Once I was back in Floating Ice City, I immediately set out to make my Rank 4 Consumables. To be honest, I should be the first player in Floating Ice City who could make consumables of such high rank. Their obvious usefulness aside, just being able to make them was enough to shock the masses.

I interacted with the NPC at the warehouse to take out a huge number of Salt and Chicken Meat. Since I already had enough Fresh Ginger in my bag, there was no way I wouldn’t make some money out of this.

I opened the cooking window and put in the ingredients: Chicken Meat x20, Salt x10, Fresh Ginger x15. I confirmed the synthesis and a mystical ball of magic light flew from my palm—

Ding~!

System Notice: You have made White Cut Chicken x4, Cooking Proficiency +5!

Huh? Four in one go?

Overjoyed, I quickly began to make my second batch. As expected, I still obtained 3 White Cut Chicken. This was fragrant cooked chicken meat wrapped in lotus leaves. Each could restore 400 MP, a staple for high-level mages.

…...

Around half an hour later, I had made a total of 120 Rank 4 Consumables. Each slot contained a stack of 10, so I had 12 stacks. All these were cold hard cash!

Standing in the center of the plaza with my game ID concealed, I yelled, “Selling Rank 4 Magic Consumables in bulk. This is some good stuff that can instantly restore 400 MP! Don’t miss this chance! Cheap goods, 80 silver each. Come quick if you need it!”

It was reasonable to say that this was a crazy era. 80 silver was equivalent to 80 RMB, so who would actually throw away 80 RMB for an mana recovery item?

However, a ton of rich people just happened to live in this time. There were those who would spend money for a beauty’s smile, and there were those who would also spend a ton of gold to buy high-rank consumables!

Many high-level players came over and surrounded me. Some would only carefully buy one or two, and some would buy five, at the most. It seemed like they were preparing to fight some boss with their friends. Or rather, that much was an obvious fact. High-level magic-based classes, especially priests, would consume about 30 MP with every use of a Rank 3 skill like Holy Light. If they weren’t using high-rank Magic Consumables, their MP wouldn’t last more than 2 minutes, making the chances of a party wipe much greater.

In the middle of all the noise, a voice suddenly came from the side. “Brother selling Magic Consumables, can we buy all your goods? How many more do you have left?”

Stunned, I turned around and saw two high-level players clad in shining metal armor!

Iron Pardon and Inconstant. The duo weren’t just popular guys on Floating Ice City’s Heavenly Ranking, they were also the “Gemini Stars”, experts recruited by Mad Dragon. I never expected to meet them here.

Even though my ID was hidden, my equipment was too eye-catching. I also always wore a cloak to hide my face so it was easy to recognize me.

Iron Pardon raised a brow. “It’s you!”

I smirked. “It’s me. What, you still want to buy them?”

“Yes, of course!” Inconstant said with gritted teeth. “How many Rank 4 Consumables do you have? Hmph, don’t tell me that you don’t want to sell it to us because we fought you in the past.”

I couldn’t stop smiling. “Revenge is revenge and business is business. Of course I’m not that small-minded!”

As I said that, I counted the goods in my bag. “I still have 95 left. Since you guys want to buy everything, I’ll give you a special price. One Rank 4 Consumable for 1 gold each!”

“What?!” Iron Pardon got angry. “Weren’t you selling it to those people for 80 silver each?”

“You guys are special!” I said indifferently.

Inconstant reached out a hand to block Iron Pardon, who was about to burst. He said in a deep voice, “Here’s 95 gold. Give me 95 of those Rank 4 Consumables!”

“Okay!”

I happily opened the trade window and placed 95 White Cut Chicken inside while the other party put in 95 gold. With a ding, the trade was complete!

Iron Pardon looked dissatisfied. Lin Yixin and I did, after all, steal the boss they had worked hard to kill and now they had to give me money.

“Bro, w-what’s this?” Iron Pardon said angrily.

Inconstant smiled. “Young master has decreed that we must gather 100 Rank 4 Consumables. Don’t bother saying anything else, the gold belongs to the young master anyway.”

“Hmph!”

Iron Pardon walked away, fuming. Inconstant gave me a warning look as he coldly smiled. “Business is business. You’d better watch yourself once you’re out in the wild!”

I ignored him and sent Du Thirteen a message: “Hurry to Floating Ice City and get ready to sell gold!”

Several minutes later, Du Thirteen arrived and traded me 40 gold, smiling. “We should have a total of 100 gold, right?”

“Is 100 worth selling?” I held out my hand and opened it, causing a huge pile of gold to appear within my palm. 258, a distinct number that showed how much gold I possessed was also visible.

“Ha?” Du Thirteen was scared silly and then burst into laughter. He patted my shoulder, still laughing like a madman. “You actually have this much gold! Isn’t this around twenty thousand yuan? Hahaha, Lu Chen, Little Gui and I were actually having a headache about how to pay for next month’s rent just a moment ago, you know~”

“Don’t be too happy. At the current stage, gold’s value will be depreciating by the minute. Hurry up and find a buyer!

“Find what buyer, just sell it on the forum’s trade platform!”

“Oh? It has such function too?”

“Go go!”

And so, I went on the official forums and did indeed spot the trade platform. PBC was the intermediary, and it collected a 1% transaction fee.

Sweeping my gaze over, I saw many players selling gold there. Just gold coins alone had several thousand pages there. Those more wealthy that posted 50 gold while those who had less sold around 3–5 gold to make a bit of money. 1 gold was currently fluctuating between 95 RMB–120 RMB. This exchange rate would definitely fall soon after the majority of the player base grew in level, though I had no way of predicting just how low it would dip.

I immediately placed 250 gold on sale, priced at 100 RMB for each. This was relatively cheap, unlike those unscrupulous sellers who put theirs up at 145 RMB each. Too overpriced!

A ding and a message came not even five minutes after I put my gold on sale—

System Notice: Valued user, the 250 gold you put on sale has been sold. After deducting the transaction fee, a total of 24750 yuan has been deposited into your China Construction Bank account: 662700200873*!

Nice, the money’s here. I made close to twenty-five thousand in an instant!

The Bloody Mercenaries workshop was smoothly developing, the near economic crisis could be considered solved. We could now go out everyday for food and drink and check out the legs of the pretty girls on the street. Bliss!

However, I still wasn’t satisfied with my current achievement. I wanted more.

I gave the metal helmet Dominating Warrior God had dropped to Du Thirteen. This was a Level 25 Iron-grade item, it was a bit better than Gui Guzi’s helmet.

I hung around in Floating Ice City’s plaza for a while, checking out what’s new. There were far more ways to get rich than what I had done before.

Standing at the center of the city plaza, I bellowed, “Buying a huge amount of Rank 2 Cooking ingredients! 50 copper for Glutinous Rice, 40 copper for Chicken Meat, I’ll buy out your entire stock! Welcoming friends leveling their Foraging!

Not long after I shouted my prices, many players who had been grinding their Foraging Proficiency charged from all around, yelling over one another about how much Glutinous Rice or Chicken Meat they had accumulated.

Both of these ingredients were Rank 2, so only those with Rank 2 Foraging could acquire them. At this stage of the game, quite a number of players had reached this rank, and many solo players had no one to sell them to. Without high-level friends who had learned Cooking, they could only sell them off.

Five cents a Glutinous Rice, four cents per Chicken Meat, why wouldn’t I take this on?

I didn’t plan to make more Rank 4 Consumables. Fresh Ginger was too hard to get and I still had a ton of Green Peppers left from when I was gathering at Cold Wind Canyon. As a result, I decided to make Rank 3 Consumables to grind my Cooking skill to Rank 5 as fast as I could. Quickly seizing the food market and becoming the pioneer of an industry was the way of a king!

The Rank 3 recipe required 20 Glutinous Rice and 10 Chicken Meat. According to the price I was going to buy them at, a Green Pepper Meatball would cost 14 silver to make. I would sell it for around 50 silver, so I would make some good profit. All in all, over 200% return of investment. Absolutely profitable. And I was increasing my Cooking Proficiency at the same time!

Alright, I’m not going to grind levels today. It’s time to do business!

I unceasingly purchased Glutinous Rice and Chicken Meat. There were even some people later on who were selling Green Peppers. I haggled the price down to 50 copper each before buying them, thus procuring all the items needed to craft the food I wanted. I took 30 gold from Gui Guzi, using all of it for manufacturing costs and begun cooking, buying even more ingredients during the process. Du Thirteen stood by my side, selling products as soon as I finished synthesizing.

I was busy all the way until midnight. Our group of three originally only had 54 gold, but under our diligent efforts until the wee hours of the morning, our total gold count had reached an impressive 805! This was why businessmen were cool! We earned a huge profit margin with a small starting capital!

I gave Du Thirteen and Gui Guzi 200 gold each and took 400 gold for myself. They obviously had no problem with that since I was technically the one doing all the work. The two of them were already delighted with the huge amount they were given.

I exchanged some gold for 30,000 RMB. That added with the 20,000ish RMB from the preceding afternoon meant that our Bloody Mercenaries workshop had 50,000 RMB in funds. This was a good start!

Holding his gold coins, Gui Guzi said with certainty, “Boss, this kind of business opportunity won’t last long. I bet we wouldn’t make this much money if we were to do it one or two days later!”

I nodded. “The other players that are leveling Cooking should be reaching Rank 3 soon. Once they’re Rank 3, our profits won’t just decrease, the price of Green Pepper Meatball will plunge as well.”

“Mn!”

We were on point. At 1 am in the morning, two other people begun selling Rank 3 Consumables. One of them was the chef of the Domination Clan, Dominating Chef God, and the other was a Level 32 archer from Mad Dragon named Wufangzhai. Both were masters ahead of the masses.

I went out to grind some levels till 3 am, when I finally reached Level 36. To my surprise, despite my efforts, I was still about to fall off from the Heavenly Ranking—

NameLevelClassWind Fantasy38Light WandererDominating Heaven Blade37WarriorDominating Mage God37MageInconstant37Magic KnightIron Pardon36WarriorDominating Knight God36Magic KnightBroken Halberd Sinks Into Sand36Undead SwordsmanDominating Warrior God35WarriorDominating Archer God35ArcherClear Perfume34Archer

The constantly-grinding Lin Yixin had a huge lead at Level 38, with Dominating Heaven Blade close behind her and Dominating Mage God at the third place. Mad Dragon’s Gemini Stars had also taken fourth and fifth place. The leveling race in Floating Ice City was getting tenser by the second. Sure enough, my level had stagnated with my head filled only with thoughts of making money. I need to grind the entire day tomorrow.I had always been intentionally suppressing my leveling speed in Heavenblessed, but I couldn’t let the difference grow too large. It’d be best if I was between 11th and 20th place. Under the radar of Heavenly Ranking, but strong enough to kill any of them. Only that would be interesting!