Chapter 115: Buy, Buy, Buy

There was only a tiny bit of cotton, nowhere near enough to make anything. If she wanted to have enough cotton to use, she’d have to grow it herself.

The caravan had even less soft cloth than cotton, but the price was much higher.

After all, it took 10 bundles of cotton to make 1 cotton thread, 5 cotton threads to make 1 piece of soft cloth, and 5 pieces of soft cloth to make 1 bolt of soft cloth (the same amount as synthesized fiber fabric). In other words, it took 250 bundles (five sets) of cotton to make a single bolt of soft cloth.

At a price of 60 silver coins for a set of soft cloth (10 bolts), Su You once again emptied out the merchant’s stock, buying a set and a half of soft cloth.

Buying finished goods was always more expensive. If you calculated the cost of soft cloth based on the price of cotton, the base cost would be 50 silver coins, with the extra 10 silver coins essentially being the processing fee.

But in reality, if the merchant had enough stock, Su You would definitely choose to buy cotton.

After all, processing just meant spending a bit more time at the workbench, and it really wasn’t worth paying those extra 10 silver coins.

But since the merchant didn’t have enough cotton, Su You had to settle for second best.

Anyway, there was still Bu Guo to haggle for her. To make money, she’d definitely work even harder.

Seventeen sets of cotton plus one and a half sets of soft cloth would have cost 107 silver coins at the original price, but thanks to Bu Guo’s efforts, Su You managed to bargain it down to about 90 silver coins.

Proportionally, the price after haggling for seeds was about a 10% discount, while the price difference for the cotton and soft cloth was about a 15% discount.

And since the total price was higher, bargaining was even harder this time, so Bu Guo’s success really made Su You reevaluate her trading skills.

Besides cotton and soft cloth, Su You also bought some other materials, like iron ore, feathers, sand, animal hides, charcoal, and so on…

In short, if Su You thought she might use it, she didn’t let it go.

Even though there were a lot of types, there wasn’t much of each, and most of them weren’t worth much, so buying this whole pile only cost Su You 39 silver coins in total.

The pricier ones were the iron ore and animal hides.

Iron ore was one silver coin each; they only had seven, so Su You bought all seven, for a total of seven silver coins.

As for animal hides, the quality varied, so they were priced at 50 copper coins for a whole hide and 20 copper coins for a damaged one. There were 15 whole hides and 23 damaged ones, and Su You bought them all, spending 12 silver coins and 10 copper coins.

Maybe because she’d bargained so hard before, the merchant was very firm on the price for these odds and ends. No matter how Bu Guo tried, Uncle Feng wouldn’t budge from 39 silver coins.

Su You knew she’d already gotten plenty of bargains and didn’t want to push her luck, so she patted Bu Guo’s little head, drooping in disappointment at her failed haggling, and paid the 39 silver coins.

…

The third batch of purchases—the last batch—was much larger and more complicated.

There were monster drops, tools, and all sorts of other things.

The caravan’s monster drops included, but weren’t limited to, the unidentified bones (Ghost Skeleton) Su You had gotten before, scale powder (Ghost Skeleton), beast fangs (Long-tailed Crocodile), and so on.

Monster drops weren’t cheap, so even though Su You wanted them and had enough money to buy, buy, buy, she didn’t want to waste money. She only picked out materials she could use right now.

As for things she didn’t urgently need, she could always collect them later.

There were actually quite a few materials she thought she could use. For example, the bones she planned to use as raw material for fertilizer to speed up seed growth—Yun Li’s people counted and found there were 17 bones in total, and Su You bought them all.

There were also beast fangs, which were one of the materials needed to make intermediate traps. Now that Duoya had recovered, as a hunter she could use bows and traps to catch more prey.

The caravan happened to have a set of beast fangs (50 pieces), and Su You bought the whole lot.

As for scale powder, Su You didn’t buy any, since it wasn’t useful to her at the moment and would just be a waste of money.

But even though she didn’t buy scale powder, she did buy some other things, like eagle eyes, slime, poison sacs, clay, unidentified flowers and herbs, and so on.

Of note were a material called “Eagle Eye” and a blue flower.

Eagle Eye, as the name suggests, is dropped by eagle-type beasts or monsters, and can be used to make an item called a “Far-seeing Lens.”

Basically, it’s a telescope.

And the blue flower was called “Star Night Flower.” Star Night Flower is a special flower that only blooms at midnight, and its characteristics are quite similar to the Sunset Flower.

Su You didn’t buy the Star Night Flower just to tell time at midnight, but to craft the “Clock” of the Sunset Continent.

That’s right—the Sunset Continent actually has a clock-like item that can tell time, and its raw materials include five kinds of flowers: the Sunset Flower and Star Night Flower among them.

Besides the yellow Sunset Flower and blue Star Night Flower, the other three are the red Zhu Tang Flower, white Frost Orchid, and purple Lian Dai Flower.

These flowers aren’t particularly rare, but they do take some effort to collect. Being able to make a clock as soon as possible was still important to Su You.

…

These monster drops cost Su You a total of 83 silver coins—already the result of Bu Guo’s bargaining; otherwise, it would have been 91 silver coins.

As for tools, Su You bought two fishing rods and a portable copper lantern.

The fishing rods were five silver coins each, and the lantern was two silver coins, for a total of twelve silver coins.

Finally, Su You also bought some skill learning manuals from Yun Li.

Learning manuals aren’t skill books; they don’t let NPCs instantly gain skills. They’re more like textbooks, providing the conditions for learning a skill.

After a period of study, an NPC has a chance to learn the relevant skill. Once they succeed, they start at “Apprentice” level, and as they get more proficient, the skill upgrades to “Beginner” and appears on the NPC’s info panel.

Su You mainly bought sewing and carpentry manuals—one for Duoli, the other for Lyle.

As for other manuals, Su You picked out a few based on her needs.

Skill learning manuals weren’t exactly cheap, but not too expensive either.

Thanks to two anonymous tips.

(End of chapter)"

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