The world is a giant shop in the eyes of the business plan.
The shop is filled with a wide variety of goods, garlic, wheat, potatoes, soya beans, grapes, cotton, wood, iron, cattle, sheep …… they all have their price.
You grow wheat and exchange it for grapes; he makes wine and trades it for mutton; I cut wood and exchange the wood for potatoes …… Everyone goes round and round, all trading constantly.
What about people?
Since he was a child, Shokaku wondered if people were the same, since all good things had a price.
Wouldn’t it create more profit if people were turned into commodities that could be placed directly in shops?
Why don’t people give it a try?
The fact is, people have a price.
Shokaku has been patiently watching for many years.
He found out by chatting and asking questions.
It wasn’t that people felt that people shouldn’t have a price, but that once there was a set price for each person, it would turn them into quality, common, or inferior according to the price.
Apart from that, then if people are turned into goods, then who are the customers involved in the buying and selling?
The only ones who can qualify are the gods, because divine greatness is everywhere. The great Yao God created the Yao civilisation and governs this world.
Shang Kei felt that the ubiquitous gods didn’t care about such trivial matters.
People still regarded themselves as too important.
Yao Shen can be able to create lightning storms, earthquakes and flames, and destroy other evil gods …… He is too busy, and the whole world needs to be overlooked and taken care of by Him.
It was like a giant and a bunch of ants under his feet.
The giant sometimes found it interesting and looked at it more, but mostly, it was just a glance – he had a lot of important things to do.
Giving a leaf to this group of ants and blocking another stream of water would be easy for the immensely large giant. But the giant wouldn’t keep staring at one particular ant.
The gods don’t care what the ants think.
Ants were dealing with ants after all.
Business planners feel that as long as the transaction is clearly marked and approved by both the buyer and the seller, then why not?
How do you put a price on a person?
He spent a lot of time making a detailed set of pricing criteria.
The first thing was to look at the age of the person; young ones were expensive and old ones were cheaper.
Then the physical condition is looked at; strong ones are expensive and weak ones are cheap.
Finally, the price attached to the individual, that is, the capacity to work, is judged.
A person with skilled skills is worth more than a person with no skills.
……
Business Accounting feels good about their set. Let everyone know their prices, clearly and transparently.
As long as they followed their own way, commodities like people would surely circulate better.
However, the mayor, Fishing Company, and the merchant leader, Shang Li, rejected his proposal altogether.
“Shang Li, you need to learn one thing first. Treat people as people.”
Shang Li asked rhetorically, “According to your method, there is no difference between people and beasts and livestock. Then why do people gather together? Just to be bought and sold by others?”
“Once people are seen as livestock to be bought and sold, trust disappears completely.”
“Without basic trust, do you think traders will still exist?”
“Will people still trade according to your ways and rules? Instead of outright looting and hunting?”
“Too much concentration on trading, you’re out of your mind right now.”
Although he was irritated, Shangji couldn’t find a rebuttal.
But he still felt that he was right.
That’s the way it is in business.
If you don’t try it, who knows if there’s any money in it?
Besides, this is a business that has never been done before and is full of opportunities.
So the business plan united some merchants and slowly reached a consensus, ready to try the overseas islanders first. The islander natives didn’t have so many taboos, and many islands were already in the habit of trading people.
The overseas pilot was very successful.
The islander natives were very fond of Shang Kei’s slave trade. Shang Kei and others also bought a large number of slaves at sea, but these slaves could only grow wheat, potatoes, soya beans and grapes on the islands and could not enter the western continent.
After the death of Mayor Fishing Company, Shang Li took over as mayor.
At this time, Shang Li set his sights on the sea, and he left Salt City, saying he was going to the northern islands to talk to a chief about co-operation.
However, Shang Kei had received inside information that Shang Li was trying to rectify the overseas slave market. This time he was going to meet with a few chiefs, a sign that he was going to make a formal move.
Shang Kei didn’t do anything about it, so he just made the first move.
He paid off sailors and fishermen to sink Shang Li’s oar sailing ship in the depths of the ocean, where there were no islands, to eliminate this last stumbling block completely. Only after confirming at the scene that the wreck was swallowed up by the ocean whirlpool did Shang Kei feel relieved.
In the past Shang Li was like a mountain, but today he had become a piece of paper.
What follows is easy.
The business plan united the previous merchants and convinced the vast majority of Salt City’s merchants to promise a portion of the benefits to the Salt Clan …… Abolish the mayor, create a citizen’s council, and collect taxes ……
All for the final goal.
The legalisation of the slave trade.
People were finally brought into shops as commodities and put on the streets, each one marked up and available for selection.
Thus men could buy wives, women could buy the husbands they wanted, old people could buy young labourers, and childless parents could pick out the children of their choice at will.
The business plan was satisfactory.
In the Salt City, the slave business quickly boomed for a while.
Slave traders became the hottest profession and slave owners became symbols of wealth. The number of slaves represented a person’s status, and those without slaves were considered poor.
Then slaves began to change from labourers to pets, and from pets to consumables …… Because slaves are property, not people, there is no problem even if they are killed by a slaver in the street.
Gradually, the merchant planners realised that the slave trade was getting out of hand.
But he could no longer stop this huge carriage. Don’t look at him as the nominal head, but he was actually just representing the interests of the slave traders, the salt clan, and others.
Going against all those who gained profit would not end up better than Shang Li.
Shang Li has no regrets.
He didn’t think he was considered a tough talker.
There was always a profit and a loss in business, it was just that this time the price was a little too high, and it was not only himself who lost, but also the rest of the city who lost too much.
Willing to gamble and lose, and then again.
The business plan had been planned for a few years, when he suddenly got the news that a group of pirates had quietly risen up. This group of pirates called themselves [Northern Temple Army], they constantly attacked the merchant ships of slave traders at sea, snatched the slaves and killed the traders.
The leader was a man named Copper Sea, who pulled this group together because his wife was sold into slavery, claiming that he wanted to smash the slavery system and free all slaves.
The merchant planners sent people to make contact with the [Northern Temple Army] and found that this group of people were indeed not just another group of merchants, but really wanted to declare war on the entire slavery system.
This made Shang Kei very happy.
An outside force would be a great help to himself, and under high pressure would help him regulate the slave market.
Then he found out wrong, the Citizen’s Council wouldn’t even fortify the stone wall.
Many merchants were even ecstatic.
“Now all sorts of goods can just go up in price! Because there are pirates, so the delivery is expensive.”
“Slaves too, will be worth more!”
“There are fewer ships now, so our business is better!”
Shang Kei couldn’t help but remember Shang Li’s words.
– -Too much concentration on trading.
The business plan finally understood the meaning of that statement somewhat.
He was tired.
For the first time in his life, this business thing had made Shang Kei feel tired and jaded.
Let it all be destroyed, shuffle the deck and start over.
Hurry up.
So when Copper Sea led the [Northern Temple Army] to attack the city with great vigour, the city responded immediately and broke the city with incomparable smoothness. That wasn’t just the result of their many years of arranging for insiders, there was also a strong push from Shangji behind the scenes.
After breaking the city, Shang Kei fled overseas.
He was then captured by an archipelago people, and after robbing the ship of all its valuables, all the people on board were sold as slaves to the leader of an archipelago people.
The old merchant reckoner was only worth three sheepskins.
He realised then that he was so worthless.
After thirteen years as a slave, Merchant Keith had grown potatoes and grapes, raised pacing birds, and was now growing cotton.
He’s been sold back and forth by islander slavers, and now he’s in the hands of a young man.
This young slaver treats him fairly well, beating him not too much, giving him water to drink, and allowing him to wear clothes – which is good enough treatment for a slave.
During his time as a slave, Shang Kei discovers that there is a large bug on the island.
They had an arching armour and a beautiful looking red back armour with seven stars on it. This bug would give off a strong aroma and there were man-eating crabs that would protect it.
Shangji spent all his time observing this bug, which made him feel happy and peaceful.
Smelling the aroma made him feel like he was back in Salt City, millions of miles away, returning to the normal order of urban civilisation.
He recorded the bugs with charcoal on coconut shells, noting what they looked like, how they flew, what they smelled like, what they ate, what they did during the day and what they did at night ……
Eventually The Ladybird Book was born on a large string of coconut shells.
On the arrival of a paddle steamer on the island, the merchant planner gave the bunch of coconut shells to a scholar to take back to Yao or Salt City.
The other was very surprised to see the writing on the coconut shells.
“You are a very learned man. May I ask your name?”
The merchant’s dark face, wrinkles squeezed into a pile, gave a somewhat constrained smile.
The slaver next to him pulled the rope around Shang Kei’s neck and said in the not fluent Yao language, “His name is San Yangpi! Slave, can write, slave.”
The scholar looked at Shang Kei, “I will go back and raise money to help you regain your freedom, you should return to Yao City or Salt City.”
“Eight sheepskins.”
The slaver quoted, “He ate a lot of my grain, and I taught him to pick cotton and grow potatoes.”
As he watched the paddle schooner sail out to sea, the merchant accountant prayed silently.
Lord Yao Shen, I only hope that you will bless and circulate the book that I wrote …… I hope that everyone can go to that kind of marvellous bug from this book and get the simplest happiness and peace.
Half a year later, the scholar returned again by ship and found the slave owner: “I want to redeem the freedom of that ‘three sheepskin’ gentleman.”
“Oh, Three Sheepskin, dead.”
“Dead? How?”
“Stomach ache, diarrhoea, pooped to death.”
The scholar said angrily, “He was your slave, why didn’t you save him!”
“Herbs are expensive on the island, and you merchants sell them expensively.”
The slaver said rightly, “More expensive than three sheepskins …… no, eight sheepskins.”
