I, the prince in distress, send money

Chapter 321 The Merchant's Fate

Butcher's Blade loves war.

Don't get me wrong, Tu Dao Qian Ren is neither a general nor a soldier. He is just a player, a food merchant who owns a food factory and specializes in selling meat products.

He likes war, simply because it makes his business better... Just recently, Butcher Blade sold 100,000 cans of pork to the defense forces and made a fortune.

Furthermore, Tu Daoqianren had a premonition that this deal was just the beginning, not the end. Therefore, he had already instructed the food processing plant in Highland to work overtime to produce canned pork, preparing to make another fortune after the outbreak of war.

Bagnia has pigs, and many of them. Even before Prince Chris unified the kingdom, the people of Bagnia loved raising pigs or going up the mountain with their hunting spears to hunt wild boars.

Pork is the most common type of meat on the Bagnians' tables. The rich eat pork, and the poor eat pork too. The difference is that the former eats pork from farmed pigs, while the latter eats pork from wild animals in the mountains and forests.

However, regardless of the type of pig, its meat is always smelly and pungent. The difference lies only in the intensity of the smell. There are many reasons for this smell, one being improper slaughtering methods, such as not bleeding the pig before killing it, and another being that the pig is not castrated.

This situation continued until Prince Chris brought in players. Some of them, who disliked fighting and preferred farming and business, realized the huge business opportunities after learning about the situation.

Butcher's Blade was one of them. He spent some money on cigarettes, found a hillside with a stream near the Bolas Fortress, and had someone build a pig farm out of wood. Finally, he took a few friends, carrying spears and hunting nets, and went up the mountain to look for wild boars.

Wild boars are animals that love to live in groups. They usually live in family units, consisting of five to ten sows, one boar, and many more piglets. The number of wild boars in a single family is astonishing.

Wild boars often roam the edge of the forest in search of food. Even though Tu Dao Qian Ren had no hunting experience, after wandering around the mountains and forests for several days, he still found many traces left by wild boars.

After three or four days of hard work, Tu Dao Qian Ren returned to his pig farm with a dozen or so wild boars, satisfied, and began his plan to make a fortune.

In fact, Tu Dao Qian Ren could have bought piglets from hunters or other pig farmers for a reasonable price, but he was unwilling to do so. He preferred the feeling of not spending money to spending money.

Because of its more scientific pig farming techniques and concepts than the locals, Tu Daoqianren's pig farm grew rapidly in a short period of time, raising hundreds of large black fat pigs.

After Prince Chris unified Bagnia, the pigs produced by the "Good Pigs with Thousand Blades" pig farm had no gamey smell and were widely praised by players and Bagnians.

Because of his great success in pig farming, Tu Daoqianren's ambition grew. He felt that simply selling pigs was not enough, so he decided to open a food factory.

Just then, Hegland had already submitted to Prince Chris, so Butcher Thousand Blades took the money and men and opened a food factory in Hegland's city, recruited workers on a large scale, and the business was booming. They even sold canned pork to the army.

Therefore, in order to increase production, Butcher Blade had to spend time and effort searching for new, cheap, and reliable suppliers both inside and outside the city of Highland.

The best pigs from our own farm are too precious to be used for canned meat, as it would be a terrible waste. Besides, even if we slaughtered all the pigs, we wouldn't have enough meat for everyone.

……

The night in Hygrand was a bit scorching. Butcher Blade, wrapped in a dark gray cloak, walked alone on the gravel road in the civilian district.

His boots made a sticky sound as they stomped through the puddles, and the air was thick with the sour smell of cheap rum mixed with human vomit.

"Pah...a bunch of lazybones, they built a toilet but they don't even use it."

Tu Dao Qian Ren complained, "This is the commoners' district of Hegland. Half a year ago, it was called the slums, a place where poor people struggled to survive."

Even after the new government's civil servants, along with village chiefs, headmen, and militiamen, leveled and rebuilt the area, the people who still live there maintain their stubborn habits... such as urinating and defecating anywhere.

In Vautradnoy, people are whipped; in Oncandra, they are punished by either cleaning latrines for three days or having their "tools of the trade" confiscated—they have to choose one.

Only in Hegland, which has a certain degree of autonomy, can people be so "indulgent" and "degenerate".

Tu Daoqianren grumbled as he quickly turned into a narrow alley, at the end of which was a dilapidated wooden house with a sign that read "Old Sailor's Tavern".

Pushing open the door, a cacophony of noise hits you: drunken workers, lumberjacks covered in sawdust, thieves talking in hushed tones, and a few bohemian vendors dressed as street vendors, wearing headscarves, all sitting around a table in the corner playing dice.

The vast majority of Bagnians have chestnut hair, while Bohemians have all kinds of hair color. These few Bohemians have striking red hair, so they need a headscarf to conceal their identity.

Although such a cover-up is self-deception, everyone except themselves can tell at a glance where they came from.

Butcher's Blade's gaze locked onto one of them, a thin man with a small mustache, who was slowly sipping a glass of amber-colored liquor. He was clearly the leader of the group, exuding the aura of a desperado.

"Vladimir?"

Butcher Thousand Blades walked over, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

The man with the mustache looked up at him, grinned, and revealed a mouthful of yellow teeth.

"Ah, Mr. Butcher, you've finally arrived."

Without wasting words, Tu Dao Qian Ren lowered his voice and said.

“I sent someone to contact a middleman to find the goods. You say you have the goods?” Vladimir looked around to make sure no one was paying attention before taking out a piece of oil paper wrapped in his pocket and pushing it over.

The butcher's knife sliced ​​open a corner, revealing a piece of dark red meat with an eerie sheen. He brought it closer to smell it, and his brow relaxed.

Yes, the familiar, fishy smell that entered his nostrils was due to incomplete bleeding and the fact that he hadn't been castrated. It immediately told him that this was top-quality wild boar meat.

"Bohemian pigs?"

"uncertain."

Vladimir shrugged.

"Anyway, it was a large pig caught in the wild, in Bohemia and also in Bagnia."

"Um, how much is it per kilogram?"

"We don't sell by weight, we sell by head. A good large pig costs four silver dollars, a lean pig costs three silver dollars, and a small pig costs one silver dollar."

The price isn't expensive. Even though I haven't seen the goods yet, I'm already a little tempted by Butcher's Blade.

Currently, a large pig in Bagnia costs about seven to eight silver dollars, and if it is slaughtered and sold individually, it can fetch up to nine silver dollars.

The large, fat pigs produced by Butcher's Blade could fetch eleven silver dollars each.

"Take me to see the goods."

Vladimir grinned, his yellow teeth gleaming in the dim light of the oil lamp.

He stood up and tilted his head toward the back door of the tavern.

"follow me."

Butcher's Blade followed him through the greasy kitchen of the tavern, where several cooks were chopping unknown chunks of meat with blunt knives, blood splattering on the mottled walls.

Pushing open the back door, a damp, cold wind rushed in. The alley was piled with rotting vegetable leaves and empty wine barrels, and a few rats scurried by.

They made their way through the winding city walls of Hygrand, and in an unguarded spot, they escaped the city by following a rope.

They eventually stopped in front of a dilapidated barn on the outskirts of the city, where Vladimir pulled a rusty key from his waist and unlocked the padlock.

"Welcome to my... temporary warehouse."

The door hinges emitted a piercing groan, and a strong, fishy stench wafted out.

Butcher Blade narrowed his eyes. Apart from a few guards with weapons, the barn was crowded with iron cages, each containing one or two wild boars.

Some of the pigs still had dried blood on their tusks, indicating they had been captured recently, while others were emaciated and covered in whip marks, clearly "survivors" of a long-distance transport.

"How about it?"

Vladimir patted the nearest cage triumphantly, and the grumpy sow inside let out a threatening growl.

"They're all wild game from the mountains and forests, the meat is firm, the flavor is pungent—it's all good quality meat!"

Butcher's Blade didn't answer. He walked closer to a cage, reached out and pinched the hind leg of a half-dead boar. The muscles were firm, and the fat layer was thin... these were characteristics of a wild boar.

This pork wasn't very tasty, but considering the price, Butcher decided not to argue with this Bohemian too much.

"Very good, all the pigs here, I'll take them all..."

"boom!"

"Hands up, tax bureau is handling this!!!"

The barn door was suddenly kicked open, and a dozen players dressed in dark blue uniforms, carrying flintlock pistols, longswords, and machetes, rushed in with torches.

The leader of the players grinned maliciously as he announced this to everyone in the warehouse.

"You little bastards, your smuggling and tax evasion has been exposed! Surrender now... or I'll kill you all!!!"

(End of this chapter)