Chapter 188 - Cooperation
Translator: TeamTWO
Editor: Nora
At noon, Ouyang Shuo was in Lord's manner, as he took care of Xie Siyun. He had received Sun Xiaoyue's reply, and he knew that she would be bringing a bunch of players to Shanhai City in the afternoon.
The players that she brought over were split into two groups.
The most important group was the professionals. A total of 30 professionals including ship maker, economist, chemist, doctor, mechanic, engineer, agriculture, and many other professions.
The 30 professionals and their family totaled at 150 people. Each was arranged a 2000 square meter courtyard.
The 2nd portion were the members of the Fallen Moon Guild, who also brought their family.
As of now, Fallen Moon Guild had a total of 400 members. When Sun Xiaoyue announced that Shanhai City was willing to accept fallen moon members, 350 of them instantly agreed to move there.
The remaining 50 weren't willing to move, as they had already gained a footing in the imperial city. As their wills were different, so would their paths differ from one another, hence, Sun Xiaoyue kicked them out of the guild.
The members of the guild brought their families along and numbered a total of 1850. In addition to the 150 people of the professional team, a total of 2000 people teleported over from Dali.
The core members of the Fallen Moon Guild were the alchemist Luoye, the bridge designer Wuchi, city planner Hui Tuban, map plotter Jiu Duanxian as well as Sun Xiaoyue's two ex-roommates—Qinruo and Pan Qiaoqiao. As for their two boyfriends, they had the combat occupation, so they could only be normal members.
Ouyang Shuo arranged the core members into the official residence quarters. Each person took up a courtyard of around 1000 square meters. The remaining members were assigned to the residential area and were each given a basic courtyard.
Sun Xiaoyue moved to Shanhai City, so she couldn't teleport back to Dali. Furthermore, since Consonance studio's Qingfeng Pavilion was located there, Ouyang Shuo would rather just shift Fallen Moon out of there.
With that, Fallen Moon would become the first guild to locate themselves in Shanhai City and probably the only one that will.
Ouyang Shuo planned that if the work occupation players in Snow-War Rose wanted to move to Shanhai City, they would all be taken into Fallen Moon Guild.
Sun Xiaoyue rushed over from Dali and also brought what the Cui family had asked her to give to Cui Yingyu.
The Cui family had packed the gift into two large wooden boxes, one filled with the jewelry she usually wore and the other filled with gold, a full 10 thousand.
Based on their words, the 10 thousand gold was her allowance. As expected from a huge business group, their riches weren't something that Shanhai City could compare to.
Cui Yingyu didn't keep the money they sent by her side. Instead, she saved it into the Four Seas Bank, which became the biggest saving deal since its establishment.
When she saw that her older sister had an additional 10 thousand gold savings, Qing'er was so envious. She started to think about when she too could save up so much.
In truth, based on the profitability of the garment workshop, she would save 10 thousand gold sooner or later.
Cui Yingyu stored the money into Four Seas Bank. Every month, she could get 100 gold interest.
If Four Seas Bank could loan out this large sum of gold, they could get 300 gold in interest. One in one out, they would get a 200 gold profit a month.
This was the way that the Four Seas Bank earned money.
This sum of money helped to solve the current monetary problems of Shanhai City.
Ouyang Shuo was originally prepared to leave a sum of money at the end of the 6th month for the Four Seas Bank. Unfortunately, his buying spree caused him to use it all up.
As the territory’s economy developed, the need for loans also increased. The 1350 gold that he had given to the Four Seas Bank in the 5th month had already been spent, so they could only rely on some of the savings to continue loaning out.
After they gained this amount of money, the Four Seas Bank would be able to sustain itself for a long time.
Apart from the two boxes of gifts, the Cui Family also sent a cooperation contract. As long as Ouyang Shuo agreed, it would be effective immediately. The contract stated that the Cui Chamber of Commerce would become the only agent of Shanhai City in Dali to sell Shanhai City’s specialties and other resources.
Ever since the system updated, the sales tax dropped to 10%. This was the same as the tax on the territorial special products selling in the grocery store. This meant that the business advantage that the grocery store held didn’t exist anymore, and they could just sell everything on the super auction platform. After all, the market to buy the products would be several times more than the system of the grocery shop.
As compensation, the Cui Chamber of Commerce would collect 2% of the agent fees from the year’s sale. At the same time, they could also help Shanhai City look for rare resources around Dali and be their agent to buy those items.
After they bought the resources from Shanhai City, the Cui Chamber of Commerce would sell them at their numerous shops around Dali. They would earn the difference between the buying and selling price.
This was a win-win situation, so Ouyang Shuo didn't hesitate and immediately agreed.
In the future, Shanhai City would sell their resources on the super auction platform. After listing their products, it was assumed that the Cui Chamber of Commerce would purchase it. Only if they rejected the listing would it naturally flow to the market.
Of course, if the Cui Chamber of Commerce often rejected the listing, this would affect the base of the cooperation. Once this type of agent system was challenged, the cooperation would be unable to proceed.
In the afternoon, Ouyang Shuo took the gap between settling down the batch of people to discuss with Xie Siyun about the cooperation between Shanhai City and the Snow-War Rose mercenary group.
After both parties signed the contract, Shanhai City and Snow-war Rose mercenary group officially became strategic partners.
Snow-war Rose mercenary group had priority purchase on equipment from Shanhai City, while being given a 10% discount. As payment, they would look out for talented work occupation players in Jianye and recruit them to move to Shanhai City.
As both sides were still in the starting stages, further cooperation would depend on the circumstances and would change accordingly.
The Snow-War Rose mercenary group was the first party he gave a discount. Even his allies and Tianshuang Town didn't have such treatment, which showed how much Ouyang Shuo valued talent.
Of course, it was partially because of his relationship with his little aunt. After all, they were a family, and the monetary ability of a guild couldn't be compared to a territory.
Ouyang Shuo had his reasons for being willing to hire work occupation players for such a high price.
Compared to talented individuals amongst the residents, players had an advantage.
Firstly, they didn't need to fulfill any requirements to choose a job. After they created a character, they could choose any occupation, and the system would naturally give them a hidden talent for them to explore.
This was the same as the talent for combat occupations. However, one was used for combat and the other was for production, so they had totally different uses.
Hence, the number of work occupations amongst player was more than the talented NPCs amongst the refugees. One could only depend on luck to get such talented people, but they could just keep hiring players, so the difference in efficiency was incomparable.
Secondly, compared to NPCs, it was easier for players to break through bottlenecks. Thus, it was much easier for them to become master rank and higher. This had something to do with the biases of the system. In the future, work occupation players would start to attract a lot of attention.
Of course, players also had their deficiencies.
Firstly, some couldn't take the hard work and would waste their talent. For example, in sewing, if you the needle doesn’t poke you several times a day, you couldn't be considered a passable tailor. Compared to other jobs like blacksmiths, tailoring was already an easy occupation. Those people who were brought up with a silver spoon obviously couldn't handle such hardships.
Secondly, players had to start from apprentices and needed a relatively longer time to train and develop. Like Sun Xiaoyue becoming an architect. She took a full two months to become an intermediate architect. The further behind, the longer time it took to upgrade, so one needed a lot of effort and patience.
Hence, only those people with resilience, who could take hardship and weren’t afraid of loneliness could have a chance to become a real master. Most people drop out in the process.
5 PM, Xie Siyun and little aunt went back to Jianye.
At night, Ouyang Shuo was at Sangu Hotel to welcome the group of professionals with a banquet.
During the banquet, Ouyang Shuo announced his plans for the various professionals. Lianzhou College would hire all of them as professors. Each month they would earn 10 gold—similar to a secretary.
At the same time as teaching, they could—based on their profession or hobby—become an advisor for a department or division. Alternatively, they could open a research lab to research their interests.
The agriculture professional could apply to be an advisor for the agriculture division and guide them in changing the water irrigation system. They could guide farmers to change the way they planted crops to raise production as well as teach ways to deal with bugs to increase yield.
An economist could be the financial department advisor. Combined with their economic knowledge, they could perfect the tax system and create better policies to stimulate the economy.
Engineering professionals could become the advisors of the building division and advise them to come out with better tools or machines to lessen the workload and increase building efficiency.
A mechanical studies professional could become the advisor of the combat logistics division and help them create siege weapons and make modifications to the ladder, alchemical fire oil, cabinet, and the like.
Metallurgy professionals could be the advisor of the material reserves department and advise them on how to raise the refining level of the Langshan mining fields gold ore, various iron ores refining levels, and make modifications to the current smelting furnace.
All in all, this batch of professionals were a treasure trove. Although they were unable to do anything about the system restrictions on the technology tree, they could use their knowledge to improve and make modifications to each industry.
Of course, the premise was that they could to adapt to the territory and understand the situation before making changes to improve it.
If one said that agriculture, economics, engineering, mechanical studies, metallurgy were all the icing on the cake, Ouyang Shuo’s main task was to build steam warships, guns, and cannons.
This plan involved many fields and needed the cooperation of many professionals. In addition to Liumo—the thermal weapon specialist, there were the alchemy workshops, the weapons workshops, and the other departments. Only then would it be possible to succeed.