novelAbuy Chapter 52 Martial Arts Manuals and Magic Manuals
Chapter 52 Martial Arts Manuals and Magic Manuals
Chapter 52 Martial Arts Manuals and Magic Manuals
Buying food in the dead of winter is not easy. Everyone is busy getting through the winter, and there is a food shortage everywhere, so food prices naturally rise.
Fortunately, the Northeast is different from the South today. There are almost no issues with land annexation here, and there are not many large landowners with local strongmen characteristics. Therefore, the monopoly of the grain market is not serious.
Therefore, as long as Rock is willing to spend more money, he can still buy food and won't be ripped off too badly.
While buying grain, he also sent his Cossacks, who had been upgraded to revolver cavalry, out to sell some weapons, including the unused rifles and a batch of foreign guns.
To increase his wealth, he simply needs to increase revenue and reduce expenditure. However, Rock is not planning to cut expenditure now; he has to spend money where necessary. Therefore, he must increase revenue by diversifying his income streams.
During this period in the Kanto region, other things might not sell well, but weapons definitely did.
Because the Kanto region is currently in chaos, there's never a time when weapons can't be sold!
After seeing off the group that went out to trade, Rock led his own team into hibernation.
In the short term, he needs to digest the territory he currently occupies before considering expansion.
Otherwise, if he continues to expand recklessly, he won't be able to control so much territory with the troops he has, and he won't have enough food to support too many troops. He needs to manage the territory in front of him first.
He has a lot of money on hand now, but most of it is unreliable, since it was stolen from those bandits.
He needed to refine his plans for that gold mine more thoroughly. He intended to wait until he had more troops at his disposal, enough to crush the remaining bandit gangs, and then wipe them out in one fell swoop.
As for the share of that gold mine that was originally supposed to be given to the garrison commander...
Just kidding, he was already planning to rebel, why would he need to care about the whims of those damned Tartars?
If you're already preparing to rebel but still have to be mindful of the Tartars' attitude, and you have to consider all the consequences even with a total war system, then what's the point of having this system?
Bored, Rock suddenly remembered that he had previously seized a lot of things from the bandits, which seemed to include several martial arts manuals and some spells from the Taoist priests of the Earth Dragon Temple.
It's strange, really. He originally thought that most martial arts masters wouldn't carry their manuals with them. After all, in his opinion, carrying a martial arts manual was like a monster carrying its own equipment—just waiting for someone to loot it from them.
Unexpectedly, three of the four masters from Tieling were carrying secret manuals!
Could it be that these guys are afraid that others will steal their martial arts skills, so they carry them with them, or do they have other ideas about carrying these secret manuals with them?
Rock couldn't understand any of this, so he simply stopped thinking about it. What he cared about most now was what the martial arts manual contained, and he just wanted to see it as soon as possible.
Although two of the manuals were damaged due to the explosion, they were still martial arts manuals after all!
Which man didn't dream of becoming a martial arts hero? Perhaps after reading the manual, his martial arts dream can be realized in this world!
He was also very curious about the magic of this world—how exactly did these spells work?
Rock quickly went to the collection room and found the few secret manuals that had been seized.
"—What the hell is this?! Holy crap, now I know why some people get hold of expert manuals but still can't master them!"
After reading through all three tattered martial arts manuals, Rock finally realized that these manuals were not something that could be learned at will!
One of the manuals was like a comic book, full of little figures practicing boxing. But he couldn't understand what the lines on the figures meant, nor could he understand the mystery of the boxing.
The other two manuals are quite different. One looks like a book written in heaven, with all the characters being hieroglyphs that no one knows what they are. The other manual is written in plain language, but it's far too plain.
For example, what does it mean to "stand in a squatting position from sunrise to noon, until your thighs are rock hard and you feel a warm sensation below your navel, and that's considered the initial stage of mastering the basics"?
Rock actually tried to assume the position he described, only to find that either he hadn't gotten the position right, or it would take years to see results. Anyway, he squatted there for a long time, almost actually defecating, but didn't feel any heat.
Standing up with an embarrassed expression, Rock realized that thankfully no one had seen his awkwardness, otherwise he would have wanted to disappear into a crack in the ground.
Immediately afterwards, he began to look through the secret manuals of the Taoist priests at Dilong Temple on how to cultivate magic, but after reading them, he regretted it.
Besides the fact that the contents of this manual were quite profound and he couldn't understand many parts of it, more importantly, he discovered that the spells practiced by these Taoist priests of the Earth Dragon Temple were completely different from what he had imagined!
It's no exaggeration to say that the series of spells recorded in this manual are no longer just simple unorthodox methods, but rather too fleshy and Cthulhu-like. After reading them, his sanity plummeted, and he felt as if he was completely unwell.
"My goodness! Compared to these Taoist priests, even the lamas on the plateau before liberation seem kind and benevolent!"
Rock, with a look of disgust, tossed the spellbook, which recorded countless evil spells, aside, a chill running down his spine.
He couldn't understand how humans could be so malicious towards their own kind.
Honestly, he felt that this spellbook would fit perfectly into the warp, and he was afraid that Slaanesh and Nurgle had combined their powers to create such a bizarre thing!
"Heh, there's really no need to learn this spell. If I ever want to learn some abstract spells in the future, I might as well just use the spells of the Chaos Gods. They're much more reliable than these broken things in terms of both effectiveness and strength."
Rock shook his head. If all the spells in this world were of this type, then he felt that the spells in this world were really meaningless.
After thinking for a moment, to prevent others from learning the many evil spells contained within, Rock simply set fire to the entire spellbook.
He didn't know if the Warhammer Mage could come up with any useful insights after seeing this booklet, but to be honest, he was truly disgusted by it.
Moreover, in his view, if he were to create various factions of Warhammer mages in the future, it would be better to have mages from different factions exchange ideas rather than having them study how to learn from others.
Letting them exchange ideas is far better than studying these weird pamphlets.
After some time, the team that Rock sent out to buy grain successfully brought it back. Although the amount of grain they bought was not much, it was enough to feed the soldiers under his command for half a year.
Moreover, on ordinary days, he would send his cavalrymen to hunt some wild game in the mountains. Although the amount of meat they caught was not much, it was enough to supplement their protein intake and at least make their nutrition more balanced.
"Hehehe, Commander, you really are a master strategist!"
Upon their return, a Cossack cavalryman saluted Rock and said with a smile, "General, you were right! After we sold our guns, we planned to take the money to the market to buy grain, but when we pretended not to understand Chinese, those guys kept raising the prices—they were just trying to rip us off!"
"The price of grain, which was originally acceptable, suddenly increased fivefold after they saw us. It's thanks to our ability to understand Mandarin that we weren't fooled by them."
Rock nodded, not at all surprised by this.
Regardless of the general fear of so-called foreigners during this period, at the same time, in order to make money, they naturally did not care about overcharging customers, especially since these foreigners were unfamiliar with the place and were naive and rich, making them even easier to fool.
For this reason, he only had the Cossack cavalry sell their firearms, without putting them in charge of purchasing them. The team he assigned to buy grain consisted of militia and a few Queen Dragoons.
"—And, General, we also bought a few more barrels of gunpowder. Although we can't guarantee that the quality of this gunpowder is as good as our black powder, the price is indeed not expensive, and it should be fine for daily training!"
"Oh, right, and those rolls of lead sheet too. We can melt that lead, rub it with a small spoon, and use it as musket bullets!"
Upon hearing this, Rock quickly looked behind the Cossack cavalry and discovered that the wagons behind them were indeed carrying a shipment of goods.
"Excellent, very good, you've put in a lot of effort!"
Rock chuckled and said that he had been worried about training his soldiers, but he didn't expect that these people would actually buy gunpowder and bullets for him in advance.
Otherwise, if he keeps buying from the system, the price is really too expensive. If you do the math, even if he uses guerrillas to refresh the ammunition, the price is still about 10 times the market price.
"By the way, where did all these guns you have end up being sold?"
Suddenly, Rock asked curiously, because he really wanted to know who was buying guns from these cavalrymen.
"Commander, it's quite a mixed bag when it comes to buying guns. I can only say that all sorts of people are involved."
The Cossack cavalryman shook his head, then counted on his fingers for Rock: "Some of them look like villagers or hunters. They mainly buy local treasuries, most likely for hunting and self-defense."
"Besides them, I feel that some of the people who are willing to come here to buy flintlock rifles are bandits, and some may be security teams from certain villages, but I can't be sure."
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