"Oh? Is that so."
Li Fei took out her phone and placed a voice call to Bai Mengtian, who patched her through to Ms. Kalida. Soon she had the price City Hall paid the goblin laboratory for the same supplies.
"Look what I found. Three tons of white gunpowder, priced at… three hundred gold coins?"
"So, Mr. Mane, could you explain why the price magically jumped fivefold before you knocked it down to 86%?"
Even a crafty goblin merchant was caught flat-footed by that. He mopped his brow, and out poured phrases like "bulk transactions get tax-policy subsidies," "economies of scale," and "public-private partnership."
Li Fei wiped her spotless Honorary Citizen Medal with a handkerchief and said earnestly:
"Mr. Mane, I could actually have City Hall buy it for me. Only then, I'm afraid, your colleagues would be the ones pocketing the commission, wouldn't they?"
"If you want me to buy from you, you'll have to give me a better deal."
"Eight silver coins per kilogram. I think that's a fair price."
Faced with Li Fei's offer, Mane refused without a flicker of hesitation:
"Impossible!"
"With all due respect, Miss Philanthropist, a price like that is simply absurd."
Li Fei asked calmly:
"What if I'm buying a very large amount?"
"Even if you bought a hundred tons in one go, it still couldn't possibly—"
"Seventeen thousand tons."
Li Fei cut him off. "I want seventeen thousand tons."
"Hiss…"
Mane sucked in a sharp breath, aghast. "Are you planning to slay a dragon?"
"Hard to say. It might just be for dealing with a few Sequence 7 and Sequence 6 mages."
Li Fei answered honestly.
What did they ever do to you?
Faced with a patron this flush with cash, Mane plastered on a dazzlingly warm smile. "It'll take a few days to gather the stock. I'll contact other clansmen to transfer goods as fast as I can, but I'll need a deposit from you first…"
"I'll pay in installments."
Li Fei went on: "One million three hundred sixty thousand gold coins, paid off over twelve months. I can cover the first month's payment as the deposit, and pay every month before the first. But your goods have to be delivered within five days."
She now had eleven storage items, each with a capacity between 1,000 and 1,234 cubic meters. Nine of them would be enough to hold 10,000 cubic meters of white gunpowder, and with a density of 1,700 kilograms per cubic meter, that meant Li Fei could carry 17,000 tons of it on her person.
Of the remaining two, one would hold her other belongings so the gunpowder stayed stored on its own. The other she'd keep hidden, not to be shown to anyone lightly.
As for the cost… sure, it was steep. But Li Fei firmly believed that trading money for experience was a very good deal, and 17,000 tons of white gunpowder, handled properly, might well bring in a staggering amount of experience.
So she made a decisive and daring investment.
"Dear customer, your request is rather too…"
Mane mopped his brow, his smile a little stiff.
Li Fei, meanwhile, wiped her spotless gold-grade Magic Academy brooch, using the hand wearing [Angel's Perch], and said unhurriedly: "You don't need to worry about my ability to repay. In the charity business, the most important thing is integrity…"
Mane naturally knew what a gold brooch meant. And among Li Fei's ten spatial rings, [Angel's Perch] had the smallest capacity, a mere thousand cubic meters, but it was the most famous, since many powerful members of the Angel race wore this ring. A well-traveled goblin merchant, Mane recognized at a glance that this spatial ring was worth more than the entire deal.
That settled it. He would close this big client no matter what.
Mane wiped the sweat from his forehead and said with a fawning smile: "Esteemed customer, we can meet your price, and gathering your goods within five days is no problem. Installments are fine too, though I think the exact repayment term and amounts could still be negotiated…"
Hm? You can make the call yourself?
Li Fei's brow arched.
She'd assumed that for a deal this big, a salesman like Mane couldn't make the decision and would have to report upward. Instead he'd launched straight into the follow-up negotiation… This greenskin had some standing, it seemed.
"Twelve installments. Not one fewer."
Li Fei said flatly.
"The repayment period can be half a year at most, otherwise our own cash flow will have problems…"
"And have you considered my cash flow?"
Li Fei still didn't budge.
She'd brought back only 450,000 gold coins in total. Add the income from her businesses over this period, subtract the debt she owed for the Spatial Wonderstone, the mortgage she had to pay every month, and essential expenses like Serpent-woman scales and materials for the Witch Sickness Suppression Ritual, and she had roughly 400,000 in cash on hand.
If she repaid over six months, she'd owe nearly 230,000 gold coins a month, and her finances would be in serious trouble by the first of next month. She'd have to draw emergency funds from either the Great Song treasury or the Sparkfire Charity Fund. The problem was that the former was for rewarding the Demon Suppression Bureau, which tied directly into experience gains. As for the latter, she'd withdrawn 700,000 two months ago to commission the Sequence 6 Witch of Distortion class and still hadn't filled the hole. If she kept recklessly raiding the fund until it collapsed, Li Fei would be facing ruin of her reputation too.
In the end, seeing Li Fei's resolve, Mane could only give way one more step:
"Fine, one year it is. But as for the installment interest rate…"
"What did you say?"
Li Fei frowned. "You're making money off me and you still want to charge installment interest? When I bought my staff I paid in installments over a year, and that old lady never asked me for a cent of interest! You need to think bigger in business."
This time, Mane, who had already compromised on the delivery deadline, the price and the repayment term, would not give another inch no matter what.
So the two sides haggled fiercely over the installment rate and finally settled on 4% annual interest, with interest waived on early repayment. Mane also threw in a user manual for free, and Li Fei could drop by any time with questions, where goblin engineers would give professional guidance at no charge.
After they shook hands and wished each other a pleasant partnership, Mane couldn't help adding one more thing:
"Actually, our Goblin Shredder just came out in a brand-new version, with across-the-board improvements in both performance and function…"
"No need. I'll come to pick up the goods in a few days."
Li Fei counted out 117,866 gold coins and strolled out in high style, without even signing a spell contract.
Since this was Loxibrook, Li Fei would have been delighted if he broke a verbal agreement. Then she could call in her connections and legitimately get the whole shipment for free.
Mane watched her back as she left, opened his mouth, and muttered softly:
"Still 66 silver coins and 66 coppers short…"
…
Next to this, the mortgage and the installments on the [Ogre's Staff] were nothing to Li Fei anymore. She'd just leave them to her assistant, Miss Qiao'er.
Suddenly carrying a seven-figure debt did, at least, work as a decent spur.
And she wasn't very worried about losing money.
After all, this stuff had roughly the same power as TNT. And what did 17,000 tons of yield mean? The famous "Little Boy" from before her transmigration was only 12,000 to 15,000 tons.
Li Fei estimated it should rival a Tier 7 offensive spell. Blow it up anywhere dense with Transcendent creatures and she'd gain a handful of levels at least.
She hoped the Morality Value penalty wouldn't be too steep. Fei-men.
She set the matter aside for now and went straight to Lady Annie's home.
The moment she stepped through the door, Li Fei, right in front of Miss Stepdaughter, eagerly dragged her mother into the bedroom.
Then she started learning a foreign language.
And she kept learning until dark.
At the dinner table, Lady Annie and Lilith both wore strange expressions, as if they were looking at an alien.
Li Fei had really spent the whole afternoon studying a foreign language!
This was positively absur…
"Are you… in a bad mood?"
Lady Annie's face showed concern.
"No, I'm great."
Li Fei answered without a second thought.
Lady Annie said nothing more and quietly ate, now and then putting food in her daughter's and her girlfriend's bowls. The mood was so silent it felt faintly eerie.
Li Fei slurped down three big bowls of tomato beef brisket over rice, then set the empty bowl and chopsticks on the table.
"I'm full."
"Did it taste all right?"
The blonde wife gently wiped Li Fei's mouth for her.
"Meh."
Li Fei said without a ripple of emotion.
…
The night was cool as water, with a lady in red sleeves tending the incense.
The Young Madam sat by the lamp, flipping through a textbook. Qin Zhihua brought her a cup of hot coffee brewed with milk in place of water, then took a cup of tea for herself and sipped it slowly, gazing at Li Fei's face with an attention no less intense than Li Fei's own devotion to her studies.
The phone on the desk suddenly buzzed. Li Fei grabbed it without looking, and it turned out to be a picture from Bai Mengtian: a pleasing yet thoroughly indecent photo of tangerines.
"Meh."
Li Fei merely glanced at it, then stopped paying the phone any attention and refocused on her textbook, looking perfectly serene.
Such an offhand gesture made Qin Zhihua's heart sink.
Normally, even in the middle of cuddling, the Young Madam would free a hand to reply to Bai Mengtian's messages, and might even hold on tighter while she did.
And Qin Zhihua would tighten her own hold in response, so that Li Fei learned what it meant that one mind can't be split in two.
Now that the Young Madam had truly achieved single-minded focus, Qin Zhihua felt no joy at all.
This Li Fei felt like a stranger to her.
Qin Zhihua gazed deeply at her beloved's profile. It was still beautiful, flawless inside and out. But it was too plain. In every frown and smile, the radiant allure that made eyes follow her was gone, and so was the delicate, angler's charm that reeled people in.
She was just a woman with nearly seven hundred points of Charm, not that green tea who, on the strength of her natural Art of Tea, could stand against a thousand Charm with six hundred.
Qin Zhihua lowered her eyes, her gaze a little desolate.
…
The night passed uneventfully. Qin Zhihua had barely left for work when Eva slipped in through the crack of the door.
Li Fei was still reading. At this rate she'd finish teaching herself the third-year textbooks very soon. Any qualified graduate of the two academies could be called learned: they could readily identify thousands upon thousands of spells, Transcendent creatures, potions, rituals and materials… and understand their traits, weaknesses and values.
But given the difference in Intelligence attributes and the pacing of the curriculum, the Magic Academy's textbooks were 2.3 times as thick as the War Academy's, and recorded even fairly obscure knowledge.
Right now, for example, Li Fei had learned five common ways to lay out an [Equilibrium] array, and how to escape after being captured alive by a succubus. (Warmly invite the succubus ladies in as guests, and after two or three rounds of offspring you'll probably have earned their trust and your freedom.)
"My Witch Sickness is about to flare up…"
Eva whispered in a breathy voice.
"You're already a witch, sister."
Li Fei exposed the lie at once.
"Then… can a witch catch Witch Sickness?"
Eva knelt lightly on the Mother of Fairies' shoulder.
Li Fei shut her book with a snap and said without a second thought:
"A witch's bloodline doesn't hunt another witch's bloodline."
"But since you've brought up Witch Sickness, I have a job for you."
She took out the [Ghost-Rearing Gourd] and instructed:
"There are a dozen-odd sisters infected with Witch Sickness in here. From now on, giving them their suppressant injections is your job. And Sasha, you keep her with you. She's stepped into the Knowledge Sequence, after all, so it's time you built up some trusted subordinates."
"Be good to them. When I reach a high Sequence someday, I'll personally bless them and turn them into witches."
"Also, you need to think carefully about your Transcendent plans from here on. You can pick either of the two academies, or City Hall."
"I'm going to be a hostess at the Golden Tangerine Tavern."
Eva said with a dazzling smile.
"Will Sofia agree to that?"
Li Fei frowned.
"Why wouldn't she?"
Eva licked her teeth suggestively. "I can do what you did: just chat with the customers and keep my work nice and clean."
Is that supposed to be a positive role model or a negative one?
Li Fei suspected Eva was being sarcastic, but she had no proof.
"Fine. Your career is your own choice."
In the end, Li Fei didn't interfere with Eva's decision.
Besides, the Golden Tangerine Tavern wasn't short of sisters who'd followed their mothers into the trade. Supposedly both their daughters planned to join the business too once they grew up, so it was basically three generations under one roof.
It did remind Li Fei of something, though, and she warned Eva: "Don't lead Yawen astray. Sofia won't let you off if you do."
"How could I?"
Eva giggled, reeking of tea. There was no telling whether her answer was meant for the first half of the sentence or the second.
…
She spent another whole morning in the gravity room.
Rhabdomyolysis had set in, but that was fine. Her Excellency the Vice Dean had plenty of experience with emergency rescue, and fatigue of this degree was nothing. She easily healed Miss Top Courtesan back from the brink.
After saying goodbye to Miss Angel, Li Fei walked straight to the little inn outside the campus.
The moment she pushed open the door, she heard a childish, sweet cheer. A soft, fragrant bundle threw itself into her arms, a golden, fluffy fox tail swishing back and forth.
Who else would arrange to meet Miss Top Courtesan in a place like this?
Without looking back, Li Fei shut the door, ruthlessly grabbed the base of the tail, held the little fox upside down, and tossed her onto the brand-new white bedsheets.
Everyone at the two academies was a Transcendent, so the hotels that could open right at the school gates charged higher prices but also gave better service. The hygiene, at least, was excellent. Even with Li Fei's eyesight, she couldn't find a single unclean spot on the sheets. They felt lovely to the touch and gave off a faint, pleasant scent, probably from being soaked and washed in Transcendent potions.
A fine place for a couple's date.
Though Li Fei had treated her with no regard for ladylike manners, Margaret wasn't the least bit angry. Her big tail kept swaying, and she tilted up a harmless little face and asked in an innocent voice:
"Did you bring the goods?"
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