Chapter 363: Letter of Intent

After dinner, the sky had already darkened. Master Bo and his party had just stepped out of the restaurant when they noticed the street lamps lighting up one string after another along the roadside.

The street lamps were like a signal; as they illuminated both banks of the Taijiang, the brilliant light, resembling a starry river on earth, also drew in large crowds of people.

Workers in blue uniforms, farm laborers in floral T-shirts, clerks in white shirts, and also short Japanese people with the same black hair and moon-head hairstyles, blond and blue-eyed foreigners... and most importantly, girls dressed in cool, light clothing.

Master Bo and his group were involuntarily swept along by the suddenly surging crowd toward the brightest lights. Along the way, everywhere they looked were girls in T-shirts and shorts, exposing their arms and legs, making Master Bo blush and burn with shame, inwardly cursing that Cao for his depravity and shamelessness, a bumpkin ignorant of propriety.

Chikan Avenue was brilliantly lit, with all kinds of barbecue food stalls and bright shop windows tempting people to pull out the money in their pockets. Watching the other members of the delegation having a grand and joyous time, a helpless Master Bo ate two skewers of grilled squid, then excused himself on the grounds that he could not stomach this damned chili powder, and went back alone, swinging his sleeves, to sleep.

A hurried night passed. Master Bo and his group woke the next morning, washed up, ate a breakfast of congee and rice noodle rolls provided by the hotel, and then settled in to wait for their guests to arrive.

To be honest, no matter how much Old Bo despised the Cao Clan's bandit gang, he genuinely liked the various ingenious devices and tools they made. Not to mention anything else, just the flush toilet: a pure white, aesthetically pleasing apparatus that flushes away filth without leaving a trace of stench. In Master Bo's view, it was prepared for gentlemen — for a gentleman is as warm and refined as jade.

As for those common folk... they should just use wooden buckets, which suits their station.

However, these thoughts were merely thoughts. Master Bo was very clear on the reality: because such expensive flush toilets required a series of supporting pipes, water supply, and sewage systems, in Xinghua Prefecture, only a few wealthy merchants and great clans had them installed in their homes; ordinary people could not afford to use them.

Even Master Bo himself, since he lived in a dilapidated official residence that was not his own property, could not enjoy such a convenient and useful item in his daily life either.

At mid-morning, the guests arrived punctually.

The visitors were two young military officers in light-green short-sleeved uniforms. Master Bo's group was no longer fazed by these public officials in peaked caps, though they could not decipher the colorful qualification badges on the visitors' chests or the patterns of the arm patches on their sleeves.

Still, the young officers' slight head tilt and dashing salute managed to startle Master Bo for a moment... After the latter returned a cupped-hand salute, both sides quickly began conversing politely.

The slightly older of the two officers was surnamed Li. He introduced himself as a staff officer from the Army Logistics Department, here today to take the visiting delegation to select weapons. Master Bo had no objection, so both parties headed out the door.

Today's errand was rather special, so they could not bring many attendants, a fact hinted at by the military four-wheeled carriage parked in front of the hotel. Thus, Master Bo took only Fang Tangjing with him into the carriage.

After the carriage started, it traveled north along Binjiang Road. Riding the gentle sea breeze, the carriage passed a chain of lagoons and arrived at a military camp. The carriage then continued on, rounding the camp to its rear, where a series of low earthen mounds and a lake lay; the Army's test range was located here.

Before they even entered the range, they heard the distant rumble of cannons. And when the carriage arrived at the test ground, the passengers could already see the cannons belching white smoke and the shells smashing into the base of the earthen mounds.

However, today's guests were not very interested in cannons — Master Bo had come this time mainly to procure some cold weapons and light weapons like bird blunderbusses; items like cannons were not on the procurement list.

Besides, a certain faction bent on rebellion had no intention of selling cannons to other powers. Cannons consumed a great deal of material, and no matter who they were sold to, the shells might one day fall back on their own heads. The Transmigrators now had plenty of products to earn silver; if the iron from one cannon were made into lighters, the silver earned would far exceed that from a cannon by many times over.

So today, Master Bo could only look at other things.

On the campus, Master Bo tested some cold weapon samples provided by Staff Officer Li one by one. These cold weapons included several different models of chopping knives and several spearheads, all commonly used styles by the Ming Army.

As the Deputy Military Defense Circuit Intendant, even if it was a sinecure, Master Bo had still done the surface work of inspecting the garrison soldiers and checking military equipment under his jurisdiction on ordinary days, so he was one of the few scholar-officials with some understanding of the Ming Army's standard weapons.

The blades and spears produced with crude steel and assembly lines were far superior in quality to those forged by Ming blacksmiths. So after Master Bo finished testing the samples on bamboo and wood targets, the words "Good blade!" burst from his mouth — the old master walked the gentleman's path; if angered, he dared to rebuke Xiong Wencan to his face, but he would not go against his conscience and stubbornly claim the blade in his hand was poor.

Next, Master Bo tested the matchlocks.

Matchlocks were basically the highest grade of firearms exported by the Crossing Faction. This old-fashioned firearm, which required the shooter to light a match cord to fire, had its lethal range precisely controlled at 50 meters.

The sole highlight of this gun was naturally its specification: the parts of the assembly-line-produced firearms were all interchangeable. At present, aside from these "Kiln District-made" ones, the matchlocks of all other powers could not achieve this.

After somewhat clumsily firing two shots at the target, Master Bo made no comment. A smoothbore toy like the matchlock relied on massed formations to prevail; its individual hit rate was very poor, so it was no surprise that Master Bo, a mere dabbler, missed the target with both shots.

Staff Officer Li, who knew the score, naturally did not explain too much. He simply followed procedure and swapped the parts of several guns. Whether Master Bo could discern the mystery within was not his concern.

As it turned out, dabbling was just dabbling. A scholar-official with zero practical combat experience simply could not understand the industrial strength and immense strategic value represented by interchangeable weapon parts. Regarding the matchlock, aside from vaguely praising the gun barrel for having no burrs and being finely made, Master Bo could not offer any other insights.

After firing the matchlock, Master Bo also tested samples of the bird blunderbuss and the three-eye blunderbuss. After this, both sides began the initial negotiations for this arms purchase.

Sitting on either side of a long wooden table in the barracks, Master Bo lowered his head and carefully read through the contract Staff Officer Li handed him. What secretly surprised him was this: the weapon prices on the contract were not too high, but rather too low.

The quoted prices for these top-grade blades basically hovered around three taels of silver, equal to the price of common goods in Fujian, and the 20-tael price for firearms was likewise not high in Master Bo's view.

Comrade Bo Daxing was now somewhat puzzled: originally, he had expected to see a batch of low-quality, high-priced weapons today — otherwise, how would his superior, Master Jiao, make money?

He raised his head, closed his eyes, and slowly stroked his long beard. With his snow-bright intelligence, Master Bo needed only two minutes to guess the hidden trick: the samples shown to him today were all top-grade, but when the goods were delivered in the future, they would turn into a pile of scrap metal!

Comrade Bo Daxing, having no concept whatsoever of industrialized commodity pricing and believing he had seen through everything, secretly resolved himself at that moment: when the day comes to inspect the goods in Xinghua Prefecture, I will make sure you lot get more than you bargained for!

Having thought it through, Master Bo then dashingly signed the letter of intent, and thus this arms purchase between the two sides officially entered the implementation phase. Staff Officer Li readily indicated that the weapons Master Bo ordered should be ready for shipment in a week.

"In that case, I must trouble your esteemed group," Master Bo said with a mirthless smile, cupping his hands, and thus concluded this brief official business.

Just like business trips in later generations, after hastily finishing official duties, the remaining time for private matters was the most important. After spending just one morning serving the nation loyally, Master Bo took his attendants to Chikan Avenue to shop in the afternoon.

Red Cliff Street, equivalent in status to New York's Fifth Avenue in later generations, was already renowned far and wide. Master Bo had been scared off by the gaily dressed young men and women the previous night; today, those shameless creatures had all gone to work, so the old man naturally wanted to do some serious shopping.

Lavishly decorated high-end shops, one next to the other with glass shop windows, lined Chikan Avenue. The five members of the visiting delegation turned out in full force this time, and the first shop they entered was a men's gift store.

Inside the glass counters was a dazzling array of cigarette holders, cigarette cases, belts, lighters, nail clippers, ear scoops, rings, wallets, key rings, ties, tie clips...

The gifts, manufactured through surface electroplating, gleamed with a dazzling metallic luster under the light bulbs at the four corners of the counter. The female sales assistant, wearing an embroidered cloisonné qipao, smiled warmly and took the items out one by one with her fair hands, placing them on the counter for the customers to choose.

Master Bo did not feel much aversion to girls wearing long gowns. As he listened to the girl's clever introduction, he picked up the gifts and examined them one by one.

The other members of the visiting delegation nearby were naturally not to be outdone; someone like Fang Tangjing, who usually fancied himself a romantic figure, was especially attentive.

It must be known that in the circles of Hangzhou's rich second generation, old masters, and retained scholars, these highly functional and aesthetically pleasing gadgets had long been in vogue. Among them, the most popular, rarest, and best for showing off was the metal windproof lighter that emitted a long, clear note when ignited... So now that he, Fang, had come to the source of these goods, he certainly could not miss out.

So without much consideration, Fang Tangjing bought up to the maximum "quota" of four for every lighter model he fancied — nearly all goods on Chikan Avenue were subject to purchase limits, and the limit for lighters per traveler was two per model, so Fang Tangjing and his servant combined could only buy four of each model.

This purchase limit was a matter of necessity. Firstly, the Kiln District's production capacity was insufficient; secondly, it was to protect the local agents everywhere — without the limit, the awkward situation of merchants sweeping goods off the streets with carriages carrying chests of silver had occurred many times in the past.

Master Bo also made his move at this time. Except for the Dunhill brand lighter, which his superior Jiao's brother-in-law distributed and which he disliked, the old master bought three hundred taels of silver worth of the other items in one go. The old master was no fool; even if he gave the surplus away as gifts, the return gifts he received would far exceed the original cost.

However, the next moment, the old master flew into a rage. After settling the bill, his own long-term servant and servant each pulled a stack of paper money from their bosoms and slapped it on the counter: "Sorry to trouble you, miss. Calculate how much quota the two of us still have, and we'll buy up the rest in one go."