is also the main reason why Ailan Hill is so crazy about importing food. This is completely a way of paying money to support the continuous industrialization of a country. If Des hadn't been plundering his family's gold coins everywhere, Ailan Hill might not have been able to develop to this extent so quickly.
From the beginning to now, the millions of gold coins that Desel got from selling most of his properties have almost been squandered. If it weren't for the fact that some of the gold coins were recycled from the products produced in the factory, Desel would have gone bankrupt long ago.
At this moment, he could only write letters to his relatives and raise the gold coins needed by Ailan Hill by borrowing. At first, he asked to borrow 50,000 gold coins, and now he even borrowed 1,000 gold coins - the shameless thing is that he never paid back a penny of these borrowed gold coins...
In every rice shop in every corner of the Higgs Kingdom, there were merchants from Elanhill frantically buying the food. They hardly calculated the price, as long as the other party dared to sell it, they would pay for the food.
…
On the bustling streets of Seris, everyone has a happy smile on their face. In the past, such smiles were hard to see, but now almost every Elanhill person is full of hope for the future, so smiles are their most common expression.
"Do you see these people? In the past, only great magicians had such a confident expression." Walking on the street with his hands behind his back, Franzberg found himself back in the magical holy city of Bellevue. He started from Bellevue and headed eastward, and was pleasantly surprised to find that in the easternmost magical forbidden land, there was a city as energetic as Bellevue.
This was truly a magical journey, which made the great magician very happy. Although he could not meditate for a month, the novelty of his experience still made him feel that the journey was worthwhile.
"They actually use something as old-fashioned as books to impart such basic knowledge." Flipping through a book called "Elementary School Addition and Subtraction within Ten" that he bought from a corner bookstore, William suddenly felt cheated.
After leaving Bellevue, William didn't have many gold coins on him, because the Magic Empire didn't use ordinary gold coins, but enchanted gold coin certificates. Obviously, such precious things couldn't be spent in the mortal world, because no one could give change...
"These mortals actually developed a new set of numerical symbols... Strange symbols, but... Very interesting..." William walked beside Frundsberg, looking as if he was oblivious to the world outside and was only focused on reading the books of sages.
"I look at things the same as before, just looking at the surface." Frundsberg looked at the various chairs placed in front of the wood shop with interest, rubbing his hands on the smooth cut surface. "Did they give the wrong change along the way?"
William was stunned when he heard this question, and then looked at his teacher in shock. During this journey, no matter what he bought, there seemed to be no mistakes in the change.
This is actually quite funny. Whether in the Higgs Kingdom or the Alante Empire, it is easy to get the wrong change. Especially when buying things from retail vendors, you must be careful.
However, this time, after they entered Ailan Hill, they found that there were very few cases of wrong change. This at least showed that the quality of the civilians in Ailan Hill was higher than that of other areas.
"It seems that these strange symbols... are indeed very useful innovations." This time, William finally took the elementary school textbook in his hand seriously.
Frundsberg looked at the newly built bright and clean buildings, and his reassessment of the country's productivity was once again raised to a higher level. The glass used on those buildings seemed to be not cheap in the Magic Empire.
You know, in this world, glass of average transparency is actually very common, but those high-quality glass with very good transparency are still luxury goods that the Magic Empire is willing to buy. After all, the great wizards also hope that their rooms will be more transparent so that they can make better use of the sunlight outside the window.
Chris opened a glass factory in order to manufacture observation equipment such as telescopes. However, the profitability of a glass factory could not rely solely on military demand, so the factory soon began to mass-produce flat glass, which resulted in even greater profits.
This is how Ailan Hill is. Every day, a stream of gold coins is earned back into the account, and then spent again. It seems that every link is making money, but many investors only get a "voucher" as a proof of income.
These vouchers can be exchanged for production materials or various consumer goods, but only a small part can be exchanged for money. However, wise businessmen will not be willing to exchange these valuable vouchers for gold coins, because these vouchers can buy many things that gold coins cannot buy.
For example - machinery, cement, glass... used to expand the factory. With these things, they can continue to recruit people to expand their factories and finally make more profits.
No one believed that Ailan Hill would collapse, because many big businessmen had already placed their bets on another possible situation. In their view, Ailan Hill would not become a rival of the Magic Empire, but would only replace Alante and become the new spokesperson of the Mortal Empire.
