I Want It All

Romain's six hundred pounds of malt sugar had sold for only 20 Gold Coins.

Morey had brought 18 plow oxen and 28 Draft Horses.

Of those, each Draft Horse cost 7.5 Silver Coins.

The 28 Draft Horses alone were worth 21 Gold Coins.

In other words, the malt sugar Romain had brought was not even enough to trade for 28 Draft Horses.

The plow oxen, meanwhile, cost 5.5 Silver Coins each, for a total value of 9.9 Gold Coins.

Draft Horses were difficult to use in war. At most, they could transport supplies or pull carriages.

Just as Morey had once said, compared to plow oxen, Draft Horses had poorer endurance, weaker constitutions, and lower efficiency in the fields.

Keeping a yoke on a Draft Horse for too long would make it struggle to breathe and could even cause it to drop dead.

For all these reasons, Draft Horses were not expensive and were worth far less than warhorses.

This batch of livestock was worth a total of 30 Gold Coins. Even through barter, Romain could not use malt sugar to buy all these plow oxen and Draft Horses.

His earlier boast had burst like a bubble.

But Romain did not feel embarrassed.

He gestured as he said to Morey, "The next time your merchant ship comes to Sigg Town, I can give you 200 barrels of malt sugar."

The production cost of this stuff was astonishingly low, and it was quick and convenient to make. There was no reason for Romain not to keep producing it.

After all, he had plenty of wheat.

Morey stammered, "How much?! Two hundred barrels? Six thousand pounds?!"

He immediately realized that Romain Split Armor had mastered the technique for producing sugar and had named this honey-like sugar malt sugar.

Was this sugar extracted from malt?

How many pounds of wheat were needed to make one pound of malt sugar?

If the cost was too high, how could it possibly be produced on a large scale?

Morey's tightly furrowed brows instantly relaxed. He was first sincerely shaken, then plunged into a whirl of confused thoughts. As countless ideas collided in his mind, he instinctively blurted out, "If 200 barrels of malt sugar all enter the market, its value will become very low."

Romain did not care how low the price might fall. Either way, it was like picking up money.

But malt sugar was a new product, and he was somewhat worried that doing this would expose Sigg Town and draw countless covetous eyes.

That would not be a good thing for Sigg Town right now.

"Then forget it." Romain gave up on the idea without hesitation.

Then Romain asked, "You should know what I'm doing now, right?"

Before Romain arrived, Morey had already spoken with the residents of Sigg Town. It was a merchant's habit, the fastest way to learn what was happening in a place.

The news he had learned here was difficult for him to believe, which was why he had seemed so excited when he saw Romain.

"You're building roads..."

Romain nodded. "That's right. I found a Salt Mine and am preparing to mine it."

Morey knew this land contained immense wealth, so he had been extremely confident and willing to invest regardless of returns.

He simply had not expected Sigg Town to develop so quickly. In less than a month, Romain had found a Salt Mine and had nearly finished the initial leveling of a 40-kilometer road.

Such efficiency was astonishing.

Even Marcor Tidebreaker, whom Morey had once met, could not compare. Though the latter was also one of the three grand dukes' heirs of the Black Iron Kingdom and everything he did could be called exemplary, he still could not be mentioned in the same breath as the absurdly exceptional person before him.

Not everyone could find a way to get rich with their bare hands in such a short time.

He hurriedly asked, "Can I go take a look?"

Romain understood Morey's eagerness very well.

He found someone and had him take Morey on a tour.

Although heavy rain had fallen a few days ago, leaving the leveled ground muddy and scarred with messy wheel ruts, it was mostly passable.

Morey raced along the road. Ox Carts and carriages traveled back and forth all around him, and he soon saw several hundred farmers enthusiastically leveling the road ahead.

This broad road had not yet reached its end, with another ten li remaining, but a small path had already been built in advance. Though large vehicles could not pass through it, people could walk directly to the Salt Mine.

Romain had sent several dozen farmers there in advance to make preparations.

They needed to build a Salt Processing Facility, clear away the piles of loose stones on the surface, and dig several or even dozens of meters deep before they could reach a corner of the Rock Salt deposit.

Compared to sea salt, mineral salt was purer. Its purity was extremely high and it contained fewer impurities. Some Rock Salt could even be used directly as coarse salt; when roasting meat or cooking, one only needed to rub a salt brick against the food a few times.

But consuming too much of it could lead to salt poisoning.

So it needed to be crushed, dissolved, filtered, boiled, and processed. The fine salt produced this way could be called refined salt, with no need to worry about safety—rest assured, people of this era would definitely die from some other accident before they managed to poison themselves.

When he saw the high-purity Rock Salt, when he saw those enormous crystals like blocks of ice, Morey became abnormally excited.

He realized this was a high-quality Salt Mine that was easy to exploit, and its future output would definitely be enormous.

Salt was a strategic resource. No one failed to value it.

More precisely, salt was second only to iron.

This special mineral could even affect certain Witches' spells.

Thus, the Church also attached great importance to salt, viewing it as a sacred substance that could drive out and purify demons.

Influenced by this, even slightly wealthier families would buy salt to drive away demons and ward off evil.

The King and nobles also treated salt as a special form of currency, using physical goods such as salt, iron, wheat, furs, and meat to offset most military pay.

So when Morey returned from the Salt Mine, his face was flushed with excitement, and he kept saying, "Good, good, good."

Romain asked, "Do you want salt or sugar?"

Morey took a deep breath and said the exact same thing Romain would have said.

"I want it all!"

Romain was very satisfied with Morey's answer. "Fine. The price of those livestock will be deducted in salt. The next time you come to Sigg Town, I'll still give you malt sugar. As for how much, that depends on how much you want to buy. For salt, I'll sell it to you for 0.1 Copper Coins per pound for now, and I won't charge you tariffs. Once you've transported 200,000 pounds of salt, I'll raise the price to 0.2 Copper Coins per pound and charge an additional tariff of 1 Copper Coin for every hundred pounds. Do you understand?"

Of course Morey understood Romain's approach.

The purchase price was the purchase price, and export tariffs were export tariffs.

Even if one bought a large amount of salt in a salt-producing region, the local nobles would still force them to pay the appropriate tariffs when they left that region. Upon entering another region, import tariffs would also be charged.

A tariff of 1 Copper Coin for every hundred pounds of salt could be considered very cheap.

After all, salt was a necessity, and tariffs had a major impact on its price.

When salt prices were stable, merchants generally purchased it for 0.2 Copper Coins per pound. If society became more turbulent, the price could very well rise to 0.25 Copper Coins per pound or even higher.

For every hundred pounds of salt purchased, they had to pay an additional 4 to 6 Copper Coins in import and export tariffs, which indirectly increased the cost of purchase.

That was why many merchants hoped to find salt-producing regions with stable prices and lower tariffs.

Wheat was premium grain. One pound of wheat was equivalent to three or four pounds of coarse grain.

The export price of 1 unit of salt was equivalent to 4 units of wheat, while the market price was 1 unit of salt for 20 units of wheat.

The price Romain gave Morey was 1 pound of salt for 2 pounds of wheat—until Morey had transported 200,000 pounds of salt, after which the salt price would be raised to the standard rate of 1 unit of salt for 4 units of wheat.

Because the plow oxen and Draft Horses Morey brought were free, essentially given to Romain for nothing, he received this cheap purchase price.

Do not think 200,000 pounds of salt was a lot.

The Black Iron Kingdom had a population in the tens of millions. How much salt would a society of tens of millions of people need?

If anyone thought annual demand would be less than 5 million pounds of salt, then there was nothing more to say.