Chapter 54 The Return of the Fifty-Four Caravans
The caravan's return journey went more smoothly than Olivia had expected.
We were originally expected to return in late April, but now we are already close to Lavosen in mid-April.
After Letilen left Anko, he sent a clever subordinate, who was lightly equipped and riding a horse, back to Lavosen first and came to Olivia to report the news.
The man's name was Cent, and he was Mrs. Letilan's cousin. When he first arrived at the manor, the housekeeper wondered where this savage came from because he was dirty and smelled bad.
After he mentioned the name, the butler remembered that one of the people trapped in the manor by the heavy snow was this Sente.
The butler was surprised. Is Letilen really that powerful?
He completed the journey in just over a month, which usually took a caravan two months to complete.
They also said that the journey was smooth, there was no loss of goods, and no danger was encountered.
The housekeeper found it incredible and quickly led him into the main house.
Olivia was having breakfast when Sente was led to see her.
The servant prepared fish ball noodle soup, a plate of steamed buns made with leavened dough, filled with jam, and some strong-flavored pickled vegetables.
Olivia listened calmly to Cent's description of the sales process along the way.
"The team will reach Lavosen in another full day. The caravan will arrive at the manor by this time tomorrow."
Olivia nodded, turned around and asked Fanxi to take down the plate of jam and bread on the table to fill Senter's stomach, and asked Fanxi to give him a stool to sit on.
Sente replied from a distance, grovelling and not daring to look up.
I just took a few curious glances at what the lady was eating, but I didn't expect that the lady would notice it.
He smiled sheepishly: "Thank you, ma'am."
Olivia has become accustomed to completing tasks by simply increasing NPC favorability.
If you gather five more NPCs with full-level favorability, the dungeon mission will be completed.
She asked Sente nonchalantly what good goods he had purchased in the south this time, especially the novel ingredients or seeds she had asked Letilen to find.
Sente planned to tell the story in detail and speak well of his elder brother in front of the sponsor.
“In Frankfurt, half of our staff are guarding the goods every day, while the other half are out purchasing.
Following your orders, my eldest brother has told us to find one or two fresh goods in every corner of the market every day, in addition to the items on the shopping list."
The eggplant and okra seeds that Olivia wants can be found in the caravan from the southeast coastal peninsula.
Cent continued, "I also found two kinds of seeds called snake beans and bitter buckwheat in the caravan from the southeast coast. I bought twenty pounds of each."
These two seeds are not widely known and do not seem to meet the rarity requirement.
Therefore, few merchants would be willing to take this kind of seeds.
Olivia nodded. She knew snake beans. They were very productive and could be used to make sauerkraut.
The taste of today's buckwheat has not been improved, and it has a strong flavor. It is completely different from the variety used in buckwheat noodles and is not suitable for consumption.
However, buckwheat husks can be used to make pillows, which are soothing and breathable, and provide better support than wool. Buckwheat also has some benefits for the body.
She then asked Senter if there was anything else special, whether he had found coffee beans, tea leaves or cotton seeds.
Sente shook his head and said that there were no such things as she described. He took the soft bread from Fanxi and took a bite, then said:
“However, we also found two kinds of preserved fruits not found in the north, one is called cherry and the other is red plum. They are both very sweet, especially the cherries pickled in sugar, which have a rich flavor.
There is also a plant called taro that is eaten as a root, and it is said that it can be taken back and planted."
These random and fresh things he found were not for making money, but were specially donated to Olivia. There was a whole car full of more than ten kinds of them.
Olivia listened with satisfaction. It seemed that in addition to the seeds and crops that could bring revolutionary development to the environment, they could only be obtained by completing tasks.
Other common regional seeds can still be found if you want to.
This should also be a reward for exploring the map.
Olivia had already figured out how to arrange the food. She gave Cent some reward money with satisfaction, and asked Vansh to send someone to the town to buy mutton and precious ingredients.
Tomorrow Letilen will come to her place to check the accounts and clear the goods, and it’s time to reward her with delicious food.
It was a good opportunity to invite all relatives and friends to a dinner party, and let Letilen tell these landlords who never left their homes about what was happening outside.
Sente ate the soft, hot and sweet steamed bun in a few bites and received some reward money, which increased his favorability.
…
Olivia gave the order, and soon, Fanxi immediately returned to the kitchen and told several people in the kitchen about the dinner tomorrow.
Graya immediately began to think about it and went to the front to ask the number of people attending the banquet.
After returning, she ordered several kinds of meat, such as lamb chops and beef brisket, and asked the kitchen helper to go to town to buy them.
Fresh beef and mutton are the main dishes that must be included in the banquet. Since Letilen just came back from a trip, he must be tired of eating smoked meat and smoked chicken.
So there is no need to smoke food for the soup, and fresh fish and shrimp should be used to make the soup.
Graya decided on the types of food, and the two kitchen helpers began to cook based on the limited ingredients.
It was clearly tomorrow's lunch and dinner, but starting from today, one of them went out to buy groceries while the other chopped a fish and began to hurriedly scrape the fish meat, prepare to make fish balls, sift flour, and wash various ingredients.
Early the next morning, Letilen's caravan slowly arrived at the manor.
Along the way, the more than 20 people looked weathered. Some of them delivered the empty carts and felt tents into the city.
A group of people followed Letilen to count the goods brought back from the south and show them to Olivia.
She took the summary receipt of purchases and sales and looked at it. There was no problem with the accounts and all the required goods had been purchased.
There are more than twenty types of goods specified, and ten types of goods are not on the list.
Common cargoes include soap bars, sea salt, olive oil, and wine.
Three spices: nutmeg, bay leaf, and cinnamon.
Food items include lavender, orange jam, rose jam, lemon jam, mint powder, dried figs, raisins, scallops, dried shrimp, salted anchovies, citron candy, and walnuts.
For example, cheap dried lavender flowers are purchased at a few suries per pound in the south, but can be sold for more than ten suries per pound in the north.
Things like raisins, dried figs, dried shrimps, etc., which cost a few kcal per pound in the south, are worth twice as much in the north.
Red wine and olive oil were purchased at one or two silver coins per pound, but sold at two or three times that price.
The most expensive thing is spices.
Nutmeg, bay leaves, and cassia bark cost thirty gold coins, and I bought ten pounds of each, which could be exchanged for twice the price in the north.
After the goods were weighed and listed, Olivia picked and chose, leaving all the spices untouched and only keeping a few samples of each of the cheaper items.
After she counted the numbers, Letilen had her men take them to town and sell them at the market.
The dozen or so uncommon fresh things that Cent mentioned included snake beans, buckwheat, dried apricots, dried cherries, taro, sunflower seeds, okra, and coconut oil.
I won’t talk about these anymore. The most important thing is that Olivia discovered cocoa beans!
She picked up the black beans, and Letilen explained:
"I only know this thing is called cocoa. It comes from overseas seeds. I have no idea what it will grow into. The person who sold it to me said it tastes very bitter, but is good for the body and can be ground into powder and drunk with water."
Olivia knew that in the timeline set in this game, cocoa was not yet widely consumed by humans.
Most people eat the white pulp inside the pod, strain it to make a sweet soup, and then sell the cocoa beans as a by-product.
No one has tried making chocolate by adding sugar, milk and spices to make cocoa paste.
She weighed it and found that Letilen had bought twenty pounds of cocoa beans in total. She asked how much they were worth.
"These? They're not worth much. They were given to me by the spice merchant."
It can also be said that these novelty goods that are not mainstream resold are actually not very valuable.
It may not be rare, but it is definitely not popular in the market and there is no demand.
The less demand there is, the less valuable it is, so no one carries it, and naturally it cannot circulate, which has little to do with the goods themselves.
Olivia was silent for a while, then asked the kitchen to put all the miscellaneous things into the box.
As for the taro and snake beans, they were sent to Jagbu for seedling cultivation. The peppers he cultivated some time ago are now stable and have begun to sprout.
Olivia had arranged for the tolls on these goods sent into the city to be much lower.
The goods were sorted into different categories and taken to various specialized streets by his subordinates, and sold directly to the Letilen family or cooperating shops.
From arriving at the manor in the morning, taking inventory, to these goods being taken to various shops and exchanged for gold coins, it only took four or five hours.
Olivia started with fifty gold coins, and after all the back and forth, she finally calculated the profit and earned a total of ninety-five gold coins.
She and her aunt, Letilan, divided the money privately according to their agreed-upon shares.
Olivia got eighty-eight gold coins, which is a very auspicious number.
She told the two people in front of her that they could tell them how much money they had earned, but they should not disclose the amount of capital she had invested.
My aunt and Letilen naturally knew this, so if anyone asked, they would just say that the goods were worth only thirty gold coins and were sold for so much after several rounds of trading.
"Of course, I can't say a word."
Letilen naturally knew that Olivia's aunt was from the same family as her, and if anything unpleasant came out, they would only suspect him.
At noon, a few people had a simple meal, but there were many people at the dinner.
Olivia invited Theresa and her two sisters.
There was also Mrs. Baskin next door, and Mrs. Bordall, who was supervising the tree digging in the estate forest.
There is also the fixed NPC Caesar who has finished patrolling, and the two priests in the territory.
There is no need to say much about my aunt and Letilen.
As a small businessman, Letilen knew that he would have dinner with so many prominent ladies in the evening, so he took a bath.
He even went to Fanon's church and asked him to help cut his hair. He also used Fanon's incense to cover up the stench of running around so that these ladies wouldn't dislike him.
There were eleven people at the dinner, filling up the entire long table.
The reason why Olivia invited Mrs. Baskin was because of the masons and bricklayers working in the monastery under her management.
At the dinner, the fireplace was still lit, and all kinds of wine, meat and delicacies were placed on the table. Everyone chatted and listened to Letilen talk about his experiences along the way. The atmosphere was very good.
There were various spring seasonal dishes on the table, and the most popular one was the dumplings stuffed with bear onions and mutton.
When Mrs. Baskin heard Olivia say that she was going to expand the house in early May, she immediately said:
"You don't need to look for those masons and workers who can build walls anymore. Just tell me how much you need and I'll call them over."
After hearing this, Mrs. Bordall also expressed her interest and asked to recommend a good architect in the town.
That person helped Bodor expand his manor two years ago and has a pretty good reputation.
Mrs. Baudelaire and Mrs. Baskin could both sense that Olivia had really made money on this caravan, and they both wanted to do business with her.
What's more, after the death of Knight Toxon, his estate was managed by Olivia, and old Renault was about to be promoted.
Anyone with eyes could tell that this family was in a powerful position in the Baron's Mansion.
But Olivia's original intention was not to lead people into business. She only recommended Letilen as a reliable businessman to a few people and look for opportunities for cooperation in the future.
If there is business to be done, Letilen will naturally go and act as a matchmaker with these two.
As long as the news that the caravan made money got out, Olivia would dare to spend lavishly.
That night, after the banquet, Olivia sent these ladies away and packed some southern specialties for each of them, as a favor.
The next day, Olivia sent someone to the town to invite the architect recommended by Mrs. Baudelaire to the manor.
The architect's surname is Tiger and his given name is Loschi. He looks tall and thin, with a beard and reddish-brown curly hair.
As Olivia expected, Loschi was a two-star talent.
This character has no other shortcomings except that he loves money and has a smooth personality.
He was often away repairing houses for others, and the work schedule had already been scheduled until next year. He was also related to Mrs. Bordello, so he took up Olivia's order again.
Olivia also knew that a good architect was hard to find.
Therefore, he was offered a good price, four silver coins per week.
In today’s manors, interior soft furnishings are of almost no importance, as they are all furnished in similar classical styles.
It’s just that the floors, structure and width of the house need to be planned systematically.
The architect's main job was to help organize her sloppy, casual and unsystematic manuscripts and standardize them.
So that today's foremen and craftsmen can understand what is painted inside.
Loschi scratched his head as he looked at the magnificent number of detailed wax sketches.
Seeing that Loschi was hesitant, Olivia also said that if the results satisfied her, there would be a bonus.
For the sake of money, Loschi took the job. He took away all the wax plate drawings and planned to organize them and draw a complete perspective diagram on the whole piece of parchment.
Loschi is known for his superb perspective, which allows him to paint images in exact proportion to the actual effect.
After the architect left, the housekeeper brought some invoices for custom-made furniture and various necessary soft furnishings for Olivia to look at.
We ordered all the furniture we needed for the new house, a total of fourteen tables, which can be used as U-shaped tables in the dining room or main hall to accommodate at least forty people for dinner.
It can also be placed in other places for use, such as study, living room, and bedroom.
There are also eighteen corner cabinets and three tall cabinets for storing wine and various preserved fruits, snacks and spices.
Eight wide beds, ten single beds, twelve chests of drawers, ten trunks, fifty high-backed chairs, one bookcase, and ten linen cabinets.
As well as some scattered wooden furniture, such as washbasin racks, toilets, small screens, chests of drawers, small round tables, and bathtubs, several of each.
The wood used for these furniture is common goods, but the quantity is sufficient, so the overall cost is not small, and it costs more than twenty gold coins.
Of course, this is not the end.
The construction workers' salaries and meals cost thirty or forty gold coins. The stones and wood were free as they were from their own homes, but tiles had to be bought with money. They also had to dig wells and scrape mud or plaster on the walls.
After the main building is completed, the budget will cost sixty gold coins.
There are also various ironware, such as fences to block sparks from the fireplace, iron nails, candlesticks, sesame oil lamps, metal tableware, and metal kitchen utensils.
There were also countless ceramic containers, water pots, water jars, kneading bowls, grinding bowls, and servants' plates.
Olivia also did not forget to ask the housekeeper to purchase wool and woolen cloth, as well as carpets, to make bed curtains, and to prepare new bedding and tablecloths.
These things don't look expensive, but they cost at least a dozen gold coins.
According to conservative estimates, the entire new house would cost over a hundred gold coins, but if you were a bit extravagant, you could spend up to one hundred and forty or fifty gold coins.
However, Olivia was not nervous at all and just took out the money to give to the housekeeper.
She ate and drank as usual, and from time to time went to check on the progress of the seedlings of peppers, eggplants and other crops in the fields.
He returned to the house and began to teach the servants how to make cocoa.
After the cocoa is roasted, peel it and grind it in a mortar. Then use a linen sieve to sift out the coarse powder and continue grinding until it is very fine.
Add milk and sugar and cook into a soft sauce, then add some cinnamon to increase the flavor. Finally, remove the cinnamon and add various nuts to the cocoa paste, such as almonds, hazelnuts, or dried cherries, dried red plums, raisins, and dried figs.
Pour it into a bowl to dry, then cut it into pieces to make rich, sweet and uniquely flavored chocolate.
The cocoa beans that Letilen sent back were enough for her to make enough chocolate food for a whole year.
As for buckwheat, it needs to be dried in the sun for two or three days, then simply pounded and the husks and kernels are separated through a sieve until they are completely separated.
Olivia made a few pillow cores. In line with the principle of not wasting anything, she fried the wheat cores, which are good for the body, and soaked them in water to drink.
But every time he took a few bites, he would always pass the rest to Caesar.
After being forced to drink it for two days, Caesar also expressed his resistance, saying that since this thing is good for the body, he has no use for it, so it is better to give it to the elderly as a filial piety.
So Olivia gave the buckwheat to Theresa and her aunt, not knowing where it would end up.
Caesar really likes chocolate. Although it tastes bitter when you taste it carefully, it becomes mellow and delicious after processing. Not only is the taste rich, but there is also a hint of sweetness in the bitterness.
I really don’t know why she is so smart that she can make such bitter seeds taste delicious.
However, every time Caesar savored high-sugar food with relish, Olivia was always worried about whether the safety of his muscles would be affected.
I don’t know if the game data can be properly controlled in this regard.
She has to use it as a pillow and play with it every day before she can fall asleep!
After Caesar noticed his concern, he consciously stopped tasting high-sugar snacks and continued to consume the same amount of food as usual.
In fact, as a knight, in order to maintain his physical strength during training, his stomach had to be filled with meat and bread. He rarely drank wine, and even less desserts.
Caesar basically only drinks a little when accompanying others for a meal and never drinks on his own initiative.
His father, who just passed away a year ago, was obese and had many illnesses due to years of alcoholism. He didn't want to become like that.
In short, during Letilen's long journey, the content of Caesar's meals did not change at all.
As for Olivia, she has a lot of fun trying out various combinations and choices every day.
The fun in life brought by the novel goods had not lasted long. As the first day of May was getting closer, the monastery was about to be completed.
Olivia was going to prepare to pay the monastery's craftsmen and inspect the project with the monastery's architect.
By the way, she also wanted to work with a few ladies to ask the Baroness to pay back the bonus that she had promised them.
On the second to last day of April, Olivia, Mrs. Baudelaire, and Mrs. Baskin went to the Baroness.
…
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