Quick Wear: Random Cheats

Chapter 219 The Princess Who Was Killed as a Wife in a Peace Marriage (6)

The Li family caravan is on its way back.

"Brother, did we make a profit or a loss this time? Can we sell these things for a high price back home?"

After all, the first shipment wasn't a large amount of gold and silver from the Western Rong Empire, but rather a pile of supplies. Li Dongyang couldn't help but worry that the goods wouldn't sell as well.

Li Dongsheng, meanwhile, was pondering while holding a lychee.

After a long pause, he finally gave an irrelevant answer:

"These lychees change color in a day, lose their fragrance in two days, and become completely inedible in three days. Even if they are preserved with ice throughout the entire process, they can only be kept for about five days at most. But look at these, I have only ever eaten such fresh ones when I was traveling through Lingnan as a merchant."

However, it is well known that the Western Rong Empire does not produce lychees, and even in most parts of the Tianhong Empire, lychees are not grown. So where did these fresh lychees come from?

"Didn't Kabu say it was exchanged from the Royal Court?"

Li Dongyang replied, then realized what he meant and said:

"Brother, do you mean there's something wrong with their lychees? Or do you suspect that what that Kabu said is true? That the Empress has a magical servant named Xiao Hei who can instantly transport all kinds of supplies from all over the world and exchange them with them at low prices?"

How is that possible? If we had that ability, why would we trade with them? We'd just steal whatever we wanted.

The Five Ghosts Moving Things Wasn't as magical as they claimed.

It can only move things within a certain range.

I suspect that some incredibly powerful force has appeared out of nowhere and has formed a partnership with the newly enthroned empress of the Western Rong Empire, or perhaps the empress is actually being supported by them and is trying to steal our business.

Brother, don't believe in ghosts and spirits!

At this point, Li Dongsheng's answer was still somewhat irrelevant:

"Theoretically, as long as we can transport fresh lychees to the Tianhong Empire, or even more distant places, by transplanting lychee trees, we can do so at any cost, but the cost of doing so is extremely high."

Even if you transplant ten lychee trees, not one of them will survive, and the fruit that does grow will taste slightly worse. In addition, the total number of lychee trees will definitely not be very large.

After all, those trees would be destroyed after the lychees were picked.

It's impossible to transplant it back.

Destroying ten trees for one lychee tree is too high a price to pay.

And have you noticed? Kabu, along with his children and even those of slightly higher status in their tribe, all have very obvious symptoms of internal heat. Kabu, in particular, even switched to Watermelon Frost.

Their internal heat is not caused by eating beef or mutton.

It's clearly due to excessive lychee consumption causing internal heat.

"The number of lychees that would cause so much internal heat among so many people is not small, not to mention that he is just a small to medium-sized tribe. If he is not lying and bragging, the number of lychees he exchanged is relatively small compared to other tribes."

Have you ever calculated how terrifying the total number of lychees that emerged from the Western Rong Empire's royal court must have been?

"The weight can range from tens of thousands of kilograms to hundreds of thousands of kilograms."

If a businessman is bad at math, he's really doomed. Li Dongyang quickly figured it out.

And he also recalled:

"Last year, 300 jin of lychees were sent to the capital."

"And don't forget, lychees are basically out of season. Although there are late-ripening lychee varieties in Lingnan, they are extremely rare and not easy to buy even in Lingnan itself."

And these lychees taste even better than the usual tribute lychees.

Even the core is extremely small.

Having peeled and played with the lychee in his hand for a while, and picked out the seed which was much smaller than that of a normal lychee, Li Dongsheng couldn't help but look back and gaze into the distance:

"Putting aside all the impossibilities, some things, no matter how outrageous they sound, are probably the truth. I don't know if the current situation is good or bad, but in any case, we can no longer do business with the Western Rong Empire with the same ideas and mindset as before. Dongyang, I want to assign you a mission. This time, don't come back with me; stay here in the Western Rong Empire and gather information."

I will leave the rest of the gold and silver to you.

In addition, I will send some more trusted confidants to you in a while. You should find a way to sell those confidants as slaves. I heard that the Empress of the Western Rong is doing her best to redeem slaves in order to abolish the slave system.

If nothing unexpected happens, they should be able to enter the royal court smoothly and become slaves freed by the Empress.

We will be able to find out more information then.

We must know ourselves and our enemy before we can make changes!

Families involved in smuggling, especially those involved in high-stakes businesses like smuggling pig iron, are unlikely to be particularly patriotic. He was simply keenly aware that the business environment had changed, and therefore, if he didn't want to lose money or have his business fail...

We must find a way to learn more information.

"So, bro, you think Xiao Hei is real?"

"Whether it's true or not, it's certain that it can provide a large amount of supplies, and supplies that we can't even provide ourselves. That alone is enough to have a huge impact on our future business. Whatever we bring over to sell in the future will have to be adjusted based on the results of your investigation here. Do you understand?"

"I understand, I will try my best..."

At this moment, it wasn't just one smuggler who was making adjustments in response to this situation, because they really couldn't give up such a large market as the Western Rong Empire.

……

Now, let's talk about the mission.

Their pace was truly slow; they set off at the beginning of autumn, and by the time they arrived at the Western Rong Empire's royal court, it was almost winter. Furthermore, their attitude was quite poor; generally speaking, they weren't very respectful. What displeased Ding Shui most was that the official letter they presented stated they wished to visit Princess Anguo, not the Western Rong Empress.

Who could feel comfortable seeing this thing?
The leaders of all the major tribes in the Western Rong Empire have acknowledged her status as Empress, but the Tianhong Empire has not.

Guoshu, this is no amateur troupe.

Even visiting cards shouldn't be like this.

This was by no means a mistake, but a deliberate act.

Not to mention, these guys came to deliver a bad news. Did Ding Shui not know whether Consort Su was dead or not? Did they really need to come all the way here to deliver this false information?

If it weren't for insufficient preparation...

Ding Shuidu wanted to take this opportunity to start a war.

The lack of preparation here wasn't because Ding Shui lacked confidence in taking down the Tianhong Empire; rather, she lacked confidence in taking it down with minimal casualties. After all, while the tribal leaders of the Western Rong Empire acknowledged her identity and treated her with respect, it was unlikely they would absolutely obey her orders.

Under these circumstances, sending them to attack the Tianhong Empire would be risky; it's hard to say how much bloodshed they would cause during the raids and plunder. Ding Shui preferred to train an army that would never harm the common people, not taking a single needle or thread from them, before attacking and destroying the Tianhong Empire. As for where such soldiers would come from?
Choose from the original slaves.

Let them work first, mainly to observe their character and other qualities. After a year or two, Xiao Hei will be able to easily judge which of them have good character and which have potential!
The next step was naturally to select them for training.

If you train soldiers for one or two years and then do ideological education for one or two years as well, you can easily cultivate elite troops.

In addition, there was literacy campaigns and basic industrial development.

To reduce their battlefield casualties, etc.

Even with Xiao Hei's assistance and a wealth of experience to learn from, it would still take five years.

So even though Ding Shui was very dissatisfied, he did not directly start a war. Instead, he sent people to tear up the letter of state on the spot, and loudly reprimanded the envoys before driving them away. Ding Shui himself did not even see them.

They simply sent someone to deliver a message to them:

"Princess Anguo has been burned to death. Now there is only the Western Rong Empress, the cursed lone star, the demon empress!"

Of course, the people were driven away.

But we accepted everything.

Why not take advantage of something that's free?

As for whether the Tianhong Empire will send troops to deal with such impoliteness and disrespect, there is absolutely no need to worry. A hundred years ago, they might have been angry enough to send troops for this, but things are not like they were a hundred years ago now.

Having just been thoroughly humiliated a few years ago and even had a princess sent to marry them off for political reasons, how could they dare to recklessly start a war?
Although the envoys were furious and found Ding Shui's words strange, they didn't actually suspect that Ding Shui disliked them. They simply believed their earlier guesses were true: Princess Anguo was merely a puppet, and what they were experiencing now wasn't Princess Anguo's doing, but rather the actual ruler of the Western Rong Empire had taken control of her.

And they didn't want them to meet.

They weren't even allowed to have contact with them.

So the envoy, feeling that his trip hadn't been in vain and that he had at least successfully gathered some information, quickly composed himself and shamelessly kept the palace maids and eunuchs that Ding Shui had refused to accept. He then left in a hurry with only three deputy envoys and a few guards.

Ding Shui had no choice but to compromise.

They scattered the eunuchs and palace maids and assigned them to factories.

After all, we can't just kill them all, or simply leave them to roam the grasslands.

At least they were free laborers.

Moreover, keeping it won't cause any hidden dangers.

After that, Ding Shui resumed his relatively stable daily life. For example, he spent a lot of time each day having his Yang spirit fly directly to the atmosphere to absorb the essence of the sun. He also spent his nights in the atmosphere, and even went further to absorb the essence of the moon. He only left a wisp of his spirit in his body to occasionally take charge, and he mainly left most of the matters to Xiao Hei to handle and resolve.

At the same time, he dared not improve his physical fitness any further, because Ding Shui was afraid that if he did, the Pregnancy Elixir might become ineffective.

Those pills weren't particularly special. Many gene-enhancing drugs and pills from the cultivation world could achieve similar effects, and even some spiritual herbs could achieve similar effects. They were definitely not some kind of rule-based medicine.

It may be useful for ordinary people or those at a low level of spiritual practice.

However, it would be absolutely useless to advanced cultivators. For example, if you fed it to the Goddess Nuwa, no matter how many there were, even hundreds of billions or trillions, the probability of Nuwa dying from overeating would be greater than the probability of her getting pregnant.

Three more months passed, and Xiao Hei, unusually, instead of complaining, approached Ding Shui with great joy: "Master, there's something you absolutely must help me with!"

"What is it? Tell me first!"

"You'll see once you enter the Land of Illusion!"

After a brief exchange, Ding Shui quickly sent a wisp of his spiritual energy into the Illusionary Realm. Without Xiao Hei saying anything, he immediately discovered the change: the island in the center of the Illusionary Realm that had become real was more than three thousand square meters larger than it had been a few months ago.

In addition, there are hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of seawater on the side.

"Could it be the power of faith?"

Ding Shui wasn't stupid. She hadn't injected any Five Elements energy into the Taixu Illusionary Realm recently. The system components she had given to Xiao Hei didn't have much energy either. Even if they could appropriately increase the area in the Taixu Illusionary Realm that could transform the illusory into the real, it wouldn't increase it by much.

Furthermore, since the Illusionary Realm has separated from the world and is now completely dependent on Ding Shui, it is unable to directly obtain the power of the earth veins from the world. Under these circumstances, it would be good enough if the Illusionary Realm did not shrink; if it were to grow larger, it could only be due to other energy sources.

With a little association, the key point can be found.

That is the power of faith.

"It's not just the power of faith that's causing the island in the middle to grow larger; the water was something I secretly brought in from the outside world."

Xiao Hei, in a rather good mood, said:
“Those people regard me as your god, and recently they have been constantly promoting a new faith to replace the original belief in shamans and gods, and telling ordinary people that as long as they are devout, they can enter the kingdom of gods after death.”

The so-called divine kingdom is actually the illusory realm of Taixu.

Only then did a portion of the power of faith directly enter the Illusionary Realm, facilitating its transformation from illusion to reality. However, the majority of the power of faith remains attached to you. Since you don't intend to pursue the path of divinity, why not give me all your power of faith?"

Since Ding Shui herself hadn't followed the Divine Path, she hadn't paid much attention to the power of faith. Now that the power of faith was useful and could save her Five Elements energy to help the Illusionary Realm become real, she naturally didn't mind taking a slight step on the Divine Path. She didn't need to go too deep; just getting to the basics and being able to guide the power of faith would suffice.

Therefore, after nodding slightly, Ding Shui quickly separated a wisp of spiritual power to begin cultivating the divine path technique. After making some progress, he immediately guided all the faith power surrounding him into the Taixu Illusionary Realm.

Then, he immediately extinguished that wisp of spiritual energy:
"I don't intend to walk the path of divinity, nor do I intend to be corrupted or polluted by the power of faith. So every now and then I will set aside a wisp of spiritual power to cultivate the divine path techniques."

By channeling the accumulated power of faith into the Realm of Illusion, both goals can be achieved.

By the way, is it okay that you stole so much water?

Or is there something that can offset this?

The power of faith is fine; the intelligent life in this world makes a voluntary spiritual contribution, which the world consciousness cannot control. However, directly transporting large quantities of resources from this world to the Illusory Realm is still a bit excessive.

That's what surprised Ding Shui even more.

Surprisingly, this world didn't react at all.

If it were possible to directly steal large quantities of things like water and soil from the world, the energy required to transform worlds like the Illusionary Realm into reality would be much less. But I haven't heard of anyone doing that.

Theoretically, this should not be allowed.

Or rather, if it's impossible, you'll be struck by lightning...

"This is all I can take for now. Taking any more feels a bit dangerous, though I'm not entirely sure why. But it should be a good thing, even if we only take a little from each world. We can keep traveling to different worlds, which will greatly reduce time and resources."

Xiao Hei was also somewhat confused about this.

But if there's a bargain to be had, why not take advantage of it?