I Can See Your Combat Power
Chapter 1074 - Chapter 1074 Chapter 368 Lively Business

Chapter 1074: Chapter 368: Lively Business Chapter 1074: Chapter 368: Lively Business “Just stay put inside the house and don’t get any funny ideas. Sixth Aunt’s 300-pound fat pig will be taken care of by big brother himself!”

Seeing goodwill taken for granted, Tang Luo rolled his eyes, “What could possibly be done? Even to pull off a ‘get-something-for-nothing’ trick, you need some capital to start with, right? You’ve spent all your money on buying corn, so how could you possibly turn nothing into a fat pig?”

“Hmph, you young people just don’t understand the complexities and subtleties of commerce,” Brother Tian said proudly, raising his head. “Who told you, to sell a fat pig, you must raise one yourself? Today, big brother will teach you how to conjure miracles from empty sleeves. Learn this, and no matter where you go, you will never starve!”

“You can teach all you want, just don’t mess it up,” Tang Luo said with a sneer. “I’ve heard that Chaochang’s business regulations are very strict. The market imposes heavy taxes on resellers who engage in skinning and flipping, and the profit you make might not even cover the taxes.”

A fat pig isn’t any luxury item, and grain products like that have fixed prices. Unless one is a butcher who sells meat by retail, the whole price of a fattened pig is frighteningly transparent.

It’s already September. Sixth Aunt probably wants to buy a fat pig to raise and then eat at the end of the year. A housewife like that is extremely shrewd. To attempt this skinning scheme, Tang Luo felt it would be as difficult as catching a wild pig outside the city.

But Brother Tian seemed supremely confident. After dropping his bold words, he swaggered out, and in the evening, he actually led a fat pig back home.

“Don’t move, don’t you move! Just stay by the door, don’t come over, don’t come over here!!”

The mud-covered obese pig was emitting an unbearable stench all over, and even its heavy breaths carried the sour smell of swill, which nearly drove Tang Luo, who was somewhat fastidious about cleanliness, to the brink of a breakdown, as he desperately tried to stop Brother Tian from bringing the fat pig into the room.

However, Brother Tian, determined to show off, didn’t care about this at all. Holding the pig’s rope, he stepped into the woodshed. Seeing Tang Luo’s ashen face, he complained, “I thought you were a warrior, not afraid of the ‘Demon Heart’ that can corrupt everything, but you’re actually afraid of a fat pig!?”

As he spoke, Brother Tian lifted the pig’s leash, positioning the pig’s large head right in front of Tang Luo, who was on the bed, proudly boasting, “See that? A 300-pound fat pig!”

Lying on the bed, Tang Luo could clearly see the remnants of swill on the snorting nose of the fat pig. If it touched the bed and bedding, he would truly be driven to despair.

Yet, as if sensing Tang Luo’s fear, the curious obese pig seemed to want to surge closer to the bed. If not for the leash, the fat pig would have already pounced.

In desperation, Tang Luo knew that until Brother Tian accomplished whatever he wanted to do, he wouldn’t lead the fat pig away.

To speed up the process, Tang Luo could only suppress his discomfort and said, “I see the fat pig, but this one you’ve brought surely can’t be sold! Chaochang has strict controls over pig traders. For instance, these 300-pound fattened pigs for slaughter all bear the stamp of the big piggery. Turn the pig’s ear over and see for yourself, this fat pig definitely has a source!”

The advantage of being well-read is that you accumulate various bits of knowledge, and you never know when they will come in handy.

Just like now, Brother Tian exclaimed in amazement, “I thought you were an ignorant fool, but you even know about Chaochang’s meat regulation. Not bad, kid!”

With that, Brother Tian flipped over the pig’s ear, revealing the white flesh where the head and neck connect. Surely enough, there was a “Wu” family brand mark, indicating that this fat pig came from the Wu Family or a pigsty managed by them.

Creating this brand mark, aside from showing the pig’s origin, serves another important purpose: to prevent resellers from disrupting the market and causing price chaos.

After all, compared to the risk of raising one’s pig to sell, how much more secure it is to profit by tampering with someone else’s pig.

As soon as Tang Luo saw the mark, he knew that Brother Tian’s sleight of hand was likely no longer effective: “This kind of mark is made with a special graphite produced in Chaochang, carved into the pig’s neck when it’s young, deep enough to reach the bone. If you remove it along with the bone, the pig is as good as dead. No one would want a dead pig without its mark, which means this pig will probably have to be dealt with by us!”

It wasn’t quite schadenfreude, but just the thought of Brother Tian’s cooking skill made Tang Luo see this smelly, enormous, fat pig as somewhat endearing.

When Brother Tian heard Tang Luo speak, he extended a finger and wagged it dismissively, “Young man, after all, is still young, with a mind not flexible enough. You can’t do business this way!”

In the midst of speaking, Brother Tian wiped the pig’s neck and the Wu Family’s mark astonishingly transformed into the character for “Tian”.

Seeing the miracle unfold, Tang Luo was riddled with black lines on his forehead, because his eyes could clearly see that Brother Tian was using a special technique to massage the original character for “Wu” into “Yun”, essentially reconfiguring the muscles on the neck of the big fat pig.

Only the Yun Clan’s soft techniques combined with facial changing and bone swapping could achieve this: “The Yun Clan’s unique facial changing technique used to alter marks; sure, it’s ingenious, but I’m afraid your ancestors’ coffin boards might not stay put!”

“Ahahaha, that’s what I call being inventive!” Brother Tian said with hands on his hips, shamelessly proclaiming, “Now, who dares to say this big fat pig wasn’t raised by me!?”

“Impressive, very impressive,” Tang Luo praised wholeheartedly, not so much admiring the swindling method, but rather Brother Tian’s ability to merge two highly difficult Yun Clan secret techniques so effortlessly. It showed that Brother Tian’s martial arts talent was genuinely remarkable.

It’s just that his interests might not lie there; having known Brother Tian for so long, Tang Luo had never seen him practice or study martial arts, maintaining only the most minimal effort of daily breathing exercises (according to Tang Luo’s standards).

On the contrary, when it came to business, trade matters would light up his face, and his daily prattle consisted of who earned, who lost, which family’s servants were dishonest, or which shopkeeper was competent, and other such trivialities.

One could only say that people have their own ambitions. If Brother Tian had put half of his passion for business into martial arts, he might very well be at the Dao Child level by now.

Brother Tian himself didn’t understand the deeper appreciation in Tang Luo’s praise and, having performed the one-second mark-alteration trick, he led the big fat pig away.

This left Tang Luo heaving a sigh of relief, only wondering how long it would take for the stench in the room to dissipate. Indeed, this was quite troubling.

…

Longzhou Calendar, year 1785

October 8th

The small courtyard faced another financial crisis as Brother Tian had spent all the money from selling the big fat pig on corn. Unfortunately, this corn had already ended up in Tang Luo’s stomach by the beginning of October.

To alleviate the further deterioration of their finances, Tang Luo suggested that his Void Stomach could digest corn stalks, which meant that so far, he had been eating corn stalks for eight days.