Yang Bolin is now seventy-four years old and has served as the Chief Shopkeeper of the Purple Treasure Pavilion for several decades.

Moreover, being born into the Yang Family, a top-tier family in Ziqiong City, his life has been full of ups and downs, and his experiences are incredibly rich.

He's one of those people who wouldn't flinch even if Mount Tai collapsed in front of him – a truly extraordinary 'calm heart'.

But this time, he couldn't maintain the expression on his face, full of astonishment.

The reason is simple.

At his level, he is all too aware of what Ma Ning's offer truly means.

A hundred years ago, beast tides in the Damo Realm would occur roughly every ten years, with a relatively long cycle.

But now, as spiritual energy becomes increasingly scarce, the contact between the two worlds seems to have changed slightly.

This has significantly shortened the frequency of spatial passage appearances to once every three to five years.

As the frequency of spatial passage appearances shortened, the number of beast tides also increased.

The number of siege battles naturally increased, much like the reverse slope of a stock market chart, steadily rising, occasionally hitting a limit up.

During siege battles, the defending side inevitably consumes a large amount of resources.

For example, arrays and also talismans.

Among the myriad of talismans, one of the most useful is the Detonator Talisman.

Compared to other talismans, the Detonator Talisman's usage requirements are extremely low, requiring only around Qi Cultivation level two to activate.

In stark contrast to the usage conditions, the Detonator Talisman has an explosion radius of up to five meters, powerful enough to harm an ordinary Tier One beast.

In an absolute kill zone of two to three meters, even late-stage Tier One beasts might be heavily injured or killed.

In short, this is a very convenient and powerful talisman.

Because of this, the annual production of Detonator Talismans in the Damo Realm is very high.

However high the production of Detonator Talismans might be, it is still a supernatural item, requiring refining materials and some of the refiner's spiritual power during production.

Therefore, regarding price, a single Tier One Detonator Talisman has always fluctuated between two to four Spirit Stones, with the exact price varying by effect.

The price of a single Detonator Talisman isn't very expensive, to be honest, but in a siege battle, it's unlikely you'll use just one talisman, right?

Not mentioning carpet talisman attacks or anything, but equipping each person with five or six might be necessary, right?

Once the purchase quantity reaches a certain base, the associated expenses become no small figure.

For example, in past years, the Wei Mansion.

In past markets, the Wei Mansion's earnings from beast materials could reach four to five thousand Spirit Stones, and special products like Seven-Color Vine could sell for one to two thousand Spirit Stones if lucky.

The Ziqiong Market opens every three to four years, so these six to seven thousand Spirit Stones are the Wei Mansion's core income over three to four years.

A simple average indicates that in a year, they earn as little as one thousand five hundred or as much as two thousand three hundred Spirit Stones.

Subtracting the family's annual expenses and daily consumptions, during the interval of a beast tide, the Wei Mansion can only afford to buy about a thousand Spirit Stones worth of Detonator Talismans.

The total is roughly seven to eight hundred talismans.

Theoretically, these seven to eight hundred Detonator Talismans could kill about four thousand beasts, but in reality, they might only kill one to two thousand at most.

They are useful, indeed, but mass usage is unaffordable.

Chixian City is in such a situation, and Ziqiong City is not much different.

Ziqiong City is a giant city with profound heritage, but the beast tide it needs to defend against is incomparably stronger than that of Chixian City.

In the most recent beast tide Ziqiong City faced, including ordinary non-tier beasts, the total number reached seven digits!

As a result, Ziqiong City requires massive quantities of city defense resources.

The resident population of Chixian City before a beast tide starts is about ten thousand (not counting refugees), and the number of cultivators from all families in the city is about three to four hundred.

Ziqiong City's population is more than two hundred times that of Chixian City, so by the simplest proportional calculation, its number of cultivators won't be less than seventy to eighty thousand.

In reality,

Due to its comprehensive productivity vastly surpassing Chixian City, Ziqiong City can support nearly two hundred thousand cultivators—of course, many of them are low-tier cultivators.

These two hundred thousand cultivators, even if each holds ten Tier One Detonator Talismans, would require a total of two million during siege battles!

The purchase price of an ordinary Tier One Detonator Talisman sold for Three Spirit Stones is about 2.5 Spirit Stones, yielding about a 15% profit.

An acquisition price of two million Spirit Stones... that's over five million Spirit Stones!

According to Yang Bolin's earlier thoughts, Ma Ning's 'cheap' at most meant reducing the cost by 0.1 to 0.2 Spirit Stones.

This kind of discount is quite impressive, but that's all there would be.

Far from being enough to alarm Yang Bolin, any higher-level scribe at the Purple Treasure Pavilion, like Zhao Zhicai, could handle it.

But if it's as Ma Ning said,

These joy sticks cost only one Spirit Stone each, and they don't even need spiritual energy to activate...

Then, just replenishing the stock of Ziqiong City could save three million Spirit Stones!

Three million Spirit Stones, which is the price of three small Spirit Stone mines.

Even Ziqiong City couldn't ignore that.

Not to mention Ma Ning's intent was clear, Taoshu Commerce Association only wants to act as an upstream merchant, so they are willing to entrust Purple Treasure Pavilion to sell these joy sticks...

And within Ziqiong City's radiation range, the population of cities amounts to over ten million...

Thinking this,

Yang Bolin took a deep breath through his nose, adjusted his breathing, and solemnly looked at Ma Ning:

"Shopkeeper Ma, how many of these Type 67 joy sticks can your side provide? Can you offer discounts? And can you guarantee the quality?"

Facing Yang Bolin's three questions, Ma Ning pondered for a while, and then smiled and said:

"Shopkeeper Yang, to be honest, we don't have too many joy sticks in stock, just a billion or so...

For the first batch... aside from the ten thousand joy sticks we brought with us, I can decide to provide an additional fifty thousand to your side.

Furthermore, to show our sincerity... we'll only charge you Forty Thousand Spirit Stones for the fifty thousand, but of course, that's the FOB price."

Yang Bolin blinked and asked:

"FOB price?"

"In simple terms, it means this price doesn't include man-made expenses like freight."

Ma Ning didn't explain the specific concepts of FOB and CIF price:

"We only take responsibility for delivering the goods to Chixian City, and your side will need to bear the expenses for transporting them from Chixian City to Ziqiong City.

As for quality issues... as a further demonstration of our sincerity, we can send the goods to Ziqiong City first, where you can randomly select some for inspection until you're satisfied!"

After saying this, Ma Ning shook his head, a faint hint of bitterness on his face:

"Shopkeeper Yang, I won't deceive you.

We're honestly selling the fifty thousand joy sticks for only forty thousand Spirit Stones at a loss, and we really can't afford more.

So if we want to have a long-term collaboration in the future, the discount price might only fluctuate around 10% off."

Upon hearing this, Yang Bolin pondered silently.

Ma Ning's claim of selling at a loss—he was actually half skeptical.

After all, in business, it's all about words, and plenty of people claim losses and actually make a tidy profit.

On the other hand,

Considering this is Taoshu Commerce Association's first venture into Ziqiong City, selling at a loss while making several thousand Spirit Stones for market expansion is possible.

This kind of strategy has been used by Purple Treasure Pavilion before, sacrificing initial profits for market share, then gradually earning money as everything stabilizes, which is a common practice in the business world.

So after carefully contemplating, Yang Bolin preliminarily judged:

Even if Ma Ning's price is not a loss price, it should not be far off from the base price.

Deducting various miscellaneous expenses, the profitability is not very significant.

After all, the power of a joy stick comparable to a Detonator Talisman cannot have an indefinitely low production cost, no matter what secret technique Taoshu itself uses.

The cost price of a joy stick at around 0.8 Spirit Stones should be more or less accurate.

Thinking this, Yang Bolin's impression of Taoshu Commerce Association improved considerably.

"Such an honest and frank business partner indeed..."

Having thought all these, Yang Bolin nodded towards Ma Ning:

"Shopkeeper Ma, let's go with this price. When can we sign the contract?"

"Shopkeeper Yang, there's no rush about the contract."

Ma Ning smiled and waved his hand at Yang Bolin, saying:

"Shopkeeper Yang, are you interested in seeing our other sticks?"

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