The Empress’s Gigolo

“Remember this, who are our customers? They are local tyrants, bureaucrats, aristocratic families, and those who are ambitious.

Why do we want to sell things to them? Because they are the only ones that deserve them and only our products can enhance their status and values in order for them to be respected and attain what they desire.

Whether it is for their own use or for their dream lover or for their superior…

If he doesn’t want to have it? It doesn’t matter, let his opponent possess it first…”

… For the next few days, Ren Baqian taught the disciples at the Black Bamboo Academy every morning. In the afternoon, he either practiced boxing or got beaten up by Tong Lan. At night, he taught the two numbskulls who, apart from looking a bit tall, were pretty useless managers of the imperial trade caravans.

“What are sales?” Ren Baqian sat on a stone chair in Pingle Park. In front of him were two almost 50-year-old managers, who stood there like honest school children.

These two days were an eye opener for them.

“To solve customer’s needs!” the two shopkeepers instantly answered.

“How do we do sales?”

“To create demand for customers!”

Ren Baqian nodded his head gently, these two blockheads finally understood some principles of sales.

“What are we selling?”

“It is about status and value as humans need to enhance their value through foreign goods…” The two shopkeepers were fluently spouting terminologies, and the empress would be amazed if she saw them.

“Very well. Bear in mind that we are not selling goods, but status! Self-expression! Love! High position and a generous pay! We are not selling any commodity,” Ren Baqian summarized to the two of them.

“Yes, Sir!” The two men nodded successively with conviction. They were wondering where this genius got his knowledge from.

These few days of lectures had benefited the two greatly. Even if they were given a pile of feces to sell, they could sell it at the price of gold.

“Both of you can take your leave now. Memorize today’s lesson and set out in two days.” Ren Baqian waved them off.

“Sir, we recorded notes when we got back and compared with each other every day, ” the two men quickly replied with respect.

“Well, when you have succeeded, you will realize your own self-worth.” Ren Baqian waved at his guards to escort the two men from the palace.

He felt some regrets after the two departed because time was too limited. Otherwise, he would have experimented with MLM.

At present, he could only rely on the two men to apply the skills they had learned during these few days.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to worry because his goods had no competitors. Even with some setbacks, he presumed that the two managers would still give a good account of themselves.

The goods he had prepared were 2,000 glass goblets, 2,000 classic drinking cups, and 1,000 silver mirrors.

However, they would not be sold during one trip, but divided between four trips. The first trip would have the least amount of goods, but the number of goods would gradually increase from the second trip onward.

Of course, the price of the goods would be the highest during the first trip and then gradually reduce.

His goal was to get more than 30 million taels of silver from the sales of this batch of goods in Dayao and Yun Nation.

This was considered a king’s ransom in Dayao.

The annual revenue of Great Xia’s state treasury was 100 million taels of silver. Yun Nation and Chen Nation received 31 million and 22 million taels of silver per year, respectively. As for Dayao, which had a land area equivalent to Yun Nation and Chen Nation combined, they only had an annual income of seven million taels of silver.

Half of the revenue was from the remnant citizens of the Hao Nation who resided in the south.

Out of these seven million taels of silver, the military expenditure was already 3 million taels of silver. With 100 thousand soldiers and excluding the food and basic expenses, each soldier received a salary of just 12 taels of silver annually. That was equivalent to a salary of one tael of silver per month.

It was a known fact that the lowest level of a soldier in Dayao’s army was at the Man Wheel level. In other countries, those with the same ability would command at least six to ten times their salary.

It was no wonder that some protectorates were reduced to the point of having to rely on the brothels to supplement their income.

The remaining four million taels of silver were used to pay the salaries of all of Dayao’s officials, craftsmen, odd-job workers, renovations for the city, and so on. There was hardly any balance left over.

As a result, Dayao basically had no spare capacity to build any infrastructure. Even the main road was just a flattened dirt path.

The imperial armory, which purchased weapons to supplement the army in successive years, didn’t have much money left at all. The additional financial burden of Ren Baqian’s cultivation shrank the empress’s coffers by a big portion over the last three months. At best, it could only last for three more months.

The monthly cultivation cost of Ren Baqian was about 50,000 taels of silver. In other words and excluding exotic items, the coffers of the empress were only left with 300,000 taels of silver. Some of the jewelry were gifts from other countries for Her Majesty’s birthday celebration this year.

Ren Baqian carefully assessed the account and felt that it really wasn’t easy to be an empress.

However, the empress was still resolute and didn’t feel any misgivings.

With the exception of Africa, Dayao’s empress was perhaps the poorest among all the rulers of Earth as well as the rulers of the civilized nations in this world.

女帝都是这样,更不用说诸位大臣了.If the empress was in such a dire situation, let alone those court official.s

According to Ren Baqian’s assessment of the situation in Dayao, the money he earned could only tide over the country’s desperate situation. The road to development for Dayao was a long one.

He had to put his worries aside and take it step by step.

Lying in bed, he entered a vast empty space. Right in the middle of this space was a towering tree that occupied the entire area. It was about 100 meters tall. The crown of the tree spanned a circumference of more than 10 kilometers and countless green vines were wrapped around the tree trunk.

When he broke through the [Visualization of Water], he entered the second visualization stage, which was the [Visualization of Wood].

Water begets wood, so after the [Visualization of Water], it wasn’t surprising that he had entered the [Visualization of Wood] directly.

The five elements corresponded with the five organs. The [Visualization of Water] corresponded with his kidneys and the [Visualization of Wood] with his liver.

Ren Baqian’s current mode of cultivation was climbing up the tree while following the trunk and the vines. Once he reached more than three meters in height, however, the gusty wind was like a storm blowing from all directions, and even breathing was difficult. As he climbed up bit by bit, he had great difficulty clinging on to the trunk and the vines while stabilizing his body against the wind. Once he had exhausted his strength, he would be blown away by the wind and would withdraw from the [Visualization of Wood].

Moments later, Ren Baqian was blown away from a height of five meters. When he awakened, he had already returned to his bed and was soon sleeping soundly.

The next morning, Ren Baqian took a medical bath and subsequently went to the Yangxin Palace Hall.

Today was a rest day for the school as Ren Baqian had imported the system of a five-day work week from Earth.

On the previous rest day, Ren Baqian had taken the opportunity to return to Earth to place an order for some items. Today, it just so happened that he was going back to Earth with the empress to bring the items back.

The items included textbooks needed by the students; mathematics for grades one to six, physics and chemistry textbooks for junior high students, Three Character Classics which came in a book form, and some laboratory materials as well.

Originally, Ren Baqian considered Standards for being a Good Pupil and Child and The Analects Of Confucius but gave up on the idea. This world and Earth were different and so were the aboriginals and the commoners on Earth.

The biggest difference between this world and Earth was the way they regarded the importance of martial arts.

Blindly applying the wise words of Confucius might not necessarily be a good idea.

On entering Yangxin Palace Hall, Ren Baqian saw a red silhouette somersaulting around. At the same time, a strong gusty wind was generated with every move made by the empress.

After attentively watching for a while, Ren Baqian discovered she was practicing a type of boxing whose name was unknown to him. A thunderous sound accompanied each punch that was delivered by her.

Ren Baqian watched quietly from the side. He was watching the empress shadow box, but a better description would be that he was just watching that silhouette.

In any case, he didn’t understand the boxing technique he saw. Furthermore, he couldn’t even see the actions clearly.

After a short while, the empress suddenly stopped and slowly brought down both hands. Steam seemed to be spurting out of her palms, and she directly smashed the green tiles below. He wondered what kind of material was used to make the tiles in Yangxin Palace Hall since they actually didn’t shatter.

” How much of it do you understand?” the empress turned her head and asked him.

“Your Majesty, it’s no wonder that you are worthy of your title. Your humble servant actually didn’t see any of your movements clearly. However, I will definitely put in more effort to keep pace. Eventually, I might be able to understand the subtlety of your boxing technique.” Ren Baqian instantly gave her a thumbs-up.

The empress stared at him and subconsciously ground her teeth.

She had deliberately slowed her movements just now and this scoundrel didn’t even see it.”There is no need to wait for another time, you will practice boxing with me from today onward!” the empress said coldly.

“Your Majesty, we are going on a trip today. You had mentioned that you wanted to go to the amusement park the previous time!” Ren Baqian said with a smile.

After the empress watched Final Destination 3, she was constantly thinking about the amusement park.

As a result, the empress knitted her eyebrows after hearing what Ren Baqian said and pondered whether practicing boxing was more important than going to the amusement park.