If a single family could produce more than forty million gold coins, that family could absolutely be called the pinnacle among wealthy clans. Likewise, more than forty million gold coins was an enormous sum in the Ewindara Archipelago. There probably would not be many families or merchant groups that could scrape together that amount even by selling the pot and melting the iron. But if the entire Icefield Giant Bear Tribe—an independent kingdom with three knights and a total population nearing twenty million—could only come up with this much, that was rather shabby.
Zhang Tie knew that these forty-odd million gold coins must include the profits from the Icefield Giant Bear Tribe's wager of nearly ten million gold coins on him during this gambling battle. Excluding those profits, it meant that the entire Icefield Giant Bear Tribe's available tribal treasury amounted to, at most, a little over thirty million gold coins. It would be difficult even to build half a capital city with that.
Only after Elder Tors laid bare their assets did Zhang Tie realize just how poor the tribes of the Ice and Snow Wilderness truly were. Among all the bear-level tribes, the Iron Bear Tribe might have been the wealthiest. Aside from them, even a tribe like the Icefield Giant Bear Tribe could only produce a little over thirty million gold coins in assets. One could imagine the state of the other tribes. No wonder the Demon Bear Tribe and the others had turned green with envy at the sight of the Tribal Axis Railway and leaped out at the slightest provocation. They were all fucking poor to the point of madness.
In this age, there were only two paths to accumulating wealth. The first was flourishing commerce and trade, like in the Ewindara Archipelago, where wealth