There Truly Is Gold Everywhere Here!

In most parts of the wasteland, the Alliance enjoyed a fine reputation. The Alliance army in particular was renowned for its strict discipline; no one had ever heard of a caravan or settlement being plundered by Alliance soldiers. Thus, Mogavi wasn't the least bit panicked. Bringing along only two agile mercenaries, he boarded the inflatable boat and urged the pilot to speed toward the beach. Covering the two to three kilometers across the water, the boat soon made landfall. "Secure the boat! Once you're done, come find me immediately!" Mogavi instructed the two mercenaries to haul the inflatable onto the sand to beach it, while he hurried toward the shoreline camp. The beach was not like the open sea. Their inflatable was coated with resin rendered from black ironwood, which gave off a rancid stench capable of repelling marine mutants. Once ashore, however, he had to fend for himself. Hurrying past the edge of the sandy beach, the moment his soles pressed into the soft dirt, his eyes went wide in utter shock at the sight before him. There, on a platform assembled from raw logs, stacks of pelts of varying sizes and colors were piled like decks of playing cards. Presumably to save space, they had been bound with hemp ropes into tidy, brick-like blocks and crammed tightly together. The only shelter over them was a crude shed thatched with reed grass. These raw hides had likely been stripped from beasts not long ago; blood and grease still clung to the surfaces unwashed, and under the sweltering heat, wisps of foul stench rose into the air. "Spirit of the Sand Sea above..." Mogavi's jaw dropped so wide an egg could have fit inside. It wasn't the butchery that shocked him. On the wasteland, unless someone had completely lost their mind, no one possessed enough overflowing sympathy to pity mutants. What genuinely shocked him was the sheer barbarism and carelessness of these people! To mistreat priceless treasures so atrociously, piling them up here like filthy rags! Did these reckless wasters not fear divine retribution?! "Spirit of the Sand Sea above! Pure-colored blood marten fur! Wait, is that a mutant leopard?! An emerald python, mutant rhino hide..." *Hiss—* "You just leave these treasures piled here to rot in this sweltering heat?! You might as well give them to me!" His clamor quickly drew the attention of nearby players. Several players busy working at the butchering station put down their tools and gathered round curiously. "Whoa, an NPC showed up?" "There's a freighter anchored over there. Looks like he came off that ship." "What's he babbling about?" "Hell if I know. I turned on my translator late." Wiping the blood from his boning knife, Qingdeng Gujiu, who wore a leather apron, eyed the NPC, squinted, and spoke in halting Human Alliance language. "Who're you?" The man spun toward him, hurriedly fished a soggy business card out of his shirt, and thrust it forward in excitement. "I am Mogavi! A traveling merchant from Silver Moon Bay! Do these pelts belong to you?" Without answering, Qingdeng Gujiu took the card, glanced at it, casually shoved it into his pocket, and looked the man up and down again. "You know your stuff when it comes to these goods?" Mogavi nodded vigorously, doing his best to suppress his excitement. "Naturally! Name a price. I'll take the whole lot!" If nothing else, those few blood marten pelts he had spotted just now—if properly cured and sewn into a fur coat before being shipped to Brahma Province—could easily fetch at least a hundred slaves! And if taken a bit further west to the ports near Triumph City, they could fetch at least a hundred thousand dinars! Not to mention, those few blood marten pelts were merely the tip of the iceberg in this pile. As for not-so-rare mutants like the mutant rhinos and mutant leopards, while their hides didn't command exorbitant individual prices, their high demand made up for it. In every port, buyers fought for them; one never had to worry about being stuck with unsold inventory. It was no exaggeration to say that all the profit from his entire shipload of cargo combined couldn't hold a candle to the few hastily stacked piles of pelts right here. After all, a whole container of iron ore didn't net him even a thousand dinars, yet a relatively intact pelt here could easily sell for that much! At the thought of such staggering profit, Mogavi's heart pounded, and his breath grew ragged against his will. This place was practically paved with gold! Praise the Spirit of the Sand Sea!! Watching the traveling merchant anxiously push for a price, Qingdeng Gujiu raised an eyebrow with a peculiar look. *Is this guy doing business for the first time?* He might as well have written 'Please Rip Me Off' across his forehead. His eyes shifted thoughtfully as he spoke. "...These pelts haven't been cured yet. We plan to process them before selling." Mogavi said in anguish, "It'll be too late! Handled like this, even a block of wood would rot! Don't scoff—if by tomorrow morning even half of this stock is still usable, I'll eat my hat!" Qingdeng Gujiu paused, instinctively countering, "How could it happen that fast?!" What kind of joke was that? He wasn't butchering for the first time. Back in Dawn City, after skinning a beast, pelts left lying around for two or three days before tanning still had plenty of buyers. How could they spoil in a single day? Seeing how completely oblivious this fellow was to the gravity of the situation, Mogavi said between laughter and tears, "Are you kidding me? This is the tropics! You don't think rot sets in at the same pace here as in your homeland, do you? I smelled the stench from far away the second I hit the beach!" Qingdeng instinctively sniffed. Perhaps having grown accustomed to the smell, he truly hadn't noticed anything. Still, he grasped the merchant's point, and his composure began to slip. "Then name your price." Masking his inner delight, Mogavi held up five fingers, pointed at a stack of goods beside him, and said with an earnest expression, "Seeing as fate brought us together, I can pay you fifty thousand dinars for this pile! All five piles, I'll take the whole lot!" That made two hundred and fifty thousand dinars in total. Including those 'unassuming' blood marten furs. Mogavi considered this offer genuinely generous. After all, if left alone, they would simply rot on the beach without fetching a single coin. To his surprise, upon hearing this very sincere offer, the man before him rolled his eyes without hesitation and flatly refused. "Get lost! Don't try to pull a fast one on me. You think I don't know what dinars are worth? There are at least two hundred pelts in this pile alone, and you offer fifty thousand dinars? What kind of joke is that!" Mogavi froze, grimacing as he said, "My friend, these are raw, unprocessed hides. Over two hundred dinars apiece is already more than fair! Even if you hauled them to Silver Moon Bay right now, you wouldn't find a buyer more generous than me." Qingdeng Gujiu shook his head like a rattle-drum. "Not a chance. At worst, I'll cure as many as I can. If you genuinely want to buy, it's at least fifty thousand silver coins per pile." "Fifty thousand silver coins?!" Mogavi's eyes bulged. "Are you out of your mind?! That's enough to buy a truck!" Qingdeng Gujiu gave a dry chuckle and shot back bluntly, "Guess how many trucks I could trade them for if I hauled them back to Dawn City?" Mogavi looked at him, caught between exasperation and amusement. "You can't bring them back! With the way you're handling them, this entire shipment will rot halfway there!" Qingdeng Gujiu curled his lip feigning indifference. "Come off it. It's hot down here, but doesn't the temperature drop once we're up in the sky? A thousand pelts, already bundled. Once we take them back to Dawn City and give them basic treatment, they'll sell for at least five hundred thousand silver coins. We can haul local seafood back, let alone a few hides." To be fair, there was an element of bluffing in his words; air transport wasn't free, after all. Furthermore, the *Niuma* wasn't a dedicated cold-chain transport. Moving a few styrofoam coolers of seafood was one thing—Dawn City residents might buy them for the novelty, easily covering the freight costs. Pelts were another matter entirely; they were bulk goods. Aside from lacking refrigeration equipment, shipping them back by weight left it questionable whether they could even break even. That said, two hundred and fifty dinars apiece was also completely unacceptable to him—he had paid more than that just buying the carcasses. If he sold them off at that price, he'd look like an absolute fool. Mogavi shook his head and turned to leave. Seeing that no one bothered to stop him, he stomped his foot, gritted his teeth, and turned back around. "Fine! In light of the help you once gave us, I'll take a bigger loss... Assuming a thousand pelts here, one hundred and thirty thousand silver coins in total, and I'll take the lot!" There was no fixed exchange rate between silver coins and dinars; in some places it was one to three, while in others it reached one to ten. It depended on the distance to Triumph City and Dawn City, as well as whether the local slave trade flourished. Although dinars were minted from precious metals, their real anchor was not gold, but slaves and the production value they generated. One thing, however, was undeniable: In most regions, the purchasing power of silver coins exceeded that of dinars. Even if silver didn't circulate as widely as dinars, that was at least true east of the Great Desert. Hearing this offer, Qingdeng Gujiu was sorely tempted. One hundred and thirty thousand silver coins! An average of one hundred and thirty silver per pelt! The price wasn't gorgeous, but it was leagues better than two hundred and fifty dinars! Tempted as he was, he still put on a hesitant face and said, "One hundred and thirty thousand... That's still too low. I need to consult with the others." Hearing this, Mogavi's eyes nearly popped out of his head, and he almost coughed up blood. *Good grief.* After haggling with him all this time, the goods didn't even belong to him! Catching the murderous glare from the NPC, Qingdeng Gujiu gave an embarrassed chuckle, felt a bit self-conscious, and cleared his throat. "...Most of it's mine. Most of it..." Giving the man no time to renege, Qingdeng Gujiu immediately dashed over to the butchering station nearby, gathered the other tradeskill players running butchering stalls, and gave them the full rundown. He explained that an NPC had taken an interest in the raw pelts stacked at the port, and what price he had negotiated. "...I figured one hundred and thirty thousand silver coins is a fair deal. It saves us the shipping cost back to Dawn City, the labor of processing the hides, and any spoilage along the way... If we really hauled them all the way back to Dawn City to figure something out, we might actually end up losing money. Better to bundle them off to this guy, split the cash, and everyone turns a solid profit." The other tradeskill players thought it over, and it indeed made sense. Mutants were attacking in wave after wave, and game carcasses were piling up so high the stalls could barely hold them. Heaven only knew when they'd ever have time to cure all those hides. If someone was willing to buy the lot, it spared them an enormous headache. As for Old Qingdeng's character, they trusted him implicitly; there was no worry of him quoting one price to their faces and pocketing another behind their backs. "Handle the talks as you see fit." "We trust you, brother." "Selling wholesale means making a bit less, but so be it. Getting rid of them quickly is good enough—it'd be a damn shame if they really rotted on the beach." Seeing so many brothers place their faith in him, Qingdeng was deeply touched. Looking at them with genuine emotion, he said, "Good brothers! For your trust, I, Qingdeng Gujiu, won't let you down!" "Bah, why thank us? You found a buyer for our goods; we should be thanking you," one tradeskill player chuckled, patting him on the shoulder. Another player had a sudden inspiration and proposed, "By the way, more NPCs are bound to come here to buy pelts in the future. Why don't we register a guild or association? In the future, we can agree on prices and sell collectively, setting separate prices for different types of pelts. We'll definitely make more than selling everything at a flat rate. Plus, it'll prevent NPCs from coming to us one by one to divide and conquer and drive down prices." The proposal immediately won wide agreement. "Great idea!" "Agreed!" "Can't let the NPCs fleece us!" Qingdeng also suddenly realized why that NPC had almost lost his temper upon hearing the goods didn't all belong to him. So that was the trick behind it. However, now wasn't the time to hammer out details. Clearing his throat, he gestured for everyone's attention and said, "Listen up, everyone. We can discuss this at length on the forums once we log off. For now, let's offload this batch first." The player who proposed it nodded. "True. Move the goods first." Having received their approval, Qingdeng returned to the stacks of goods, where Mogavi was pacing back and forth. With the backing of his brothers, he had the leverage to bargain and argued vigorously with Mogavi. In the end, after a round of back-and-forth haggling, all 1,131 pelts were finalized at a price of 140,000 silver coins. Although it didn't hit his target of 150,000 silver coins, it was clearly the merchant's absolute limit. The moment the words "Deal" left his mouth, the NPC looked completely hollowed out, wearing the wretched expression of a man whose pockets had been picked clean. Even though he was an NPC, NPCs in this game were virtually indistinguishable from real people, so Qingdeng Gujiu felt a bit guilty about squeezing him to death. He still hoped to maintain a long-term business relationship. As a condition of the 140,000-silver-coin deal, the players of Port French Fries were required to help deliver the thousand-plus bundled pelts onto the deck of the freighter *Northwest Wind*. Without a dock, loading ten to twenty tons of cargo onto a ship was no easy feat, but Qingdeng Gujiu agreed readily anyway. "As you wish, one hundred and forty thousand silver coins! I need to go to the freighter to retrieve the money... Deliver the cargo to the deck, and we'll trade hand-to-hand, cash on delivery." Having made the verbal agreement, Mogavi walked to the south side of the camp, paused beside the palisade gate, and looked back to remind Qingdeng Gujiu repeatedly. Seeing the man's grief-stricken expression as if he'd lost his shirt, Qingdeng chuckled and waved a hand. "Got it, got it. Hurry on back. Tell your captain to hold the ship steady; we'll bring them over in no time." "It's a deal..." Not wanting to dawdle any longer on the beach, Mogavi turned and headed back toward the beached inflatable. Just then, the two mercenaries with rifles slung over their backs strolled up, completely baffled to see their boss hurrying back. "Boss?" "What's... the situation?" "Business is done!" Mogavi slapped the shoulder of the mercenary in front, urging him along frantically. "Time to go. Time is money! We have to get back to the ship immediately!" Those goods piled over there were his property now. Every minute wasted here meant another pelt might spoil. That was completely intolerable to him. Especially those blood marten furs he had set his eyes on—bundled together with a stack of raw mutant rhino hides meant for leather! Seeing the blood and grease smeared across that gorgeous fur made his heart ache with agonizing spasms. What a bunch of prodigals! Hearing their boss say they were heading back, the two mercenaries nearly coughed up blood. After panting and sweating to haul the boat ashore to beach it, they had planned to hit the Alliance settlement for a couple of drinks. Instead, before they could even lay eyes on the entrance, they were being rushed back. "What are you staring at me for?" Seeing them standing dumbfounded, Mogavi glared at them. "Get moving already!" "Right..." Not daring to offend their employer, the mercenaries swallowed their annoyance and trudged begrudgingly back toward the inflatable. In his rush to get back to the deck, Mogavi didn't even care that the seawater soaked his trouser legs, joining the mercenaries to push the boat out. After nearly half an hour of wrestling with the boat, the three finally made it back beside the anchored freighter. The two patrol speedboats moored beside the freighter hadn't left; the patrol captain was puffing impatiently on a cigarette at the bow, having apparently waited for quite some time. Without wasting a second, Mogavi grabbed the ladder and scrambled onto the deck. Seeing his employer return, Song Haining immediately walked over and asked, "What's going on ashore?" "The prophecy was true! A land paved with gold! Hahaha! I actually found it!" Dropping every shred of the dejected look he had worn during the deal on the beach, Mogavi was practically incoherent with excitement, clutching Captain Song's shoulders with both hands. Song Haining was taken aback, completely baffled by his words. Recovering after a moment, he said, "What do you mean, gold everywhere..." "I bought a shipment from them! Wait here for a bit—they'll bring the goods over shortly. I'm going to get the money ready." With that, Mogavi headed toward the cabin. Song Haining grabbed his arm at once and pressed, "Wait, what goods? Delivered to the deck? How are they going to bring them up?" He had no plans to dock here, and more importantly, there was no dock to moor against. If they shuttled it back and forth in small boats, how long would that take? If a submarine from Shelter 70 targeted them, he didn't think two patrol speedboats would be enough to keep them safe. Looking at the fretful captain, Mogavi chuckled and patted his hand. "Don't worry. They said it'd be fast, not long at all. Just wait a little while." Song Haining glared at him. "We can't afford to wait long! The Federation patrol is waiting on us, and without their escort, we won't get through the minefield! And there's Shelter 70's—" "Then please tell them for me to wait a bit longer! Two speedboats... I can pay them an extra two thousand dinars!" Watching Mogavi shake off his arm and rush headlong into the cabin, Song Haining's brow furrowed into deep crevices of worry. Just then, a sailor scrambled down the gangway, calling out anxiously, "Captain! The airship from the shore! It's heading toward us!" The airship?! Song Haining froze and instinctively looked up toward the north shore of the strait. There, the hovering airship was trailing a bundle of cables, slowly drifting toward his ship. Looking at the cargo slung beneath those ropes, his eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. Holy hell. That works too?! Emerging from the hold with a briefcase in hand, Mogavi was equally stunned by the Alliance's maneuver. His shock didn't last long, however. In less than fifteen minutes, the airship hovered steadily directly above the freighter. The sea wind howled. Slung from the cables, several massive 'tofu blocks' swung like pendulums, taking several attempts before they were settled securely onto the deck. Watching this hair-raising spectacle, Song Haining felt his heart leap into his throat. Especially when that giant pendulum swung toward his *Northwest Wind*, his face had turned stark white with terror. Fortunately, luck was on everyone's side; this absurd operation hadn't claimed a single life. From atop one of the bundled stacks, a man in a leather jacket hopped down. He looked left and right, quickly spotting Mogavi standing dumbfounded beside the cabin. His eyes lit up, and he stepped forward with a smile. "Cargo's delivered. Where's the cash?" Taking quite a while to come to his senses, Mogavi closed his agape mouth, gave an impressed thumbs-up, and handed over the briefcase. "All one hundred and forty thousand silver coins are here." Qingdeng Gujiu took the briefcase and peeked inside. Seeing over a dozen neat bundles of hundred-denomination bills, he snapped the lid shut with a satisfied smile. "Pleasure doing business." "Pleasure doing business... I'll be back here in a few days. Remember to save the good stuff for me when I return," Mogavi said, casting a glance at the captain glaring at him, before clearing his throat. "Also, you guys... better figure out how to build a dock as soon as possible. I'm afraid no ship will take me on the return trip otherwise." Qingdeng Gujiu's eyes shone. "That's easy! I can introduce you to someone!" Mogavi blinked and gave him a strange look. "You... have ships?" "Of course!" Qingdeng said with a grin. "If you ever need one, when you get to Ring Port, look for someone named Tail. She's aboard the ship flying the white bear flag." Mogavi nodded. "I'll go check it out if the need arises... By the way, how do you plan to get back?" "Easy. The same way I got here. See ya!" With a wave and a grin, Qingdeng turned and climbed back onto the stacks of pelts. He unhooked the cables from the cargo bundles and snapped them onto himself. Everyone watched speechlessly as the man, clutching the briefcase, was hoisted off the deck by the airship and swayed gently back toward the shore. Watching the figure vanish in the distance, Song Haining swallowed hard and glared fixedly at Mogavi beside him. Knowing what he wanted to say, Mogavi gave an awkward cough and offered, "Actually, those guys are pretty decent folks. Far easier to deal with than survivors in most settlements... Just a bit reckless at times." "I don't care about reckless or not, but you'd better not drag me into your madness! This ship has been with me for twenty years!" Song Haining continued, staring daggers at him. "This is the last time... On the way back, I will not drop anchor anywhere near here! Don't even think about it!" Mogavi nodded with an appeasing smile. "Sure... of course!" Not stopping here? Impossible. The money made from that single deal just now was almost equal to the profits of his entire shipload of cargo. Not only was he coming back, he planned to stay for a while. Perhaps once he reached the port on Ring Island, he could look up that person named Tail whom the seller had recommended, and see if she was willing to take the job... Then again... Why did that name sound so familiar? Mogavi couldn't shake the feeling that he had heard it somewhere before.