Chapter One Hundred: Subjugation

Hathaway lit up at once. An extraordinary item worth five million apiece was simply too good a bargain.

“I’ll take two first.”

With that, she selected two contaminated items from the bag with great care. As a witch, she was the best suited to using such objects; even merely holding them could bring out some measure of their power.

Under Matong’s envious gaze, Hathaway spent eighteen million in succession, buying two extraordinary items, three magic stones, and a quantity of spirit rice.

The entire transaction was astonishingly swift. In barely more than ten minutes, Hathaway had taken the goods and left. As she departed, Matong even heard her say, “I always keep cash on hand, but I only prepared ten million. Can I transfer the remaining eight million?”

Qin Jing did not give it much thought and readily agreed, merely handing her an account number and letting her remit the payment later.

“You trust her that much? That’s eighteen million,” Matong could not help asking Qin Jing after Hathaway had gone. For all that he was a supernatural being himself, he had never laid eyes on so much money. After all, the authorities still held a certain degree of suppressive power and would not let supernatural beings run wild.

Qin Jing smiled and said offhandedly, “It’s only eighteen million. Just a small deal.”

Only? Small?

Matong felt a vein twitching at his temple, yet he had no way to vent his frustration.

Perhaps, to this big shot of supernatural level four, it really was only a matter of “just” and “small”? Matong thought with envy.

Then, the next moment, a thought suddenly struck him, and his heart began to pound. He hurried closer to Qin Jing and asked softly, “Mr. Qin, can I buy these things from you as well?”

Seeing Qin Jing turn his gaze toward him, Matong quickly explained, “I don’t dare hope for the same treatment as that Lady Hathaway. I don’t mind paying a higher price for what you sell me.”

Those spirit rice grains were something not even Ma Junshan had access to. If he could buy some, then resell part of them, he could recover his costs, and eat the rest himself to increase his own spiritual energy. That was the idea that had suddenly occurred to Matong just now.

Qin Jing smiled. He thought to himself that this fellow had some brains after all; he had even been wondering how best to guide him.

“Oh? Sell to you?”

Matong looked at Qin Jing pleadingly. There was no trace left of resentment; instead, he was full of flattery, nodding repeatedly.

“That works. I’ll give you a daily purchase limit of ten jin of spirit rice, at twenty thousand per jin.”

“But there are two things you need to know in advance. First, in my shop, payment must be made in old banknotes or gold. Second, all goods are subject to limited purchase. Can you manage that?”

Hearing this, Matong was so excited he felt tears nearly welling up, and he nodded at once. “Don’t worry, I’ll absolutely do as instructed.”

“There’s one more thing. If you want to take my goods and resell them elsewhere…”

At this, Matong’s heart immediately tightened. If there were rules against reselling, then he would truly have no way forward; he simply could not get that much money on his own.

“It’s not impossible, but you must tell me in advance.”

Qin Jing looked at Matong with a smile that was not quite a smile. “When one opens a shop, who would complain about too much business? But my goods are limited, and their prices must also be controlled. If you sell them too high, it damages my credibility as a merchant. So you may only sell them at the price I set.”

“Of course, if you tell me in advance, I can give you a middleman commission. Even the people you introduce, so long as they complete a transaction, will earn you a certain cut. You are not my first intermediary, and the shop already has strict rules in this regard...”

Matong stared at Qin Jing in dumbfounded silence. It felt as if everything he could think of, and everything he could not think of, had already been arranged in advance by this man. What was more, after hearing Qin Jing lay out those rules and commissions one by one, Matong was actually tempted. This was essentially an authorized dealer. With genuine authorization, who would want to be a scalper?

Qin Jing took Matong back to the shop, introduced him to Susan, and even produced a contract for him.

It was an employment contract. Once Matong signed it, he would become the sales manager employed by Qin Jing, responsible for helping sell the shop’s “merchandise.” Of course, there was no base salary and no guarantee. The only benefit was this: for every twenty items sold, one item could be taken as a reward.

Even so, Matong thanked him profusely, signed the agreement, and then spent more than an hour gathering together two hundred thousand in bits and pieces, which he brought over to buy ten jin of spirit rice first, intending to go out and sell it.

“How did you think of making him the sales manager? Is he really reliable?” Susan asked with some concern when Matong had left and came to stand beside Qin Jing.

Qin Jing lay comfortably in the reclining chair, one hand around Susan’s slender waist while the other roamed mischievously without restraint, smiling as he said, “Matong is a true petty villain. I certainly don’t trust him. But I can keep him in line, and I can give him profit. Under those circumstances, there’s no need to worry about him betraying me.”

“Don’t underestimate a local snake like him. Today, there are a great many supernatural beings around here. I can guarantee you that Matong knows at least eighty percent of them. Think about it: for the sake of his own profit, would he contact those people? And once they learn that I have spirit rice here, would those supernatural beings come to buy it or not? How many supernatural beings are there in all of Cold Sea? If each of them purchases even at a price of ten thousand per jin, what sort of volume of sales would that create? Right now, I’m actually worried my spirit rice may not be enough.”

Susan was stunned. “Surely not?”

In truth, Qin Jing’s prediction was remarkably accurate.

Half an hour later, Matong returned alone. This time he brought five hundred thousand in old banknotes and told Qin Jing that he wanted to open an account here, so that whenever he got old cash, he could deposit it, and the payment for any goods he took would be directly deducted from the account.

Then Matong took away another ten jin of spirit rice.

An hour later still, Matong deposited one million. This time, he directly took away a magic stone.

By evening, Matong simply brought two other people with him to Qin Jing’s shop.

“Brother Qin, let me introduce them to you. This is the independent cultivator Zou Yichen, one of the best-known level-three powerhouses in our new district. And this is Zheng Shoucheng, a major shareholder in the Zheng Family Chamber of Commerce. The Zheng Family Chamber of Commerce can also be considered one of the leading family enterprises in Cold Sea.”

Zou Yichen was around fifty years old, with a rather unappealing face covered in acne. Though he was only a freelance cultivator, he spoke with considerable force. According to Matong’s introduction, he was among the more respected independents in this area.

As for Zheng Shoucheng, he was a man in his thirties. In appearance, he bore some resemblance to the Zheng sisters, as if they might be relatives. Qin Jing naturally knew nothing of Qin Jing’s past, but Matong’s introduction of Zheng Shoucheng was extremely detailed in private. He said Zheng Shoucheng was currently at a critical juncture, advancing from supernatural level two to level three. If he succeeded, he would gain control over important power within the Zheng Family Chamber of Commerce. That meant a great deal of resources had gathered in his hands; in plain terms, he was loaded.

The two of them were Matong’s “friends,” and they had come after hearing his “promotion” to purchase “extraordinary items.”