Chapter 330 - 306: Thousands of Percent in Profit

Chapter 330: Chapter 306: Thousands of Percent in Profit

"???" Baguda was indeed stunned.

’What is going on?’

’Weren’t we talking about tourism? How did it turn into a beauty pageant?’

Seeing that Baguda didn’t understand, Lu Feng immediately added, "Send out a notice. The women who are selected will not only receive a reward but also be given jobs at the scenic areas!"

Baguda’s eyes lit up. "I understand! This way, we can solve the unemployment problem for a number of people."

Lu Feng smiled and prompted him, "Is that all? The people who can afford to travel abroad have disposable income. And those with disposable income are generally capable people—in other words, talent. Many of them are single, too."

Baguda’s eyes shone even brighter. "So if the girls can find a way to make them stay, to start a business or work in the Xuanfeng Alliance, we can offer more rewards? We could even pay for their weddings?"

As he said this, he looked at Lu Feng in disbelief.

’The Governor is incredible! Can you really recruit talented immigrants like this?’

’But this is definitely a good method. After all, the Xuanfeng Alliance is seriously underpopulated.’

The key reason was the wars. Too many men were conscripted and died, which created a huge disparity between the number of marriageable women and men.

If the Xuanfeng Alliance were to solve this problem on its own, it would probably take 10 to 30 years for the next generation to grow up.

Lu Feng naturally couldn’t wait that long. However, hearing Baguda’s words, he shook his head. ’This guy’s thinking is too crude.’

Still, in Dragon Country, if you had to say which stratagem had appeared most often and had the highest success rate from ancient times to the present, it would definitely be the honey trap.

’The honey trap is the wisdom of the ancients, after all.’

So, with the Xuanfeng Alliance’s female-to-male ratio at 3:1, the honey trap was a tool that had to be used. After all, a "marriage crisis" for women was sweeping the alliance.

In any case, it was better than two or three women marrying one man.

After all, he, the dignified Governor, was devoted to his own girlfriend. Most men in the Xuanfeng Alliance were poor and couldn’t afford to support so many women. Marrying more would only make their lives too difficult.

The key was that it would be too chaotic. It wouldn’t be good if ordinary families were staging palace intrigue dramas every day.

So, with a shortage of men, even enforcing monogamy drew complaints from the women.

After he had Baguda issue the monogamy decree, people came to the Governor’s Mansion to complain every day.

In that case, he would use these women to attract more people and talent for the Xuanfeng Alliance.

Besides, a man could be rational about anything, except when it came to a woman.

So, if a man could get a wife for free without his job benefits suffering, and there were even policies offering marriage bonuses and help with a down payment on a house... how many do you think would be willing to immigrate?

At least within Dragon Country, there would definitely be many.

Of course, this would also attract some freeloaders. ’A lot of scumbags will probably show up, won’t they?’

’But what does that matter?’

Dating doesn’t necessarily lead to marriage. For a woman desperate to get married, perhaps even being played by a scumbag would be a welcome experience.

It could also alleviate the social friction caused by the imbalanced gender ratio.

Of course, he couldn’t just let it run wild. He had to at least ensure the men were physically healthy, and especially free of diseases. If they brought in some sexually transmitted diseases, that would be terrible.

’This has to be a rule. A medical examination will be required to enter the Xuanfeng Alliance.’

Naturally, there was another type of freeloader: those who would date a girl from the Xuanfeng Alliance and then plan to take her back home to marry, getting a wife for free.

Without a doubt, once word got out in Dragon Country that you could marry a wife in the Xuanfeng Alliance without paying a bride price, countless single, unmarried men would flood into the alliance with this exact idea in mind.

These men, with no house, no car, and no savings, generally couldn’t afford a bride price anyway. Their families might even shamelessly teach them to get the girl pregnant so they wouldn’t have to pay it.

There were many such families. They held the entitled attitude of "I’m poor, so I’m right," and would resort to all sorts of dirty tricks.

Hadn’t there been news reports about a man who couldn’t afford the bride price, so his family gave him the idea to poke holes in the "little umbrella" to get the girl pregnant?

Once the girl was pregnant, the man’s side would play hard to get, making the woman’s side anxious, and thus gain the upper hand.

At that point, the woman would either have to get an abortion or resign herself to her fate.

Many irrational and naive girls fell for this trick.

The final outcome was predictable.

These types of men had no backbone or ambition. After marriage, they usually had little ability, couldn’t earn much money, and their family life was unhappy. Then, the women would choose to divorce.

The rising divorce rate nowadays was partly related to these kinds of families.

Perhaps some would say this was painting everyone with the same brush, and that there were plenty of births out of wedlock.

But one thing was certain: in a family with good values, even if a premarital pregnancy occurred, they would never resort to the idea of using it to gain leverage. If only for the sake of the relationship between the two families, they would at least try to negotiate.

In reality, most bride prices weren’t as exaggerated as they were made out to be online. Many families negotiated them amicably.

Lu Feng had seen more than one example of this back in Dragon Country.

Two of his neighbors had married wives who got pregnant before marriage. One family used the opportunity to gain leverage over the woman’s side. Although they achieved their goal, the woman’s family was very reluctant. They only came to the wedding with long faces, and the two families rarely interacted afterward. Eventually, they divorced. It was said the woman saw through him and became a rich man’s mistress, while the man remained an old bachelor, too old to trick another woman.

The other family was different. After learning about the pregnancy, the man’s side borrowed 80,000 and gave it to the woman’s family, showing their sincere attitude and willingness to negotiate.

As a result, their wedding was a happy occasion, the two families visited each other often, and the wife even gave her husband two daughters and a son.

Lu Feng was certain that when the first type of man learned that they didn’t need a bride price to marry a wife in the Xuanfeng Alliance, they would absolutely set their sights on the alliance, hoping to trick a woman into leaving with them.

If that happened, his Xuanfeng Alliance would suffer a double loss.

However, he had a way to deal with such people. He’d let the girl’s family demand a bride price. He had said there was no bride price for marrying *in* the Xuanfeng Alliance; he never said there was no bride price for taking a woman *away* to marry.

They would have to pay according to Dragon Country’s standards.

Won’t pay?

There were plenty of ways to ensure they couldn’t take the woman away.

Of course, if someone was truly willing to pay such a bride price, it meant the girl had found true love. There was nothing to be done about that. ’Go and live happily.’

Still, the beauty pageant was the key. ’First, we’ll select a batch of beauties to draw people in, and then we’ll see what happens.’

Anyone who sells things knows you have to show off your best-looking products in the advertisement.

Baguda immediately asked, "Governor, I will arrange the beauty pageant. What is the second matter?"

Only then did Lu Feng hand the recipes he had just written down from memory to Baguda, instructing, "Purchase all the ingredients for these three recipes for me. Then find people to set up a dedicated production line to manufacture the items from these recipes."

Baguda took the recipes curiously. He was stunned when he saw the contents. "Salt, MSG, and a sauce? Governor, aren’t these just common kitchen seasonings?"

Lu Feng nodded and said, "Yes. We’re going to process ordinary MSG and salt to create premium-grade seasonings. It won’t be a problem to sell them for several dozen times the price."

Lu Feng was confident about this.

Don’t look down on just a few +1 attributes. The +1 attribute on the electromagnetic rice cooker had already proven to be amazing.

After all, how much does a pound of salt cost? The kind a normal family uses is less than 10. More expensive ones go for 20 or 30, and a bag can last a family of three for a month.

So even if the price was multiplied by several dozen times, it would only be a few hundred.

A few hundred a month to make their food taste delicious, to raise their cooking skills by a level, to the point of even rivaling a master chef—he believed countless people would buy it.

What they needed to do was acquire cheap salt, buy the other ingredients to create the special salt, and then turn around and sell it for dozens of times the price.

The profit margin would be several thousand percent.

This was a deal they absolutely had to make.

Baguda didn’t doubt Lu Feng’s words. He nodded immediately and went out to make the arrangements.

So, in the following days, the Xuanfeng Alliance announced a beauty pageant event, to be held in every county and town.

This sudden event confused everyone, as they didn’t know its purpose.

However, when they saw that the beauty pageant came with prize money and the promise of a high-paying job, everyone’s enthusiasm soared.

For a time, the Xuanfeng Alliance was swept up in a beauty pageant craze.

At the same time, Baguda had already arranged for people to acquire the various ingredients, and the production lines for the special salt, MSG, and sauce were being custom-built.

During this period, the fish also took the bait.

"Master, the people the F-B-I sent to deal with Curik and the others have already headed to Myanmar. And there are quite a few of them—all elites," Xiaozhi’s voice suddenly rang out. "It seems they really have it in for me."

"Since the fish have arrived, monitor their position at all times." Hearing this, Lu Feng immediately dialed Yang Ming’s number.

’The fish have arrived. They need to be cooked, of course.’

’As for how to cook them... I’ll have to think about that carefully.’

’Wait, aren’t they planning to enter the Xuanfeng Alliance from Myanmar, crossing at the border?’

’There are plenty of bandits at the border, aren’t there?’

’The F-B-I’s elite forces running into border bandits and getting wiped out... that would be a perfectly reasonable story, right?’

At that time, he could have people impersonate a group of bandits and then publicly claim responsibility for the incident.

’That should be fun, right?’

...

「Meanwhile.」

In a hidden location in the Beautiful Country, Doug was also looking at a screen, which displayed a set of coordinates. The coordinates were in Myanmar.

The people he had sent to deal with the Xuanfeng Alliance’s God of Hackers had already arrived in Myanmar.

Beside him, a blond white man frowned and asked, "Doug, are you sure you’ll succeed this time?"

Doug nodded. "I’ve made thorough arrangements. The identities of those three hackers have been confirmed. They must be eliminated. They’re too great a threat to us. If we don’t get rid of them, I’m afraid we’ll have to be wary of them whenever we want to do anything in the Xuanfeng Alliance’s sphere of influence."

The blond man beside him nodded. "The Xuanfeng Alliance’s influence is growing. We really do need to do something. When their hackers exposed the data of our members before, it caused us heavy losses. We can’t just let it go."

Doug picked up his communicator. "Flying Eagle, we’ve arranged accommodations for you in Myanmar. After tomorrow, you’ll infiltrate the Xuanfeng Alliance. Someone will be there to meet you. Although our contact is already helping to keep an eye on the three hackers, you still need to be mindful of the network situation. Don’t get discovered by their hackers."

On the other side, in Myanmar, two teams of people had already boarded a bus.

A burly black man among them held a communicator and replied, "Don’t worry, Mr. Doug. We’ll be careful. Besides, our secret communications have anti-intrusion alarms. If the other party tries to hack us, we’ll know."

This black man was Flying Eagle, and his words were full of confidence.

Besides, with their skills and a covert infiltration across the border, there was no way the enemy could possibly discover them.

He wouldn’t give the enemy a chance to discover them, either.