Chapter 37

Chapter 37 – Zhang Manor Preparation .

March 15th, 181 A . D . Anping County, Zhang Manor . 7 AM .

Tong woke up by the sunlight shining through the window in his room . Tong sat up on his bed with his exhausted body . He managed to complete his 19th mission yesterday night .

His quest was a perverted one just like when he was a baby . This time the system ordered him to make Hua Shi screaming 10 times in one night, which made Tong crying like a madman in a roller-coaster when he had first seen the content of the mission .

Meanwhile, Hua Shi also received similar mission, sleeping in the same bed with Tong for a month, which she managed to complete it earlier than Tong .

Tong had a rough time trying to complete his quest . Although Hua Shi was cooperative when Tong shared the content of his mission to her, she always counter-attacked him with her saliva vacuum tongue every times she almost reached Tong's goal .

As a result, he was tired out first before he could complete the mission every night .

Then yesterday, he found out that Hua Shi intentionally interfered and didn't want him to complete his mission too fast . She enjoyed kissing him too much!

Tong was enraged . He tied her up in his room for the entire night and used every technique he had to teach her as a lesson .

In the end, he completed the quest, with Hua Shi sleeping in exhaustion on his bed, yet still having a smiling face .

With the annoying quest out of the way, Tong checked his status .

…

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**Status**

Name: Zhang Tong

Age: 16

Lifespan: 41,262 Years

Shopping Pass: 3

*Active Skill List*

[Time Stop] LV . 2 EXP( 55/200 )

- Stop time and space flow in your current universe for 10 seconds .

Skill Cost: 10 years of the host lifespan .

Skill Restriction: Can only be used once per day . Skill resets at midnight .

[Firearms Creation] LV . 1 EXP( 213/10,000 )

- Create any firearm or bullet of your choice .

- Currently only handguns and handgun bullets can be created

Skill Cost:

- 1 year of the host lifespan per a handgun bullet

- 50 years of the host lifespan per a new handgun of your choice

Skill Restriction: Can only create one gun a day or one bullet a day . Skill resets at midnight .

*Passive Skill List*

[Plot Armor] Cannot be leveled up

- Immune to all natural disease, poisoning and physical attacks .

- After the host become 20 years of age . The host shall be forced summoned back the Netherworld .

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…

Tong kept collecting his lifespans . They were essential for Tong next phase of plans because there were many things he could buy from the shop .

He had to save up for advanced items and utility items that was too difficult to mass produce in this ancient era, such as cements and other chemical products, or the raw materials that couldn't be gathered in short span of times, such as woods, irons, coals and stones . Even raw oil could be bought .

Tong could even buy warhorses if he wanted to . But he would waste his precious shopping passes if he chose to do so .

Tong had an ambitious goal . He no longer just wanted to live here as a commoner . He would raise his flags alongside with his father and become an overlord in this era .

Once he succeeded . The lifespans and the shopping passes he had been hoarding would come into play and would shock the world .

. . .

After the incident with Sima Xin that night, Tong forced his father and his uncles to relocate from Ningjin County to Anping County, claiming that Guo Dian would attack them soon and Ningjin was too close to Julu County .

Tong also abandoned the thought of hiding his soap business .

He told his father to make a trip to Nan Pi City with 2,000 bars of soap with him . Tong wanted to make a deal with the Yuan family .

Nan Pi City was located on the north-east of Julu County and Anping County . The entire Nan Pi District was dominated by one of the ancient aristocrat families, the Yuan family, which was the richest nobles in the city .

In 189 A . D . , after Dong Zhuo had occupied Luo Yang and enthroned Liu Xie, Yuan Shao escaped back to this city along with his family . Then he used the Yuan family wealth and influences to build up his forces which would dominate the northern China later on .

Tong wanted to absorb a portion their wealth by selling them soap . Although the nobles and the officials would notice him, the wealth he could draw from the family worth the risk .

After the trip, Zhang Jiao came back with 12,000 gold, which was higher than Tong's initial expectation .

Tong had always sold a bar of soap for one gold each to the nobles and merchants, but he would barter-trade with fellow commoners and Hua Tuo .

Yet Zhang Jiao managed to rip off the Yuan family by selling them for six gold each, which demonstrated that his father was not an ordinary old fox .

Tong thought, he had to reevaluate his father's abilities again .

But Zhang Jiao shocked Tong once more, he told Tong that he had spent 8,000 gold to bribe the officials to get the trading pass and paid for border taxes, or else they wouldn't be able to come back with this much gold .

Tong's corner of his eyes twitched . This meant that Zhang Jiao had sold one soap bar for 10 gold, not 6 gold .

His father's persuasion and politic skills was something Tong could not look down upon . No wonder he could tame over 300,000 followers and turned them into rebellions in short amount of times in the history .

Tong wanted to share his gold with his father, but Zhang Jiao only took a thousand gold to pay for his workers and household maintenance . The rest was for Tong to keep .

Tong was touched by his father's love . He swore that Zhang Jiao's ideal would be realized by his hands .

With 11,000 gold and 1,000 gold that Tong stored in his warehouse, he had more than enough to hire the blacksmiths to produce weapons and armors for his troops .

Today, Tong made an announcement to the villagers and the neighbor villages, an imperial army from Julu County would raid this village in October or November .

The causes of the invasion was that, the governor of Julu County was jealous of Tong's soap business and wanted to make it theirs . Therefore, he sent his men to threaten his family before, but ultimately got chased back .

However, they would come again with large army, so Zhang family wanted to stand ground and fight the imperial troops .

Tong warned the villagers that they had to either cooperate with the Zhang family or escape to other provinces . If they chose to stand with Zhang family, Tong would reward them handsomely .

This caused an uproar in the villages . The villagers believed in it without realizing that Tong had threw dirt on Guo Dian and framed him .

Information manipulation was easy in this era . As long as the speaker had an acceptable status, the commoners would believe in it .

The villagers also was not happy about this announcement . They had just planted the crops but they had to evict from their home? This was unacceptable .

Most villagers main occupation were farmers, only a handful of them were either carpenters or blacksmiths . They didn't like the idea of abandoning their hard work because one of the lord would march the troops here .

Without an option, most of the villagers chose to stay and help the Zhang family fight against the army . They wanted to protect their houses and their wealth from the looters .

Seeing the positive feedback, Tong made another announcement . For those that helped him this time would receive one gold per one family . Blacksmiths and carpenters would receive two gold per person .

This caused another uproar . The blacksmiths and carpenters who were about to leave changed their minds . One gold coin could buy at least one ton of grain, which could support the entire family for a long time . This offer didn't come often .

They wholeheartedly accepted the offer!

Seeing the overwhelming reaction from the crowd, Tong felt relief . He assigned blacksmiths to forge armors and weapons such as long spear and pikes, while carpenters would craft the repeated crossbows that Tong had designed beforehand .

The crossbow design was the standard Ming Dynasty repeated crossbow . The repeated crossbow first appeared in China on 400 B . C . during the warring state period, but was redesigned by Zhuge Liang later in the Three Kingdoms era . And Ming Dynasty improved it further for ordinary commoners to use .

Tong's crossbow was easy to use even for a person who had never used a bow before . It was designed to be a household protection weapon against bandits .

However, the design for every kinds of repeating crossbows were only spread among minority of nobles and could not be found among commoners in this Han period .

Tong wanted to revive it and used it before Zhuge Liang could even learn to talk .

As for the rest of the farmers and commoners without special skills, Tong ordered them to craft arrows for the repeated crossbows if they were free from their farming jobs .

Counting the number of families and households, Tong had to pay total of 3,000 gold for all villagers, blacksmiths and carpenters .

The iron ores and lumbers would take him another 2,000 gold to equip all 2,000 soldiers of Zhang family .

Tong still had 7,000 gold to spare . But he saved it for this harvest season . He would stock as many grain as possible this year because he was unsure if this year would be the last good harvest season .

Tong also didn't stop his soap business . Another batch of 10,000 bars of soap would be finished by the end of this month . Tong spent all his ingredients he had had in stock to make this batch .

Tong determined to steal more wealth from the Yuan family one more time before the war with Julu forces broke out .

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