Chapter Twenty-One: Upstream and Downstream

The night was long.

Su Ziye still worked through it.

In fact, he had not slept at all last night either. Tonight, after persuading Liu Ru to rest, he himself remained at his labors through another sleepless night.

Senior Zhou Yi had stood by observing for more than an hour, then personally taken over for a round of operation. In the end, he could not hold off exhaustion and lay down on the simple bed nearby, so deeply asleep that even the machine’s thunderous roar failed to wake him.

“So you’re the one who looks most tired,” someone said softly from the side.

Su Ziye looked up and saw the red-haired Carlotes standing there, watching him.

“How is it?” Su Ziye asked with lively enthusiasm, introducing his new favorite creation.

“You should ask how capable the academy’s master craftsman is,” Carlotes said calmly. “I never expected that only a few days after you arrived at the academy, you would already have found the correct way to use it.”

Beyond its many general courses, the academy also offered teaching and training in almost every field. What Su Ziye was working on this time involved the extremely obscure arts of metal smelting and mold making. If he had gone outside to find a blacksmith, it would probably have taken months. Yet the academy happened to have master-level talent in precisely this area.

“What else is there to say?” Su Ziye smiled. “As expected of the academy.”

“Yesterday afternoon, when you told Liu Ru that story, I was listening beside you the whole time,” Carlotes continued. “I’m a little curious how you came to know it so clearly.”

“So I should say that as expected of the president?” Su Ziye said evenly.

On the return journey yesterday, there had been no one else around.

But they had still been on the streets of Yeye City. If someone had cared to listen, they absolutely could have overheard the two of them talking.

For example, that Mountain Lord could certainly have done it.

And yet the person now standing before Su Ziye was Carlotes.

Carlotes shrugged. “If possible, I truly hope you had never come to the academy.”

“But I’m already here.” Su Ziye looked at him and smiled. “So, what exactly did the president want to say?”

“Do you know why I made that request?” Carlotes asked, answering with a question of his own.

The request, of course, referred to Carlotes asking Su Ziye to turn one goldleaf into a million within a year.

In truth, though, that had happened only two days ago.

In just two days, Su Ziye had done a great many things. He had already produced an excellent project, and by the most conservative estimate, that project would bring him more than ten thousand goldleaf in immediate cash flow.

“So the president regrets it, then?” Su Ziye said calmly.

“I never regret anything. I had you do this principally because I wanted to give you something to occupy your future life at the academy, and preferably something peaceful. After much thought, there really doesn’t seem to be anything more peaceful than doing business,” Carlotes said, looking at Su Ziye. “What I never expected was that you might already have intended to do exactly this.”

“Of course, perhaps that wasn’t your original thought, but my request happened to align with your own.”

“So that’s the real reason you agreed to me.”

Su Ziye lowered his head and said nothing. After a moment, he lifted his gaze and smiled. “So, President, should I applaud you?”

“If you want to,” Carlotes said calmly.

So Su Ziye raised his hands and began to applaud Carlotes.

“Your idea really is even more interesting than I first imagined. I used to think you were simply a madman who wanted to drive all those monsters out of this world, but now it seems you are at least a very clear-headed and rational madman,” Carlotes said, studying Su Ziye.

“To receive such praise from the president, I’m truly delighted,” Su Ziye answered calmly.

“How much concentrated syrup can this machine produce in one night?” Carlotes suddenly asked.

“If people keep working and the machine doesn’t stop, it can produce three thousand liters in twenty-four hours. But it’s best to set aside half a day each week for cleaning and maintenance if you want to preserve its service life. And this machine needs one standard crystal for power, consuming one every three months,” Su Ziye replied simply.

“Very interesting,” Carlotes said. “The three of you could only produce three hundred liters in a night.”

“People get tired, but machines don’t,” Su Ziye said.

“Your ingenuity is even greater than I imagined. How many of these machines do you plan to make?” Carlotes asked.

“That depends on demand, and on how many workers can operate them skillfully. In any case, as long as I can get enough raw materials, you could say that however much demand there is, I can manufacture that much,” Su Ziye replied calmly.

“So when you said in the ending of that story that you could do what a saint could not, this is what you meant?” Carlotes asked with interest.

“Something like that,” Su Ziye said, looking at Carlotes with a somewhat perfunctory air.

“But this only allows you to accumulate more wealth for yourself,” Carlotes said calmly. “Even if it benefits others, it would only benefit a very limited number of people. That is still far from enough.”

“Yes,” Su Ziye said, looking at him. “But have you ever considered, President, that if I truly needed vast amounts of white sugar, then more people would begin planting sugarcane and sugar beets, and more sugar mills would be needed? The other spices would also require wider cultivation, wouldn’t they?”

“And if my syrup business grew large enough, I could even extend it both downstream and upstream. Downstream, I could take over the bottling and sale of the soft drink directly; upstream, I could control the production and processing of the raw materials. In that case, the number of people I could benefit would be quite enormous, wouldn’t it?”

Carlotes shook his head. “I hadn’t thought of that. But if you did, you would be taking a lot of people’s bread.”

Food, clothing, shelter, and transport: the things on which life depended.

If Su Ziye truly could control every business upstream and downstream of the syrup trade, and if he reorganized and recruited the related workers according to his own way of thinking, then he could indeed benefit a great many people. By extension, if Su Ziye also intended to enter other industries, he could still simply follow the same pattern.

But the problem was this: how could the local powers already entrenched along that entire chain be willing to hand over their business so easily?

Or, to put it another way, just like the Flashgold Chamber of Commerce, the reason the Flashgold Chamber of Commerce was so powerful was precisely because it controlled the network linking upstream and downstream, conducting almost every related trade. Only then had it grown into such a colossal behemoth.

If Su Ziye did the same, there was no doubt he would directly become an enemy of the forces led by the Flashgold Chamber of Commerce.

“That’s why the academy is taking a share, right?” Su Ziye replied with a genial smile.