Chapter 589: Night Talks
Chapter 589 – Night Talk
The night was already very late, in a manor in the southwestern suburb of Jingyao, most of the lights had already been extinguished in most of the buildings, and among the few remaining dots of light, among them was the light from a room on the second floor of the manor’s main house, which belonged to Gerd Rodney’s room.
The owner of the room was sitting on the sofa, carefully reading the pile of documents in his hand, his eyebrows were sometimes stretched, sometimes tightly frowned, showing the ups and downs of the owner’s inner emotions.
Just as he put down one sheet of paper and was about to read the next, a beeping knock sounded on the door.
“Come in!”
The rooms were opened and the footsteps of a total of two people reached Geld’s ears.
He put down the papers in his hands, stood up, and said to the visitors, “Father, brother, you’re back?”
“Yes, we are back. When we entered the front door, we noticed that your room was still lit, so we thought we’d come in and see what you were doing, I didn’t think you’d mind.”
A short, fat figure at the head said, he was none other than Gelder’s father, Prince Jasim Rodney, the blood brother of the current king of Aldo, and the tall, thin figure following him was Gelder’s younger brother, Jasim’s second son, Eurico Rodney.
“Dear father, dear brother, of course I don’t mind. It’s just that, aren’t you off to an all-night party, and don’t you need to be back by dawn?” Gerd opened his hands in welcome.
“Oh, don’t mention the damn banquet.”
Yuriko raised her arms and grumbled, “Someone got drunk and acting crazy at the banquet and ruined the whole thing, so we came back early.”
Gerd teased his brother, “That’s pretty unfortunate! I remember you were planning to use this banquet to court a certain girl, right?”
Urico spread his hands and said helplessly, “It will have to wait for the next opportunity.”
Prince Jasim came to his eldest son’s side and saw the stack of papers on the table near him and casually picked one up, “What are you reading?”
Gerd replied, “Oh, it’s the revenue statistics for several recently opened factories.”
Urico padded over and joined his father in looking at the sheet of paper, only to see that it was filled with neatly drawn tables filled in with words or numbers that he didn’t quite understand. In some places, there were other patterns, such as lines that looked like waves or a pizza cut into pieces.
Yuriko looked puzzled, “What is all this? It looks like evil magical runes depicted in novels.”
Gerd shook his head, he was a bit helpless to this brother who was slightly related to the description of “uneducated”, “Jurico, if a scholar of mathematics saw this paper, even if he had never touched it, he could guess what it was for based on his knowledge, and I have often urged you to touch this great discipline that provides insight into the nature of the world, and I have always advised you to get in touch with it. great discipline of insight into the nature of the world, but you ……”
Urico clutched his head and begged for mercy, “Oooooooooooooh! Spare me my dear brother, my head hurts just thinking about those inexplicable formulas and numbers. Our last name is Rodney isn’t it? We were born to rule, not to study.”
Gerd frowned, “Sooner or later you’re going to get a big headache with that kind of personality.”
“Well, I don’t want to see my two sons arguing in front of myself, so if you must argue, do it where I can neither see nor hear you.” Prince Jasim stopped the brothers from arguing.
He looked to his oldest son, “Dear Gerd, how about bringing those back from the Northwest Gulf? It looks like you took it quite seriously, dealing with things in the workshop at this late hour.”
Hearing his father ask this, Gerd suddenly glows with both eyes.
“Oh, father. The technology and equipment given to us by Count Gleiman are just too useful, and they are already starting to generate profits for us. Paper, canned goods, the market demand for he them seems endless, salt not to mention, it can even be paid to our army as pay, spring wagons are also very popular with the nobles, placed in honeycomb coal ……”
Just as Gelder was about to list them all, he was stopped by his own father, “Alright, alright, it’s good that it can be useful, you don’t need to introduce me in such detail.” Prince Jasim narrowed his eyes and a smile piled up on his face, he hadn’t seen his son this excited in a long time.
“Alright, but you must hear the numbers.” Gerd held up the paper in his hand, “If all goes well and our revenues can grow at the current trend, the new technology from the Northwest Gulf will have brought us half a million silver guilders in the next year, and that’s after expenses are deducted for pure profit.”
“5……500,000 silver guilders?” As expected of Gerd, his father’s eyes widened.
This was undoubtedly a huge amount of income, as the king’s younger brother, Prince Jasim knew that last year, the royal family’s annual income was around 5 million silver guilders, and last year was rather unlucky, with just over 4 million. What? Once you build a few workshops, it’s worth one-eighth to one-tenth of the royal family’s income?
It’s just too unbelievable.
“It’s thanks to the fact that Count Paul Greiman has already paved the way first and cut out all the thorns on the road, and according to him, the market is far from [saturated] right now, so he’s happy to let us, his partners, walk on the road he’s paved and share his channels and customers. Or rather, we are also one of his production bases here, and no matter what, he has twenty percent of the shares here.”
“Partner?” Yuriko, who was on the side, grunted, “If I remember correctly, the Greiman family should be the bannermen of the royal family – the Schroeder family, right? It’s not too flattering for you to say that.”
“Jurico!” Gerd chided his brother, but instead of continuing to criticize him, he continued to address his father.
“Ours will not stop at this income, it will continue to grow. The recent war in Corner Bay may have caused some trouble, but that’s okay, the Northwest Bay is building a trade fleet capable of sailing to the far east, no longer relying on the second-handers of Corner Bay. And we’ve brought in their shipbuilding technology, the traditional shipyards in Westport are being remodeled to get a piece of the shipbuilding pie. I expect ……”
Geld paused for a few seconds, calculations running through his head.
“In five years, the revenue these new industries will bring us will equal the traditional revenue of the Crown – of course, this is an optimistic estimate.”
“Oh!”
Jasim was captivated by the big pie drawn by his son, although he didn’t care about the specific details of the new industries, as long as they could bring in profits it was good.
(End of chapter)