Matrix Survival: One random treasure chest per day

Chapter 638 Catfish Effect
Prices vary in each block of the outer city for various reasons.

Some neighborhoods sell weapons that are more expensive, some sell armor that is more expensive, and some sell medicine that is more expensive...

This gave rise to a profession in the early days called the neighborhood merchant team.

Their main business was buying and selling.

However, the cost of the street portal was later increased, which reduced the profits from trading, and this special profession gradually disappeared.

Some of these merchant groups with extensive networks could get teleportation discounts from familiar portal attendants, making it cheaper for them to teleport across blocks than others. Taking advantage of this, they established "companies" with similar businesses, specializing in transporting goods across blocks for others.

One of the best examples is Kangaroo Express, which Li Zheng had previously encountered.

The first fifty districts are in high demand because many residents go on wilderness adventures and missions. While crops that can be developed into genetic abilities are not favored by some races, most residents still have a strong desire for them.

Taking Menghuage as an example, Huaxiangyu delivers tens of thousands of mid-to-high-end crops to dozens of shops in Block 7 every month.

Even with such a huge trading volume, there are times when supply cannot meet demand.

Occasionally, when the terminal issues mandatory tasks, shops selling agricultural products are often sold out.

Therefore, the demand for culture solutions that can accelerate crop growth is much greater than in other neighborhoods, and the price naturally rises accordingly, with the market price being half again as much as Kanger originally paid!
Kanger purchased intermediate culture medium from Li Zheng at a 30% discount, approximately 1,050 white crystals per 100 milliliters. This was a discount that the Kota brothers negotiated with the black market, getting a price of 1,500. The original price was 2,000 white crystals per 100 milliliters.

The enhanced intermediate culture medium is naturally more expensive than the regular version, and based on the prices in Kanger's neighborhood, it's roughly between three thousand and four thousand white crystal coins.

Prices are higher in Block 7, so Li Zheng charged Meng Hua Ge 5,500 white crystal coins for 100 ml of enhanced intermediate culture medium!

“If you want a large enough quantity, I can give you a discount on this price, making it only 5,000 white crystal coins per 100 milliliters.” Li Zheng readily offered his target price.

This price would get you high-quality culture medium in Block 950 (which is the block near Kanger Botanical Garden; I'd been mistakenly writing it as 902).
Hua Xiangyu did some mental calculations and thought the price was reasonable, so she didn't bother to haggle and agreed directly: "Okay, give me 100,000 servings at 100 ml per serving."

The time it takes for the culture medium to take effect varies depending on the quality of the crop being cultured.

The higher the crop's growth level, the easier it is for the same dose of culture medium to be completely absorbed, resulting in a significantly shorter duration of absorption.

Menghua Pavilion's business is extremely extensive; just by looking at it, Li Zheng could see that there were more than 10,000 crops growing there.

In comparison, these 100,000 culture media samples seem more like a trial run for Huaxiangyu to test the effects, rather than a formal order.

But for Li Zheng, it was already a super big deal.

Once this deal is done, the Black Dragon Spear will be secured!
"The quantity is quite large, and my inventory is not enough. It will take some time to deliver." Li Zheng smiled wryly. He did not expect the first botanical garden to have such a big appetite. At first, he thought he would need to visit several more places, but now it seems that just fulfilling the order from Menghuage will keep him busy.

It's normal to have insufficient inventory. For example, Menghuage doesn't keep all kinds of flowers in stock. The shops in the neighborhood usually place orders first, and then she starts planting and cultivating them, and delivers them after the products are produced.

Hua Xiangyu asked, "How many days will it take to deliver the goods?"

"Within ten days." Li Zheng thought for a moment. Apart from purchasing some necessary raw materials, the culture medium itself didn't take much time to make. "I can deliver it to you in batches within ten days, so it won't delay your use here."

"Ten days..." Menghuage is not in a hurry for the orders she is currently taking. The culture medium she is purchasing this time is for bidding when competing with other botanical gardens next time. So Huaxiangyu immediately nodded: "Ten days it is, but the deposit can only be one-tenth first. The rest will be paid according to the proportion of each batch of goods delivered, until all payments are made in full."

"No problem." Li Zheng smiled and extended his hand. "It's a pleasure doing business with you."

Hua Xiangyu understood immediately, reached out and shook his hand, and said with a light smile, "It's a pleasure to work with you."

Once the deal was agreed upon, the two drafted a contract on the spot, checked and filled in any gaps, and revised any ambiguous clauses. Finally, they both signed the contract, and the deal was considered finalized.

The total amount was 50,000 red crystal coins, and one-tenth of that was 5,000. For Hua Xiangyu, it was just a small amount of money. After signing the contract, she transferred it to Li Zheng without even blinking.

Upon receiving the funds, Li Zheng was in high spirits. He looked happily at the four-figure sum in his Inscription Card (red crystal coins, the number would be too long if converted to white crystal coins), counted it several times before putting the Inscription Card away.

"Oh, right." Li Zheng remembered something and asked, "I heard in other neighborhoods that crops capable of developing genetic abilities are monopolized by laboratories, right? Why does the gardener have so many fireworks here?"

Kanger Botanical Garden only cultivates delicious fruits; it doesn't produce a single genetically modified crop.

At that time, Kanger of the old Tengluo tribe told Li Zheng that genetically modified crops were controlled by laboratories and that botanical gardens did not have the qualifications to operate.

“It’s very simple.” Hua Xiangyu pointed to a table not far away, on which was the business license provided by the terminal when registering the botanical garden: “Because Menghuage has dual qualifications as both a botanical garden and a flower crop laboratory, I can also operate genetically modified crops here.” Li Zheng immediately realized that Hua Xiangyu had just mentioned not long ago that the Firework Flower was a new variety she had cultivated.

This detail showed that Menghuage also possessed laboratory qualifications, something I hadn't noticed at the time.

He then asked, "The Gardener previously mentioned that Block 4 was once the territory of the Tianluo Clan. What would happen if the terminal didn't allocate Block 4 to the players from Water Blue Star?"

"You players from Water Blue Star haven't even entered the outer city in large numbers yet, and you've already managed to get an exclusive district with such a high number. You've really hit the jackpot!"

Speaking of this, Hua Xiangyu sighed, "Back when the Butterfly Flower Clan entered the outer city, the terminal only assigned us a street with a very low number. After the one-month exclusive period, almost no residents from other streets were willing to settle there, and it almost turned into a ghost town."

Later, thanks to our clan's talent for cultivating flowering crops, we started from scratch and moved into neighborhoods with higher numbers. The location assigned to us by the terminal became the largest flower cultivation base in the entire outer city.

And it was during that time that I saved up some money, gradually developed the business, and eventually settled down in Block 7, growing Dream Flower Pavilion to its current size.

Li Zheng nodded thoughtfully. In other words, the terminal reward of Street 4 to him was equivalent to indirectly saving Water Blue Star players the trouble of advancing.

It provides a direct, one-step access to the premier neighborhoods that most residents of the outer city dream of.

"Where did the original inhabitants of Block 4 go after they were cleared out?" Li Zheng asked. "Did the terminal also pay a considerable price for this?"

Hua Xiangyu: "The residents who previously lived in Block 4 should have been transferred by the terminal to a vacant block with a later number. The terminal does have to provide some compensation for the dispersal of the residents of Block 4, such as returning part of the expenses they incurred when they bought the houses there."

Li Zheng couldn't even imagine how astronomical the severance pay would be, given how many people lived in that neighborhood.

I reckon only the terminal in the entire outer city has the resources to do something like this.

Hua Xiangyu glanced at Li Zheng's expression and continued, "Are you worried that those displaced residents might come back and cause trouble for you one day?"

Li Zheng nodded: "That is indeed a concern."

After all, the terminal's behavior is similar to forced demolition. If he were forced to leave, he would feel resentful.

“You don’t need to worry about these things,” Hua Xiangyu said. “This kind of thing used to happen every now and then. Generally speaking, it’s only when a certain race makes a great contribution to the outer city that they can move into a street with a very high number.”

Alternatively, residents of certain neighborhoods with higher numbers may be relegated to lower numbers if their contributions are too low.

However, since the day the outer city residents began to abandon their homes on a large scale, the overall layout of the outer city has remained unchanged for a long time. This demotion of Block 4 is the first such change.

"If your contribution is too low, you'll be demoted to a lower-ranking neighborhood?" Li Zheng pondered. "Does this mean that the Fourth District, where the Tianluo Clan is located, was dismissed by the terminal because their contribution didn't match their current status?"

“That’s one way to put it.” Hua Xiangyu nodded and said, “Actually, the situation in Block 4 has long since deserving of its current position. It’s just that the top fifty blocks have gotten used to the current situation and are too lazy to submit qualification verification applications to the terminal.”

At this point, she suddenly seemed to remember something and pondered, "The enthusiasm of the residents in the outer city is declining year by year. Perhaps the terminal has other intentions in allocating Block 4 to you this time."

Other intentions?

Li Zheng was slightly taken aback, then suddenly realized: "Damn, the catfish effect?"

He once heard a story about a certain country where people loved to eat sardines, especially live ones.

Live fish fetch much higher prices than dead fish in the market, so fishermen always try their best to bring sardines back to the fishing port alive.

Despite all efforts, most sardines still suffocate and die en route, but there is one fishing boat that always manages to bring most of the sardines back to port alive.

The captain kept the secret strictly, and it wasn't until his death that the mystery was revealed.

It turned out that the captain had put a catfish, which mainly feeds on fish, into the fish tank that was full of sardines.

After the catfish entered the fish tank, it swam around restlessly due to the unfamiliar environment. The sardines, seeing the catfish, became very nervous, darting left and right, trying to avoid it, and swimming faster. This solved the sardines' oxygen deficiency problem, preventing them from dying.

In this way, the sardines returned to the fishing port, leaping and bounding about.

And the players on Aquamarine are like the catfish thrown into a sardine field by the terminal!
My math skills and memory are... well... when I checked the data today, I found a huge bug in chapters 529 and 530! But it's been fixed now...

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(End of this chapter)