The Art of Making Money, Ye Yu Repays Kindness

But there was an art to making money.

Because he had loved reading novels in his previous life, including historical farming stories,

Ye Yu knew how to make glass, soap, Snowflake Salt, Snowflake Sugar, black powder, and more.

But he absolutely could not bring any of those things out now.

The profits involved were simply too great; he could never protect them!

Once he revealed them,

the goods might be gone—and so might he!

After thinking it over carefully,

Ye Yu finally settled on a relatively safe way to make money.

He would open training classes in Nuoding City and teach mathematics and drawing.

After studying at Nuoding Academy, Ye Yu had discovered

that the mathematical standards of the Douluo Continent were abysmal.

They basically only had the most fundamental addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division involving integers.

As for decimals and fractions, they did not exist.

No one had discovered various laws of operation either, such as the commutative and associative laws of addition, the commutative and associative laws of multiplication, and so on.

Equations were even more unheard of.

And Ye Yu believed mathematics was extremely useful knowledge on the Douluo Continent.

With outstanding mathematical knowledge, one could work at an inn or restaurant

as an accountant and live a relatively respectable life.

The income would certainly be higher than farming!

Besides that, the sketching Ye Yu had learned in his previous life was also a painting technique unknown on the Douluo Continent.

Teaching people how to sketch should make him money too!

And quite a lot of it!

After all, anyone who could study art definitely came from a family with money.

Ye Yu even felt that, in the future, quite a few Nuoding City nobles might send their daughters to him to learn painting.

And whether he taught mathematics or painting,

he himself would be indispensable.

He would also form bonds of teacher and student with countless pupils.

With those connections,

as long as he was willing to pay some protection money, people probably would not become envious and swallow him whole.

After all, there was little meat and plenty of trouble.

It was unnecessary!

After that, while attending Nuoding Academy,

Ye Yu began putting his teaching plans into action in the afternoons.

First, he set up a small classroom at home.

Then, he posted notices to recruit students.

He claimed he could teach advanced mathematical knowledge that would make it easy to become an accountant.

The tuition was only one Gold Soul Coin per year!

At first, naturally, no one believed him.

How high could the mathematical level of a child around ten years old be? What qualifications did he have to teach arithmetic?

Many people even scoffed at him.

They mocked Ye Yu for being so young yet already money-crazed,

because even Nuoding Academy only charged two Gold Soul Coins a year for tuition.

In fact, even his uncle, Wang Hongshan, had been somewhat doubtful at first.

But Ye Yu's way of proving himself was simple.

He went directly to several accountants from Nuoding City's most famous restaurants, the ones who had always scoffed at and relentlessly mocked him.

He challenged them one by one to competitions in keeping accounts!

Naturally, Ye Yu won every single time with crushing superiority.

It left everyone utterly dumbfounded!

The entire Nuoding City was stirred up.

No one had expected Ye Yu's mathematical ability to be so monstrous!

No one would turn their back on profit.

Before long, parents came with respectful, ingratiating smiles and brought their children to enroll in Ye Yu's mathematics class.

As for how to get his painting class off the ground,

Ye Yu had his own clever plan.

First, he went to the entrance of the Spirit Hall Branch in Nuoding City and waited for its beautiful female deacons.

Taking advantage of his age, he sincerely asked the pretty older sisters to let him draw them for free.

Then, with his vivid and exquisite portrait sketches,

Ye Yu's artistic skill directly stunned the beautiful female deacons of the Spirit Hall Branch.

And because Soul Masters and nobles were connected in countless ways,

Ye Yu's reputation as a young painting genius soon spread throughout Nuoding City's noble circles and was enthusiastically sought after.

Many noble ladies and young misses invited Ye Yu to paint them.

As for the price, it started at no less than ten Gold Soul Coins!

And because Ye Yu had suddenly become a hot favorite among the nobles,

among those noble ladies and young misses who admired and liked him,

were quite a few mothers and older sisters of Nuoding Academy's noble male students.

Naturally, those noble male students at Nuoding Academy had initially been very unhappy about this and found Ye Yu extremely displeasing.

But who was Ye Yu?

As a transmigrator from five thousand years of civilization, tempered by the explosion of information on the internet,

handling these little brats was effortless for Ye Yu!

Thus,

under Ye Yu's protection,

the Work-study students of Nuoding Academy, for the first time ever, were no longer bullied by the Noble students.

This made the Work-study students deeply admire and appreciate Ye Yu.

Chen Hu, their current leader, was even ashamed of himself and voluntarily suggested giving his position to Ye Yu.

But Ye Yu naturally declined.

He was busy now!

He had no time to be some damned leader.

And after Ye Yu gained enthusiastic popularity among the nobles through his unique and superb sketching technique,

nobles soon began choosing to send their daughters to Ye Yu to learn sketching.

With such an outstanding skill,

they might someday marry into a noble family with a higher Nobility Rank.

This was clearly a business with nothing but profit!

As for the students in the painting class,

because Ye Yu knew that nobles did not lack money—and would even be unhappy if he charged too little,

feeling that doing so would lower their status—

he directly set the enrollment price for the painting class at one hundred Gold Soul Coins.

Yet it was still fully booked in an instant!

By teaching mathematics and painting,

Ye Yu earned more than three thousand Gold Soul Coins a year.

Before opening the classes, Ye Yu had thought he might need to spend some of it greasing palms.

But after meeting many noble ladies and young misses from Nuoding City through his portrait sketches,

with those connections,

and with quite a few of his students also being children of noble families,

Ye Yu no longer needed to grease any palms.

And because he had earned a considerable amount of money and built a broad network of connections in Nuoding City,

some parents happened to think highly of his uncle, Wang Hongshan, and were willing to make introductions.

With Ye Yu's help,

his uncle Wang Hongshan finally settled down, married a gentle and virtuous wife, and opened a small restaurant.

Its specialties were several Eastern recipes from Ye Yu's previous life that he still remembered,

such as fish-fragrant shredded pork, kung pao chicken, and roast duck.

With these distinctive dishes, along with Ye Yu's connections,

his uncle Wang Hongshan would certainly live well in Nuoding City from then on.

This was also the repayment Ye Yu could offer his uncle Wang Hongshan for now.

And after earning enough money through the mathematics and painting classes,

Ye Yu also had people buy medicinal herbs such as Hundred-year Ginseng and Hundred-year Lingzhi to increase his cultivation speed.

Besides that, there was Whale Jelly.

This was a treasure that could improve a Soul Master's physical constitution, allowing them to absorb Soul Rings beyond their limits!

Because the effects of Whale Jelly had yet to be discovered,

as an aphrodisiac,

Hundred-year Whale Jelly was already more than sufficient.

Thus, few people bought Thousand-year Whale Jelly or Ten-thousand-year Whale Jelly.

This made the prices of Thousand-year Whale Jelly and Ten-thousand-year Whale Jelly extremely low.

Thousand-year Whale Jelly cost only a few dozen Gold Soul Coins.

Ten-thousand-year Whale Jelly cost only a few hundred Gold Soul Coins.

Most of that was transportation costs.

And once he had enough money,

Ye Yu bought medicinal herbs like Hundred-year Ginseng and Hundred-year Lingzhi to increase his cultivation speed on one hand,

while on the other, he bought Whale Jelly in large quantities and consumed small doses multiple times a day, reducing its side effects while strengthening his body.

Before he knew it, Ye Yu had finally turned eleven.