Chapter 37: Chapter 36: A Huge Crisis
Hearing Elder Wang’s words, Patriarch Wei and Wei Fan exchanged a glance and simultaneously asked:
"Foreman?"
"That’s right."
Master Wang leaned against the armrest of the chair, his right hand pressing on his left wrist, and explained:
"Foreman is a term from the local side, more formally known as a construction contractor.
In simpler terms, it’s leading a group of people to take on construction work all over.
What I mean by foreman is hoping you can recruit some refugees or citizens in the city to help us build a city."
Wei Fan asked in surprise:
"Build a city?"
Elder Wang nodded and explained:
"For some special reasons, we are temporarily unable to send a large number of workers to the Damo Realm—at least ordinary porters are more troublesome and unnecessary.
The refugees you recruit only need to be responsible for moving bricks, which we call laborers, and other technical problems will be handled by our professional technicians.
The laborers will be provided with three meals a day and lodging, ensuring meat at every meal.
Their wages are calculated based on efficiency, such as five cents per brick—of course, the specific price needs to be defined based on your local price level.
As for the labor fee here in Chixian City...
We calculate it per head.
Let’s account for each recruited person as two hundred Huaxia Currency, or offset with materials, that’s fine."
Establishing a fully functional forward base in another world.
This is a plan that was set before the base camp dispatched troops.
After all, there is too much to research in the Damo Realm, so much so that it’s not excessive to build several super-large experimental bases just for physics and chemistry.
Not to mention all kinds of work outside of scientific research.
According to the original plan of the rabbits.
The Fire Squad would select a suitable location near the Gate of Light to build a comprehensive base that could accommodate about five to eight thousand people.
However, as the saying goes, plans can’t keep up with changes.
After learning of the vein news.
Master Wang was certain that the base camp would definitely rethink the construction of the base—let alone anything else, at least a defense base needs to be constructed outside the vein, plus some troops stationed, right?
But no matter how the new plan is set, one thing is certain.
That is, the workers needed will only increase.
So Master Wang dared to recruit people boldly—Chixian City has at most over ten thousand people, with many young and strong injured in the sieges, and deducting women, children, the elderly, and the upper class.
Recruiting two to three thousand people would be considered a lot.
For the rabbits, what’s two to three thousand workers?
So Master Wang spoke without hesitation, if you can recruit twenty to thirty thousand, the rabbits can handle that too.
Perhaps because of the ancestral lesson of ’work relief’.
Patriarch Wei quickly agreed to Master Wang’s proposal—this might be the easiest aspect of the entire conversation for the Wei Family to comprehend, as Patriarch Wei and Wei Fan whispered a few words and then said:
"Leave the recruitment to us, the Wei Family will send managers to various parts of the city to issue notices after the meeting, and results will be available within a Damo Day."
"A Damo Day, that’s about seven days?" (In the future, we’ll calculate using Earth time)
Master Wang rubbed his chin.
The footage of this meeting was being transmitted in real-time to the Fire Camp, and from there, a special person was dispatched to cross the Gate of Light and deliver the video to Modu Base Camp.
In some sense, the core level was almost watching a live broadcast—there might be only a ten-minute difference.
If Elder Wang’s guess was correct.
The core level might already be discussing a brand-new construction plan, and it would take at most one to two days to produce a complete construction scheme.
And the labor recruitment time given by Patriarch Wei was three to six days, enough time for the core to come up with a new plan.
So after Elder Wang calculated, he agreed very readily:
"No problem, let’s consider five days as the baseline.
In five days, you bring the recruited refugees to us, and we’ll send special vehicles to transport them to the construction site."
Then Elder Wang added:
"Since we’ve decided to use Huaxia Currency as the trade equivalent, accounts must be opened, also known as ledgers, which are mainly used for settlement and reconciliation.
Can you understand this concept?"
Wei Fan smiled and said:
"We are certainly familiar with accounts; the Wei Family has a bank in the city, and we even use the double-entry bookkeeping method handed down by our ancestors."
Hearing this, Elder Wang nodded and summoned a person from behind him to introduce to Wei Fan and Patriarch Wei:
"This is Mr. Qian from the Ministry of Commerce. He will assist you in opening Huaxia Currency accounts, and in the future, you can contact him if you want to purchase any materials.
Mr. Xiaoqian, later you transfer the fees for five hundred heads to Patriarch Wei’s account.
Five hundred times two hundred is... one hundred thousand, right? The value over at the Spirit Stone Mine hasn’t been estimated yet, along with various cultivation data...
Let’s do this, first transfer two million to Patriarch Wei’s account.
Also, give them a list of materials to see if there’s anything they want.
If they want it, deduct it directly from the account, and then deliver it as quickly as possible.
Oh, and open a sub-account for each of the four branches of the Wei Mansion, and transfer three hundred thousand to each account."
It must be said.
Even in another world, doing things generously is definitely a plus.
Although the Wei Family present didn’t quite understand what exactly ’two million Huaxia Currency’ meant, they could do the math:
Recruiting five hundred workers for just a hundred thousand dollars...
Elder Wang immediately transferred twenty times that amount, which equals the labor fees for ten thousand workers.
This is by no means a small sum!
If this were set in one of those costume dramas,
there would undoubtedly be an elder slapping the table, raising a thumb and shouting, "Magnificent!"
Although both sides aren’t acting in a drama right now, some principles can be shared within and outside of the play.
In the face of the rabbits’ full sincerity,
while the core members of the Wei Mansion won’t be bowing down, calling them daddy and hanging on their every word,
at least some conspiracy theories have completely vanished.
After all, everyone is an adult, and it’s quite easy to distinguish between true generosity and fake magnanimity.
Like that eagle from the opposite shore,
saying "community of destiny" while their dogs defecate filth all over their own yard, then pretending not to acknowledge it.
That is false generosity.
As the talks progressed to this point, some basic intentions had been reached.
But Elder Wang’s task was less than halfway completed.
After all, this is a Xianxia world.
Valuating spirit stones and herbs is extremely critical.
Only after confirming the exchange rate between spirit stones and Huaxia currency can the cooperation have a truly stable and feasible foundation.
Besides that, there was another equally important matter that Elder Wang mentioned before but didn’t delve into...
Xianxia materials.
For Huaxia people, those who know, know.
Huaxia has a population of 1.4 billion.
If you point to everyone and say they’re Xianxia fans, that’s definitely not the case.
But if you skip one, there’s a 100% chance you’ve missed someone, and not just a few of them.
Therefore, Elder Wang came over this time not only to discuss aid plans.
Another task was to see what Xianxia is really about.
This is also why Elder Wang was so generous in allocating fifty percent of the spirit mine profits—a family from the lineage of a Huaxia transmigrator, capable of providing complete translations of otherworldly texts as well as Xianxia resources, how much time can this save for the rabbits?
Conservatively speaking, at least three or four years, right?
There is practical evidence for this.
The ancient elegant language—equivalent to the elegant dialect in the Central Plains, with historical documentation, began translation compilation by the Huaxia Ministry of Culture on April 22, 1997, until February 17, 2005, when the compilation was declared complete.
It took seven years and ten months in total.
The language of the Damo Realm is more complex than the elegant language but has no documents to refer to.
Even with all the elite rabbits and reliance on supercomputers, it would still be impossible to thoroughly translate the otherworldly language within three or four years.
And now, for the rabbits, time is the most scarce resource.
Isn’t this worth a fifty percent split of the spirit vein?
Thinking of these,
Elder Wang turned his head and said to Wei Fan:
"Patriarch Wei, could you take me to see where you practice Xianxia?"
Wei Fan was prepared for this and immediately agreed:
"No problem."
A moment later,
Elder Wang and others filed out of the house.
Wei Fan was about to lead them to the Martial Arts Arena when he saw Wang Qiang hurrying over.
"Elder Wang,
the inspection of the exotic beast... no, demon beast’s corpse has concluded, regarding the two-headed ox, there’s already a result.
You previously instructed us to notify you as soon as we had results."
Elder Wang waved his hand, indicating to Wang Qiang not to be nervous, and said with a smile:
"That’s right, I did instruct about this matter.
Comrade Xiao Wang, did you guys find out anything?"
Wang Qiang handed him a form:
"Elder Wang, we conducted tests on the corpse of the two-headed ox.
After analyzing biological samples from its internal abdominal wall, muscle fibers, etc., and verifying bone age,
we concluded that this creature grows very quickly, has a very low saturated fatty acid content in its muscle fat, evenly distributed subcutaneous fat, and it’s said they don’t eat humans, so we drew a conclusion... "
Wang Qiang paused to swallow:
"The two-headed ox, this otherworldly species... has immense culinary value."
In a moment, almost all the rabbits’ eyes lit up.
What do they say?
In a different world, enjoy the delicacies.
One must say, this is indeed a tremendous crisis—for the two-headed ox species.
Note:
Crowdfunding for a name, what should the rabbits’ new city be called? If you have any ideas, leave a comment at the end of this paragraph.