Chapter 661: Trade Talks and Pipelines
The moment Zhangfei mentioned the word buy, Xiaoyun’s eyes widened for a second before returning to normal.
"How much are you guys looking for? I can try my best to get enough to sell."
"About fifty thousand tonnes," Zhangfei answered casually.
"Fifty thousand tonnes!"
Xiaoyun’s heart skipped for a second. He had never even seen that much food, let alone selling that much.
"Sorry, did I hear that right? You said five thousand tonnes?"
Seeing Zhangfei nodding his head, Xiaoyun paused for a second again, recollecting his cool before speaking up.
"You can sell however much you want. It’s okay if you can’t sell that many at once."
Zhangfei quickly added, seemingly to have realized how big a number he had just mentioned without thinking.
"I can sell you around a hundred tonnes per week. I can’t give you any more, I have my own mouth to feed." Xiaoyun answered.
"That’s fine. We’ll take it as well..."
As the car drove out of the airport and reached closer and closer to Foshan proper, Xiaoyun could notice his face looking a little off.
"Is there something wrong?"
Xiaoyun curiously asked as the car took a right turn, heading around the outskirts highway rather than entering the city itself.
"No, Mr.Chen... Can I ask where we are going?"
"To Guangzhou. You said you wanted a tour of our city, right?" Xiaoyun questioned, looking a little confused by his response.
"You had cleared Guangzhou and Foshan?"
"Of course, they are like twin cities. There’s no way someone could clear one without clearing the other."
As Xiaoyun casually responded, he could feel the change in Zhangfei’s face—a hint of shock and jealousy.
"That’s very impressive... Are there more cities under your control?" Zhangfei curiously asked again.
"Qingyuan, Shaoguan, Shenzhen... Almost forgot to include Zhaoqing. I just had it cleared about two days ago."
The atmosphere in the car started to get a little tense as Zhangfei could tell at this point that Xiaoyun was just flexing his muscles.
"No wonder the trader who came to our place calls you the ’King’ of Guangdong." Zhangfei complimented.
"Please don’t call me that. Just call me Xiaoyun if you want... How about your guys? How much does your leader control?"
Before Zhangfei could even say anything, the bodyguard in the front cleared his throat once again.
"Does your bodyguard need some cough syrup? Xiaoyun offered, looking a little annoyed as he kept on interrupting his talks.
"Thank you for asking, but he just had a small cold... I know this might be shocking to you, Mr.Chen, but we don’t control any cities."
"No cities?"
Xiaoyun was a little intrigued as he remembered Yiming once telling him how fierce and tough the soldiers in the Northwest were.
It didn’t make sense to him that any possible threat could stand in their way, other than an actual death zone similar to the one in the Capital.
"We only have military bases. It’s too burdensome to take over cities that are riddled with zombies and dust storms."
"I see... Then what are you guys planning to trade food with? I have a lot of things from the cities already."
"The gas around here is pretty limited, aren’t they? And those lights in the cities?" Zhangfei asked.
"They are pretty expensive..."
As Xiaoyun fell into silence for a second, his mind started to realize what Zhangfei was trying to suggest.
"Well, we can perfectly complement each other with you giving the food to us and we giving the fuel to power your cities and cars."
"But how are you going to transport all that oil down here?" Xiaoyun questioned.
"There’s already a pipeline that connects all over the country. All you needed to do was send a small team to make sure everything was fine."
"You do know that there are almost 3000 kilometers of pipes that I would need to maintain for this to work, right?"
Zhangfei didn’t seem to be too bothered by Xiaoyun’s question. It was almost as if he had to answer the same question before.
"You’ll only need to send a small team to each of the city’s checkpoints. You wouldn’t need your soldiers to check the entirety of the pipeline to know what to replace with."
Xiaoyun sat still in the passenger seat. The thought of accepting the deal started brewing in his mind.
Having near-unlimited fuel was just too tempting, especially with the recent manufacturing boom that had created an energy shortage.
Not to mention Yuqi’s upcoming plan to implement rolling blackouts due to the aging power stations that haven’t been properly taken care of since the outbreak.
"How much are you offering?" Xiaoyun asked, his face remaining mostly calm to hide the urge to say yes.
"We are willing to give 1 tonne of oil for 2 tonnes of food." Zhangfei offered.
"1 tonne of oil for 1 tonne of food."
"Deal."
Seeing how easily Zhangfei accepted his counteroffer, Xiaoyun couldn’t help but feel a little ripped off.
"No need to be so rushed. I have two conditions that I haven’t said yet... How about we talk it out inside the office?"
"Sure."
As the two of them exited the car, they were already at the administrative building, as Houqin and the bodyguards quickly exited the car.
"Can you tell your men to wait here? The four of us are enough to go inside the building."
Zhangfei thought for a second before agreeing to it as he and Xiaoyun both signaled the rest of the troops to remain in their cars.
"This building is yours?" Zhangfei curiously asked as the four of them entered the building.
"The government owns everything in the city... But people have their own rights and liberty to their own private properties."
Xiaoyun quickly added the last part as he could notice the change on the bodyguard’s face when they headed towards the elevator.
"Wow... This thing really worked?" Zhangfei murmured, his face looking genuinely surprised as the elevator began to go up.
"Of course. I don’t want my workers to be forced to take the stairs every day... If you came here in the morning, you would have seen a lot of people right now."
After exiting the elevator, Xiaoyun guided the three of them into an empty meeting room before he signaled Houqin to take out a piece of paper and a pen.
"Houqin, write down all the conditions we had discussed earlier... So other than the 1 tonnes of oil for food, I have two conditions that I wanted to mention earlier."
Xiaoyun paused for a second, then continued.
"I have no way of transporting the food over. But I assumed you have your own ways of transporting it."
"We’ll be using the plane we came in with to carry the food," Zhangfei answered straightforwardly.
"Then that’s one condition off the list. The second condition is... I’m willing to pay to have your armies check the pipeline is working properly."
"It’s going to be a hefty price on that," Zhangfei warned.
"I know. But I’m going to be frank with you, my army is stretched thin. I don’t have the men or the capability to project people outside of the province."
The answer didn’t seem to surprise Zhangfei in the slightest, as he could already tell through the various cities Xiaoyun had conquered.
"Then we can do that for you. But you’re going to need to pay a one-time fee of one hundred tonnes of food for the checks."
"Food is no problem. Give me three days and I’ll gather five hundred tonnes of food for you to carry back."
Zhangfei’s face finally changed a little as he looked a little surprised by Xiaoyun’s willingness to trade so much food at once.
"You aren’t scared that we might just take the food and never come back?"
"If you can grow more food in Lanzhou, then you wouldn’t fly all the way over here just to get a month’s worth of food."
"You’re much more daring than I had expected, Mr.Xiaoyun."
"I’m just naively believing humanity wouldn’t focus on infighting when there’s a crisis right in front of us."
As the two reached a consensus on the deal, Houqin quickly handed the two copies of all the negotiated terms to them.
"Mr.Zhangfei, looks like we have a deal," Xiaoyun answered as he signed both papers without even reading them a single time.
"Nice working with you, Mr.Xiaoyun."
Zhangfei didn’t read it either, as he wrote his signature on both copies before handing one back over to Xiaoyun.
With one last handshake as the two of them both stood up, the deal was finally complete.
"Since it’s going to be three days before we can gather enough food for you to fly back, you can visit around the cities if you want."
"Will do."
"Very well then... Houqin, can you bring them to a hotel?"
"Yes, sir."
As Houqin led Zhangfei and the bodyguard out of the meeting room, Xiaoyun let out a small sigh as he stared towards the paper he had just signed.
"Five hundred tonnes... Where the hell am I getting this much food in three days?"
Despite trying to think of multiple solutions, there was one clear path right before him, one that took a snap of a finger.
"I’m going to need to work overtime, don’t I?" XIaoyun murmured as he looked towards the canned food he had just created in his hands.