``` [You Rou preferred to address you as "President."]
[After all, you were the Trade Association's true owner, while You Rou was merely its manager.]
[Over her years managing the Trade Association, You Rou had also reaped considerable benefits as its profits continued to grow.]
["Mm."]
[You looked at You Rou and asked with a smile, "How is the Trade Association doing?"]
[Your greatest source of confidence in daring to establish the Trade Association was your knowledge of every event that would occur in Black Mountain Market over the coming decades.]
[It was as good as seeing the future without divination.]
[In both your first and second simulations, you had spent most of your life in Black Mountain Market.]
["President, these are our profits from the past year."]
[You Rou immediately handed over a Storage Bag.]
[You opened the Storage Bag, gave its contents a cursory scan, and nodded slightly.]
[Spirit stones made up the bulk of the Storage Bag's contents—more than six thousand of them.]
[There were also plenty of resources, such as various raw ingredients for alchemy and materials for drawing talismans.]
[Altogether, their total value should have approached ten thousand spirit stones.]
[Those ten thousand spirit stones were pure profit-the net earnings that reached your hands after all costs and expenses had been deducted.]
[And that was just one year's net profit.]
[Your purpose in establishing a Trade Association differed from that of other cultivators.]
[You had established the Trade Association not merely to earn profits, but also to nurture the cultivators under your command.]
[Thus, you were generous with their compensation, and part of the Trade Association's operating expenses went toward this.]
[Your aim was to have your cultivators enter and explore the Mountain-Sea Secret Realm ahead of you once it opened.]
["Tell me about the