Calculating Cultivation

I returned to Half Moon City with no fanfare. My businesses were running smoothly and there was nothing that needed to be done. I had set things up so there was as little involvement from me as possible.

On the way back, I had a conversation with Master Yi Rong about resources and sect points. They expected each disciple to contribute 100 points per year. Each contribution point was worth about a rank 1 spirit stone or about 1,000 taels.

The sect didn’t like currency conversions from people, since they paid sect points for performing tasks around the sect. If people just brought in money from the outside, tasks wouldn’t get done. The exception was spirit stones.

One could trade in spirit stones to the sect for contribution points, since there was always a need for them. As long as one earned the stones themselves. The people at the sect weren’t stupid and an elder couldn’t just give a bunch of spirit stones to their disciple or child. That was where the 100 point transfer limit came in. Cultivators were meant to be independent and self-sufficient, not children who had their hands held their entire life.

The work around were businesses and tasks the cultivators created on their own. That meant anything I earned from now until I joined the sect, and afterwards was allowed. Yi Rong had told me I couldn’t use my status as a future inner sect disciple to bully people.

The Cloudy Moon sect liked low drama and the non-interventionist faction would be up in arms if I did something like that. It was their entire focus, not crushing mortals. The protector faction was partially aligned in this regard, since they wanted to protect humanity and gather strength. The militant faction would be annoyed at anything that took away from killing enemy cultivators and beasts.

That meant flashing my sect token and making a scene were out of the question. It didn’t stop people from hearing rumors, speculating, and not giving me a hard time, but I couldn’t just demand people obey me, either.

Yi Rong explained that many elders and cultivators had passive interests they themselves had set up. The Coinage Guild in the city was actually under the control of the Sect Leader. Grandmaster Kang of the woodworkers also had an elder backer.

An elder of the protection faction even backed my father, Yuan Chen. Only the elders had factions. Everyone else in the sect worked and cultivated. They could do things, but it was a rule that cultivators shouldn’t directly crush mortals and make a mess other cultivators had to clean up.

It just pissed everyone off and was a good way to unite all cultivators into hating you. Even rogue cultivators with no sect avoided making a fuss, since while the sects were isolated, they got supplies, food, and other goods from the mortal world. Messing with the supply chain would stir the old monsters to go out and make an example.

What I had been doing was fine. I was playing within the rules. Even Yi Rong was just mooching off my father since he had basically retired. Many senior cultivators reaching the end of their lives were given easy long-term tasks like this. Mortals would care for them to the highest standard while they lived out their last couple of decades.

The mortals would be protected during this time. While it was an expense, no cultivator would dare mess with my father. Even the sect wouldn’t give him a hard time. It was their retirement plan while also keeping a grip on the city and other areas under the Cloudy Moon Sect’s control.

It was one perk of reaching the fourth stage and being labeled a member. These old people didn’t get contribution points, but they didn’t have any living expenses either. Others might travel or save up to spend their last days in the sect.

Other sects usually greeted members of other sects warmly and allowed them to stay for a month or two to discuss cultivation. No sect would turn away free knowledge and building some relations. They gave these people a strict rule that they could only discuss their own cultivation outside the sect. No tomes, knowledge, or anything else.

Some of these wandering cultivators might train up a disciple outside of a sect if they had left on poor terms. But they didn’t discuss cultivation outside of their own. That was another way you got the old monsters in the sect to act.

Stealing knowledge was considered the quickest way to get the sect excited. All this meant for me at the moment was that I had to keep my notes locked up securely in a chest while not using them. The chest was only for my cultivation notes on myself and had the Cloudy Moon sect symbol stamped on the outside.

If the notes got stolen, I would get a reprimand, and a lot of mortals would get killed once the sect enforcers showed up. It was technically illegal, but Yi Rong assured me it was fine as long as I didn’t talk to anyone but him and kept my notes to myself.

It was technically a bit of a gray area, since I was under his supervision and Half Moon city was so close to the sect as to be in its backyard. As long as nothing came of it, there would be no issue. I spent my days going to my businesses and looking at purchasing more businesses to build up my portfolio and increase my cash reserves while cultivating.

I entered the mining business next. I had enough cash flow from my hot sauce production that I felt confident in such an investment. Hong had insisted on hiring three more guards since we were leaving the outer walls to a mining town at a nearby mountain.

Just as I had put Ting in charge of managing the day to day and record keeping for my businesses, I arranged for Hong to handle my personal safety. I had burned the main accounting book I had written in Arabic after copying everything over in the local script. I was no longer concerned about people interfering with my businesses.

Yi Rong had explained that if I stepped on any toes, the regional supervisor for the sect would come and speak with me and sort things out between me and the other party. Otherwise, it was just business.

The mining town was struggling with flooding and going higher on the mountain risked more beast attacks. They had tried it in the past with poor results. They mined iron here and were one of several suppliers to Half Moon city.

The people were half starved, and almost all of them were debt slaves. The buildings were worn and leaky, and the entire place smelled. They invited me into the foreman’s home, which was much nicer. The mine owner was looking to sell after slowly bleeding out money over the last decade. He had focused on hiring slaves, but the costs were too much, and he kept cutting corners.

Now everything had fallen into this state and the owner was desperately trying to sell for 20,000 tael. The Coinage Guild was agreeable to lending me the money at four percent interest. It was higher because of the mine being outside the city walls and at much greater risk.

“You produce ten carts of ore a day and ship that to the city to be processed?” I asked, hoping for confirmation from the foreman.

“Yes. There was talk of making a smelter out here, but the smell would agitate the beasts.”

“Ten carts daily? Is that high, low, average?” I asked.

“That is a good day. Bad days, we might get one or two carts filled up with ore. There is a lot of ore, but the water fills up the mineshafts and we bucket it out, but it is slow. Most of the time, we wait for it to drain and work the side shafts.”

They would sell a cart of ore for a tael and would produce about five iron bars, which would sell for a tael apiece. The mine was only earning about four tael a day on average after looking at their records. About 1,000 tael a year.

But then there were all the expenses which rapidly cut into that. Food, supplies, wages, buying new debt slaves, and paying to rebuild when beasts came through and wrecked everything. “Is there anything that can be done about the beasts?” I asked Hong, who was listening in.

“It wouldn’t be easy. You kill one beast, and more come to claim its corpse. Kill too many, and you get a high ranked beast coming through wiping everyone and everything out.” I nodded slowly at this.

“What about underground or more fortified buildings?” I asked.

“Would last longer, but they would be much more costly. It wouldn’t really stop anything. That is why they build houses like they do,” Hong said, and I nodded at this. It made sense and also why anyone dealing with this situation would pull their hair out.

It also explained the lack of metal available in the city and in general. It would have been far better to process the ore on site. “There is no way to ward off beasts?” I asked Hong, who shook his head.

“No. It just isn’t possible. The more you kill, the more they get riled up. They also don’t like walls or things stopping them. The sect has broken enough beast tides by the city. They have given up, but if they put a wall up out here, they would attack,” Hong explained.

I went and looked at the mine and went inside as well. This part was well done with careful and consistent wood bracing along the entire route, even the side tunnels. I saw the water and damp stone as the tunnel ended along with the bracing.

“It rots and there is a much greater risk of collapse,” the foreman explained. The water was coming through the soil and mountain above, not from the entrance. It was leaking through cracks in the rock to fill up the bottom of the mine.

At least being short paid off this time, since I didn’t have to duck while entering the mine. I considered my options. I couldn’t make my own smelters, since the Smithing Guild had that on lockdown. They handled the ore, and they set their rates.

They made the road to the city with gravel, so it wasn’t a muddy mess either. So, there was little improvement that could be done there. No one wanted to work outside the walls, either. Which meant slaves were the only real option. While the attrition wasn’t terrible, it was still bad.

Even if I developed a system to get the water out of the mine, it would be a headache to get the ore out as the mine was dug deeper. The biggest improvement would be wheeled carts to move the ore out more efficiently, but there were a host of problems.

The thing was, I wanted an iron mine since then I could find a smelter to buy out and get my own iron for my own projects, saving on the enormous cost of purchasing iron myself. I had paid a small fee to the clerk at the Coinage Guild to keep me informed. He had just given me that smile he had plastered on his face and agreed.

“Why don’t humans drive the beasts back and out of these lands?” I asked Hong.

“Beast cores are otherwise known as spirit stones. Beasts gather energy naturally to cultivate. You kill off all the beasts, then cultivating and ingredients at the higher stages becomes much harder,” he explained.

“You know all of this?” I asked, surprised.

“I considered a career as a beast hunter. It pays really well but is very high risk. They also aren’t allowed back into the city unless they remain quarantined for a month without incident.”

“How intelligent are the beasts?” I asked.

“A rank one beast is an animal, but a little smarter. A rank four beast is as clever as a human. But their cultivation is innate to their body, so they are like body cultivators. I could kill a rank one beast, and all four of your guards could handle a rank two beast. But you would need specialized equipment and men to kill a rank three beast.”

“The more you kill, the more attention it brings,” I muttered, and Hong nodded. I couldn’t hire local hunters to clear out the nearby beasts, since that wouldn’t help anything. Investing in the mining town wouldn’t work if everything kept getting destroyed once every couple of years. The foreman was sitting quietly as well.

No wonder why the owner was giving up. “What do other mines do?” I asked, and the foreman shook his head.

“They struggle like we do. Some are better, some are attacked less, but we all have the same problems,” he replied as we went back inside and sat inside his house.

“What about building houses partially into the mountainside with stone, and reinforced roofs with thick wood beams?” I asked.

“A beast would rip them apart just to check before moving on,” Hong explained. We were mining in enemy territory with no way to kill or hold off the beasts.

“What about in the mine itself?” I asked.

“We use that for shelter, but it is cramped, and no one likes it. It would also interfere with pulling ore out. We only do that if there is an attack,” the foreman explained. I rubbed my head in frustration.

“Could you carve out larger rooms?” I asked.

“Not really. And it is dark. People living there would bring too much smoke. That is why we dig down instead of up, so the smoke flows out of the mine,” he explained. But that brought water issues.

“There has to be a way to build a structure that won’t be ripped to shreds, right?” I asked and looked at Hong, who shook his head. The foreman shook his head as well. “Is there a plant or something that would keep the beasts away?” I asked and got another negative from both of them. These beasts were really annoying me.

“What about digging and living underground?” I asked.

“It would be too damp,” the foreman replied. “Water would leak through the stone. People wouldn’t last long and we have tried it.”

“If there were no leaks, and it was dry, would the beasts dig up the ground?” I asked. The foreman grew thoughtful for a moment.

“Most wouldn’t, some might. But this land is all hilly. It’s difficult for beasts to tunnel in.” I nodded at this. “Also, it isn't easy to dig up. If we are digging, we aren’t mining.”

I left without deciding, since I needed to think about the issue some more. Mining was a perilous activity. I could make improvements and investments, but for them to get wrecked and have to start all over, turned me off from purchasing the mine.

I even asked Yi Rong if there was a cultivation type solution and about beasts. “It is an age-old problem. Some areas have pushed out a lot more like Blazing Sun Sect and the Imperial Sect. But they have immortal cultivators and have been around for a long time. They also have the population to support such an expansion.”

“The sect moves the outer wall occasionally when someone pays ‌to purchase land, since they are ultimately responsible for repelling any beast tides. But it is a slow and steady process. And also, the beasts provide spirit stones.”

“What do the larger sects do?” I asked.

“They have more territory. It is just that simple. A high-ranking sect would spread out far and wide and have other sects report to them. The Cloudy Moon sect reports to the Imperial Sect and pays a century tribute to them.”

“Really? How much?” I asked.

“A thousand level 1 spirit stones. A hundred level 2 spirit stones. Ten level 3 spirit stones. And one level 4 spirit stone. But that is the power of a high-ranking sect.” I didn’t even mention about not paying. Since then, a ninth rank cultivator would show up and wreck face. “There are rumors of more powerful forces, but we do not possess the qualifications for such things.” What my Master Yi Rong was saying was that we were weak.

“Then what about shaping stone? Could a cultivator do that? Make caves inside the mountain?” I asked.

“It would require effort and cultivators would not do a task cheaply. You would need to pay around fifty thousand taels for what you want.”

“Why that much?” I asked.

“You need someone at least at the core formation stage. And no, I will not help. Just making the caves is not enough. Using techniques like that would draw the beasts’ attention, and things would escalate. You would pay for an expansion.”

“Could I hunt beasts?” I asked.

“Dangerous, but many cultivators or aspiring ones do. It is one of the main ways to gather Qi. The hard part is that the spirit stone inside the beasts often breaks when they are killed.”

“Could beasts be cultivated?” I asked.

“It has been tried, but there are a lot of risks. They have the power of a cultivator and grow more intelligent. Would you wait meekly to be harvested?” I shook my head and gave a negative.

I would need to check some things first, but I was interested. Returning to the city, I looked into cement and concrete. While they were available, both were expensive. Very expensive. Since the limestone was mined, crushed, and then baked, there were a lot of steps involved. They used it in high end buildings that were made of stone.

Getting the mine working, without constantly losing people, would take a large up-front investment. After doing some math, it would take half a year and about 10,000 tael just for the materials to build underground bunkers.

Figure a year and 15,000 tael with delays and cost overruns. That would mean I would need around 40,000 tael total to purchase the mine and proceed with the investment to build bunkers people could live in. Or I could go to the Coinage Guild, which would charge me 1,600 tael a year to have a loan of that magnitude.

I had decent cash flow, but not that much to support such a loan with the farm loan still hanging over me. While growth was good, the mining operation and investment were just too risky. If it failed or something went wrong, I wouldn’t be able to recover from it.

While it was tempting to go from business to business, I needed to build up my cash reserves. That was when I considered getting other investors. That would invite new headaches and I would lose out on a part of the possible revenue. But it would also get me support from other people.

This time when I went to the Coinage Guild to discuss things, I was passed on from the smiling clerk to a manager and was invited into his office.

“So, you have a plan to turn the mine around and possibly other mines, but you require a larger investment and are interested in getting other investors,” he confirmed what I had explained to him.

“Yes. The risk of such a venture is quite large. I was considering forming a company, and wanted the Coinage Guild’s advice,” I asked.

“The guilds are such companies since our operations and profits are tied directly into the sect, but you appear to want to take a different route?”

“I could see the sect being one investor, and perhaps other people. But the legalities are something I am unsure about,” I replied.

“It would be an agreement between parties. How much equity would you be giving up and would it involve your other businesses?” the manager asked.

“I was thinking ten percent at fifty thousand taels. That would give my company a valuation of half a million taels.”

“Such a thing is not really done. A holding company owned by multiple people and selling percentages like that would be unknown. At most there are two or three investors, but I am guessing you are interested in multiple.”

“If it is just one, it is fine. But that is the valuation I would require and the equity I would give up.”

“Right now, the Coinage Guild will have to say no. While you have had two successes. This is a long-term risk and investment, which we don’t do,” the manager explained.

“May I ask why not?”

“It is a matter of cash flow and getting too entangled in business ventures. That is why we prioritize short-term gains and then sell off the equity we get. It impacts our long-term projections, but we are under strict orders not to invest into things that would take over ten years to recoup any losses.”

“But then, why sell the equity?” I asked. I really didn’t understand the Coinage Guild. It seemed to me like they would scoop everything up to increase profits.

“That used to be done in the past. But it stifled growth and turnover in businesses. You are the perfect example of why we try to keep the various markets in flux just enough for innovators like yourself. If the Wood Carvers Guild or the Smithing Guild were owned by us, then people are not incentivized to create something new. If you would not make a lot of tael, would you have come up with the rocking chair?”

“No, I would have looked at other areas to develop a business in.”

“And if we controlled all the businesses and fields?”

“Then I would look at other cities,” I replied.

“While the Lord runs the day-to-day operations of the city, the Coinage Guild answers directly to the Cloudy Moon Sect and handles long-term development. While we could invest a lot ourselves, it would create a monolithic business structure and slow down long-term development.”

“We want stability and slow and steady growth. Speeding up and slowing down creates too much instability.”

“Thank you for explaining this to me,” I bowed my head towards the manager.

“I am more than happy to. There have been people in the past who have asked the same questions that you have. But we are a low and mid-level facilitator to the city, not an institution for the super wealthy or individuals.”

I said my goodbyes and left the Coinage Guild with much more to think about. I hadn’t missed the hidden subtext of that conversation either. They prevented monopolies from forming. Monopolies would cause long-term issues with the competition between various businesses.

Where I had not seen a lot of turnover before, that was just from my experiences in my past life on Earth. The Coinage Guild wanted a set amount of turnover, and the current rate was ideal for the various businesses. Their low interest rate was to make things easy, since they would scoop up everything if a person defaulted.

The initial equity and then selling it would move the wealth around or into the hands of the sect. It hadn’t escaped my notice that I had heard nothing about buying the equity of successful businesses.

They might even transfer ownership to the Sect Leader, making the Coinage Guild a clearing house for investments. They threw out the bad ones and moved the good ones into his portfolio while also managing the entire economy.

No other group or person was allowed to give out loans. The one gray area was families, and in small amounts. I could go to my father and get a loan for 50,000 tael, but it would step on the toes of the Coinage Guild, which he wouldn’t do. Forming a holding company would be a gray area and apparently wasn’t done.

There was very little diversification and limited vertical integration of businesses. I had hired a glassblower specifically for my hot sauce business to cut down on costs, but most businesses just contracted out.

The more I learned about the economy of Half Moon City, the more complex and simple it became all at the same time. Complex in terms of higher-level relationships and the pressure the Cloudy Moon Sect and the Coinage Guild exerted. Simple in terms of business practices.

I would need resources, lots of resources, which would be expensive. Talking with my master Yi Rong, he had explained that the third stage required resources to attune my meridians and channels to a type of element. The base cost would be around five level 3 spirit stones for a resource for that stage.

A level 1 spirit stone was 1,000 tael, and they went up by multiples of 10 taels after that. So, a level 3 spirit stone would cost about 100,000 tael. The higher up one went, the more the price fluctuated. It could be lower or higher, depending on how quickly a seller needed money and the demand, but that was the standard rate most people agreed on.

For the fourth stage costs, the costs started at level 5 spirit stones. That was ten million tael per spirit stone. They normally handled anything over a million taels with spirit stones that had been shaped into currency or spirit coins.

They weren’t used for crafting or cultivating, but were made to the same shape and size by the Imperial and Blazing Sun Sects who had different coinage. All the local high-level currency was Imperial Sect standard, since this region and the Cloudy Moon Sect were under their purview and paid tribute to them.

The tribute was the equivalent of four million tael every century, or forty thousand taels a year. A small amount, compared to the wealth a cultivator could gather, but very strict in requiring payment. After some tea with my brothers, I learned my father earned only ten thousand tael a year before expenses.

There was a lot of wealth caught up in the compound and maintaining our status. I had been considering moving out, but I was advised not to and would be seen as an insult to my father and create unnecessary tensions.

My mother was busy with my two younger sisters, but she was still prone to dramatics and asking me to help support her and buy new dresses and perfumes. I refused to hand out money like that since it would never end. She kept pestering me every time I saw her, which was one reason I had not been spending a lot of time at the compound.

I visited my different properties and business to oversee them and to collect as many motes as possible. Once Jian restored the land and began producing peppers, that was when the real money would start rolling in and I would look at expansions.

For now, I needed to build up my war chest and the tael I had on hand to invest in various mining towns. That was where the real money would come from once. I could engage in vertical integration. From iron ore to a smelter, to a blacksmith, to various finished products.