Chapter 53 High defect rate
“Sir chairman, you don’t have money?” Agnes who had been silently following him since he came into the Falling Rain Forest suddenly stopped and turned to look at Xu Yi. She dug around in her clothes for a bit before taking out a gold coin to hand to Xu Yi, “Here, I only have this much on me now, you can take it for now.”
Xu Yi looked at the gold coin in Agnes’ slender fingers in surprise before looking up at Agnes’ serious expression and saying in a confused voice, “What are you doing?”
“Didn’t you say to chief Siluka that you don’t have money? I don’t have any use holding onto these gold coins for now, so you can take them.” Agnes responded with a natural look on her face.
Xu Yi finally understood her meaning and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as he pushed her hand back while saying, “Agnes, I said that I don’t have money, but more accurately it isn’t that I myself don’t have money, rather it’s the Frestech Chamber of Commerce that doesn’t have money. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Ah? The company doesn’t have money?” Agnes’ eyes popped open in surprise and she looked at the gold coins in her hand before shaking her head, “This bit probably won’t be enough. How about when we go see the elder later, you can talk to the elder about borrowing some from her? Didn’t you give the elder wages for our clansmen, it seemed to be several thousand gold coins.”
Seeing Agnes’ innocent face, Xu Yi couldn’t help finding it funny.
“Agnes, looks like you still don’t understand what I mean. When I say the company doesn’t have money, I’m talking about how we have no floating capital. It means that if the company really needs money to use, we can’t take out the capital. If the company really needs to use money, several thousand gold coins is far from being enough.”
“Then what do we do? If we can’t take out money when we need it, wouldn’t our company be in big trouble?” Agnes was a bit anxious, “Sir chairman, have you thought about what we should do?”
“Relax, it’s not as serious as you think, it’s just a temporary lack of funds. Then again, after another period of time, the company will be able to naturally earn plenty of money.” Xu Yi waved his hand as he comforted her.
“Oh, that’s good.” Agnes’ expression calmed down. She thought about it before doubtfully asking, “But sir chairman, why is the company suddenly out of money? I remember that our Frestech Chamber of Commerce has been earning a lot during the past few months. Last time I heard manager Sebas say that just last month, the company earned several tens of thousands of gold coins.”
“Then you didn’t pay attention to him saying how much we spent?” Xu Yi said with a smile, “Let me tell you, our company’s earnings haven’t been small in the past few months, but we’ve spent even more. Not mentioning anything else, we’ve already invested three hundred thousand gold coins into the Falling Rain Valley. Adding in the over a hundred thousand for the Falling Rain Road and the hundred thousand for the road between Banta City and Karma City, as well as the various expenses and fixed costs the company has, the company doesn’t even have twenty thousand gold coins in cash. We really can be considered out of money.”
Anges stuck out her tongue, “So there’s still twenty thousand gold coins, I thought there wasn’t even a single gold coin left.”
Xu Yi couldn’t help rolling his eyes. He thought that after Agnes followed him for several months, why did she still not care about worldly matters?
Could it be that the elves really were like the rumours? Because of their long lives, it was hard for them to change?
Thinking of this, Xu Yi couldn’t help looking at the dark Falling Rain Forest in front of him. If the elves really were like this, elder Illusia’s hope of letting the elves live in harmony with humans really would be hard to realize.
“I am also worried about this.” Elder Illusia gave a slight nod, “So I had Agnes follow by your side the entire time because human merchants have the most ideas among you humans and are the most flexible humans. If Agnes can live normally by your side and learn how to be flexible like humans from you, I believe that the other elves can do the same.”
“The problem is…...I feel that Agnes hasn’t changed much from the first time I’ve seen her. Rather I feel that she’s become even more innocent compared to before.” Xu Yi said with a frown.
“No, just the opposite. Compared to back when she lived in the tribe, there’s already been a large change in Agnes.” Elder Illusia shook her head with a faint smile, “Agnes was just a very pure child before, she would only think simple thoughts about matters. But now, according to what you’ve told me before, she has learned to not appear as soon as you mentioned that you didn’t have money, rather she waited until you came to the Falling Rain Forest to express her thoughts. This can be considered her learning how to use proper timing from you humans.”
Xu Yi was speechless. This was a skill humans had innately, how did it become something this worthy of praise when it came to Agnes?
“This is because you are humans and we are elves.” Elder Illusia answered Xu Yi’s question with a very general and real answer.
Xu Yi shook his head, as he still couldn’t understand the thoughts of elves.
“Alright, putting the change with Agnes aside, we should talk about business.” Xu Yi took out a cover for the new generation Magic Fan from his backpack and handed it over.
Elder Illusia took it to look over before curiously looking at Xu Yi, “Is there a problem with this plastic cover?”
“There’s no problem just looking at it alone, but……” Xu Yi came forward and pointed at a finely made flower design on the top right of the cover as he said, “It’s a problem that this part isn’t the same as the other Magic Fan covers.”
Elder Illusia looked at the finely carved flower pattern and was very confused.
“I don’t see any problems, this flower is carved very beautifully.”
“This flower itself is the problem.” Xu Yi said with a serious expression, “Elder Illusia, when I asked your Night Song Tribe to make these plastic covers for the Magic Fans, didn’t I give you some blueprints to follow?”
“Un.” Elder Illusia stood up to flip through a box and took out several pieces of paper, “They are still here.”
“I ask the elder to look it over, is there a flower design on the covers on the blueprints?” Xu Yi asked.
Elder Illusia looked at the blueprint and shook her head, “The blueprint doesn’t have any.”
“So that means when making this Magic Fan cover, the elf responsible didn’t follow the blueprint, right?” Xu Yi kept asking.
“It seems to be that way.” Elder Illusia nodded before revealing a look of confusion, “But chairman Xu, I still don’t understand what’s the problem. There is an extra beautiful design on this Magic Fan cover, could it be that it doesn’t make the Magic Fan more beautiful?”
“It isn’t a problem if it’s said like this, but honourable elder, this Magic Fan is not a single unit and is a mass produced product of our company, so that makes it a very large problem.” Xu Yi said with a serious face.
Seeing the serious expression on Xu YI’s face, elder Illusia thought about it before sitting down and saying to Xu Yi with a serious look, “Chairman Xu, I don’t understand what you mean. Please explain it to me.”
“Alright.” Xu Yi didn’t hold back and picked up the Magic Fan cover as he said, “Elder, if there was a Magic Fan cover with this design and one without it, if these two Magic Fans had the same price and you wanted to buy a Magic Fan, which one would you pick?”
“Clearly the one with the design because it looks better.” Elder Illusia replied.
“Good. That means that at the same price, it is impossible for the Magic Fan without the design to be sold, right?”
“Not necessarily, perhaps there are humans that like ones without designs.”
“Un, we can’t rule out that possibility. But elder Illusia, don’t you have to admit that the price of these two Magic Fans should be different? Because of the difference in design, their price shouldn’t be the same.”
“Yes.”
“Then the problem appears there. This Magic Fan cover is being used with Magic Fan covers without designs to make the same mass produced product, so if we put these covers on, then that means it’ll be difficult to set a price on this batch of Magic Fans. This is because people won’t accept that they can buy products of different value at the same price.” Xu Yi raised the plastic cover in his hand, “So when our company is producing Magic Fans, this kind of cover is treated as a defective product and it isn’t used.”
“Defective product?” Elder Illusia looked at Xu Yi in surprise, “Chairman Xu, in the skilled hands of us elves, how could there be a defective product? You must have made some kind of mistake?”
Xu Yi slightly knit his brows and said with a serious expression, “Honourable elder, it doesn’t matter if you’re willing to admit it or not, but this is the standard of our company. Any parts that don’t follow that standard will be considered a defective product!”
Seeing how serious Xu Yi was treating this, elder Illusia considered this a bit before giving a slight now, “Alright, since we are making things requested by your company, we should follow the standard you have set. You are right.”
Xu Yi looked at elder Illusia and confirmed that nothing was wrong with her before continuing, “Actually this cover is just one of the situations that isn’t considered that serious, the more serious ones are when the entire cover’s shape is distorted. We can’t assemble them with the other parts of the Magic Fan at all. After our final examination, we’ve found that among the twenty thousand Magic Fan covers you made this time, the defective products reached 30%. So honourable elder, I came this time to ask you…..what is going on?”
Chapter 54 The elf race’s sense of discipline
“Thirty percent?” Elder Illusia’s expression changed slightly. She thought about it before asking, “Chairman Xu, can I ask, how serious of a loss has this caused your company?”
“According to the contract we signed before, our Frestech Chamber of Commerce had some Magic Fans that were delayed in being produced, causing a batch of orders to miss their deadline. Therefore we had to pay a penalty of three thousand gold coins to the other side.” Xu Yi replied.
There was a serious look of apology on elder Illusia’s face, “Sorry, chairman Xu. We’ve caused losses to your company, I will think of a way to compensate you.”
Xu Yi looked at elder Illusia for a while before slowly shaking his head and saying with a sigh, “Elder Illusia, actually three thousand gold coins is not considered much to our company. Compared to this, the losses your tribe suffers is even bigger.”
Elder Illusia looked at Xu Yi in surprise, “Why do you say this?”
“First, because there were defective products among the products made by your Night Song Tribe, according to the contract, the losses caused by these defective products should be paid by your Night Song Tribe. According to the normal rules of us human merchants, you should compensate our Frestech Chamber of Commerce gold coins because of this.”
Elder Illusia gave a straight nod and said, “That is normal, but our tribe doesn’t have enough gold coins right now……”
“We’ll talk about this in the future.” Xu Yi waved his hand before saying in a deep voice. “Second, our Frestech Chamber of Commerce had your Night Song Tribe make these twenty thousand Magic Fan plastic covers for us, but there was a 30% defective rate with your products. According to the custom of us humans, our company should have serious doubts about the abilities of your Night Song Tribe. Even if we make a similar order in the future, we wouldn’t consider having your Night Song Tribe do it.”
Elder Illusia was silent for a bit before saying with a bit of difficulty, “I understand, this is a problem of trust.”
To have an elf admit that a human that they couldn’t trust would have a trust issue with their tribe, this was a very hard decision to make, but elder Illusia still admitted to this point.
Xu Yi couldn’t help feeling admiration for elder Illusia. If it wasn’t for trying to find a way out for the Night Song Tribe and even the entire elven race, she wouldn’t have put down the pride of the elves and admitted that elves weren’t good enough.
“The final thing is the most important thing. From the production of the plastic covers, I found that there is a large problem with the Night Song Tribe, or rather the elves in general, which is that…..” After saying this, Xu Yi stopped and hesitated a while, but he still didn’t say anything.
Elder Illusia revealed a faint smile, “Please don’t have any scruples and just say it.”
Xu Yi looked at her and paused before nodding, “Alright, then I’ll say it. The problem is that elves seem to have a very casual personality. To put it more directly, it’s very…..lacking in discipline.”
After saying this, Xu Y nervously looked at elder Illusia.
He wasn’t certain what kind of reaction the other side would have hearing his impolite criticism of her entire race.
But elder Illusia’s reactions went against his expectations.
After hearing this evaluation, elder Illusia was first stunned before falling into a long period of contemplation.
This period of thinking actually lasted an entire half an hour. Only when Xu Yi’s legs felt a bit numb did elder Illusia come back to her senses, looking at Xu Yi with an apologetic smile as she said, “Sorry, I suddenly thought of something from the past and fell into a daze.”
“Long time ago?” Xu Yi was secretly stunned.
According to elder Illusia’s age, this long time ago might have been something from several hundred years ago.
That was really a long time ago…...
“Chairman Xu, regarding the appraisal you just gave, I’ve carefully thought about it and have realized that in our elven language, there’s never been the word discipline. This word seems to have been learned from you humans, but…...We elves have never understood the meaning of this word.” Elder Illusia said with a thoughtful look on her face.
Xu Yi was a bit confused, “You don’t understand the meaning of this word? What does that mean?”
“It means that……” Elder Illusia revealed a bitter smile, “For us elves, there has never been any form of discipline that existed.”
Xu Yi was stunned.
In the rumours about the elves on the Sines Continent, the words used most to describe them were beautiful, elegant, mysterious, powerful, and proud…...But no one had ever connected the word disciplined with the elves before.
As for the reason why humans could take over as the rulers of the continent from the elves several thousand years ago, people always summarized it as humans using their unique creations and powerful learning to take over control of the continent.
But rarely did they mention the weakness of the elves.
Hearing what elder Illusia said, Xu Yi felt like he had suddenly grabbed something.
But elder Illusia didn’t give Xu Yi time to think as she suddenly stood up and said to him, “Chairman Xu, please come with me. Let’s go take a look at how the clansmen finish those plastic covers and why there would be a 30% defective rate.”
Watching as elder Illusia walked out the door, Xu Yi strangely felt a cold sensation that he had never felt from her before.
Leaving the living space of the Night Song Tribe, they walked around a hundred meters to a large open space that was around the size of a soccer field.
And in that open space, there were currently a hundred elves working there.
Looking around, one could see strong elven men coming out of the forest with large glass jars in their hands. They came to the left side of the open space and poured them into a large porcelain jar.
Heat rose in that jar and the smell of resin kept coming out.
As the heat was gradually increased, the green light of the Magic Array under the jar kept shining, as the impurities of the resin floated out to the surface.
When all the impurities were taken out, the elves on the side scooped them out and put them in a container by the porcelain jar.
There was also another elf that kept adding an unknown blue powder while stirring the concoction. The yellow liquid began to become more sticky as the colour gradually turned light blue.
Finally under the guidance of other elves, the resin that was finished was poured into molds that had already been prepared. After they were cooled down for a bit, they turned into complete Magic Fan covers.
Although this entire process seemed a bit crude, under the magic of the elves, the final plastic covers were even better than the ones made from plastic factories on earth.
Moreover because of the nature of the elves, after this resin was formed into plastic covers, it still kept the scent of the resin. It didn’t have the special odor that normal plastic had.
There seemed to be no issue with this process based on a first glance, the elves were completing their work.
But if one watched for a while, they would find that sometimes the elves would stop in the middle of work and walk around, even going off to sing and dance.
The other elves didn’t find this situation strange at all. There was even an elf that became a bit too excited when adding in material and threw a large bunch of it in.
He actually let this batch of material go to the next step, so there were clear distortions in the final plastic cover that was made.
Then when it came to the final step of the process, something even more shocking would happen.
The elves that seemed like they were bored actually came to the side of a mold that was cooling down. After they discussed it for a while, an elf picked up a stick from the ground and even began drawing on the plastic cover.
When he finished, perhaps they thought that the pattern he drew on the cover was beautiful, but the other elves began clapping for him.
Xu Yi’s face couldn’t help twitching.
Although from the high 30% defective rate, he had already guessed that the elves weren’t as meticulous when it came to making these plastic covers, he never would have thought that the elves would actually be this slack when it came to the production process!
If they were human workers in the Frestech Chamber of Commerce’s factories and this situation was found, Xu Yi would have fired them all without saying another word!
Looking over at elder Illusia, he found that her expression was still calm, but the tightly knit brows showed that her mood wasn’t that good.
The two of them were being covered in elder Illusia’s Shadow Stealth Spell, so they weren’t worried about being found by the other elves.
But seeing the elves act like this, it really didn’t feel good to them.
“Chairman Xu, in the factories of your company, how do the human workers act?” Elder Illusia suddenly asked this.
Xu Yi looked at the elves who didn’t act seriously at all in the distance and shook his head, “I can’t really describe it, but they definitely aren’t like that.”
“Is that so?” Elder Illusia was silent for a bit before saying, “Chairman Xu, I really don’t understand what it means to be disciplined. I didn’t think that there was a problem with my clansmen, but after talking with you today, I’ve found that something really isn’t right. But as for how to change it, I really didn’t know. Chairman Xu, do you have a good method?”
“You really want to change them?” Xu Yi asked.
“Yes.”
“Then it’s simple, give them to me. There is a very simple method that can change them, which is……” Xu Yi’s lips curled into a cold smile, “Special training.”