Volume 5 Chapter 145 Black hearted Xu Yi
Lieutenant colonel Noon gave a nod. He looked at the guard ship in the distance with the Candra Empire flag on it and he gave a sigh before saying, “Chairman Xu, I must admit that your Frestech Chamber of Commerce’s guard ships are just too…..easy to use. In the time I commanded it on the seas, I don’t know how many times better it is compared to the old wooden ships from before……”
Hearing lieutenant colonel Noon talking about the merits of the guard ship, Russell and the people beside him couldn’t help knitting their brows.
Seeing that lieutenant colonel Noon wasn’t about to stop, Russell suddenly gave a strong cough.
“……We easily caught up with those pirates and easily……”
Lieutenant colonel Noon’s voice suddenly stopped and he turned to look at Russell, instantly understanding something. He quickly gave a cough before saying to Xu Yi with an awkward smile, “Of course, chairman Xu, there are also flaws to the guard ships.”
“Oh? Please explain.”
“Eh……” Lieutenant colonel Noon hesitated a bit before awkwardly saying, “This guard ship’s other parts are good, but there is a serious problem which is that it has a large consumption. Look, you need to use at least two large Magic Crystals to travel a hundred kilometers on the sea. Like this, we need to load up a large warehouse with Magic Crystals. Then there’s limited space to store these Magic Crystals on the guard ship, so it’s not good for long distance journeys. You have to know that we could go as far as we wanted on those old wooden boats.”
“Before you could go that far, the ship would break apart first.” Xu Yi rolled his eyes inwardly, but he still had a smile on his face. He said with a nod, “Un, that is indeed a problem, but lieutenant colonel Noon, I think…..that you should have purchased normal Magic Crystals from the market as a power source, right?”
Lieutenant colonel Noon was surprised, “What is the problem with that? Moreover, we’re not buying low grade Magic Crystals, we are only buying the highest quality Magic Crystals. Because of this, we spent over two hundred gold coins on the Morning Light just last month alone.”
“Is that so?” Xu Yi turned to Russell with a smile, “Sir Russell, I remember that when you took the ship, we also passed you an instruction manual for it. If I remember correctly, it should have been written clearly. The best power source for this guard ship are the high concentration Magic Crystals that our Frestech Chamber of Commerce makes and it would be best not to use the common Magic Crystals on the market.”
Noon looked at Russell in surprise.
Sir Russell had never mentioned this matter to him, he hadn’t even seen a trace of this instruction manual the entire time.
Russell’s expression changed and he said in a deep voice, “There is indeed an instruction manual, but this was handed over to the headquarters to study, so it wasn’t passed to you.”
Turning to Xu Yi, he said with a soft snort, “The reason for this is because now that the guard ship is in our hands, it should adapt to our situation here. It can’t just keep following what your Frestech Chamber of Commerce say.”
Xu Yi couldn’t help giving a cold laugh in his heart.
This Russell, he seemed like he accepted new stuff on the surface, not hesitating to convince the navy headquarters to buy three guard ships from the Frestech Chamber of Commerce, but he was still a conservative fellow deep down.
What hoping that it would adapt to the situation of the Candra Empire? He clearly didn’t want these three guard ships to be influenced by the Frestech Chamber of Commerce, so it could be completely controlled by the Candra Empire.
But it was a pity that while his ideas were good, there was a big mistake,
The guard ships of the Frestech Chamber of Commerce weren’t like those wooden ships. Compared to the traditions of the Sines Continent, these things were considered highly advanced products.
If the Candra Empire wanted to treat them like a normal ship, that was only asking for trouble.
Look at the reason why they called him here. Wasn’t it because they couldn’t use the guard ships and had no choice but to request his help?
Thinking of this, Xu Yi’s face turned a bit cold as he said with a serious look, “Sir Russell, I must seriously tell you that this guard ship has a high level of technology, far surpassing even the highest end product that you and the navy knows about. It’s definitely not as simple as you think. There are many things where if you follow our instructions, it will help you. But if you choose to ignore this…..then I can only say that’s the consequences of your pride.”
The expressions of Russell and the Candra Empire’s officers changed.
Xu Yi’s words were openly ridiculing and threatening them.
But now that they weren’t able to use the guard ships, they couldn’t refute this at all.
Moreover, the guard ships had shown a powerful display in the first few months and it had already convinced everyone in the Candra Empire navy. They deeply believed that these brand new iron guard ships would replace the wooden ships.
Even if they were unhappy towards the Frestech Chamber of Commerce, they still invited them here for a consultation and to try to deepen their cooperation.
Russell was silent for a bit before taking a breath and calming his expression, making an inviting hand gesture to Xu Yi.
“Alright, chairman Xu, let’s sit over there and discuss this. Please.”
Xu Yi revealed a faint smile and as he had expected, they accepted reality in the end.
They came to the military compound near the harbour and there was a spacious area there, which seemed to be an operations conference room.
Russell as the master introduced Xu Yi to the various people here before they entered the main topic.
The main reason the Candra Empire invited Xu Yi here was of course to make this guard ship operate like normal, as well as guaranteeing that the Candra Empire navy could use it as smoothly as possible.
To put it bluntly, the guard ship was an experiment for them. The navy wanted to grasp how to use this new kind of ship as soon as possible, so they could replace their current ships with this new ship.
So the focus of the discussion was how to maintain the guard ships in the future.
The Candra Empire naturally wanted the Frestech Chamber of Commerce to share their technology, so they could maintain the ships even without the Frestech Chamber of Commerce.
Of course Xu Yi directly told them that this was impossible.
The reason for being this direct was not because the Frestech Chamber of Commerce wasn’t willing, rather the Candra Empire navy didn’t meet the requirements to make this request.
Speaking of maintaining the ships, the main problem was that they had to replace the damaged components.
But all the components came from the Frestech Chamber of Commerce. Not to mention the Candra Empire, even the Lampuri Kingdom with the deepest magic machine industry wouldn’t satisfy this condition.
The parts could only be made from the special steel made by the Frestech Chamber of Commerce and only they had the techniques needed to make these components, even the corresponding production magic machines were things only the Frestech Chamber of Commerce had.
To put it simply, other than the Frestech Chamber of Commerce, there wasn’t another company or organization that could solve this problem.
So even if Xu Yi was willing to give all this to the Candra Empire, they still wouldn’t be able to do it.
Although the Candra Empire navy wasn’t convinced, they had to accept this fact. So after intense discussion between both sides, the Candra Empire had to accept the solution the Frestech Chamber of Commerce put forth. It was that the Frestech Chamber of Commerce would maintain these guard ships for the Candra Empire, keeping them in normal operating condition.
The Candra Empire navy just had to pay the maintenance fee that wasn’t cheap to the Frestech Chamber of Commerce.
The daily maintenance was cheap, but the equipment replacement was terrifying.
For example, the guard ship that had stopped operating. According to the engineer the Frestech Chamber of Commerce had sent before, because the Candra Empire navy didn’t maintain this ship according to the Frestech Chamber of Commerce’s instruction manual and exceeding the output limit, it caused the Magic Array that provided the power to be damaged and it was unable to operate.
The Magic Array was the core of the guard ship, it was very serious if there was a problem with it.
According to the estimates of the Frestech Chamber of Commerce, to fix it, they might have to pull it all the way back to the shipyard in the Stantine Duchy to fix it.
Because the Candar Empire didn’t have the right environment to fix it at all.
Like this, with the cost of the materials and labour, it wouldn’t be cheap.
Xu Yi represented the Frestech Chamber of Commerce to give the Candra Empire navy a high maintenance price of seventy thousand gold coins.
Although the Candra Empire navy’s side was very unhappy with this price, Xu Yi wouldn’t relent at all, so they could only accept it in the end.
In the end, if the Frestech Chamber of Commerce chose not to fix it, they couldn’t use it.
Seeing Russell and the other Candra Empire officers looking like they wanted to eat him alive, Xu Yi revealed a faint smile and couldn’t help feeling a bit proud.
When he agreed to sell the guard ships for five hundred thousand gold coins per ship, many of the high ranking members had objected to this since the pricing was too poor. Even if there were other conditions, they were still losing too much.
But Xu Yi insisted on agreeing because he had already planned for this day to come.
As long as the Candra Empire navy had the guard ships, they would find that they were incomparably better than the wooden ships and would continue using them.
As long as they used them, they would be forced to accept any maintenance conditions the Frestech Chamber of Commerce put forth.
Whether it was Candra Empire’s navy or the fellows in the company, they wouldn’t know that compared to the price of selling something once, maintaining it afterwards was where the money was.
This kind of method was something the advanced western nations on earth were very familiar with, there were many places that were much smaller in China that had even suffered from this.
Now that he was on the Sines Continent, Xu Yi wouldn’t mind using this model.