Chapter 95
“Defect?”
Tang Yu’an followed Zhou Qi, listening to him talk about what he had thought of while promoting salt notes with Granny Guo earlier, and couldn’t help but ask.
“What defect?”
At this moment, they had already left Granny Guo’s house, and Jin Lili was peeking out from Zhou Qi’s backpack, curiously looking at the umbrella above their heads.
Since the appearance of this umbrella, she felt extremely comfortable.
It wasn’t cold or hot; she had never felt this comfortable since she could remember!
She couldn’t understand the conversation between her two brothers, so she curiously stared at the Shadow Umbrella.
Meanwhile, Tang Yu’an and Zhou Qi’s conversation continued.
Zhou Qi replied, “Rather than calling it a defect, it’s more like a loophole.”
“How so?” Tang Yu’an asked.
“First of all, the production cost of our three types of salt notes is the same; regardless of the color of the salt note, its value is 1 Point.”
Zhou Qi explained, “However, the selling price of the three qualities of salt is different.”
Tang Yu’an fell into thought.
“If customers use salt notes to exchange for salt, it’s naturally a profit for us,” Zhou Qi continued.
In the wholesale market, 1 Point can be exchanged for 10 grams of refined salt, while the production cost of the salt note is 1 Point, meaning that when customers trade with salt notes, they can only get 1 gram of salt for 1 Point.
With a 10-fold difference, no matter how customers exchanged, it was a profit for them.
Not to mention the lower-value coarse salt, which has a cost value of 1 Point for 20 grams; they would earn even more.
Tang Yu’an frowned in thought, then suddenly realized, “If it’s for exchanging salt, we profit, but for other items, it’s not necessarily the case!”
“Exactly.”
Zhou Qi nodded, “The price of white-gold salt notes is higher; although their value is equal to gray-gold and black-gold, they can be exchanged for more other items.”
According to the prices they set yesterday—
1 white-gold salt note = 2.5 gray-gold salt notes = 5 black-gold salt notes, which means 1 gram of refined salt = 2.5 grams of coarse salt = 5 grams of sea salt.
Assuming a customer uses salt notes to exchange for soybeans, where the Points value of soybeans is 5 Points for 100 grams, if a customer trades 10 black gold salt notes for 100 grams of soybeans, they would net a profit of 5 Points.
But if they used the equivalent of 2 white-gold salt notes to exchange for 100 grams of soybeans, they would incur a loss of 3 Points.
“So, if we want to use salt notes to earn Points, we must increase the Points value of white-gold and gray-gold salt notes.”
Like now, where all types of salt notes are valued at 1 Point, that definitely won’t work; this is the biggest loophole and obstacle—
The salt notes they issued are not real currency.
Because in the system’s judgment, currency is just a piece of paper; it currently does not recognize the value symbol represented by currency.
“But if we want to increase the Points value of salt notes, then the production cost will also increase,” Zhou Qi said.
Tang Yu’an frowned tightly, following Zhou Qi’s words and asking, “So what do you think we should do?”
“From now on, reduce the issuance of white-gold salt notes,” Zhou Qi said.
The more they issue, the more they lose.
Currently, they only have 100 white-gold salt notes, which can be released in small amounts as benefits for Old Customers—after all, even if they can’t earn Points, they can still gain Experience Points, which they can afford.
They also do not restrict the exchange of salt note types; black-gold salt notes can also be exchanged for refined salt, just in larger quantities.
Tang Yu’an’s frown did not ease; he always felt something was off because, having been influenced since childhood, although he had never studied systematically, he was still quite sensitive to “money.”
At this moment, he heard Zhou Qi say, “Then, limit the goods that customers can exchange.”
For example, glucose in the system’s wholesale market is also 1 Point for 10 grams, the same as refined salt; salt notes can completely be used as sugar tickets, and both are equally precious in the Wasteland.
Tang Yu’an nodded; this indeed could ensure that both links would profit…
Wait, two links?
“Wait a minute.”
At this moment, Tang Yu’an realized something and said, “When we sell salt notes, we have already earned Points once.”
The paper currency they printed, although not recognized by the system for its symbolic value, could still be utilized.
For example, when they issue salt notes, in the system’s judgment, it’s like taking a piece of paper to exchange goods with others, and they can basically swipe for Points equivalent to the value of the goods.
Now, they are giving a little to customers for trial use to promote, but in the future, if customers want salt notes, they will definitely need to exchange something for them.
Just like Granny Guo exchanged 8 fruits for salt notes, they profited 64 Points.
Later, when she comes to exchange salt notes, even if they incur a loss, they won’t deduct the Points they earned; they just need to provide her with the goods.
This is equivalent to Granny Guo exchanging something with them, storing it with them first, and later coming back with the ticket to retrieve the goods.
Although they won’t earn Points, they can still earn Experience Points.
Tang Yu’an said, “As long as the value of the other items Granny Guo wants to exchange is equal to that of those eight fruits, we won’t incur a loss.”
Because they have already earned Points upfront, as long as they provide equivalent goods later, they definitely won’t incur a loss—
Moreover, these goods don’t necessarily have to be exchanged from the system’s wholesale market; the Points earned earlier can still remain in their pockets, which can also be considered profit.
“And, since the price of goods is set by us, like the soybeans mentioned earlier, as long as we set that 2 white-gold salt notes can only be exchanged for 10 grams of soybeans, we would profit!”
Zhou Qi nodded, “But this involves another issue.”
“What issue?”
“The value of items.”
Tang Yu’an was taken aback; the value of items? Although he hadn’t studied it yet, he tried to understand it literally…
“Is it referring to the value of goods during the process of use?”
Tang Yu’an felt like he had said something pointless, so he added based on his understanding, “For example, with the same rough rice, if we only use it for eating, 20 grains of rough rice have very low use value for us.”
“But Granny Guo uses rough rice to make seeds; for her, the use value is very high, so she is willing to exchange fruits for 20 grains of rough rice.”
“Exactly.” Zhou Qi nodded.
Tang Yu’an had a natural talent for business; these concepts were clear to him at a glance.
“And the Points value set by the system is different from the use value of goods in the Wasteland,” Zhou Qi said.
Not only is it different, but the gap is also very large.
For example, the Points value of a fruit is 10 Points, while ordinary animal meat is only worth 20 Points per pound.
In the Wasteland, can two fruits be exchanged for a pound of meat? That’s clearly impossible!
“So the prices we set will definitely have a significant discrepancy with the Points value of goods, which could cause confusion,” Zhou Qi said, “We need to maintain balance in pricing.”
However, just like Tang Yu’an said, they have already earned Points once when selling salt notes, so as long as they don’t pursue earning Points when redeeming salt notes, it won’t be a problem.
“It feels so complicated…” Tang Yu’an couldn’t help but mutter.
“Take it slow.”
Zhou Qi said, “For now, we will only sell salt and sugar, occasionally selling items traded from other customers; otherwise, if we bring out too many things at once, it won’t be safe.”
Salt notes also need to be trialed for a while; once they are truly operational, any issues that arise can be adjusted in a timely manner.
After all, the population of Desolate City is not large, making it a suitable trial location—
As for whether the residents would spread the word? This is the Wasteland; people knowing that there is a “hidden” store selling salt would only keep it to themselves.
To develop a customer base, they still have to rely on themselves.
“Alright then, let’s do it your way.” Tang Yu’an nodded in agreement.
At this point, their conversation came to a pause, and Tang Yu’an immediately pushed the complex issue to the back of his mind.
“Let’s go! Take Lili to see our big house!”
Hearing her name, Jin Lili finally pulled her attention away from the Shadow Umbrella.
She really couldn’t understand what her two brothers had just said; it was all a blur until this sentence, which she barely comprehended.
She looked at Tang Yu’an.
Tang Yu’an smiled at her, and the little girl also curved her lips slightly.
Seeing her finally smile, Tang Yu’an couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief.
Great! It seemed she had temporarily moved on from the sadness of leaving Tie Jin.
When they arrived in front of the building, Tang Yu’an took Jin Lili out of Zhou Qi’s backpack and waited outside with her.
After all, Ba Shi and Ba Tu looked quite fierce; it wouldn’t be good if they scared Jin Lili.
Zhou Qi went inside the building alone to check.
Jin Lili leaned in Tang Yu’an’s arms, looking up at the Shadow Umbrella floating above her head, unable to help but point at the umbrella, amazed, “Haha, the umbrella is floating, right?”
“Floating… floating!”
The little girl became a bit more lively and was willing to speak.
“Brother will take you around; in the future, you can come here to play with Dad.”
Who would have thought that as soon as he finished speaking, the little girl pouted again.
“…………”
This time, she didn’t cry loudly; she just sobbed and shed tears, looking extremely pitiful.
Tang Yu’an realized he had said the wrong thing, reminding her of Tie Jin, so he quickly started playing around her, even using Lightness techniques to jump up and down, quickly diverting Jin Lili’s attention.
When Zhou Qi came out, he put Jin Lili back in the basket and then pulled Zhou Qi, leading them away from this “sad place.”
Children have short memories; they quickly forget their sadness and lean back in the basket, listening to their conversation.
“Brother Qi, what did you trade with Ba Shi and the others?” Tang Yu’an asked.
He had just seen the system prompt that Brother Qi had made three trades with Ba Shi and earned 37 Points and 4 Experience Points.
“They exchanged wild fruits for a few whole wheat buns.”
Whole wheat buns, as a filling food, still have a certain market in the Wasteland.
Perhaps when the demand for salt saturates in the future, the residents of Desolate City will be willing to exchange salt notes for other goods.
Of course, there is also a possibility that residents will take the salt they exchanged from them to sell in Jufeng Town.
Once they open a branch in Jufeng Town in the future, the likelihood of this situation occurring will decrease.
Because the price of salt they sell will definitely be lower than that of these second-hand dealers, and it can be imagined that the salt markets in Desolate City and Jufeng Town will definitely be impacted by the large amount of salt they supply.
However, they did not see any stalls selling salt at the market. As for other channels for purchasing salt, they had not had enough time to understand them during their short stay in Jufeng Town.
So before selling salt in Jufeng Town, they needed to obtain Hong Li’s permission first—having Chi Hao as a connection should not pose any problems.
As for the surrounding areas…
The roads were blocked, which made it difficult to cause a significant impact.
Zhou Qi continued, “We should be able to wrap things up by tomorrow afternoon, so let’s come a bit earlier.”
“Okay.” Tang Yu’an nodded, “Should we give them a few salt notes?”
“We can give them black gold tickets,” Zhou Qi replied.
“Mm-hmm.” Tang Yu’an thought for a moment and said, “Then we need to print more black gold salt notes when we get back.”
At this point, he suddenly paused, finally recalling what had felt off to him earlier.
The first question Brother Qi raised could be resolved by issuing a single type of salt note.
But this could potentially lead to new problems.
For instance, if someone wanted to exchange for 10 grams of refined salt, would they need to present 50 black gold tickets? For 100 grams of refined salt, that would be 500 tickets!
This would create an excessive demand for black gold tickets, which would also increase their production costs.
Tang Yu’an said, “So issuing salt notes of different denominations is indeed very necessary!”
Zhou Qi nodded.
“You are right.” He agreed, “But for now, we don’t need to worry about encountering this problem.”
With coarse salt and sea salt available for sale, the number of people purchasing refined salt would significantly decrease; even Granny Guo preferred coarse salt.
Once the coarse salt is sold out, more people might still choose sea salt.
An individual’s daily salt intake should be less than 6 grams; considering the situation in Wasteland, an average of 3 grams would be about right, meaning a person would need at most 90 grams of salt in a month.
And for the least valuable sea salt, 90 salt notes would require 18 fruits, and exchanging for mushrooms or wild vegetables would require even more.
In Desolate City, very few people could take out so many items at once for exchange; if someone really could, they could also use gray-gold salt notes instead.
As for larger transactions…
To be honest, their current credibility was not sufficient for that.
Granny Guo trusted them enough, right? Currently, she was only willing to hold onto a dozen or twenty salt notes; anything more would exceed her psychological comfort zone.
So for a long time to come, large transactions would still have to be conducted with physical goods.
“It does seem that way.” Tang Yu’an nodded.
“The promotion of salt notes will definitely be a long process, so we need to adopt a flexible approach; it’s better for the salt notes in the market to be scarce than to print them excessively.”
They were not a government agency, nor were they a bank; they were just a small grocery store.
The scarcity of salt notes was not a problem; at worst, they could continue bartering, as salt could be exchanged for both salt notes and physical goods.
This way, they could also avoid the behavior of middlemen selling salt notes at high prices—after all, they were still precious resources in Wasteland.
If they restricted exchanges to only salt notes for salt, the resale situation would inevitably arise, which was not something they wanted to see.
“And there’s another issue: the people in Wasteland have not learned arithmetic, and converting different denominations of numbers is not a simple matter for them.”
One white-gold salt note equals five black gold salt notes; but what do two, three, or four tickets equal? This is a very simple question for them, but for those who have never used money and have not attended math classes, it is quite a challenge.
This matter can only develop slowly; after all, they have plenty of time.
“Mm-hmm, then let’s take it slow!”
Next, Tang Yu’an opened the map and found that Old Li had already returned home, so he and Zhou Qi carried Jin Lili to Old Li’s house.
Seeing Jin Lili, Old Li was quite surprised.
“This is Tie Jin’s adopted daughter?”
Previously, when Tie Jin came to him for a comb, he had mentioned it, and they had chatted about the situation before the disaster. Now, seeing the little girl with her particularly red hair, he guessed it.
“Yes, this is Lili.”
Tang Yu’an explained Tie Jin’s whereabouts, “We are helping to take care of her for a few days.”
Old Li was not surprised that they would take on this task. Looking at Jin Lili’s curious gaze, he reached out to pull a few blades of straw and quickly wove them into a butterfly.
“Here.”
Jin Lili took the straw butterfly, her eyes sparkling.
Old Li’s eyes showed a hint of a smile, and then he turned to Zhou Qi and Tang Yu’an. After a brief chat, he began discussing other matters.
“I went to Giant Lizard Nest these past two days, and Lin’s judgment seems to be correct; it has become very dangerous there.”
He said with a serious expression, “I’m not sure what the specific situation inside is, but besides the mutated giant lizards, there is also a powerful mutated plant.”
He had not seen any signs of the mother lizard these past two days; even when getting close, he did not feel the mother lizard’s mental power as he had before.
It was very likely that the mother lizard was no longer there.
If the mutated mother lizard had been defeated and absorbed by that mutated vine tree, it was hard to imagine how high its mutation level would be.
“You all should avoid going there in the future.”
Although he felt it was a pity to think of the lizard eggs in Giant Lizard Nest, life was more important.
Then, Old Li continued with a worried expression, “The plants in the center of Desolate City seem to be growing outward; I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing.”
With more plants, there would also be more animals, making food easier to gather.
But this also meant danger.
Tang Yu’an and Zhou Qi exchanged glances, surprised that Old Li had noticed this too; it seemed it was not just their illusion.
“Well, we’ll take it one step at a time.”
Old Li did not continue on this topic but instead took out the goods he had prepared for trading today.
“Grandpa, have you run out of salt?”
Old Li did not say whether he had any left, only stating, “Are we trading salt today? That’s fine.”
“Would you like to try this coarse salt? It’s cheaper than refined salt.” Zhou Qi took out the salt jar again.
Old Li glanced at it and agreed.
Thus, Zhou Qi exchanged 4 scoops of salt with Old Li for a pound of meat, earning 16 points and 1 experience point.
Then he took out four gray-gold salt notes and shared the information he had told Granny Guo with Old Li as well.
“Opening a store?”
Old Li looked at the two boys with suspicion, feeling increasingly confused by them.
Why would two kids from Fortress think of coming to Desolate City to open a grocery store? Since they had stable channels to obtain salt, they were not without foundation.
What benefits could opening a grocery store in Desolate City bring them?
Old Li racked his brain but could not figure it out, ultimately deciding to go along with it as before; since they were here, he would accept it.
After all, his life had been saved by the two kids, so whatever they wanted, he would do his best to cooperate.
And like Granny Guo, he did not take advantage of them for free, taking out a piece of animal fur to exchange with them.
“Grandpa, how many fruits could you exchange for this piece of animal fur before?”
“Four or five, I suppose.”
The fur could be used for sleeping at night, lasting a long time, but its demand in Desolate City was generally low; it could only be sold for a high price in Jufeng Town.
Tang Yu’an calculated.
1 piece of fur = 5 ordinary fruits = 5 grams of refined salt = 12.5 grams of coarse salt.
Meanwhile, Zhou Qi had already taken out 3 white-salt notes and 1 gray-gold salt note to supplement Old Li.
“White-gold salt notes can also be exchanged for coarse salt; one can be exchanged for half a scoop,” he explained, “For now, salt notes can only be exchanged for salt and sugar.”
“Okay.” Old Li nodded, “When you open, I will definitely come to exchange.”
In the future, their store would be located in this neighborhood, making it very convenient to get around.
Once they had filled up their experience points, Tang Yu’an and Zhou Qi took their leave and set off to find Lin Zhan.
She had already returned home, but besides her, there was also a green light dot in her house, which they were unsure if it was her guest.
However, considering this was the apocalypse, Tang Yu’an and Zhou Qi did not let their guard down.
That green dot could be Lin Zhan’s friend or a stranger looking to rob them, especially since Lin Zhan still had a lizard egg in her home.
They hid under the Shadow Umbrella and cautiously approached.
Jin Lili watched her two brothers’ sneaky behavior with curiosity.
Tang Yu’an made a shushing gesture to her.
The little girl quickly covered her mouth and shrank back into the backpack.
Seeing her cooperation, Tang Yu’an smiled, then he and Zhou Qi jumped onto the windowsill of Lin Zhan’s house.
They could hear voices coming from inside.
“One ice cube for a meat pancake? You might as well go rob someone!” Lin Zhan cursed, “Damn Lan Lin, give me back my meat pancake!”
Tang Yu’an and Zhou Qi exchanged glances; could it be that ice-type ability user?
“Everyone gets a share; we’ve known each other for so long, it’s just a pancake, why are you being so calculative?”
A strange young man’s voice came out, his tone casual, sounding unhurried, contrasting sharply with Lin Zhan’s frantic screams.
“Scoundrel! Let me out!”
Hearing Lin Zhan’s voice nearing fury, Tang Yu’an and Zhou Qi hurriedly revealed themselves from the window and looked inside.
They saw Lin Zhan surrounded by a circle of ice, frantically stabbing at the ice wall with a dagger, but it was utterly futile.
The instigator was sitting leisurely on a stone in front of her, preparing to eat a pancake.
He was a handsome young man with shoulder-length hair that was well-groomed, and they could vaguely see some strands dyed ice blue, looking as if he had highlighted it.
Furious, Lin Zhan screamed, “Do you believe that if I bite into this, your mouth will rot, and you’ll have diarrhea, just like how it went in and will come out!”
Lan Lin’s hand involuntarily paused.
Not that he was genuinely worried about Lin Zhan poisoning him, but her words had disgusted him.
“Do you have to be so vicious?” Lan Lin said, speechless.
“Let me out!”
At this moment, the large parrot nearby clearly wanted to help but was stopped by Lin Zhan: “A-Mu, don’t come out, stay curled up.”
The large parrot hesitated for a moment before returning to its nest.
Due to Lan Lin’s presence, the temperature in the room had noticeably dropped; it was a critical period for hatching eggs, and they could not afford to fail.
At this time, Lan Lin also noticed the two boys outside the window.
Tang Yu’an timely called out, “Sister Lin, what happened? Do you need help?”
Translator’s Note:
All this salt notes and currency talk was so confusing, it took me hours to translate this chapter… I hope the logic was correct, if there is any mistake please forgive me >.<
