Volume 4: How big is the heart, how vast is the earth Chapter 116 Snow Wolf Tribe Blackie
When Ms. Evelyn last came to the Fire Tribe, the population of the tribe was less than 200 people, and more than 30 of them were migrant workers from other families, and their "household registration" had not yet been transferred.
Now, with the addition of five tribes from the central grasslands that came from thousands of miles away, the population of the tribe has reached more than 1,100 people...
Transforming the population into a labor force is not just a slogan. It requires providing the necessary conditions and environment for the population to transform into a qualified labor force. In this regard, Xiao Yun, who has spent four years laying the foundation, has a proven and feasible implementation method, which is divided into three steps:
The first step is to use a mature and complete mechanism of old employees mentoring new employees to bring novice workers into jobs in the shortest possible time, eliminate the phenomenon of idle personnel, and prevent the existence of idle people in the tribe.
The second step is to use complicated and heavy labor to maximize the exploitation of people's physical strength and energy, and to minimize the conflicts and frictions that may arise during the running-in period. The principle is similar to the "barracks melting pot". After a day's work, the remaining energy is enough to eat, wash up, and climb into the kang. Even if there is someone you don't like, you don't have the energy to get angry.
The third step is to study, study, and study again without stopping in the intervals between work, so that the learning atmosphere fills the entire living space, and the person cannot be idle, and the mind cannot be idle...
This kind of life where everything inside and outside a person's life is arranged in detail is indeed a bit harsh... and if you want others to be forced to this extent and still be willing to endure it and not run away, you have to be responsible for their survival. It is necessary to provide them with food, and the living environment must also be fully guaranteed.
After entering the living area, Ms. Evelyn was shocked to find that...the buildings were lined up in rows and rows, with no aesthetic appeal at all. The walls of each room had to be marked with white lime to identify and classify them.
After curiously staring at the different strange symbols on the walls of the houses for a while, Ms. Evelyn couldn't help but ask Ajiang, the cat cub who was not easy to get along with, "Are these the symbols you use to distinguish the houses?"
"It's the house number." Jiang said, as if to say, "How come you, an elf, don't know anything?" He pointed to the place they just passed by said, "Count from over there, 1-1 to 7-1. Don't you elves use numbers for house numbers?"
"This symbol is a number?!" Evelyn was shocked.
"The numbers you use are different from ours?!" A Jiang was even more surprised than her.
Ms. Evelyn opened her mouth wide. Because she was young and had a well-informed teacher, she did not think that the characters she knew were all the characters in the world. She hurriedly and humbly asked Ajiang how to pronounce those simple symbols drawn with lime... After recognizing the numbers from 1 to 9, Ms. Evelyn showed a complex expression of "Numbers can be written so simply" and "This way of writing seems to be very useful".
Well... the more ancient language systems on Earth, such as Latin and Chinese, have very complex descriptions of numbers. It is not without reason that Arabic numerals swept the world after they became popular. Ms. Evelyn compared the common language number writing method she knew with the high elf number usage habits and the "symbolic" numbers used by the Snow Wolf Tribe. Although she found it a little difficult to accept emotionally, it was true that the Snow Wolf Tribe's way of using numbers was more convenient and easier to learn... Jiang had only been exposed to "symbolic" mathematics for a little over ten months, and he was already able to use this number system flexibly. In this regard, both the common language mathematics and the high elf mathematics lost.
Cats are all very curious. When they found out that the numbers they learned were different from those the elves knew, Jiang was reluctant to leave after bringing Evelyn to the mobile home for entertaining guests. He curiously asked what the numbers the elves used were like. After seeing the complex numbers that Evelyn wrote on the bark paper with a feather pen, which looked like patterns, Jiang said bluntly, "Is it really convenient for you to use such troublesome numbers? It takes you a long time to write a formula with a pen, right?"
“You know the math?!” Evelyn gasped.
Ah Jiang's cheeks suddenly puffed up: "Why don't I understand? Although I haven't studied as long as Yangmao and the others, my math grades have always been passing!"
Evelin knew she had said the wrong thing , and said awkwardly, “Sorry, that’s not what I meant… Uh, what do you know about number operations?”
"Digits? Do you mean the number of digits, or the formula?"
"ha?"
"???"
The two stared at each other for a long time. The clever golden cat cub realized that the elves' mathematics was different from their arithmetic. A Jiang was a little unhappy that the other party looked down on him, so he proposed a way to show his arithmetic results: "How about this, we give each other questions and let the other party answer them. You can only give the other party questions that you know how to answer. How about it? You go first, and I'll show you how to do it."
Ms. Evelyn didn't really want to argue with a cub who was probably only one-tenth her age, but she was indeed very curious about the mathematical system of the grassland tribe. After thinking about it, she came up with a question that she thought was of a certain degree of difficulty.
Ah Jiang didn't even write out the math formula, he just calculated the answer in his head, and raised his eyebrows at the female elf mage with pride...
Ms. Evelyn gave a few more math problems, ranging from addition and subtraction of hundreds to multiplication and division to the more difficult exponentiation and square root. At the beginning, A Jiang did mental arithmetic, but later he used pen and paper to answer and gave the answers...
Ms. Evelyn: “…”
Ah Jiang smiled proudly: "It's my turn to ask questions!"
Then, the naughty boy A Jiang wrote a trigonometric function problem on bark paper with charcoal pencil to calculate the unknown lengths of sides and unknown angles in a triangle, and then explained the problem to Evelyn.
Ms. Evelyn: “…”
Xiao Yun came back from the construction site and went to the bathroom in dormitory 1-2 where he lived. He fetched two buckets of water to wash off the mud on his body, changed into a clean suncloth pullover and shorts, and then hurried to meet the guests.
As soon as he entered the mobile home, he was shocked to find that Ms. Evelyn, the long-lost spokesperson for forest elves’ friendship, was struggling with math problems with great resentment.
Xiao Yun: "...What are you playing?"
"We are doing homework." The golden cat cub A Jiang came up to Xiao Yun excitedly and licked his face out of habit.
Xiao Yun was not used to the bad habit of cats licking people all the time, so he stretched out his hand to push A Jiang's bear face away: "Didn't you say you were entertaining guests, but how come you ended up doing questions?"
Ah Jiang knew that he was deliberately making things difficult for him, so he just smiled and said nothing.
After sending A Jiang away to play, Xiao Yun sat down in front of Ms. Evelyn and said, "The naughty kids in our tribe like to make trouble. Please don't mind it, Ms. Evelyn."
Evelin raised her head from the calculation draft paper and looked over with a troubled look on her face: "Uh... I calculated the result, Ayun, please check if it is correct."
Xiao Yun picked up the bark paper that Evelyn had been calculating on, and stared at the characters on it that were like patterns and curved for a few seconds: "...It's beautifully drawn."
Ms. Evelyn: “…”
"Don't mind, it's just a joke." Xiao Yun quickly gathered the scattered bark papers together and put them aside. "Actually, I can't understand your words, but that's not important... You're here for the deal, right? It's just right, we're almost ready, take a look at the quantity and see if there's any problem."
The forest elves who came to the last transaction this year were all warriors who were there to deliver messages. Xiao Yun was unsure of the attitude of the Ananas top brass, and it was not convenient for him to test General Crest, so he simply kept up his image as a grassland man who never thought too much, and calculated the transaction volume according to what he had mentioned to Hailin at the beginning of the year: canned fruit, porcelain, sauerkraut, bean paste, hot sauce, garlic sauce, etc. The small transactions were arbitrary, and the large ones, two kinds of vermicelli totaling 500,000 kilograms, vinegar 300,000 kilograms, and soy sauce 1 million, all prepared in sufficient stock, just waiting for the elves to pick them up.
This year, the manpower is not as tight as last year. During the road construction, Lan Guo's engineering team discovered a rocky mountain range composed entirely of limestone and kaolin, and they were very happy to mine it. Xiao Yun dared to pat his chest and generously said that the large jars of soy sauce and vinegar sold this year did not need to be returned...
When it came to the business of trading, Ms. Evelin finally recovered from the arithmetic blow, and discussed the details of the transaction in detail with Xiao Yun for half a day, and put forward a request to expand the trading volume of soy sauce and vinegar.
"Isn't this amount of soy sauce and vinegar enough for you?" Xiao Yun pretended to be stupid, knowing the answer and wanted to see how the female elf mage would respond.
"That's not the case. One pound of soy sauce is enough for an elf family to use for a month. The total population of Ananas is only over 10,000, so how could they need so much?" Ms. Evelyn said frankly, "In fact, other elf cities also like this seasoning. It is also very popular in the Dwarf Kingdom. In the summer, the Dwarf caravan purchased more than 600,000 pounds of it."
Xiao Yun was simply stunned by the female mage's honesty... Of course, he certainly couldn't show it, and had to put on a surprised look: "Oh, right, the other side of the Elf Forest is the Dwarf Kingdom. It turns out that the dwarves also like our sauces. Hehe, that's great. This year we planted tens of thousands of acres of soybeans. The harvest is good. Next year we can brew more soy sauce and vinegar. How much soy sauce do you need?"
"We hope to have 5 million kilograms of soy sauce, the more the better. The same goes for vinegar." Evelyn's face was flushed, and she increased the transaction volume fivefold in one breath... Originally, Evelyn was a little worried that the Snow Wolf Tribe would not be able to brew it with this transaction volume. Now that she saw that they had so many more people, she felt more confident when she shouted out this number.
Three thousand kilograms of soy sauce purchased with a ten-gram gold coin can be brought back without the need to spend manpower to repackage it. It can be directly sold to other cities or to dwarf merchants, and the profit of three to five times can be safely pocketed without any trouble... No matter how noble the forest elves are, they can't afford to miss out on making money!
The price of vinegar is three times that of soy sauce, so the profit from reselling it is relatively less, and the demand for consumption is not as great as soy sauce. However, the cold dishes that the elves like to eat are completely different with or without vinegar, so the more vinegar the better, they can eat any amount!
Xiao Yun smiled in a very naive and honest way... For him as a producer, the gross profit of vinegar is more than ten times, and the gross profit of soy sauce is more than three times. He makes less money from soy sauce than vinegar; but the more soy sauce he sells, the heavier the blow to his potential enemy, the Lamia Chamber of Commerce, the largest salt merchant in Bloomfield, so he doesn't care about giving up that part of the profit at all. He just wants people all over the continent to start eating his own soy sauce!
Raising a finger proudly, Xiao Yunyun said calmly: "Since you have a demand, we can't say no. We can provide you with 2 million kilograms of soy sauce now. During the spring trading period next year, we will prepare 10 million kilograms of soy sauce and 3 million kilograms of vinegar for you!"
“It’s settled!” Evelin slapped her thigh in excitement without caring about her image.
Xiao Yun didn't care about the darkness, and immediately lit a torch to take Evelyn to collect the goods... This year, there were enough people, and a newly discovered mountain range made of limestone and kaolinite could be mined as much as possible. The newly fired pottery jars were large and beautiful, with a capacity of 3,000 kilograms per jar. Xiao Yun was charged at the wholesale price of one gold coin for a jar of soy sauce and three gold coins for a jar of vinegar. He counted the gold coins until his hands were tired...
Xiao Yun made a lot of money, and the forest elves seemed to have made a lot of money too. When Evelyn took out the space props to load the goods, Xiao Yun found that the space bracelet she wore on her wrist was not the one she wore last year. It was twice as thick...
"How much does it cost to buy a bracelet like this that can hold things?" Xiao Yun asked shamelessly, relying on the fact that he was still a cub.
Evelyn showed an embarrassment: "Well... using space props requires magic power... at least a second-level spellcaster or above."
Xiao Yun: “…” Well, the Snow Wolf Clan that is disliked by the Magic Goddess does not deserve to have a name in a place like this… No wonder when he asked Tim about this, the other party always avoided the question and refused to tell the truth.
Fortunately, he is a local manufacturer and is not responsible for transportation...
"Why can't we, the Snow Wolf Tribe, use magic?" Xiao Yun pretended to be annoyed and muttered to himself. Anyone with eyes open could see that this female elf wizard was close to the Snow Wolf Tribe, so he simply continued to act innocent to see if he could get some information from this female elf.
Evelyn really had no doubts. She put the soy sauce into her bracelet one by one and kindly advised, "I have seen records about the ancient gods in the books of the Council of Elders. In the age of the gods, because the relationship between the Goddess of Magic and the Goddess of Valor was bad, the followers of the Goddess of Valor were not blessed by the Goddess of Magic. But on the other hand, the followers of the Goddess of Valor also have a high resistance to magic and are not afraid of places where magic is rampant. So it is hard to say what the pros and cons are."
"The goddess of bravery?" Xiao Yun was surprised. "I have never heard of this goddess. What kind of god is this?"
Evelyn smiled and said, "The Goddess of Valor is the most special of all the gods. She also serves as the Goddess of Knowledge, but she doesn't like believers to blindly worship her. She never sends down oracles, arranges divine messengers, and doesn't recognize the temples built for her by believers. In the Age of the Gods, she even came down in person to punish the self-proclaimed priests who preached for her. When the gods returned to the Kingdom of God, she was the first to leave."
Xiao Yun was really shocked this time, he wasn't pretending... Why is this goddess so, so desperate? !
But why did he have an inexplicable liking for her?
"Will there still be people who believe in the Goddess of Bravery under such circumstances?" Xiao Yun said.
"Yes, in the Age of Gods, a considerable number of humans believed in her. In addition, there were barbarians, centaurs, and your Snow Wolf tribe who were her believers."
Xiao Yun: "..." If the person standing in front of him wasn't a forest elf, Xiao Yun really wanted to ask whether this era of gods really existed or was just made up by someone out of necessity... Forget about humans, what about the Snow Wolf Tribe, Centaurs, and Barbarians? ! Those two aren't good people!
If this is fabricated history, the person who wrote it must be a Snow Wolf tribe traitor...
After the money and goods were settled, the people who had returned from work had eaten and drunk their fill and went to sleep. Xiao Yun, whose stomach was growling with hunger, dragged Evelin, who was also starving, and ran straight to the cafeteria kitchen. They had just stepped over the threshold and were still outside the door when Dahe's handsome face looked at them with resentment.
"Ayun, you are a liar! You clearly told me to go on a business trip and work, and that you would teach me how to make the most delicious dry fragrant pot when I come back!" After finally seeing Xiao Yun, Dahai grabbed his shoulders and shook him hard.
"Oh, didn't I tell you I would teach you when I'm free? I'm busy now. Come on, let go. I haven't had dinner yet—"
"I won't do it! I was so annoyed by all those people that I had to try my best to hold back my laughter, and you still treat me like this!"
"Who taught you to say the word 'selling smiles'?"
“…Dahe, long time no see.” Evelin held back her smile and waved at Dahe.
"Evelyn is here~" Dahe smiled warmly at the female elf. She was bad because she was unwilling to put in effort. Her brain was quite useful. She knew that she should be polite to this customer who came to do business without Ah Yun telling her. She turned around and continued to shake Xiao Yun with a bitter and resentful look, "Teach me how to make a hot pot! Hot pot, hot pot!!"
The naughty Dahe still looked very handsome and pleasing to the eye. Xiao Yun had no temper with her and raised his hands in surrender: "Okay, okay, I will teach you tomorrow. Can you let me eat first? Evelin hasn't eaten since she came to our tribe."
Da He finally gave up and let Xiao Yun in...
There were many people like Xiao Yun who were so busy that they missed the meal and rushed over to fill their stomachs after others had gone to bed. They entered the small canteen with several long tables in the kitchen. Dashui, Qingcao, Qingyan, Balk, Qiu, Baru and other people in charge of specific work were all there.
The person in charge receives an extra two copper coins per day compared to the average person. They are not white-collar workers. They can only leave after everyone on the field has finished work. They have to work an extra hour or so than others. By looking at who comes to eat the latest in the canteen every day, you can basically know how many foremen and person in charge there are in the tribe...
At one point, Balk's appetite dropped to the same level as that of an ordinary snow werewolf. After being forced to drain at least 10,000 to 20,000 kilograms of vermicelli every day, his consumption increased and his appetite soared. The table in front of him was filled with food, and he had to eat ten autumns' worth of food by himself. As soon as Xiao Yun appeared, the green dragon, who knew very clearly that he was being exploited, looked over angrily, and his cheeks vibrated while chewing the food as if the fast-forward button was pressed, making a "mmm-mmm" sound.
"Ugh, it's so dirty. Let's talk after you finish eating, Balke." Qiu moved his plate away with a look of disgust.
"I told you not to sit opposite him." Dashui laughed beside him.
"That's right. When he's eating too much, he'll eat food from other people's plates." Qingyan also laughed.
"Hmmmm!!" Balk looked angrily at the people who were making fun of him.
“You, you are not…” When Evelyn came back last time, Balk was still hiding as a house dragon. This was the first time she saw this green dragon.
"He's a guest here. Come on, let's sit over here, stay away from him. Seeing him eat makes people lose their appetite... In the past, people paid attention to table manners, but now people pay less and less attention to them." Xiao Yun pulled Evelin to sit at the table next to him. "Niu Jiao, bring the food quickly. Hey, didn't you leave?"
The last sentence was said to Da He who was in charge of the welfare department. Da He became even angrier after hearing this: "I just got here too. Don't you know how much I have to do now? I haven't eaten yet!"
Xiao Yun quickly turned his head away...
Balk finally swallowed the food in his mouth and slammed the table angrily: "Even if you let me have enough time to eat every day, I will not abandon my table manners!"
"Okay, okay, I don't blame you. Hey, Qiuqiu, there are rice grains on your face... Qingyan! Don't lick it!!"
Qingyan, who was sitting next to Qiu, licked the rice off Qiu's face out of habit, and sat back down with a look of surprise on his face: "Ayun is really nosy."
Qiu didn't think it was strange for cats to lick each other's faces, but Ayun had been picking on these for a few days, so he continued to eat the fried rice made with all kinds of leftovers.
Xiao Yun was so angry that he didn't want to talk. He picked up the fried rice brought by Niu Jiao and started to eat it hard - instead of quickly finding partners and having cubs, these cats were all engaging in homosexuality and lesbianism, which really made him worry.
Evelyn stared at Balk while eating. The relationship between forest elves and green dragons is really annoying. Such a green dragon actually stayed in the Snow Wolf tribe and ate at the same table with a group of grassland people. In his words, he revealed that he was asked to work and was exploited very hard... It really makes people curious! What did this green dragon encounter in the forest?
As a well-educated and cultured adult elf, Evelyn couldn't ask anything like Xiao Yun, relying on her status as a cub. However, the green dragon Balk sitting in the crowd was so conspicuous and hard to ignore... After holding it in for a long time, Evelyn still succumbed to her curiosity and said painfully, "Ayun, how come there is a green dragon in your tribe?"
"Lord Balk had different ideas from his father, Lord Austin, so he ran away from home and stayed in our tribe. He also helped us with work and processed vermicelli." Xiao Yun gave the official answer in a serious manner. Anyway, everything was filed with the Elf King, so he was not afraid of the forest elves knowing.
“…” Evelyn dropped her fork in shock. Green Dragon, do something? !
"The vermicelli is very popular in our tribe, and Balke is the main contributor. If it weren't for Balke, we wouldn't be able to make so much vermicelli to sell to you." Xiao Yun smiled simply. It was just nice words, but it was a waste of saliva.
Balke, who had a furious look on his face just now, immediately straightened his chest and even his eating manners became a little more reserved.
Evelyn: “…”
As a disciple of Elder Gwendolyn, although Evelyn didn't have that kind of scheming mind, she had at least seen what scheming people looked like. So the look in the eyes of this female elf mage's eyes when she looked at Xiao Yun was particularly strange, and it was particularly hard to describe...
——Why did she vaguely feel that there seemed to be something wrong with this snow wolf cub who seemed to be very innocent and cute to her?
Author's note: Regarding the master-disciple relationship between Ms. Evelyn and Elder Gwendolyn, this can be viewed separately. Zhang Juzheng's teacher was Xu Jie, and when Xu Jie was old, his assets were more than Yan Song, the most corrupt official in Jiajing. As for Zhang Juzheng, even if the Qing Dynasty scholars slandered him to death, after his death, his property was confiscated and only tens of thousands of assets were seized, which was less than one-tenth of Xu Jie's. So we should not lump the character of the master and the character of the apprentice together...
