Chapter 58: Mountains, Actually Quite Cheap

Finally, the key moment!

Xia Qing surreptitiously wiped her palms on her legs hidden beneath the table before solemnly accepting, with both hands, the usage-rights certificate for Mountain No. 49 and the two contracts.

The certificate's material, size, and seal were identical to her lord certificate—clearly genuine. Both certificates listed precise coordinates and area; the difference was that her Territory No. 3 land usage rights and Gao Po usage-rights certificate had no time limit, while Mountain No. 49's usage rights were for one hundred years; her territory's area was 7,500 mu, while Mountain No. 49's surface area was 180,000 mu; the names on the two territory usage-rights certificates were hers, while Mountain No. 49's was the Azure Dragon Squad.

According to the precise coordinates, Mountain No. 49 was twelve kilometers east-west and ten kilometers north-south, with a surface area of 120 square kilometers, or 180,000 mu. The main peak of Mountain No. 49 was nearly two thousand meters tall, and the mountain's surface area was countless times larger than its footprint.

She was about to become this mountain's owner for a hundred years. Until she turned one hundred and twenty-five, the mountain would belong to her?

Although she held the certificate, Xia Qing still couldn't feel a shred of reality. She returned the usage-rights certificate to Yang Jin and asked, "Captain Yang, buying this mountain must have cost your squad quite a bit of effort, right? How many points did it take?"

Yang Jin smiled. "We traded with supplies. Converted to points, it's 1,100,000."

H-how much?!!!

Xia Qing's eyes instantly went wide.

Yang Jin lifted his hand to pour tea for Xia Qing across the small table. Only after the slow trickle of water called back the soul that had been startled out of the cute Miss across from him did Yang Jin unhurriedly continue, "Of these points, 300,000 were the base making things difficult for the Azure Dragon Squad—nothing to do with you. So Mountain No. 49's actual price is 800,000."

800,000... that's still a lot...

At this moment, Xia Qing finally had an incomparably weighty sense of reality about about to own a mountain: she, who had just been about to reach moderate prosperity, was about to be 800,000 in debt.

Yang Jin read her expression and helped her analyze it. "800,000 for a hundred years—that's 8,000 points a year. It's already very cheap."

Cheap? Xia Qing, who used to earn only five points a day on the construction crew, numbly nodded. "Thanks for the reminder, Captain Yang. Shall we sign the contracts now?"

Yang Jin smiled. "Brother Luo, please use your phone to record video."

The requirement to record video when signing contracts was also Xia Qing's request.

Because she was the weaker party in this transaction, she had to hold, besides the contracts, video evidence that the Azure Dragon Squad had sold her the mountain. Otherwise, if the Azure Dragon Squad later went back on their word, even if she went to sue waving the sales contract, everyone in the entire base would assume the contract was forged by her.

With video evidence it would be different. When the time came, she would only need to release the video to ruin the reputations of the Azure Dragon Squad's three leaders.

Under video recording, Xia Qing signed the two copies each of the sales contract and the sublease contract, then exchanged contracts with Yang Jin, each signing their respective copies, and finally held up the contracts to display them before the phone camera.

Her side signed and pressed fingerprints; the Azure Dragon Squad's side had Yang Jin, Xie Yu, and Luo Pei sign and affix the official seal. After the contracts were signed, Luo Pei saved the video to a USB drive and handed it to Xia Qing.

After the contracts were signed, Xia Qing, in order to earn points, continued to do business with Yang Jin. "Captain Yang, for the edible food you purchase from my territory, can we set the price according to the safe zone's market rate?"

Yang Jin agreed. "That works."

"If you need to use spring water, how should we price it?" Spring water was extremely sought-after; there was simply no public market price for it. Xia Qing knew that Yang Jin, in order to treat Luo Pei, had once traded with Huiyi Base's Fire Phoenix for two boxes of pollution-free spring water.

Since it could be traded, there was a price, which could serve as a reference.

"We can reference Huiyi Base's Blaze Squad's public spring water sale price. What do you think?"

Yang Jin's answer was indeed exactly as Xia Qing had predicted. She nodded and continued asking, "Captain Yang, is my spring water's quality better or worse than the Blaze Squad's?"

Yang Jin answered directly. "Yours."

Spring water quality was mainly determined by two factors: first, the content of qian elements and radioactive elements in the spring water; second, the content of yi elements and other elements beneficial to the human body. The lower the former and the higher the latter, the better the spring water performed in cultivating plants and treating qian-synthesis poison.

Xia Qing offered a price she could accept. "My spring water's quality is good, so it should be priced higher than the Blaze Squad's. But I don't have the Blaze Squad's strength—I need the Azure Dragon Squad's help to keep the spring water's secret. So my spring water price will be twenty percent lower than the Blaze Squad's, and at this stage I'll only trade with the Azure Dragon Squad. Is that acceptable?"

Seeing Yang Jin watching her with those captivatingly beautiful eyes, Xia Qing tightened her face and firmly resisted the temptation. "That's the price. It can't go any lower!"

Any lower, and she'd never know when she'd be able to pay off the 800,000 points she owed the Azure Dragon Squad.

Beauty was indeed tempting, but beauty couldn't bring her a single point or a single grain of food. Between beauty and points, Xia Qing naturally chose the latter without hesitation.

Yang Jin, who had originally planned to trade with Xia Qing at the Blaze Squad's price, beamed. "Currently the Blaze Squad's spring water price is 180 points per liter. Your price is 144?"

"That's fine." Xia Qing lowered her eyelids. With her brain a bit dizzy from the beauty, she simply couldn't calculate 800,000 divided by 144 no matter how she tried.

Yang Jin helped clear her confusion. "If all 800,000 were calculated in spring water, at the current price that would be 5,555 liters of spring water."

5,555 liters? Xia Qing quickly calculated in her head.

5,555 liters was about twenty-eight days' output from her spring, one-third of the amount of spring water used to save Luo Pei, and a mountain...

So, the poison on Luo Pei required three Mountain No. 49s to cure!

So, the three guns, nine hundred bullets, eight green-light saplings, and ten security personnel Yang Jin traded her last time were worth three mountains!

Compared this way, Xia Qing suddenly felt that mountains were actually quite cheap, and 800,000... wasn't exactly a crushing debt...

Her back straightened again, her shoulders relaxed, and a look of ease appeared on her face.

The smile in Yang Jin's eyes grew deeper as he continued the business talk. "After Brother Luo leaves Territory No. 3, can the Azure Dragon Squad exchange 300 liters of spring water with you on the first of each month? If anyone else in the squad gets poisoned with qian-synthesis poison, we'll discuss the water amount then."

Xia Qing's spring could produce 300 liters a day. Yang Jin exchanging 300 liters a month was an amount Xia Qing could fully accept. "That's fine. If it's for detox, the maximum water amount can't exceed what Brother Luo used this time."

Not everyone was worth an opponent paying such a heavy price to poison. Yang Jin nodded. "Of course. It definitely won't exceed Brother Luo's water amount. For the vegetables, grain, vegetable seeds, and grain seeds grown in your territory, if you bring them to trade, I hope you can include the Azure Dragon Squad among your trading partners."

"That's fine." Xia Qing agreed. Currently, she wanted to keep her cover close, and trading with the Azure Dragon Squad was the best choice.