I'm in Warhammer, I just want to grow mushrooms

Chapter 67: Krypton Gold Makes People Stronger (3.9k)

"If I hadn't known you before, I would have thought you were an old monster who had just undergone a rejuvenation operation."

Isabel sighed from the bottom of her heart and took out the data pad from her handbag:

"I completely agree with what you just said. Whoever masters yeast will own the future of the tobacco, food, brewing and genetic engineering industries. I happen to have a case involving tobacco here. I will use it as an example to introduce you to the current situation of the tobacco industry."

"Please say."

Li Nuo listened attentively.

Isabel pressed the data pad, projecting a holographic image.

The case she recounted came from the Crum family’s rivals, the Levi family.

The Crum family started out in tobacco and later branched out into the pharmaceutical market.

The Levi family is just the opposite. They are one of the pharmaceutical giants in this hive city. They began to enter the tobacco industry because the pharmaceutical market was saturated.

The Crums had a head start on ghost potions, which threatened the Levi's, who launched a fierce attack on the tobacco industry.

A new type of cigarette called Gold Medal Mint Cigarette has appeared on the market.

Its aroma resembles the natural scent of mint leaves. The aroma is rich and refreshing when it first burns without losing the mint flavor. The main aroma is mellow and long, and the aftertaste is clean and fresh.

Apart from its high price and a tendency to irritate the throat, this new type of cigarette has almost no disadvantages.

"Gold Medal Menthol is the product of the Levitra family. Once launched, it crushed similar competing products from the Cram family and grabbed one-fifth of our high-end cigarette market share."

Isabel smiled bitterly:

"I happen to be in charge of this part of the market. I have arranged for Zhongchao's research institute to reverse engineer the formula of this cigarette, but the progress is very slow. If it takes too long and customers become loyal to Gold Medal Menthol Cigarettes, it may not be so easy to regain the lost market share."

Li Nuo was thoughtful, "Do you have any samples?"

"Yes." Isabel took out a women's cigarette case from her handbag, opened the lid, and took out two cigarettes.

The one on the left has white cigarette paper, a light green filter, and the words "Kram's Menthol Cigarette" written in gold-stamped inkjet.

The one on the right is just the opposite, with light green cigarette paper and a white filter, it is the gold medal mint cigarette from the Levi family.

Li Nuo wrapped his fingertips with a handkerchief, picked up two cigarettes and put them to his nose to smell them, then carefully observed the material and color of the cigarette paper, filter, and tobacco.

After completing these steps, he used identification techniques to verify his judgment.

The identification results were the same as what he analyzed.

The raw materials of the cigarette paper, filters and tobacco of the two cigarettes can be said to be exactly the same.

The only difference is the fermentation process.

The Levi family's fermentation process is superior, allowing the mint tobacco leaves to burn more evenly and the aroma to be more abundant.

To put it numerically, the flavor of Gold Medal menthol cigarettes is about 10% stronger than that of Kram menthol cigarettes.

Don’t underestimate this 10%.

In the eyes of experienced smokers, a 5% difference in aroma concentration is enough to distinguish the two cigarettes.

"Isabel, I want to ask, how much profit can cigarettes like this generate each year?"

Li Nuo put the cigarette back into the box and asked.

Isabel closed the box and turned it between her fingertips:

"Net profit is confidential. I can only tell you the gross profit. The average gross profit over the past five years is 130 million throne coins per year, with an average annual sales of 2 million. Another approximately 3000 million are tithe items that the Kram family is responsible for, and will be unconditionally transferred to the Governor's Tax Affairs Department, which will be handed over to the Imperial Ministry of Internal Affairs by the Governor."

The primary reason why the Hive Nobles are nobles is that they are responsible for preparing tithes for the Governor.

Anyone who could help the governor with the tithes was eligible to become a noble.

Let’s not talk about the cigarettes used to pay taxes, and just talk about those sold in the Nest City.

The gross profit of 130 million Throne Coins is a huge sum of money!
Li Nuo's heartbeat accelerated noticeably.

"Isabel, I would like to ask, suppose I discovered a better yeast by chance. How can I use it to exchange for wealth?"

"Use yeast to exchange for wealth..." Isabel thought for a moment and replied:
"There are two main ways. One is to sell the yeast patent and production technology in a package to get a one-time profit. The other is to start your own company, set up a production line, and produce related products."

Li Nuo asked:

“Why should we sell the patent and production technology of yeast together? Can I share the patent with others for a fee?”

"Unfortunately, Li Nuo, once the yeast is given to others to use, the yeast gene fragment will no longer be a secret. The major families can easily imitate it without infringing on your patent."

"Oh yes, that's true." Li Nuo suddenly remembered how advanced the genetic technology in the Warhammer world was.

Cloning and modifying genes is as easy as drinking water for major families.

After the new yeast is made public, anyone with ulterior motives only needs to collect its samples and tamper with the genetic fragments that do not affect fermentation to turn the yeast into another new yeast.

The fermentation effects of the two types of yeast are the same, but the similarity of the gene fragments is not 100%, so they can be regarded as two patents.

This kind of competition was quite common in the world before the time travel, and it is naturally also prevalent in the Warhammer world.

Therefore, selling the patents in packages or starting his own company to keep the samples firmly in hand are Li Nuo's only two options.

Li Nuo prefers the second option.

"Isabelle, how do you, the Klum family, plan to fight back against the Lewei family? Are you planning to take their yeast samples..."

"Shh~" Isabel raised her finger in front of her plump lips and chuckled:

"No matter how dirty we nobles are behind the scenes, we will always keep ourselves clean in public. The first rule when you communicate with nobles is to see through them before you speak. Once you say the wrong thing, you will gain an enemy."

"Sorry, I spoke too much. Thank you for reminding me."

Li Nuo admired Isabel's sophistication. He thought that he, a nerd who devoted himself to research, was still too naive...

After chatting along the way, the two arrived at the Golden Rose Bank.

Li Nuo followed Isabel into the bank's VIP room to open a private account to receive cash transfers from the Kram family.

After a while, the two returned along the same route, and Isabel sent Li Nuo back to his residence.

As soon as Li Nuo entered the door, he went straight to the study and bought all the research equipment, experimental equipment, yeast, tobacco leaves and other things that could be bought on the market.

What's coming is a crazy, hysterical, mesmerizing fungus simulation!

...

In Shangchao’s home, in the basement.

Brandi converted the warehouse into a laboratory, installed experimental facilities, and brought in yeast and tobacco leaves and arranged them neatly. Then she closed the door, leaving Li Nuo alone to sit quietly in the laboratory.

The table in front of Li Nuo was filled with bottles and jars, containing all the yeast that was openly sold in Shangchao.

After observation, Li Nuo confirmed that yeast has no bacterial ability.

It doesn't matter if you don't have it, the fungal ability of mushrooms is enough. Click on the system interface and touch the devices around you one by one.

A large amount of system text refreshes rapidly in front of my eyes.

[You found a constant temperature incubator, a constant temperature shaker, a high pressure steam sterilizer, a dry heat sterilizer, an automated clean bench, an automated inoculation box, a holographic microscope, an automatic homogenizer, a liquid nitrogen freezer, a spectrophotometer, a centrifuge, a pH meter, an automated chromatograph, and an automated laser mutagen. ]

[By absorbing these devices, the fungus analysis and fungus simulation functions will be permanently upgraded. ]

【May I ask if you have absorbed it? 】

Krypton gold makes me stronger!

Li Nuo waved his hand:
“Sniff, sniff, sniff. Take it all in.”

Don't worry about Brandi noticing that the device is missing, and it's okay for her to know about it.

The reason why the robot servants are trusted by the human empire is because they are reliable enough.

As long as Brandi doesn't get access to the Chaos Code, she will never betray me.

Even if she found that the equipment was missing, she would pretend not to know and would not spread the secret.

"call out----"

All devices disappeared out of thin air, system texts poured down like a waterfall, and system functions underwent a major update.

The changes brought about by this operation can be described as qualitative changes.

First, Li Nuo unlocked the automatic simulation function.

He can let the system run automatically in the background for tedious and mechanized operations such as removing bacterial contamination, cultivating mushrooms, and laser mutation experiments, without having to take out time to simulate them one by one.

Take the water mine bacteria as an example.

Li Nuo now only needs to give the system a command to "remove contamination from foreign bacteria", and the system will automatically follow the standardized experimental process to try to separate and purify the bacteria that are not contaminated by foreign bacteria.

When the system falls into an endless loop and is completely unable to remove a certain bacteria, Li Nuo will need to intervene.

The same is true for laser mutation experiments.

There are three possible mutation directions for fungi:
Beneficial mutation direction, neutral mutation direction, harmful mutation direction.

The so-called benefit is to remove the harm of fungi and amplify the beneficial aspects.

Neutral refers to the ability to increase yield and resist pathogens.

The direction of harmful mutations is opposite to that of beneficial ones, which means amplifying the harm.

Aren’t fluorescent spores highly toxic?

Li Nuo just moved his hands and manually set the direction of the beneficial mutation, and the system automatically performed the simulation operation.

It took less than 10 minutes for the fluorescent spores to undergo a benign mutation under the action of the laser mutator, becoming a non-toxic fungus that retains its ability to glow during metabolism.

In this way, Li Nuo gained a brand new bacterial ability:
Light spell!
This fungus's ability is not useless, it can produce unexpected results.

After activating the light technique, only 1 kg of fluorescent spores per minute is needed to keep the light going.

The basic lighting range is about 10 meters, and the light intensity is 500 lux, which is roughly equivalent to a 50W LED lamp.

The closer you are to the light source of the light spell, the higher the light intensity, and the farther away you are, the lower the light intensity.

Increasing the consumption per minute can increase both the lighting range and the lighting intensity.

After Li Nuo unlocked the light technique, he wanted to see how bright this thing could be.

So, he made a big move, consuming 1 ton of fluorescent spores at once, and released a beam of light strong enough to blind the titanium alloy dog's eyes.

At that moment, he seemed to see a white sun rising in the room, flashing strong light at his eyes at a close distance.

He immediately terminated the light spell and fell headfirst onto the sofa, taking a full ten minutes to come back to his senses.

Li Nuo waved his fist excitedly, turned over and continued to study the changes in the system.

Automation simulates the liberation of your hands, and the change is obvious.

In addition, after the holographic microscope was absorbed by the system, a virtual holographic image appeared in Li Nuo's field of vision.

Through this image, he could visually see the cellular structure of the fungus.

When used with a spectrophotometer, centrifuge, pH meter and automated chromatograph, dynamic monitoring data will be presented on the holographic image.

The data that can be monitored include but are not limited to:
Yeast growth density, cell concentration, quantitative analysis results of proteins and nucleic acids, number of isolated and purified bacterial cells, content of specific components of metabolites, etc.

In short, it is like replacing a musket with a cannon.

Li Nuo began to think about his own R&D path and subsequent sales plan.

The first thing to do is to consolidate one's own industrial foundation.

Li Nuo chose to start with the tobacco industry.

There are two main reasons.

First, the tobacco industry is in line with one’s own major.

Second, tobacco has a high net profit margin.

Given time, if I could use tobacco to help the governor collect part of the tax revenue, I would definitely be able to leap into the aristocratic class.

So, how to make tobacco bigger and stronger?

Shangchao has many forces, complex interpersonal relationships, and a basically saturated market, making it a typical red ocean.

On the other hand, the lower nest can be said to be a blue ocean.

Regular tobacco sold at the family counter was prohibitively expensive, with the price starting at 20 ration cards per piece.

Therefore, handmade cigarettes produced by private workshops are very popular. Not only are they of poor quality, but they also have a certain degree of toxicity.

More than 90% of the Xiachao tobacco market is occupied by private workshops, and only 10% belongs to family businesses.

Li Nuo's idea is very simple.

Use cheap and healthy tobacco to control the entire Xiachao market, use production costs and R&D costs to form market entry barriers, squeeze out family businesses, and become the only supplier to all private workshops, thereby gaining sufficient cash flow to provide guarantees for their subsequent R&D and production.

Aren't the Crum family's premium cigarettes sold at twenty ration cards each?

OK, family members, Lee’s Cigarettes will give everyone benefits.

The same quality of cigarettes only requires five ration cards in our live studio.

The approach is to be close to the people, to capture the lower-tier markets, and to achieve economies of scale.

As for the brand, grade, and style, it will not be too late to plan after you have a full grasp of the Xiachao market.

(End of this chapter)