thefictionvixens Chapter 176 Trade Competition
Chapter 176 Trade Competition
Time flies, and a year has passed in the blink of an eye. The imperial power and the prime minister's power in the empire are still struggling secretly, and the disputes are endless.
After a whole year of open and covert fighting, forming cliques and all kinds of political tactics, Takezawa Yuko finally succeeded in consolidating her position as the commander of Lionheart Castle, and all this was naturally inseparable from Zhang Wei's silent support and assistance behind the scenes.
Zhang Wei chose to help Takezawa Yuko consolidate his position, which meant he chose to infringe on Miyajima Junpei's interests in Lionheart Castle. Zhang Wei simply appeased Miyajima Junpei's anger by giving up 10% of his interests.
At this moment, the trade fleets led by Zhang Wei and Junpei Miyajima have grown like a snowball to as many as eight fleets, of which Zhang Wei controls half - a total of five fleets; while Junpei Miyajima controls the other three.
The key to maintaining such a large trading fleet is the huge and continuously growing market demand for Desert Scimitars and the Kingdom's specialties in the Empire.
In addition, the land caravan jointly managed by Zhang Wei and Takezawa Yuko also made significant progress and expanded to four teams, three of which were managed by Zhang Wei and the remaining one was owned by Takezawa Yuko.
After comprehensive calculation, the total number of caravans conducting trade between Zhang Wei and the empire has reached an impressive twelve!
However, even so, it was still difficult to satisfy the empire's seemingly insatiable appetite.
Both Takezawa Yuko and Miyajima Junpei had sent envoys to discuss with Zhang Wei whether the number of caravans could be further increased. When faced with these requests, Zhang Wei always smiled helplessly. It was not that he was unwilling to make more money, but because his own production capacity had already reached saturation.
Time flies, and in a blink of an eye it is March, the second year after the signing of the peace agreement. This time, Zhang Wei, Miyajima Junpei and Takezawa Yuko gathered together in the Empire's Katani City for the first time to hold a meeting of great significance to discuss how to further expand the scale of trade.
This meeting was held at the strong request of Junpei Miyajima. At the meeting, Junpei Miyajima raised two things. One was that the Western Legion of the Empire had recently had a specialty of desert scimitars being sold on a large scale in the market. Junpei Miyajima asked Zhang Wei if he knew what was going on.
Junpei Miyajima said that they could have sold the specialty Desert Scimitar at a high price in the western part of the empire. In fact, because the empire is now on the defensive, the price of the specialty Desert Scimitar is even higher in the western part of the empire.
However, because the Western Legion of the Empire also had a source of goods, their goods became difficult to sell and their profits were affected.
Junpei Miyajima pretended to ask Zhang Wei if he knew about this, but in fact he was wondering if Zhang Wei was doing business with the Imperial Western Legion again.
This time, Zhang Wei shook his head and said he didn't know. He needed to send someone to Crescent Castle to find Zhang He and ask what was going on. Although Crescent Castle helped Desert Scimitar block the blade of the Empire, Crescent Castle was not as good as Lionheart Castle and could not stop caravans and smuggling.
Although Junpei Miyajima was skeptical about what Zhang Wei said, he thought that since Zhang Wei said he would investigate, he should be able to give some results by then.
In fact, Junpei Miyajima was not very interested in the so-called survey results. After all, such things were written by humans. As long as it could benefit Zhang Wei, it would not be strange what it was written in.
What Junpei Miyajima really wanted to do was to take this opportunity to warn Zhang Wei so that he would reduce the production of goods of the Western Army of the Empire, so that his own losses could be reduced accordingly.
The second thing I want to talk about is related to the Neon Empire.
Ever since Neon occupied the two seaports of the Holy Light Kingdom, it began to purchase large quantities of the kingdom's specialty products at low prices, and then resold them to the eastern region of the empire at high prices. This seriously squeezed the market share of Zhang Wei and others in the eastern region of the empire.
Faced with such a situation, he would have been helpless in the past, but now Zhang Wei has a large fleet in his hands and is fully capable of organizing a privateering fleet to attack the Neon Empire's transport fleet.
However, regarding the robbery, Zhang Wei said that he needed to communicate with the major forces in the kingdom that control various ports in advance to see if it is feasible.
The final outcome of this meeting will depend on how Zhang Wei's side handles it.
After Zhang Wei rushed back to Newt City without stopping, he immediately sent a messenger to Crescent Castle to find Zhang He, asking him to investigate in detail the source of the goods received by the Western Legion of the Empire, the supplier, and whether they had benefited from it, so as not to be fooled by others.
At the same time, Zhang Wei also sent other heralds to find the Duke of White Tiger and the Blood Moon Cult.
The reason for looking for Duke White Tiger is because he controls the port of Zovia located above the southwestern peninsula of the kingdom.
This port happened to be on the route of the looting fleet led by Zhang Wei.
As for contacting the Blood Moon Cult, the hope is to borrow a passage and directly reach where Duke Dragon Wing is.
You know, last year Duke Longyi used some unknown means to successfully capture the Port of Pada on the southern island of the kingdom, making it the next key location after Zhang Wei's fleet passed through the Port of Zovia.
If neither of these two dukes allows Zhang Wei to carry out looting operations against the Neon Empire, then he must seriously consider how to deal with this thorny problem.
Fortunately, Duke White Tiger responded very quickly.
Since his maritime caravan had also recently suffered severe suppression from the Neon Empire, resulting in heavy losses, he expressed his willingness to negotiate on the matter.
With the idea of trying to reach an agreement on every deal possible, Zhang Wei proposed two cooperation plans to Duke White Tiger.
In the first case, if Duke Longyi is also willing to participate, the three parties will distribute the profits in the ratio of 4:3:3.
Specifically, Zhang Wei was responsible for providing the plundering fleet, and therefore received four shares of the profits;
The two dukes only needed to provide a port for ships to dock and they could each share three shares of the profits.
Another option is that if Duke Longyi is unwilling to join, then Zhang Wei will join forces with Duke Baihu to attack Duke Longyi's Pada Port.
By then, Pada Port will belong to Duke White Tiger, and the subsequent looting operations will still be carried out by Zhang Wei's fleet, and both parties will continue to share the profits equally.
Faced with such generous conditions, Duke White Tiger could not find any reason to refuse.
Although he knew in his heart that the reason why Zhang Wei was so generous was simply to take this opportunity to weaken the Neon Empire's market share in the Northern Empire.
However, Duke White Tiger currently has no way to trade with the Northern Empire, so attacking the Neon Empire will only benefit him and not harm him.
Once the Neon Empire runs into a shortage of goods, the goods in his hands can be sold at a higher price within the Neon Empire. Isn't this a good thing?