Cave Refuge-Chapter 162 - 161: Summer Refreshing Drinks_1
Because mobile payments were prevalent before the catastrophe, most of the survivors actually didn’t have much cash on hand.
Due to the electromagnetic pulse, which damaged most electronic devices, the paper money in their hands did not become worthless like in other post-apocalyptic novels, even after several catastrophic events.
On the contrary, the existence of the Officials caused the value of paper money to become somewhat polarized.
In the eyes of ordinary survivors, the value of paper money has somewhat declined, but it remains unusually stable. However, to some clear-sighted people, the value of paper money is just like waste paper.
Although the survivors now receive contribution points for labor in the Refuge Centers, the value of paper money has not diminished much.
In fact, the Officials were initially happy with this situation. After all, paper money is based on the credit of the Officials. Plus, as survivors don’t have a large amount of paper money individually, it’s convenient to continue using it.
After all, if anyone has the most paper money, it must be the Officials.
Originally, continuing to use paper money in this way was not problematic. However, besides the Officials, those who have the most paper money are precisely private organizations that had a lot of shady money before the catastrophe.
These private organizations were initially fairly honest, but now that independent Refuge Centers have emerged, they have begun to heavily exchange paper money for supplies. This is essentially like bleeding the Officials’ main artery.
They must understand, just like the Officials do, that paper money has no real value, and the value it represents is actually the credit of the Officials.
Before the catastrophe, the Officials could limit the flow of their black money into the market through various means. But now that most electronic devices have been paralyzed, without effective monitoring means, this black money quickly enters the market, looting all kinds of materials issued by the Officials.
For this reason, the Officials decided to temporarily abandon the old version of paper money and prepare to use contribution points to replace the existing currency.
Ye Liuyun and Dong Tianyu’s trades have always been barter-based. Although currency is sometimes used to measure the value of the items, the trade is always a barter transaction.
Saltpeter, as the hottest commodity in the market, has a self-evident value. Although Dong Tianyu only plans to offer over a hundred kilograms of saltpeter, Ye Liuyun has to give three times the weight of gold in return.
After many trades, Dong Tianyu has a clear understanding of what Ye Liuyun can obtain. Except for some special items that are not easy to circulate, other items are optional to Dong Tianyu.
But in order to maintain the trade with Ye Liuyun, Dong Tianyu eventually had to ask Ye Liuyun to trade with pure metal ingots, with no specific requirements for the type of metal.
The metal ingots obtained from the trade are mostly buried by Dong Tianyu into the veins of the earth. But perhaps due to the large quantity of metal needed for the upgrade, the resource level indicated in the Cave Mansion’s veins continues to maintain a large resource level, despite trading for so long.
The property of Resource Area is quite interesting. Many ores are contained in the earth veins, most of which come from the metals that Dong Tianyu fed into his Cave Mansion.
Under normal circumstances, the ores hidden in the earth veins will assimilate some surrounding stones into the same type of ore each year, if Dong Tianyu does not mine them.
Not only that, when these metal ores accumulate to a certain volume, the center of these ore deposits will breed higher-level ores, such as pure iron in iron ore, copper in copper ore, mithril in silver ore, and pure gold in gold ore.
Similar to ordinary ores, if Dong Tianyu keeps these ores in the earth veins, these ores, which are higher than ordinary ores by one grade, will slowly assimilate the surrounding common ores. Even when these special ores grow to a certain size, the center may breed a higher level of ore.
Now, it is not as chaotic as in the early stage of the Cold Catastrophe, and Dong Tianyu cannot recklessly collect all kinds of materials. Anyway, Ye Liuyun rarely has things that Dong Tianyu wants. Therefore, in order to maintain an equal transaction with Ye Liuyun, he can only conduct transactions with pure metal ingots.
After all, these things are easy to find, as long as one is willing to put in the effort, even ordinary people could gather a lot of it.
But it’s not easy because the value of ordinary metal ingots is very low, and therefore a large quantity is required. Moreover, they must be processed into pure metal ingots, making it very troublesome.
Actually, Dong Tianyu doesn’t care about whether it is a pure metal ingot or not, as the Cave Mansion has the ability to absorb and disintegrate it. Whether it’s pure or not doesn’t make much difference once it’s in the Cave Mansion.
But if he picks up all sorts of junk, it will be a nuisance eventually. It’s better to only collect pure metal ingots, which have a wide range of uses, and even collecting a lot of them will not attract other people’s attention.
After all, there have been many transactions, and neither of them haggle over every detail, so the deal for this transaction was agreed upon in just a few sentences.
There are no cooking facilities in the tents. Although there is a biogas pool built here, the biogas has not been connected to each tent. Instead, a public dining hall has been built in a corner of the second underground level. If one wants to cook, they can go there. With more than twenty independent stoves, it can meet the cooking needs of the survivors living on this level.
Unwilling to go there to cook, Dong Tianyu took several packets of cooked food and self-heating hotpot from the box. Although both of them drink alcohol, they don’t really like it, so Dong Tianyu didn’t take any alcoholic drinks, but took a 2.5-liter bottle of cola instead.
Seeing Dong Tianyu take out the cola from the box, Ye Liuyun’s eyes cooled and then he stood up and said: "I am going home to get some things, I will be back shortly."
After finishing speaking, Ye Liuyun didn’t wait for Dong Tianyu’s response, he got up and left the tent without looking back.
However, not long after, when Dong Tianyu had just finished arranging the food on the table, Ye Liuyun rushed into the tent, carrying a small iron bucket. Only after Ye Liuyun brought the small bucket to the table did Dong Tianyu see that it was filled with a lot of ice.
"Is it clean?"
"Of course!"
After getting that answer, Dong Tianyu immediately opened the cola cap and poured the entire bottle of cola into the ice bucket.
Under normal circumstances, the shelf life of cola is less than twelve months, so even the cola with the latest production date before the catastrophe, would have been past its expiry date by this time.
Although the items in the Shadow Space essentially become ageless from the moment they’re put in, Ye Liuyun doesn’t know this. In Ye Liuyun’s mind, this bottle of cola has definitely exceeded its expiry date.
But what can be done about it? Although, because of the Craftsman God, the original damaged electronic devices might slowly be repaired.
But even before the catastrophe, Pengcheng was only slowly transitioning from Heavy Industry City to Tourism City, without a formal carbonated beverage company.
Even if there was, such a company is not on the priority restoration list. Therefore, during this period of transport interruption, expired carbonated drinks, as long as they’re not poisonous and have taste, who cares what they drink.
