Despite his adult appearance, this kid's mentality is no more than that of a three-year-old. He often throws tantrums like a child when you're upset. For example, he'll get angry and refuse to play with you, but if you give him a piece of candy, he'll make up with you.
Ye Xu, who considered himself very mature, refused to be brothers with a childish guy, but he still had to coax Fatty Chicken. Anyway, the butler couldn't just pull it out whenever he wanted; if he couldn't, it was understandable that he wouldn't give it to him.
Upon hearing Ye Xu's agreement, Mo Bei immediately perked up: "I knew it! You still consider me a close friend!"
My best friend who's been cursed.
Ye Xu held back from speaking, thinking to himself that he was being too considerate, and that it was fortunate that Mo Bei had met such a good-tempered and tolerant dragon.
A few days later, the system finally finished its consideration and told Ye Xu that it agreed to let Jiang Yuexuan lend a large number of points to help unlock the goods.
Ye Xu felt a little embarrassed to take so many points from Sister Xuan, even though he would repay them all in the future, the amount was still too large. Unfortunately, he didn't have anything Sister Xuan needed, so he didn't know what to give her as a token of his gratitude.
"Why don't you charge interest? Even when relatives lend money to each other, they usually have to pay some interest," Ye Xu said.
Jiang Yuexuan didn't care: "Then you can give me whatever you think is appropriate. Anyway, I don't think I'll be borrowing many points from you this time."
"Not much?" Ye Xu was a little surprised. How could unlocking so many items not cost much?
Upon hearing this, Jiang Yuexuan recounted her past actions to Ye Xu.
It turns out that Jiang Yuexuan bought a lot of things she didn't need in order to unlock products. Keeping so many things in her possession wasn't a solution, so in order to recoup her investment, she found a way to resell them at a discount to other store managers who needed them. In the end, she recovered more than 90% of her energy, which is why she didn't lack points.
Of course, selling things takes time. So Jiang Yuexuan didn't rush to start her own business. Instead, she traveled to more than a dozen different planes, contacting buyers from various sources while trying to earn some more points to make up for her losses.
Now that she wanted to lend money to Ye Xu, Jiang Yuexuan not only had enough points, but also had some left over. Moreover, she had already learned from her previous experience, so she could avoid certain pitfalls the second time and guide Ye Xu to avoid making unnecessary mistakes.
"Leave this to me, and I'll try my best to help you sell the items as soon as possible. I'll keep the points from the sale myself, so it's like I only borrowed the difference from the sale price from you, which is about 1% of my total spending that year."
Not counting the funds needed to recoup the initial investment, Jiang Yuexuan initially spent over 200 billion points, which, at 1%, amounts to 2 billion, is indeed not a large sum. However, to complete this deal, one would first need 200 billion in savings; without it, one would have to buy and sell one by one, which would be very laborious.
Jiang Yuexuan wasn't going to bother charging interest on the 2 billion points. But Ye Xu felt that since she had gone to so much trouble, he should at least get a fee for her hard work, even if it meant paying no interest. Thinking about how much he had benefited from it, Ye Xu decided to gather 3 billion points to pay it back together.
“That works too.” Jiang Yuexuan had no objections. “You can give it to me whenever you want. Let’s get down to business first.”
After saying that, she pulled up her old notes, which listed the items she needed to buy. The items on the list were all easy to sell and had low depreciation rates; price was secondary.
Jiang Yuexuan only learned a lot of information later after conducting market research. For example, even among medicines, a 100-point item (Drug A) could only be resold for 80 points, while a 10,000-point item (Drug B) could be sold at the original price or even at a premium. In this case, of course, she would buy the latter, even if it cost more.
The reason why secondhand prices are higher is due to several factors. The most common reason is that some items require a lot of energy to condense, making it unprofitable to produce them yourself. Therefore, people prefer to buy inventory from other store owners at higher prices, as long as it consumes less energy than condensing it themselves, they are making a profit.
Ye Xu asked curiously, "Why is that? The system shop must make a profit by setting the price, which means the system shouldn't need that many points to make this medicine. Why does it cost the shopkeeper several times more to make it?"
“The system’s control over energy is unmatched by us. This applies to all products; we spend more money producing them than the system does. However, most products don’t cost as much as the price in the store, so making them ourselves is always cheaper,” Jiang Yuexuan explained.
That makes perfect sense, Ye Xu nodded in understanding.
Based on the above experience, Jiang Yuexuan minimized the depreciation costs. As a result, her total depreciation cost reached 10%, but Ye Xu only paid 1%. Unfortunately, secondhand items that are more expensive than the original price are rare, otherwise Jiang Yuexuan might have made a profit.
“This business can’t last long,” Jiang Yuexuan said with a hint of regret. “The demand for high-priced secondhand items is low, and you have to rely on luck to find buyers. Otherwise, everyone would be doing this business. I made a lot of connections to recoup my losses so that I could find buyers as quickly as possible.”
Ye Xu was extremely impressed. He had felt the need to rely on Jiang Yuexuan before, but never as strongly as today. After all, even without Jiang Yuexuan, he could manage the mall's operations on his own, but he couldn't handle reselling goods.
Just as he was about to express his gratitude, he didn't know what to say. Suddenly, Jiang Yuexuan said, "Xiao Han and the others will definitely become independent shop managers in the future. Whether you herd one sheep or two, it's all the same. Why don't I just help them sort this out as well? We can do it according to your plan. Forget about 3 billion. Give me 2.5 billion energy each, and I'll earn a little 300 million in hard work. Isn't that more worthwhile than running a shop with all the effort?"
Running a shop in one dimension yields a maximum of one billion energy points, but there's no limit to how much you can earn by helping them resell their goods—the more people involved, the more you earn. Jiang Yuexuan, currently a regular employee who only receives 2% of the shop's profits, is making ten times more money from her side hustle than from her main job. It sounds pretty good.
Ye Xu: "..." Sister Xuan is also a very self-satisfied person.
“Oh, right.” Jiang Yuexuan remembered something else. “Since you’ve already asked me for money, why don’t I lend you another 1 billion to redeem you?”
When working for the system, each dimension has to pay logistics and teleportation fees, which are not cheap. By going out on your own and unlocking the synthesis of all goods, you don't need to pay logistics fees, and the shopkeeper can also spend less money when teleporting between dimensions.
The system is asking for 10 million points, but private teleportation actually costs between 1 million and 5 million. It mainly depends on the size of the shop that's being teleported. The shop owner costs 1 million points, and the shops are tiered by size. Ye Xu's shop would probably cost 2 million points, making the total 3 million points.
That's still more than two-thirds cheaper than the system's price!
Ye Xu was immediately tempted and was about to agree. During this debt-ridden period, every penny saved was precious.
However, the system intervened even faster: "The ransom cannot be obtained through borrowing!"
If borrowed points aren't allowed, Ye Xu will have to complete at least two more missions across different dimensions. The system knows it can't keep Ye Xu around to exploit for too long, so it's taking what it can get now.
Ye Xu sighed regretfully, "Forget it, let's just run the business honestly. I'll try to bring over more UR employees in the next two worlds so that you can earn some extra money, Sister Xuan."
It's unlikely that two dimensions can gather the maximum of 20 UR employees, and Sweetie's lucky skill can only be used twice in total. His own luck is unpredictable, and gacha pulls really depend on fate.
"Wait a minute." Hearing Ye Xu's troubles, Jiang Yuexuan suddenly remembered something. "You should have some Encounter Tickets from opening the upgrade packs, right? Why haven't you used them?"
An encounter ticket? Ye Xu was bewildered for a moment, then finally remembered what it was—he had actually forgotten such an important item!
When Ye Xu first arrived in the modern world, he was so stunned by Sister Xuan's magnificent appearance that he forgot about the lottery ticket that could get him a UR card. Ye Xu quickly opened his long-unused achievements panel, claimed the accumulated upgrade packs, and finally opened a total of 7 tickets, including the ones he had opened before.
The achievements will become much harder to complete later, and the experience required to level up will be enormous. Ye Xu estimated that he might not be able to get any more Encounter Tickets in the next two planes, so having these 7 tickets was already quite good.
Ye Xu was very satisfied, and he couldn't wait to try out one of them.
A note from the author:
[Encounter Ticket]: Can guide you to the location of an excellent UR employee, but the store manager needs to use personal charm to persuade the employee to join the company.
New character Zhenzhen will debut tomorrow.
Chapter 37 Encounter
Jiang Yuexuan stopped Ye Xu's actions: "Encounter tickets can only be used to encounter UR cards in the current dimension. If there is no second UR candidate in the current dimension, the encounter ticket will be wasted."
"Huh?" Ye Xu was immediately deflated. He felt that there might not be another UR in this world, since Xuan Jie had appeared.
Fortunately, Jiang Yuexuan was a seasoned veteran with plenty of experience, and she knew how to solve this problem. She told Ye Xu to negotiate with the system; they had wasted so much money on the system, so giving them some special treatment wasn't unreasonable, was it?
Ye Xu immediately understood what Sister Xuan meant, and turned to the system and said, "We don't ask for much, just tell us how many URs there are in each plane."
Once you know the quantity, you can use the employee coupons more effectively.
The system wasn't surprised by these two's ability to seize opportunities; they'd create them even when none existed, let alone now that they'd actually put in so much effort. Reluctantly, it added a notification to the encounter tickets, so that when using them, a quantity notification would pop up first, asking if the system wanted to use the tickets.
Ye Xu took one out to try it out and indeed saw a prompt box displaying the number "1". There's still a UR card waiting to be contracted in this dimension, not bad luck.
After using the Encounter Ticket, a guide arrow appeared on Ye Xu's panel, telling him where to go to find the UR card.
Ye Xu stared at the arrow for a long time before saying, "Can't you just tell me the destination directly? If the target is far away, am I supposed to follow the arrow and walk across half of China?"
arrow:"……"
That seemed to make sense. A moment later, a large map appeared before Ye Xu's eyes; it was a map of China. The location belonging to Sichuan Province was specially marked. Then the map zoomed in, turning into a map of the province's territory, and Tianfu City was marked.
Ye Xu quickly took out his phone and started typing to record the information: a certain district, a certain street, a certain residential area, a certain building, a certain city in Tianfu City, Sichuan Province. The large map disappeared after he finished writing it down, but the arrow remained, probably to prevent him from getting lost later.
"In Sichuan Province, which is quite far from here." Ye Xu remembered that he was in Jiangsu Province, which really was halfway across China. "Do I have any identification documents? Can I take a plane or motor vehicle?"
Although the system handled the tax payment procedures for him, the taxes were all deducted and remitted by the system without his intervention. In fact, Ye Xu did not have any identification documents, and he suspected that his travel was restricted.
Jiang Yuexuan was probably the only one among them with an ID card, but she couldn't go alone, could she? Ye Xu, as the store manager, couldn't be absent.
As for using one's power to help Ye Xu get an ID card, that's something you can only read about in novels; it's not that easy in reality.
"Or you could drive there yourself," Jiang Yuexuan suggested after thinking for a moment.
Ye Xu opened the map app and checked the driving time. It would take about 20 hours, which was quite a long time, but there was no other way.
“Xiaoyu can teleport,” Ye Xu suddenly thought of this. “But it can only be used once. Once she’s there, she’ll have to find a way back herself.”
They weren't actually in a rush; they could drive there at their own pace, treating the journey like a road trip. With the robot butler at the mall, there was no need to worry about operational issues when they left. The only question was whether the store manager could stay too far from the mall.
Jiang Yuexuan said, "The store manager's travel will not be affected. You can go wherever you want."
"None of us have driver's licenses," Ye Xu reminded her, meaning that Xuan-jie would have to drive alone.
Jiang Yuexuan didn't take it seriously: "Just hire two more drivers, and that'll be fine."
As the two were discussing, the system suddenly popped up: "It is not advisable for outsiders to know about this trip, nor is it advisable for it to be detected by surveillance cameras."
Ye Xu immediately realized something was amiss: "What do you mean?"
The system remained silent; the only backdoor it could open for Ye Xu was a reminder, and it couldn't say anything more.
It's not that it doesn't want to, but the world's will in this plane is watching it, preventing it from interfering too much. It has a cooperative relationship with the world's will, and it wouldn't be good to break off relations and do as it pleases.
Ye Xu looked at Jiang Yuexuan, who shook her head, indicating that she didn't know either.
Even with her greater experience, she had never encountered such a problem. Her initial encounter tickets had all gone smoothly without any mishaps; after all, the number of tickets was limited, and encountering special circumstances was rare.
Ye Xu was a good boy who listened to advice easily. He knew the saying "no zuo no die" and immediately took the system's words to heart. Based on this reminder, he also deduced several possible scenarios.
“There must be something wrong with UR Card. He/She might be being monitored. We need to take him/her away without letting anyone know it was us. Using Xiaoyu's skill to go there is the best solution, but how to get back after that is a problem.”
Jiang Yuexuan nodded in agreement: "If all else fails, we can hide for a while and leave when things calm down. But there's a problem here. If the enemy is very powerful, we might not be able to hide."
The two exchanged a glance and simultaneously thought of the items in the system's shop.
Although they lacked teleportation devices, they had disguises. Changing their height, build, and appearance was no problem. When they arrived, they were teleported directly to a blind spot in the surveillance system, and emerged looking completely different. After taking the person to the blind spot, they would change their appearance again and blend into the crowd to leave.
“Then we’ll have to choose a place with lots of people and lots of eyes.” Ye Xu was actually better at this than Jiang Yuexuan. He was a commoner who had spent his childhood wandering the streets and alleys, and had encountered many hooligans. He had some skills in counter-surveillance.
In stark contrast to him, Jiang Yuexuan was a wealthy heiress. Even if she had made a special effort to learn about her, she could only grasp the surface of things. The Jiang family wasn't involved in organized crime; the family was large and influential, and no one would bother targeting a daughter like Jiang Yuexuan who wasn't part of the family business.
This matter couldn't be discussed by just the two of them, so Ye Xu quickly gathered everyone together.
After listening, Mo Bei asked in confusion, "Didn't you say before that this country is well-managed? How come from what you're saying, it sounds like there are evil groups that monitor and imprison people?"
"There's no way to guarantee that these kinds of things won't happen at all, right? The country is so big, with such a large population, there will always be some bad apples." Han Yingchen was quite realistic.
Ye Xu paused, unsure how to respond. After a moment's hesitation, he whispered, "Don't forget, our interdimensional shop can't withstand scrutiny. We'll have to remove the people from this dimension later."
Even if the people eyeing the UR card don't have that much power, they can still be tracked down using surveillance cameras. For example, they can report someone missing under the guise of a relative or friend, which will definitely lead to an investigation, and surveillance footage can be easily accessed.
Therefore, to reduce trouble, Ye Xu suggested taking the people to scenic spots or other locations where activities are held. The flow of people in those areas is terrifying every minute. If a section of the road is missing surveillance footage, and they change their appearance along the way, it will be difficult for others to compare the entrance and exit surveillance footage to find out which people appeared out of thin air.
Once they've gone far enough, they can change their identities a few more times and rush back here. Or they can simply not come back at all and leave this world when the time comes.
"We can't just pick them up and leave; the mall will close as well. Having the same time on both sides is too conspicuous and easily leads to speculation," Luna said seriously.
Ye Xu and Jiang Yuexuan both fell silent for a moment.
"Am I wrong?" Luna asked, puzzled.
"That makes sense, but you've overlooked one thing."
"What?"
“There are tens of millions of shops across the country, and many close down every day. It’s not surprising that one of our shopping malls is closing down.”
Luna was stunned for a moment. As a country bumpkin from a Western fantasy world, she had indeed overlooked the economic prosperity of the current plane.