Chapter 4
Bei Qiao: "..." If this wasn't a game, she might just pretend not to be at home because she finds it troublesome.
"Don't pretend you're not home! The plaque on your escort agency's door is up, which means someone's here! Open the door! We're neighbors, so even if we're not open, we should help each other... Oh, no, that sounds a bit like moral kidnapping..." Yu Qian, standing outside the door, raised her hand and gently patted her mouth: "Sorry, wait a moment, I need a little time to reorganize my words."
Bei Qiao: “…”So, it’s troublesome!
Taking a deep breath, Yu Qian paced back and forth at the entrance of the escort agency, muttering softly as she paced, her expression serious and earnest, as if she were attending a job interview: "Hello, Young Escort, I'm here this time to... No, no, it's weird to talk like that, let's start over! Good morning, Young Escort, no, good afternoon. It's our first meeting, let me tell you about the situation here. In exchange, can you open the door for me..."
"Okay." Putting his dominant right hand on the short stick at his waist, Bei Qiao took a look outside through the crack in the door. After confirming that there was only one person outside, he quickly opened the door a crack.
"...I really only have this one request...Huh? What?" Yu Qian, who was still trying to organize her words, suddenly looked up: "Is it hallucination? I just heard her say yes."
"Aren't you going to come in?"
"Come in, come in! Oh my god, we're finally saved!" Yu Qian rushed into the escort agency, then sat down on the ground under Bei Qiao's wary gaze, took out a handkerchief and wiped her sweat frantically: "Miss, you don't know! Life without air conditioning is simply unbearable! Staying indoors at night, even if you don't do anything, you will sweat all over! The paper on the table has wrinkled after dripping with sweat, and the words have become smudged. The few pieces of paper I wrote with great difficulty... Oh, hello, my name is Yu Qian."
"Hello..." Bei Qiao shook her head and closed the door. She took two small stools from the martial arts arena and sat down side by side with Yu Qian. Since they didn't look like bad guests, they should try to be hospitable. Although there were chairs in the warehouse of the small building in the backyard, they were a bit far away. She didn't feel comfortable leaving a stranger alone in her territory.
"Excuse me, is Captain Qiao home? Your car has arrived, please take it!" Just as Bei Qiao was about to tell Yu Qian that his escort agency was currently without transportation and couldn't open for business, there was another knock on the door. At the same time, an email icon suddenly popped up in front of Bei Qiao's eyes, flickered twice, and then automatically expanded into a page of mail.
Bei Qiao: Oh my, the holographic mode is so realistic that I almost forgot I was playing a game.
This letter is sent to players by the system and the content is as follows.
This player:
Hello (please don't ask why we don't call you dear players, really, really don't ask anymore), your escort agency's essential transportation, the carriage, has been delivered to your door, please sign for it.
When you first enter the game, you don't own the tools you need for your profession. You only have the right to use them and must pay for repairs and other related expenses. Please work hard and pay the monthly rental fee. If you are in arrears for more than three months, your carriage will be confiscated (trust me, you don't want to use human labor to transport darts).
The initial carriage comes with the horses, but you can also build your own (if you're skilled enough or have the money to hire the natives). The horses pulling the carriage require care. Players can choose to rent horses from a stable daily, returning them to the stable at night to be cared for. Alternatively, you can collect the horses' rations and care for them at home, then buy them back when you have enough money. The rations are already included in the rental fee.
Finally, "A Different World of Martial Arts" allows players to spend money, but the scope of the money is limited to the backyard, which can be used to improve the player's living conditions (in summary, you can wander around in places that the natives can't see, and try your best to pretend to be a native in places they can see). All career-related items cannot be exchanged for money, so players are requested to work hard (you can trade with the natives, but you cannot trade things that are beyond the historical background. Property and strange objects of unknown origin will bring danger to the players)!
"You can't buy it with money." After reading the letter quickly, Bei Qiao rubbed the holographic helmet and opened the door of the escort agency: Well, I have to think about how to do business. No matter what, I still have to accept the carriage. After all, whether I open an escort agency or not, the carriage is a very important means of transportation.
"Yeah, it's really quite fair and yet so unfair." Hearing that the person outside was there to deliver the carriage, Yu Qian was even more excited than Bei Qiao. She jumped up on the spot and started to take out her wallet: "Don't worry, little sister, I will definitely not delay payment. I have money!"
"Who are you……"
"I'm a storyteller, and I'm pretty good at it... Damn! Why is there a donkey?" Yu Qian suddenly shrank back, her whole body pressed against the door panel of the escort agency.
"Ah--uh!" The little gray donkey shook its ears, turned its head to the side with a nonchalant look, and bit the staff's sleeve: When is dinner?
"Hello, I'm from the stable. This is the carriage you need to take." The driver, wearing an indigo robe, jumped down from the carriage with a flick of his hem. "Here are a donkey and a horse. Please choose one to keep. I'll take the other one back. The donkey will be much cheaper to sell, but the rental price isn't much different."
Patting the horse's neck, the staff member pulled down the wooden sign hanging from his waist and handed it to Bei Qiao: "Here is the price list, please review it. The first month's rent can be delivered to the stable within three months. Please try to pay on time. Although the rent can be delayed for two months, if you default too many times, you will be put on the list of deadbeats."
When we first arrived, we all started from scratch. Although horses are majestic, donkeys are more affordable. To prevent customers from liking horses but finding them too expensive and insisting on a price reduction, the staff always displayed the price before letting people choose.
Send it to the stable instead of collecting the money at the door. Okay, just played the game for a while and I already missed electronic payment... Bei Qiao thought so and took the price list and read it carefully: renting a donkey is 100 coins a month, renting it for a year is discounted to 1 tael; renting a horse is 200 coins a month, renting it for a year is discounted to 2 taels...
"The rent doesn't seem to be much different, but buying this horse costs 20,000 coins," while buying a donkey only costs 3,000 coins, so the difference in value is almost ten times... "By the way, what is the exchange rate between copper coins and silver, and what is the purchasing power of silver?" Although it's only a ten-fold difference, there is still a difference between ten times one hundred yuan and ten times ten thousand yuan.
The staff answered conscientiously: "The calculation method here is that one thousand copper coins can be exchanged for one tael of silver, and ten taels of silver can be exchanged for one tael of gold. One tael of silver can buy two hundred dou of rice here, which is about 1,180 kilograms of rice." Fortunately, the customer this time was a good-tempered and not stupid, unlike the previous one, who was a complete idiot!
"That means one copper coin can buy a little under three kilograms of rice. Three thousand coins is three taels of silver, and twenty thousand coins is twenty taels of silver..." Bei Qiao did a quick calculation. "I don't know the other prices yet, but let's consider the rent. It's one hundred coins a month, so I need to earn at least three hundred copper coins in three months. That has to be pure profit, and there needs to be some extra cash for turnover... But I don't have the initial capital right now, which isn't right." If he were to open a restaurant, Bei Qiao was confident he could start by making some snacks with the flour in the small building and slowly build up capital. But with no idea when the escort agency would open, and transportation costs high, wouldn't it be unreasonable to not provide initial capital?
"We have the initial capital, a total of ten taels of silver. Here's the receipt for the initial capital." The staff member pulled out a palm-sized bronze medal from his sleeve pocket. "For use only with the escort agency."
Bei Qiao accepted the bronze medal with both hands. "Great, thank you. Finally, could you tell me where the horse farm is located?" Having just arrived, Bei Qiao hadn't had time to explore the map. This game was too much like real life; there wasn't even a system map, only the most basic information, leaving players to figure everything out on their own.
"It's at the easternmost end of the village. Just walk along the road in front of the escort agency to the end." The staff member took back the small wooden sign: "Have you made your choice? After you have chosen, I will help you send the carriage in and then untie the other one and take it away." After completing this order, he can go home.
The carriage cannot enter the front door of the escort agency, but there is a side door in the martial arts field at the back, which is next to the guard dog. The entire door is within the attack range of Dudu.
Bei Qiao led the staff in a carriage to the side door and asked them to wait there: "Please wait a moment, I will ask my family for their opinion." As she said that, she opened the side door with the key, rubbed Dudu's head and shouted to the backyard: "Mom! Should we choose a horse or a donkey?"
"Make your own decision! Hurry up and come back for dinner!"
"Okay!"
"Can I touch them? If our personalities match, I'll choose the donkey." The horse is actually better looking and runs faster, but at the moment, the donkey is more cost-effective. After all, she hasn't received any darts that must be delivered to the destination in time by horse.
Moreover, if the temperaments were incompatible, theoretically, training a horse would take longer than training a donkey. An untamed horse couldn't work, and if it took three months to tame it, then the account would be useless.
"I'm not a particularly relatable person, so the chances of picking a donkey are very high."
As Bei Qiao expected, the horse and donkey tied to the cart showed no particular reaction to her. However, to her delight, the little donkey didn't reject her touch, and didn't seem particularly stubborn.
"Please rest assured, the horses and donkeys from the horse farm are still good-tempered." If the means of transportation are unreliable, it will be difficult for everyone to develop outside.
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