Zhu Zi and his soldiers loaded three large carts with copper coins and completed the handover with Luoluota.
Luoluota turned and ran to the clerk: "Hehehe, look, how much tax I need to pay, I won't miss a single copper coin."
The clerk took the ledger and calculated for a while, then looked up at Luoluota.
"A total of 233,200 wen. With a ten percent tax rate, you should pay 23,320 wen."
"For large transactions, Governor Liu has granted tax preferential treatment."
"So, I'll round it down for you. Just pay twenty-three guan."
"Hey, hey, hey! Good, I'll get it for you right away."
Luoluota happily counted out twenty-three guan from the cart full of copper coins and placed them at the clerk's feet.
This was also why Fang Er insisted on trading within the market.
Once you've made money, it's impossible to take it all with you.
The convoy transporting the fluorite was led by Zhu Zi's men towards the Taihe River.
Luoluota left a team to guard the copper coins, and then he began to wander around the market himself.
When he came, Balemenggan had also given him a task to purchase supplies.
He just didn't know if they could buy what they wanted with these two hundred guan.
Only Fang Er remained in the shop. After thinking for a moment, he went up to the third floor.
Then he began to take things out of his spatial storage.
Blue pills, Maotai, Mendunlu, lollipops, jeans, cigarettes, Cefazolin, Ibuprofen.
A messy pile of items filled the nearly two hundred square meter room on the third floor.
He took out paper and a pen, wrote the price for each item, and then closed the door and returned to his mansion.
He called over the maids Bing and Xue and gave them the price list.
"There's nothing else going on at home, how about you two go manage the business in the market?"
They had come with Chai Yue and, when they were idle on the estate, they attended classes. Reading a price list was not a problem for them.
The two maids blushed, their hands nervously fidgeting.
"When the young lady is not here, it's so awkward facing the master."
Suddenly realizing, Fang Er was asking them to manage the business outside. Bing'er looked surprised.
"Master, this servant has never done this before, I'm afraid I won't do well."
"Hahahaha, what are you afraid of? The master will send some people to help you. If anyone is unwise, just break their legs and throw them out."
In Liaodong, anyone who dared to offend Fang Er was simply courting death.
After speaking, Fang Er picked up the walkie-talkie and asked Zhang Tian to send a squad to guard the shop.
The two maids kept looking back at Fang Er as they walked away, their eyes filled with a sense of "the wind howls and the Yi River is cold."
Watching their retreating figures, Fang Er thought for a moment and also walked outside.
Xue'er looked back and saw Fang Er chasing after them. Her face lit up, and she stopped in her tracks.
When Fang Er reached them, she bashfully asked, "Does the master miss this servant?"
Fang Er was stunned: "Uh, I'm going out to do something."
Then he shook his head and left. "This girl, what is she thinking? Am I that kind of person!"
Xue'er's face was filled with embarrassment and disappointment. Bing'er snickered and poked her in the ribs.
"You little vixen, you dare to seduce the master?"
Xue'er covered her face, utterly mortified!
Fang Er was indeed going out on business; he was heading to the workshop, but it just happened to be on the same route as Xue'er and the others.
In the workshop, the craftsmen were still replicating the lathes. The new lathes were placed aside, only lacking tooling to be put into use.
Tooling would require materials for making tools, which would be smelted after other grassland tribes delivered their mineral resources. Thus, they could only wait.
He called Zhao Gang aside and asked about the situation at the Taihe River.
Zhao Gang was the overall head of the workshop, and someone reported the situation to him every day.
"Your Excellency, the calcination furnace over there is completed. The cofferdam and the water channel for power generation are still under construction, and it will likely take about a month before they can be used."
"The road from the iron mine to over there is also being built, and it will also take about a month. It can't be helped, the work is actually quite fast. As long as you are willing to spend money, many people will rush to do the work."
"However, the curing of cement is a time-consuming process, and it cannot be rushed."
Fang Er calculated that it would take a month here, while road construction in Qingzhou would take at least two to three months, given that it was a hundred li of road.
Since he was idle anyway, he might as well train some troops for fun. This way, his chances of winning against other system hosts in the future would be greater.
Of course, this training would not be ordinary.
First, he had Zhang Tian fly a helicopter to Qingzhou to pick up Wu Yong.
Then, the four division commanders sat together, and Fang Er issued a task to select elite soldiers.
From the four divisions excluding the Sixth (Artillery) Division, each division was to select three hundred elite soldiers.
Then they would undergo unified training.
The difficulty of this training was greater than that of the previous individual division training.
Fang Er left with the twelve hundred elite "Tianhuo Soldiers" selected over five days.
For a full two months, no one knew where they had gone, and afterwards, none of these Tianhuo Soldiers revealed what had happened during that time.
Upon their return, out of the twelve hundred soldiers, seventy-three were directly incapacitated and could no longer return to the combat sequence of the Tianhuo Army. They could only perform logistical work. Some damage was unavoidable under such high-intensity training.
In the mansion, looking at the remaining six hundred elite soldiers, Fang Er gave them an order, an unbelievable order.
"In three days, assassinate the five division commanders! The time limit is five days!"
"This is your first assessment. Don't think you're qualified just because you lasted this month."
"You are still far from what I require!"
"Half of you will still be eliminated! Prepare yourselves."
The six hundred soldiers saluted in unison: "We guarantee to complete the mission!"
Fang Er had never held back during the month of intensive training.
Twenty kilograms of weight, fifty kilometers of cross-country, required to be completed within nine hours.
For shooting, a single shot accuracy at three hundred meters was required.
Extreme endurance: seventy-two hours without food or water was required.
On top of these, there were combat exercises.
The twelve hundred soldiers were randomly divided into two teams.
Wilderness survival and encirclement.
Positional warfare, ambush, surprise attacks, and so on.
In short, Fang Er utilized all the methods he had seen in the army in his previous life. These more than a thousand people were tormented as if they were dying and coming back to life during these two months.
The soldiers who were eliminated first were directly transferred to become examiners.
Their failure made them particularly harsh towards the soldiers who were still undergoing training.
One sentence could explain this: "What I can't get, you can't get either!"
This was the primary psychological state of most failures.
Therefore, as the training progressed, the difficulty increased because there were more examiners!
Zhu Zi and the others who received Fang Er's notification were stunned.
"What's going on? The soldiers selected from under our command are now going to assassinate us?"
"This is too ridiculous!"
But orders were orders. They had no choice but to prepare thoroughly. If they were actually decapitated, they would be utterly shamed.