Leasing Land

A carriage rolled slowly out of Bunta City's west gate, then picked up speed as it headed for the western outskirts.

Inside, Xu Yi sat opposite Heinz. Heinz held a rough map of Bunta City and was explaining something to him.

"Look. All this land belongs to Viscount Leslie—nearly a thousand hectares in total. More than half of it is undeveloped wasteland. Viscount Leslie said we can choose any plot there to lease."

Xu Yi glanced at the map, then put his finger on a spot. "No need to choose. Here."

"Here?" Heinz studied the spot Xu Yi had picked and frowned. "It isn't the closest place to Bunta City, and there's nothing nearby. Living there won't be convenient."

Xu Yi shrugged and smiled. "That's even better. We'll be free to plan it properly. Drawing on a blank sheet of paper is much easier than drawing on one already covered in pictures."

"But that'll probably cost more than we expected." Heinz was still frowning.

"The initial investment is necessary." Xu Yi nodded and drew a circle on the map. "If I could, I'd lease this entire stretch of wasteland."

"All of it?" Heinz stared at him. "We can't do that. We'd already owe Viscount Leslie a hundred gold coins a year for just one hectare. Leasing this much... Maybe not ten thousand gold coins a year, but certainly several thousand. Besides, all we need right now is a small workshop. What would we do with so much land?"

Xu Yi smiled. "Heinz, are you really content to run one little Magic Fan factory?"

Heinz stared at Xu Yi in surprise. Did this man have even bigger ambitions?

Just yesterday, Xu Yi had told Heinz to stop looking for a suitable place to rent inside Bunta City. Xu Yi had his eye on an open plot outside the city and intended to build a factory there for full-scale Magic Fan production.

Recently, Xu Yi had asked Heinz's nephew Alex to help him conduct a small market survey. From the results, Xu Yi estimated that demand for Magic Fans within Bunta City was between three and five thousand units. Fewer than five hundred had been sold so far, leaving a market of several thousand.

And that figure covered only the city itself. Families in the surrounding villages might not be as well-off as those in Bunta City, but some of them would surely want Magic Fans too.

Counting the entire area served by Bunta City, Xu Yi made a bold estimate: demand for Magic Fans might exceed ten thousand units!

Renting a warehouse inside Bunta City would be far too limiting if he wanted to raise production that much. So Xu Yi set his sights on the outskirts and decided to build a Magic Fan factory outright.

After looking into it, he settled on this tract of land belonging to Viscount Leslie.

Of course, increasing production required more than space. What mattered most was people.

Xu Yi looked down at the stack of papers in his hands, a smile touching his lips.

Half the stack consisted of thirty personal profiles; the other half, thirty contracts.

He had come away with them after a visit to Baron Rector Magic Academy.

After considerable persuasion, Xu Yi had finally convinced Director Hiller to let him recruit students from Baron Rector Magic Academy. Hiller had made it clear, though, that he would not publicly endorse the arrangement. He simply would not oppose it.

Xu Yi then put in more effort at the academy and eventually recruited thirty students who met his requirements.

None of them was particularly accomplished in magic. At least, none could match Xu Yi.

But as students of Baron Rector Magic Academy, they had a solid grounding in Magic Array fundamentals and some experience drawing them.

The Wind Spiral Array engraved inside each Magic Fan was more complex than usual after Xu Yi's modifications, but it was still only a low-level Wind Element Array. Drawing it was not especially difficult.

The students had been recruited for one task alone: drawing the Magic Arrays.

The work was simple and tedious, but it did require a certain level of magical ability.

For the first five hundred Magic Fans, Xu Yi had enlisted his colleagues from the research lab. But he now planned to produce as many as ten thousand, and ten colleagues could never manage that.

Hiring the thirty students made far more sense than relying on those ten colleagues.

For one thing, the thirty students did not have the same pride as the ten colleagues, who were magicians. They signed contracts with Xu Yi without much hesitation, establishing a clear employment relationship and giving Xu Yi less reason to worry about disruptions to production.

For another, after his ten colleagues helped make five hundred Magic Fans, Xu Yi had paid each of them five Gold Coins and a Magic Fan. The students, by contrast, had agreed to receive two silver coins for drawing the Magic Array in each Magic Fan they completed. That cut costs considerably.

Xu Yi had worried the students might think the pay was too low. To his surprise, they had all been delighted and repeatedly praised his generosity.

Most important of all, unlike his colleagues in the research lab, these students had not yet settled into fixed ways of thinking. They had fewer prejudices about practical uses for magic.

Xu Yi could teach them the mechanical engineering knowledge he had brought from Earth and let them learn from the ground up.

If even a few proved talented in Magical Mechanical Theory, they would be invaluable.

And if more such magicians emerged in the future, Xu Yi's vision of building a complete industrial system on Sains Continent might no longer be just a dream...

The carriage jolted violently, bouncing Xu Yi off his seat and cutting short his thoughts of the future.

"We're almost there," Heinz said beside him.

Xu Yi drew back the curtain and looked out. The carriage had left the main road west of Bunta City and turned onto a narrow, deeply rutted dirt track.

As the carriage shook around him, Xu Yi frowned.

"This road is terrible."

Heinz gave a wry smile. "Of course it is. No one's developed this wasteland. We're lucky there's a track a carriage can use at all."

"This won't do. Heinz, roughly how much would it cost to build a smooth road from the plot we've chosen to the main road?"

"Build a road?" Heinz paused, then measured the distance on the map. "That won't be cheap. Even just leveling this one would probably cost several hundred Gold Coins." After a moment, he added, "It's a bumpy ride, but carriages can get through. Do we really need to spend money rebuilding it?"

Xu Yi shook his head. "No, this road definitely needs to be built. Magic Fans aren't particularly intricate, so the ride might not matter much for them. But our later products will be more precise. On a road like this, they could easily be damaged in transit."

Heinz pursed his lips. He did not really understand what Xu Yi meant by "craftsmanship," "follow-up products," or "precision," and for the moment he could find no way to argue.

Xu Yi was leading the venture anyway, and Heinz had no real say in the decision. After a little thought, he gave up trying to persuade him.

The carriage bounced along the track a while longer before coming slowly to a stop.

Xu Yi and Heinz climbed down from the carriage. The land around them was as desolate as promised: apart from broad patches of weeds, there was almost nothing to see.

Heinz looked disappointed. Xu Yi was not surprised at all.

Back on Earth, he had inspected countless industrial sites awaiting development. Some had been far more desolate than this, yet not long after development began, they had become thriving districts.

The place was barren now, but Xu Yi believed that if he kept building and investing in it, it would prosper one day.

"Are you Mr. Xu Yi and Mr. Heinz?" A thin old man appeared from somewhere nearby.

"Hello, Butler Wenlai. I'm Heinz, and this is my partner, Xu Yi." Heinz hurried forward. "Xu Yi, this is Mr. Wenlai, Viscount Leslie's steward."

Xu Yi took in the unremarkable old man and gave him a polite bow.

Wenlai rolled his eyes, showing more white than dark, and studied Xu Yi for a moment. Then he nodded. "Well, since you're here, take a good look around. His Lordship said that while he has no plans to develop this land, it's still his territory. He can't simply let others do as they please with it. Whatever you want to do here from now on, you must inform His Lordship first. Understood?"

Wenlai's lofty manner left Xu Yi both annoyed and amused.

Back on Earth, a landowner would have been thrilled to find a developer willing to pay to lease a wasteland like this.

But here on the Sains Continent, Viscount Leslie had already taken his money, and Butler Wenlai still acted as though Leslie had bestowed the land on Xu Yi as a favor rather than leased it to him.

Xu Yi let none of that show. He merely nodded to indicate he understood, then went off to inspect the area for himself.

He liked what he found. The ground was sound and remarkably level, making it well suited to a factory.

Better yet, a river more than ten meters wide ran beside the plot, with a small wood on the opposite bank. Both water and timber would be easy to obtain.

The only drawback was the poor access, and Xu Yi had already taken that into account.

Improving the road to ensure reliable transport was, after all, the first step in establishing a factory.