Castle of Black Iron

The headquarters of Long Wind Business Group was located in a 300-m skyscraper in a prosperous area of Yiyang City. The entire building was like a sailboat. The building was covered with sparkling reinforced glass walls. It was beautifully shaped and was the landmark of this region.

Being directly affiliated with the Zhang clan, Long Wind Business Group not only reached each corner of Huaiyuan Prefecture but also in the entire Waii Sub-continent. It was qualified to rank top 20 in Waii Sub-continent.

The total asset of Long Wind Business Group was 3.8 billion gold coins. It’s business scope covered banking, insurance, industry and mining, shipping, manufacturing, port, overseas trading, munition, daily goods, medicine, traffic, navigation and armed employment.

The business group employed 870,000 people directly. It owned the largest armed fleet across the Waii Sub-continent. Meanwhile, it was the largest military supplier across Waii Sub-continent. The rune weapons sold by Long Wind Business Group occupied 1/8 of the high-end military products market across the Waii Sub-continent. Additionally, the battle crossbows produced by Zhang clan of Huaiyuan Palace and sold by Long Wind Business Group monopolized above 70% of the high-end battle crossbows market in Waii Sub-continent.

Zhang’s crossbows were well-known around the world. All the warriors and fighters who took battle crossbows as weapons knew Huaiyuan Palace’s battle crossbows. Many of them were proud of having a advanced battle crossbow produced by Huaiyuan Palace.

From some perspective, Long Wind Business Group was an epitome and tentacle of Zhang clan of Huaiyuan Palace to the outside world.

To manage such a huge business empire, the headquarter of Long Wind Business Group had to collect and analyze information from everywhere.

The headquarter of Long Wind Business Group was matched with the largest crystal remote-sensing communication center, which contained over 1000 staff. In each second, messages from across the Waii Sub-continent would be collected here through communication nodes, enabling the headquarters of the Long Wind Business Group to master the latest news from all aspects like a big invisible net.

The news being collected here included latest prices of commodities, business opportunities, special events, changing ruling powers and all the other economical, political, cultural and social dynamic information from wherever the agencies of Long Wind Business Group were located.

The news that Zhang Tie customized 10,000 vials of medicament was also received by Long Wind Business Group late on May 23rd.

The message being received through crystal remote-sensing communication was a series of remote-sensing communication codes composed of signals of different duration. This message was first passed to the communication center of the headquarter. After that, a remote-sensing message receiver on a communication position recorded the signals and sent back a receipt before giving the record paper to the examiner on his side.

Although it was already in the late night, staff in the Remote-Sensing Communication Center of the headquarter were still very busy. After checking the codes a few seconds, the examiner found no problem with it. He then rapidly took that recording paper to the Decoding Center of the Communication Center.

”News from Hidden Dragon Island; it’s sent through Fengxin B LV 3 cryptographic codes, please decode it as soon as possible!”

Soon after taking the recording paper, the staff in the Decoding Center had already translated the information. It was only one common sentence.

”Zhang Tie, a student of Breaking-Heavens Department registers his exclusive symbol of medicament and orders 10,000 vials of medicament at once. He says that he will purchase another great batch of vials in a short period. He estimates that the further purchase would not be less than 100,000 vials! Given his abnormal order, please pay special attention to him!”

After decoding this sentence, the staff didn’t waste any time; instead, he directly passed this message to the Information Center. The moment the staff of the Information Center received this information, he had stored this message in the super brain over there.

The super brain of the information center of Long Wind Business Group was a Xuanyuan 7-type large-scale steam-driven computer from the East Continent. It contained 154,000 computing gears and parts with super high precision, which weighed 513 tons in total. The perimeter of its computing gears could circle twice around Yiyang City. The entire steam-driven computer consisted of three functions, namely computing, storage and input/output. Additionally, it could output message through printing, mapping and card. In this age, undoubtedly, such a set of steam-driven computers represented the top achievement of human beings in machinery manufacturing.

Only a few minutes after Zhang Tie’s message was input into the storage equipment of this steam-driven computer, a information analyst of the Information Center had discovered 3 intelligence information chains concerning ”Zhang Tie” and ”All-purpose medicament” that Long Wind Business Group had received in these days from the intelligence associative feedback output from the steam-driven computer.

The earliest message was sent from manager Zhang of the Long Wind Pearl Field on the Hidden Dragon Island——Zhang Tie, a student from Breaking-Heavens Department can produce a special solution which is of great effect to rheumatism, arthritis and gastric ulcer. It is of great medical function and promotion value. Manager Zhang suggested the business group to dispatch someone to negotiate with Zhang Tie so as to purchase the secret knowledge of Zhang Tie’s special solution or directly cooperate with him. After mass production, the business group will promote the solution to the market through the channels of the business group for mutual benefit.

The second intelligence arrived a couple of days later than the first one. It was sent from the Hidden Dragon Palace——Zhang Tie, a student from Breaking-Heavens Department had produced the all-purpose medicament which had passed the medical effect test of master Su Yun, it’s medical effect is as follows...

The third intelligence was just received——Zhang Tie, a student of Breaking-Heavens Department registers his exclusive symbol of medicament and orders 10,000 vials of medicament at once. He says that he will purchase another great batch of vials in a short period. He estimates that the further purchase would not be less than 100,000 vials! Given his abnormal order, please pay special attention to him!”

When manager Zhang sent the first intelligence, he didn’t know that Zhang Tie was producing the super enzyme, namely the all-purpose medicament. However, the second message from Hidden Dragon Palace justified the real status of Zhang Tie’s solution. Today’s message then indicated that Zhang Tie would push his all-purpose medicament into the market.

If not the quantity of the vials that Zhang Tie customized, the value of the three messages were not great to the Long Wind Business Group at all.

For super powers like Long Wind Business Group, it didn’t lack cooperation with alchemists. Even though Long Wind Business Group and Zhang clan cultivated alchemists themselves. These alchemists were all excelled in making various medicaments; some of them could even produce advance medicaments.

Although Zhang Tie’s all-purpose medicament had various marvelous effects, most of which were based on human beings’ physiological functions. According to the strictest standards on dividing medicaments adopted by the Alchemists’ Association, those all-purpose medicaments produced by Zhang Tie could only rank LV E and LV D. It was more effective than LV 1 antidote; additionally, it owned many other effects which were a bit dwarfed than other professional medicaments. This indicated that the price of one vial of this medicament could hardly reach 7-10 gold coins.

Many alchemists won’t even wast time on producing such ”cheap” items. Those who made money by producing LV 1 antidote were all low-level suspending gourd alchemists. When they reached binding-belt alchemists, they would be able to produce more valuable items.

However, every change would finally reach a qualitative change.

If a common suspending gourd alchemist spent all of his efforts and time on producing LV 1 antidote in one year, he could only produce 300-500 vials.

Even senior alchemists like master Suyun could not produce more than 1000 vials of LV 1 antidote in one year. This explained why many senior alchemists didn’t want to produce low-level medicament——they could not gain more profits than producing advanced medicament at the cost of the same time.

For example, if one used an advanced machine tool which could process steam-driven computer’s precision gears to process spades and iron hammers, one would not gain more profits.

However, don’t forget the number of vials of medicament that Zhang Tie customized for the first batch!

10,000 vials, and 100,000 more in the future!

What did this mean? If this was the speed at which Zhang Tie produced the all-purpose medicament, even though merely taking these all-purpose medicaments as a LV 1 antidote, Zhang Tie had already been more efficient than hundreds of suspending-gourd alchemists at producing a LV 1 antidote by working overtime.

Although LV 1 antidote was not expensive, it was also a very significant strategical material like crystal, wheat flour, steel & iron and one of the necessary battle materials that were required by a human army.

In the past half a year, with the gradually intense situation in the Waii Sub-continent, the marketing prices of various medicaments including LV 1 antidote, especially some fundamental strategical materials had grown at least 50%. Many powers had already enlarged and accelerated the storage of ”materials for the winter”

Let alone Huaiyuan Palace, even the entire Jinyun Country had enlarged the purchase of various strategical materials; however, the total quantity of the vials of LV 1 antidote that Jinyun Country stored might not even surpass 100,000.

When the information analyst caught sight of the last one of the three messages concerning Zhang Tie, he almost couldn’t believe his own eyes. How could someone need so many vials of medicaments? After a confirmation, his face instantly changed as he stood up at once and rushed into the director’s office.

Only after two minutes, the director of the Information Center had hurriedly left his office.

Without heading for other managers of the business group, the director directly ascended to floor 99 of the skyscraper using the elevator at the fastest speed and entered the director-on-duty’s office.

...

”You mean that juvenile called Zhang Tie in the Breaking-Heavens Department probably have known how to produce all-purpose medicaments in a large scale?”

In the office of almost 1000 sq meters, a 50-odd-year-old white man seriously asked him with his eyes fixed on the director of the Information Center in an extremely majestic manner.

”That’s it. According to the first message that the manager of the Long Wind Pearl on the Hidden Dragon Island sent, Zhang Tie generously gifted at least 10 kg to the yakshas in the sea and the other staff in the Pearl Field, which was equal to over 100 vials of that medicament. If he could not produce it so easily, how could he gift so much at once?”

”What else?”

”Before that medicament was verified as an all-purpose medicament, Zhang Tie took this thing as a drinking that he drunk a great amount of such a medicament over a long period of time. Judging from the situations and so many vials of medicament that Zhang Tie ordered this time, we could ensure that Zhang Tie had probably mastered the method to produce this medicament on a large scale!”

Standing in front of that man’s desk, the director of the Information Center slightly bent over and answered respectfully.

The 50-odd-year-old man then narrowed his eyes as he tapped the intelligence on the desk slightly while fixing his eyes on the testing data on Zhang Tie’s all-purpose medicament made by master Suyun. He started to be serious.

”Large-scale...” The on-duty director of Long Wind Business Group mumbled slightly as a shred light flashed across his eyes.

Large-scale steel & iron manufacturing capability...large-scale grains production capability...large-scale army...large-scale funds...large-scale massacre...large-scale population...even large-scale ants——Any thing, once being connected with ”large-scale” would form a threatening force.

At this moment, what was behind ”large-scale” was a medicament above LV 1——large-scale all-purpose medicament production...

”It seems that I have to go to the Hidden Dragon Island tomorrow!” The director of Long Wind Business Group replied calmly, ”For so many vials of medicaments that Zhang Tie ordered, the business group had to keep secret. Nobody is allowed to look up the intelligence concerning this without the consent of the director of the Business Group!”

”Yes, sir!” After the reply, the director of the Information Center remembered something, ”Hidden Dragon Island has already sent the news that Zhang Tie registers his exclusive symbol and orders 10,000 vials of the medicament for the first batch to the Alchemists Association of Jinyun Country!”

Hearing this, the director of Long Wind Business Group faintly frowned his forehead...

...

At the same time, two people were talking icily and simply in a gloomy basement.

”Someone on the Hidden Dragon Island of Huaiyuan Palace’s Zhang clan suddenly orders 10,000 vials of medicament with uniformed symbol!”

”10,000 vials? Do we know him?”

”We don’t, a new symbol is used on the vials——Manjusaka!”

”Go check!”

”Yes, sir!”

...