Chapter 182: Out of Stock

Two hours after Cao Mao had a meeting with Qiang Han, Ma Moxi and Pang Lingming visited the local market. As Cao Mao had predicted, they visited a shop to gather necessary ingredients for special pills and spiritual liquor that Ma Moxi was planning to make.

Per Ma Ping's order, Pang Lingming came to help Ma Moxi deal with the local merchants, so the elder could haggle with the local shop owners to get cheaper pill ingredients.

The first shop they visited was a store of Ma Moxi's friend, Tang Merchant Guild.

When Ma Moxi showed up at the front door of the guild, many employees and store clerks glanced at him with the corner of their eyes in disgust. They didn't think that the infamous good-for-nothing grandson of Ma Ping would buy anything in the store other than borrowing their young master's money to either gamble or buy women again.

A minute after their arrival, a morbidly obese young man, aka the eldest son of the Tang Merchant's guild master, ran toward his best friend. His jiggling belly bounced as he ran. Fortunately, he had a bit of cultivation strength. Or else, he would have passed out from the full-speed sprinting for 10 seconds with over 300kg of body weight.

Tang Fan's round oily face was glittering under the sunlight. His robes were too small to be covered by his clothes even though the size was XXXL. His sweat and his body odor had the same scent as a rotten pig, but Ma Moxi and the guild employees got used to it.

"Moxi! What's up? Wanna go somewhere with me today?" Tang Fan laughed and patted his jiggling belly.

Looking at this fat friend, Ma Moxi laughed. His pretty smiling face dazzled female employees for a moment, "Fatty Fan, I'm here for a business today. I'm not playing around this time."

"Oh? Really?" Tang Fan widened his eyes, switching to the businessman mode.

Although Tang Fan often hung around Ma Moxi, he was still a talented businessman. Every spirit stone he spent so far was the money that he had earned himself, so his reputation was not as bad as Ma Moxi's. On the opposite, everyone in his family approved him since he was an adult, unlike Ma Moxi who was still leeching his declining family.

"Are you here to buy something?"

"Yes. Senior Pang, can you give him the list?"

Pang Lingming handed a scroll to Tang Fan. It was the list of Ma Moxi's pill and spirit liquor ingredients, which required basic herbs that could be easily found in any marketplace.

"Plum mushroom, wailing jay flowers, pooping grasses, red salmon's dongs… hmm?"

Tang Fan's face twisted as he found something odd about the list. He turned toward Ma Moxi, "I'm sorry, buddy. I can't sell you anything."

Pang Lingming and Ma Moxi looked at each other in confusion. These items were always discarded or given away as cheap presents since they could be found anywhere, including the side roads. These oversupplied materials never ran out of stock for centuries after human cultivators migrated to this continent.

"Why, Tang Fan?"

The fat merchant sighed, "The Qiang Clan contacted my father and bought everything. You guys are an hour late."

"Huh? The Qiang Clan?"

"Yeah. They bought everything with a marked-up price. My father couldn't refuse the offer, and he sold everything."

"…"

Ma Moxi and Pang Lingming were shocked. They didn't know why the Qiang Clan wanted these materials since they also had several tons of them in their clan.

Something was fishy.

"Tang Fan, can you import these items from other cities? Your guild has several branches in other cities, right?"

Tang Fan had a wry smile on his face, "The Qiang Clan also reserved all herbs and ingredients in the list."

"Wait, how many catties are they reserving?"

"All of them."

"What!? All of them!?"

"Yeah, everything."

"As far as I know, there should be over a million catties! Are you sure they reserve all of them!?"

"Yeah, all of them. My father even raised the price by 50%, but they insisted on buying everything."

"…"

Ma Moxi's face darkened, and his brain stopped working for a moment. This development caught him off guard. Because of the pressure of the upcoming auction event, he got nervous if he would fail to meet his grandfather's expectations.

After a minute of quick thinking, Ma Moxi came up with a few solutions, "Do you know if the black market is still selling these items?"

"Doubt it. Since the Qiang Clan is adamant about hoarding these items, they should already have extended their hands to the slum by now. All local shops are probably cleaned as well."

"Ha!" Instead of getting irritated by the Qiang Clan's action, Ma Moxi snickered. He had an idea to obtain these ingredients, "Tang Fan, do you have a map?"

"What do you need it for?"

"Just give me one. If I can't buy these materials, I can just collect them from the wild."

"Hahaha! That's right. Give me a second. I'll tell my men to fetch one for you!"

.

Ma Moxi left the Tang Merchant Guild, but he didn't come out empty-handed.

The protagonist got a region map, which displayed the location of all northwest continent cities. The map also revealed small rivers and main roads, which showed potential transportation routes between cities.

After getting the map, Ma Moxi sent Pang Lingming to check the slum district and the black market if they still had the ingredients. As for him, he strolled to the Qiang Clan's merchant house to survey.

Ma Moxi went to the same building that Cao Mao had visited earlier. He asked for the same herbs.

"I'm sorry. The herbs on the list have been sold out."

"Ho? Sold out?"

Ma Moxi was amused. The Qiang Clan proactively bought all herbs from his friend's store, but their shop also had nothing to sell.

'They're up to something. Are they planning to hoard all basic products to jack up the price? That's impossible, you moron. There will be more supplies to the market soon, and you can't increase the standard price! You all will lose money. What a bunch of idiots.'

After confirming that the Qiang Clan was hoarding all the ingredients, Ma Moxi thought of the upcoming auction event, which Tang Fan's father would hold in a month. From his perspective, he thought that the Qiang Clan might be aiming to increase the average price of all herbs, but their plan was doomed to fail.

Ma Moxi left the Qiang Clan and exited the city in secret. He went out to gather wild herbs and ingredients from the wild. Also, he planned to rob the Qiang Clan and their merchant caravans, hoping to get something for free.

.

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Evening, the same day

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A hundred spatial rings were gathered in front of Cao Mao, who was staying in the Qiang's clan guest courtyard.

Qiang Han was efficient. He dispatched 5th-stage elders as errand boys, bringing spatial rings with all requested products with haste.

Normally, Qiang Han used 4th-stage soldiers to transport goods from cities to cities. However, the urgency required him to deploy 5th-stage elders to be the product bodyguards.

The result was satisfactory. Nobody dared to obstruct these elders as no sane 3rd-rate bandits would dare to find trouble with these flying old men. All cargo was brought here intact.

In the end, Cao Mao spent 15,000 refined stones, which almost depleted his backup cash. He wanted to use the refined demonic stones as a currency as well, but these cultivators didn't accept them since they couldn't cultivate demonic Qi.

"Alright. I have everything. Thank you for such quick delivery."

"That was nothing. I hope we can continue doing business."

Qiang Han didn't care what Cao Mao would do to these common herbs. He only cared about profits and money that Cao Mao could shower him.

Rich stupid customers were the best customers. There was no point in backstabbing or robbing this youth since he could come back to spend more money.

.

.

Cao Mao came back to the Ma Clan's inn at night.

The investment today was huge. It depleted most of his cash, but Cao Mao had a way to make money. After all, he had been practicing alchemy for almost a year in the Isolation Training Space.

The system shop had updated after Cao Mao completed all tutorial quests. It sold various pill recipes from low-grade to high-grade. Of course, he had already bought all available recipes.

Still, it usually took hours to complete one batch of pills, and each batch consumed only a set of ingredients. With the time-consuming processes, no alchemist could use the ingredients in these 100 spatial rings, which contained several tons of herbs.

But Cao Mao had one cheat that could turn all these ingredients into pills within less than a few minutes.

Ding

Mass-Production Menu

Available Pills and Medicines

100% Success Rate - Orc Strength Pill

100% Success Rate – Superior Orc Strength Pill

100% Success Rate – Wood Spirit Pill

100% Success Rate – Yang Gu Pill

72% Success Rate – Grain Pill

27% Success Rate – Wood Corn Pill

100% Success Rate - Low-grade Healing Pill

95% Success Rate - Medium-grade Healing Pill

54% Success Rate - Low-grade Refreshment Pill

62% Success Rate – Low-grade Poison Pill

Currently, the pills that Cao Mao could make was not many. However, he could instantly mass-produce them with the auto-mode.

Orc Strength Pill was something that Cao Mao made when he was at the Myriad Cauldron Sect. As for the rest of the pills, Cao Mao mastered it the hard way by concocting 1,000 perfect-graded pills 1,000 times in a row.

Grain Pill, Wood Corn Pill, and Medium-grade Healing Pill were the new items that Cao Mao made from the system recipes. So far, Cao Mao still had a long way to go before he could perfect his skills in making these pills.

Three additional unique pills were also added to the list –Wood Spirit Pill, Superior Orc Strength Pill, and Yang Gu Pill.

Similar to what happened to the Orc Strength Pill, these three pills were mutated products, which Cao Mao accidentally made when he tried to make normal pills.

Wood Spirit Pill mutated from Wood Corn Pill. It was more potent than the original. Not only could it give the consumer wood Qi, but it could also increase the consumer's compatibility with wood elements.

Superior Orc Strength Pill came from medium grade healing pills, which was the only medium-grade pill that Cao Mao could make as the ingredient variation and concoction process barely changed.

As for the last mutated pill, it appeared when Cao Mao was making poison pills. The Yang Gu Pill contained rampaging yang Qi, which contained the discarded impurity of Cao Mao's life essence.

Once consumed, it would spread Qi strands into the victim's body, disguising as pure energy. These energy strands would enter the victim's muscular system and skeleton system. Afterward, it would enter an incubation period for two weeks. Then, on the 15th day, it would melt the victim's bones and muscle, turning them into liquid.

And now, Cao Mao had enough ingredients to mass-produce a million pills with the auto-mass-production mode.

"System, make me wood spirit pills, superior orc strength pills, and yang gu pills with everything I have!"

Ding

[Are you sure? You will make 98,588 wood spirit pills, 613,010 superior orc strength pills, and 571,551 yang gu pills. This hotel room will not be able to contain everything.]

"Yikes. Fine. Let's make 1,000 at a time. How many items can I stack in the system inventory slots?"

[You can stack over a million of the same items in one slot.]

"Eh, then. Can you transfer the completed pills to the system inventory directly?"

[Yes.]

"I change my mind. Transfer all completed items to my system inventory. Make wood spirit pills with every available ingredient first!"

[Understood.]

While sitting and resting in the Ma Clan's inn, Cao Mao began mass-producing pills.

Cao Mao wanted to keep the wood spirit pills for his family members, so he would not sell these pills in the auction house. As for the other two unique pills, he would slowly release them to the market to spike the demands first.

Still, these three types of pills were not the only items that Cao Mao wanted to sell. He went to sleep early, so he could start concocting other pills that he had never tried, hoping to create more new mutated pills.

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