Chapter 352: Chapter 236: Golden Mountain and Silver Sea (Part 2)

Fang Zhen sent the message and put down his phone.

His plan was clear: raise an army to protect his trade and his territory.

He needed to purchase sufficient military supplies in the real world, primarily food. But his army couldn’t be a pure drain on his resources; it had to generate value.

That value would come from safeguarding the construction of his territory and his upcoming commercial ventures.

The army’s value lay in protecting trade. Trade, in turn, would create wealth to support the army. Therefore, the key was wealth.

There were only a few main ways to obtain wealth: inheritance, plunder, and trade—in other words, the exchange of value.

Fang Zhen was more inclined toward trade.

Even though he had an army, he didn’t want to go down the path of plunder. The Nameless World’s industry and commerce were undeveloped. Plundering would mean robbing commoners, and that was something Fang Zhen refused to do.

Besides, to quote a line from a certain classic, much-memed movie, "How much money can the poor possibly have?"

They were already so poor. Exploiting them further just wasn’t right.

Trade was a much gentler approach.

And for now, the most valuable commodity for exchange between the real world and the Nameless World—and something Fang Zhen was very familiar with—was the trade of precious metals, like gold.

He’d had this idea ever since he first discovered the Nameless World: to exploit the price difference of gold and silver between the two worlds to trade precious metals.

In an industrial society, silver was cheap, so trading for the Nameless World’s Gold Ropes offered a huge profit margin.

While waiting for a reply to his message, Fang Zhen took a Gold Rope, a Silver Rope, and a Copper Rope from his King’s Belt.

These were the currencies of the Zambein Kingdom, all based on a twenty-four-unit system: one Gold Rope was worth twenty-four Silver Ropes, and one Silver Rope was worth twenty-four Copper Ropes.

A Gold Rope contained about six grams of gold. A Silver Rope contained about ten grams of silver, mixed with two grams of copper to increase its hardness.

Fang Zhen spread the three coins on his palm, felt their weight, then put them away. He opened the calculator app on his phone and began tapping numbers onto the touchscreen, running the calculations.

One Gold Rope had six grams of gold. The latest price for gold was over six hundred yuan per gram. For the sake of simple calculation, he rounded it down to an even six hundred.

A Silver Rope contained ten grams of silver; the copper could be ignored. The current price of silver was 7.1 yuan per gram, so he’d just call it seven.

A rough calculation showed that one Gold Rope was worth 3,600 yuan, while one Silver Rope was worth 70 yuan.

Based on their twenty-four-unit system, twenty-four Silver Ropes were worth 1,680 yuan.

In the Nameless World, twenty-four Silver Ropes were equivalent to one Gold Rope, but in the real world, their values differed by 1,920 yuan.

Fang Zhen looked at the numbers on his calculator and couldn’t help but smile.

This price difference was his profit!

In the Nameless World, gold was cheap and silver was valuable. In the real world, gold was valuable and silver was cheap.

All he had to do was buy large quantities of silver in the real world and exchange it for gold in the Nameless World. For every Gold Rope he exchanged, his theoretical maximum net profit would be 1,920 yuan.

Of course, there would be transaction costs. Purchasing physical silver was more expensive than its paper spot price, so his earnings wouldn’t be quite that high.

Furthermore, during the exchange, he would have to give his trading partners a cut of the profit. Only then would they be motivated to do business with him and work for his benefit.

But by a conservative estimate, he would still make at least 1,500 yuan for every Gold Rope he acquired with silver.

And keep in mind, this was the profit from exchanging silver for just a single Gold Rope.

If he handled it correctly, the profits he could gain from trading in precious metals alone would be unimaginable.

In fact, by the same logic, trading copper was even more profitable.

A Copper Rope from the Nameless World was tiny, using only about eight grams of copper, while in the real world, one gram of copper cost only about 0.07 yuan.

The metal cost of a single Copper Rope was 0.56 yuan. Twenty-four of them were worth only 13.44 yuan, whereas a single Silver Rope was worth 70 yuan.

Exchanging pure copper for Silver Ropes, or even directly for Gold Ropes, was absurdly profitable!

It would be faster than printing money with his own press. Soon, he could be swimming in an ocean of cash.

However, it would require too much copper. Plus, in the Nameless World, silver was a harder currency than copper. Carrying large quantities of copper bars would also be inconvenient. He could consider it later, once he had a firm foothold in the Nameless World and the situation stabilized. For now, it was just a backup plan.

Fang Zhen hadn’t attempted such an exchange before mainly because buying precious metals in bulk in the real world had its own barriers and was a huge hassle. Moreover, he’d had no foundation in the Nameless World, and attempting such a trade would have made him an easy target for robbery.

Now, he had soldiers, commanders, status, and prestige. He could handle a business of this scale.

Wear the shoe that fits your foot; run a business that fits your power. It has been this way since ancient times.

In his mind, Fang Zhen called this trading plan the "Golden Mountain and Silver Sea Plan."

If he handled it properly, he could quickly amass a huge fortune.

A true golden mountain and silver sea, both figuratively and literally.

One could never have too much wealth. You could save money just for the sake of saving it.

Wealth wasn’t just about money, and the point of money wasn’t just to live a life of luxury.

Fang Zhen was just one person, and his material desires weren’t particularly strong. How much could he possibly spend? It would be a drop in the ocean compared to what he was about to earn.

The true essence of money was stored value. In modern society, money was one side of an equation, with all material goods on the other.

Hoarding wealth was equivalent to hoarding countless resources. When needed, that wealth could be exchanged for anything—for example, buying real-world supplies to support his army.