Volume 1 Chapter 10 - Renting land

Volume 1 Chapter 10 Renting land
A horse carriage was slowly heading out Banta City’s western gate. It gradually accelerated and quickly headed to Banta City’s western suburbs.
Xu Yi and Heinz were sitting across each other inside the carriage. Heinz was holding a rough map of Banta City in his hands and was explaining something to Xu Yi.
“Look, this is Viscount Leslie’s territory, with a total area of close to a thousand hectares and over half of it is undeveloped land. Viscount Leslie has promised us that we can casually pick a piece of land to rent from this undeveloped land.”
Xu Yi looked over the map and pointed at the map with his finger, “No need to pick, here is fine.”
“This place?” Heinz looked at where Xu Yi was pointing and thought about it . He said with a frown, “This place is not close to Banta City and it isn’t close to anything else, I’m afraid it won’t be convenient living there.”
Xu Yi gave a shrug before saying with a faint smile, “It’s good if there is nothing there, it’s more convenient for us to plan things. It has to be known, it’s easier to draw on an empty piece of paper than a covered piece of paper.”
“But like this, our expenditures will be higher than estimated.” Heinz still had a frown on his face.
“This initial investment is necessary.” Xu Yi nodded before drawing another circle on the map, “If it’s possible, I even want to rent this large part of undeveloped land to use.”
“This large part?” Heinz said in a stunned voice, “We can’t do that. Just to rent a hectare of land, we need to pay Viscount Leslie one hundred gold coins every year. I we rent such a large piece…..It wouldn’t be ten thousand, but it would be several thousand gold coins each year. Then again, we don’t need such a large workshop, why do we need such a large piece of land?”
Xu Yi revealed a faint smile, “Heinz, could it be that you are only satisfied with a little Magic Fan factory?”
Heinz looked at Xu Yi in a daze. Could it be this fellow has even bigger ambitions?
Just yesterday, Xu Yi had found Heinz to tell him not to waste time finding a suitable place in Banta City because Xu Yi wanted to find an empty space outside Banta City. He was planning to build a factory on empty land and focus on producing Magic Fans.
During this time Xu Yi also had Heinz’s nephew Alex perform a small survey of the city. According to their results, Xu Yi could estimate that the consumption for Magic Fans in Banta City was around three to five thousand and right now they had only sold less than five hundred. This meant they had a market of over several thousand people.
Moreover, this number was only limited to Banta City. The living conditions of families in the rural areas outside Banta City was not as good as Banta City, but there was still a certain demand for Magic Fans.
If the area around Banta City was included, Xu Yi could make a bold estimate that the demand for Magic Fans was over ten thousand units!
Because of this number, Xu Yi had made the decision to increase his production line.
If he wanted to greatly increase his production, there were limits to the warehouses he rented in Banta City. So, Xu Yi directly headed outside the city, preparing to build a Magic Fan factory.
After all his research, he finally decided on a piece of land that belonged to Viscount Leslie.
Of course, if he wanted to increase production, other than land, the more important thing was people.
Xu Yi looked at the stack of things in his hand and his lips curled into a smile.
Of this stack, half was information on thirty people and the other half was thirty contracts.
These things were his harvest after his trip to Baron Rickto Magic Academy.
With his hard work at convincing him, Director Shearer finally allowed Xu Yi to recruit Baron Rickto Magic Academy students to work for him. However, Shearer had said that he would not openly support him, he would just not oppose him.
However, after Xu Yi put in effort all around the campus and finally succeeded in recruiting thirty students that met the requirement.
The magic level of the students were not high, at least there wasn’t a single one that could compare to Xu Yi.
But as Baron Rickto Magic Academy students, they had a solid foundation on the basics of Magic Array, as well as some experience drawing Magic Arrays.
Even though the Revolving Wind Magic Array of the Magic Fan had been changed by Xu Yi, making it more complicated, it was still only a low level Wind Magic Array. It wasn’t that difficult to inscribe it.
Xu Yi recruited these students and the only thing they had to do was inscribe the Magic Arrays.
Although this was a very simple task, they needed a certain amount of magical power to do this.
When he was manufacturing the five hundred Magic Fans, Xu Yi had asked his ten coworkers to help him complete them. However, in order to produce over ten thousand Magic Fans, it was impossible just to rely on his ten coworkers.
Compared to this, it was more suitable for him to hire thirty students than to rely on his ten coworkers.
First, these thirty students wouldn’t be as constrained as his ten coworkers, they wouldn’t hesitate to sign a contract with Xu Yi. With them establishing a clear employment relationship with Xu Yi, Xu Yi wouldn’t need to worry about them affecting production.
Next, when Xu Yi invited his ten coworkers to complete the five hundred Magic Fans, he had paid each coworker five gold coins and given them a bonus of a Magic Fan. Compared to this, he had already discussed this with the thirty students and each one would be earning two silver coins per Magic Array drawn, so he could greatly cut down on costs.
Actually when Xu Yi mentioned this pay, he was a bit worried that the students would find it too low. However, he never thought that after hearing the pay, the students would all look very excited, even praising Xu Yi for being so generous.
The last thing was the most important point. Compared to his coworkers in the lab, these magic academy students still had not formed their own thinking, so they didn’t have that much prejudice towards magical application.
Xu Yi could instill them with his mechanical engineering knowledge from earth, letting them learn from the beginning.
If a few of them showed talents in magical engineering, that would be a very valuable resource.
If more and more of these magicians appeared, Xu Yi’s dream of creating an industrial system on the Sines Continent would no longer just be a dream…..
The horse carriage suddenly jolted and Xu Yi was thrown out of his seat, instantly bring him out of his daydream about the future.
“We’re almost there.” Heinz on the side reminded him.
Xu Yi opened the window and looked out. He found that the horse carriage had already left the large road to Banta City’s west and was now on a rocky and unsmooth small village road.
Feeling the shaking coming from the carriage, Xu Yi couldn’t help knitting his brows.
“This situation of this road is too lacking.”
Heinz said with a bitter smile, “Of course, this place is a piece of undeveloped land. For it to have a small road that can let a horse carriage pass is already pretty good.”
“This won’t do. Heinz, if I wanted to make a smooth path from our place to the large road just now, around how much money would that cost?”
“Building a road?” Heinz was stunned. He looked down and pointed at the map a few times before replying with a bitter smile, “That is not cheap. Even if it is the most simple road, it would cost several hundred gold coins.” After pausing for a bit, he couldn’t help adding, “Actually, although this road is a bit bumpy, it can let a horse carriage pass, so we don’t need to spend all that money on repaving the road, right?”
Xu Yi shook his head, “No, we have to repave this road. The Magic Fans aren’t that well made, so perhaps their transport requirements aren’t high, but we will be making more and more precise products in the future. With the situation of this road, it’s very easy for products to occur during transport.”
Heinz curled his lips. He found that he didn’t understand what Xu Yi meant by “well made”, “future products”, and “precise”, so he couldn’t help trying to convince him otherwise.
But right now, Xu Yi was the one in charge and he didn’t have any decision making rights, so he gave up on trying to convince him in the end.
The horse carriage continued jolting down this road for a bit before it finally slowly stopped.
Xu Yi and Heinz jumped out of the horse carriage and looked around, seeing a true expansive wasteland. The surrounding area was filled with weeds and they couldn’t see anything.
Seeing how run down the land was, Heinz couldn’t help being a bit disappointed, but Xu Yi wasn’t surprised at all.
He had gone to several areas on earth that were being developed, the land there was even more desolate than this. After it was developed, it wouldn’t be long before it became much more lively.
Although this area was very desolate right now, he believed that if he kept investing in it, this place would become much more luxurious.
“Are you Mister Xu Yi and Mister Heinz?” A small and thin old man had appeared at an unknown time.
“Hello Butler Brunei, I am Heinz and this is my partner Xu Yi.” Heinz quickly came forward to greet him, “Xu Yi, this is Viscount Leslie’s butler, Mister Brunei.”
Xu Yi looked over this ordinary looking old man and gave him a bow.
Brunei looked over with his small eyes and looked over Xu Yi. He said with a nod, “Alright, since you are here, then have a proper look. The Lord Viscount has said that although this place is undeveloped land, since it is in his territory, he can’t just give it to people to use. No matter what you want to do in the future, if it’s on this land, you have to tell the Lord Viscount first, understood?”
Looking at this arrogant Brunei, Xu Yi couldn’t help feeling angry and finding this funny.
If this was earth, if someone like him was willing to pay money to rent this undeveloped land, the owner would go wild with happiness.
But on the Sines Continent, Viscount Leslie not only took his money, his butler Brunei was acting this arrogantly. It was like this land wasn’t being rented by Xu Yi, rather it was Viscount Leslie who was gracious enough to let him use it.
Xu Yi naturally couldn’t reveal anything on his face, so he just nodded in agreement. Then he turned to look around the area.
Xu Yi was very satisfied with his inspection. This geological conditions of this land was good and the terrain was rather flat, it was very suitable for building a factory.
The more important thing was that there was a ten meter wide river by this land and there was a small forest on the other side, so it was easy to gather resources and to gather water.
The only problem was that transportation wasn’t too convenient, but Xu Yi had already considered this problem.
Renovating the road to ensure connection was the first thing to do when building a factory or a mine.