Volume 6 Chapter 144 - Spreading
Duke Windsor’s sudden change in att.i.tude, Xu Yi was surprised, but it also made sense to him.
In the end, no one could avoid benefits.
The magic machine industry had developed to a certain extent in the Candra Empire, so everyone could see the giant hidden benefits of this new industry.
The Torea Province was the coastal province that was ranked at the bottom, famous for being poor. However, through the marine transport and the magic machine industry that developed, its revenue had gone from the bottom to one of the top five provinces.
Moreover, the benefits that the Torea Province received from the magic machine industry wasn’t just in terms of profit, it was also reflected on the entire Torea Province.
The most important one was the large number of jobs that it brought to the Torea Province.
Because of the large demand for workers that these companies had, when many factories opened, it allowed every person who was healthy to find some form of a job and they didn’t need to worry about making a living.
The Torea Province didn’t even have enough manpower to satisfy the needs of the factories, so there were many people who came from the nearby provinces, looking for jobs in the Torea Province.
Many of these people came from the southern province.
Seeing the large influence the magic machine industry had on the Torea Province, if Duke Windsor didn’t understand that change, he wouldn’t have been able to be the southern province’s governor for so long.
The only thing that he was worried about was the Frestech Chamber of Commerce’s att.i.tude.
There was some grudge between their two sides before, so if he rashly went forth, the Frestech Chamber of Commerce wouldn’t agree to cooperate with them that smoothly.
However, Xu Yi’s att.i.tude was completely different from what Duke Windsor expected.
Before Duke Windsor spoke, Xu Yi had already exposed his reason for coming here and showed a very warm att.i.tude, taking the initiative to propose a cooperation between them.
Xu Yi was this active and positive that even if Duke Windsor had some doubts, he threw them away.
He had been investigating the Torea Province and the surrounding provinces for half a year now, so he had a deep understanding of the influence the magic machine industry had. He was certain that hidden in this new thing brought by the Frestech Chamber of Commerce was a power that could change the entire continent.
If he didn’t make any changes, he might lose out on this and might even be eliminated.
As the head of the WIndsor Family, while also being the Candra Empire’s southern province governor, if he didn’t understand this change, he would be the greatest criminal in the Windsor Family and the southern province.
With the idea of following the new age, just a grudge wasn’t comparable.
So Xu Yi stayed in the Torea Province for only three days before signing a personal contract with Duke Peresco and Duke Windsor.
According to the contract that wasn’t made public, the Frestech Chamber of Commerce would start cooperating with the Torea Province and the southern province.
Of course, with the awkward relationship between the Candra Empire and the Frestech Chamber of Commerce and because of Duke Windsor’s reputation, the Frestech Chamber of Commerce wouldn’t direct invest in these two provinces. They would first work with another company that wasn’t related to the Frestech Chamber of Commerce and was controlled by the Candra Empire called the “Tunan” Chamber of Commerce.
This Tunan Chamber of Commerce was just an empty company. The funds came from the Frestech Chamber of Commerce, mainly being responsible for investing in these two provinces for the Frestech Chamber of Commerce.
According to the contract, the Frestech Chamber of Commerce would build an agricultural magic machine factory in the Torea Province through the Tunan Chamber of Commerce, providing agricultural magic machines for the two provinces.
Later there would be two small magic machine industrial bases in these two provinces. Other than mainly producing household magic machines, they would also produce construction magic machines that would be used to undertake projects in the two provinces.
This was one of the requests Xu Yi made to the two dukes.
He explicitly told the two dukes that to smoothly develop the magic machine industry, as well as enjoy the benefits of the magic machine industry, they first had to solve the backwards infrastructure of the two provinces.
The main part of this infrastructure was mainly solving the problem of the roads.
So not long after Xu Yi left, the Amrit Chamber of Commerce’s chairman Cruise received Duke Peresco’s invitation. They entered the Torea Province and signed a contract with Duke Peresco and Duke Windsor’s representative there to build roads.
This contract was different from the private one that they signed with Xu Yi, this was an official contract with the seals of the Torea Province and the southern province on it.
According to this contract, the Torea Province and the southern province would invest in one million and two hundred thousand gold coins and one million and seven hundred thousand gold coins respectively to build four roads in the two provinces, for a total of one thousand and two hundred kilometers.
Once these four roads were paved, from the Torea Province, the cargo from the ships that landed in the southern ports could be brought from the coast to the Torea Province and the southern province through these roads.
At the same time, the two provinces could smoothly send products through this road to the harbour before sending them to different places.
So in order to work with these roads, the two provinces ordered two hundred large transport Magic Cars from the Frestech Chamber of Commerce.
Of course, since Duke Windsor had clearly announced that products related to the Frestech Chamber of Commerce couldn’t enter the southern province, for the two hundred large transport Magic Cars that the southern province ordered came from an unknown company under the Torea Province.
As for how this company would get these large transport Magic Cars to the southern province without raising any suspicion, that was something for Duke Windsor to worry about and not something for Xu Yi…..
While chairman Cruise was still negotiating with the representatives from the two provinces on the four roads, Xu Yi had already returned to his seaside manor in the Frestech Chamber of Commerce’s main base.
When Xu Yi came home, the first thing Xu Yi did was go to the study with the large map of the Sines Continent hanging on the wall.
He picked up the pen and first put a red dot in the Candra Empire’s southern Torea Province before putting several dots in the southern province. After hesitating a bit, he didn’t colour any parts of this map red and only left a few more red dots.
He was very a.s.sured about the Torea Province, believing that Duke Peresco would have enough sincerity in working with the Frestech Chamber of Commerce to develop the magic machine industry. But as for the southern province, Xu Yi wasn’t that confident.
Although Duke Windsor had shown enough sincerity, based on his previous actions, Xu Yi still needed to observe him for some time.
After he finished dotting these two areas with differing degrees of red, Xu Yi’s eyes turned to the Candra Empire on the map. He found that there were many patches of red in the Candra Empire’s large s.p.a.ce, which showed that the magic machine industry was developing quite quickly in the Candra Empire. It was already incomparable to the difficult position it had been in in the beginning.
Xu Yi was someone who always believed in the magic machine industry the most. He believed that when everyone in the Candra Empire realized the benefits the magic machine industry brought, the Candra Empire would fall eventually.
This was the tide of the new age, there was no person or country that could block it.
After moving his eyes away from the Candra Empire, Xu Yi looked at the Marlow Empire to the north that also occupied a large s.p.a.ce and he revealed a satisfied look.
Although the Marlow Empire didn’t have as many red regions as the Candra Empire, it was much darker in colour. This showed that in Xu Yi’s mind, these places in the Marlow Empire had greater development in the magic machine industry compared to the Candra Empire.
The reason for this was first, the geography of the Marlow Empire was special. There weren’t many places to develop the magic machine industry in. Second, it was because the Frestech Chamber of Commerce’s entry into the Marlow Empire was different. It was mainly focused on Marquis Southgate, which was where the development was focused and had a deeper red colour.
Of course, if one went by the development situation in the two empires, the Marlow Empire was much stronger than the Candra Empire because of Marquis Southgate and their government’s accepting att.i.tudes.
The Marlow Empire had already made enough agricultural magic machines. With the help of the Cantona Chamber of Commerce, they were already harvesting over 30% of their farmland with agricultural magic machines, which was more than ten times more effective than in the past.
The Marlow Empire that had tasted the benefits had clearly stated to the Frestech Chamber of Commerce that they hoped that they would transfer the agricultural magic machine technology, helping the Marlow Empire completely implement the agricultural magic machines.
The Marlow Empire even proposed reducing their tariffs by 5% for all their products, which was enough to show their sincerity.
Don’t look down on this 5%.
Including the agricultural magic machines, just last year, the Frestech Chamber of Commerce had sold a total of seventeen million gold coins worth of products in the Marlow Empire.
Although the tariffs for these various magic machines weren’t that high, being 54%.
But if 5% was reduced off of this, the Frestech Chamber of Commerce would be able to get over eight hundred thousand gold coins.
This didn’t seem like much, but considering the Frestech Chamber of Commerce was importing over thirty million gold coins worth of products into the Marlow Empire, this was an amount that couldn’t be ignored.
Not to mention that because of the lowered tariffs, the Frestech Chamber of Commerce could lower their price, making it easier to sell in the Marlow Empire and making the Frestech Chamber of Commerce’s products more compet.i.tive with the products of the other magic machine companies.
Based on this, the benefits that the Frestech Chamber of Commerce had earned was even more shocking.
But this was still far from being enough for Xu Yi…...