Rise Of The Wasteland
/ Rise of the Wasteland Chapter 175 - Hot-Selling
Chapter 175 Hot-Selling
“ My name is Rooney, and they’re my sister and my mother. What do you think about them? You can sleep with the both of them as long as you give me some canned food.” The kid was eleven or twelve years old at most, and yet he seemed to be extremely familiar with the structure of the black market as he led Zhou Qingfeng and Butcher to a large tent.
A large-scale brothel service was taking place inside the large tent. The tent was divided into smaller rooms with cardboards, and women who were at the end of their tethers came here to exchange their dignities for food.
Butcher, who stood behind Zhou Qingfeng, laughed shamelessly once he saw the two so-called ‘good stuff’. “Victor, are you really going to sleep with them?”
Rooney’s sister and mother seemed to have stopped taking care of their appearances for at least several days now, as their hair were messy and their faces extremely dirty. They were not exceptionally pretty, so it was easy to imagine that they did not have any patrons for their brothel services. They were extremely nervous, especially when they saw Zhou Qingfeng and Butcher, who did not seem like good guys.
“Kid, is this your family?”
“Yes.”
“Perfect. I’ll kill your mother and sister next time if you dare to steal from me again.”
“Ah…. Please don’t do this. I apologize. Previously, I had no other choice. That's why I chose to steal from someone else.”
“Enough, just shut up.” After he finished threatening the kid, Zhou Qingfeng took some canned Spam out of his backpack. He opened the can with a military dagger and handed it to Rooney. “Try it.”
Those canned foods from the US military were oily and greasy, and Asians were not used to eating them. However, they were just perfect for the Europeans and the Americans. The poverty-stricken Rooney could not resist accepting the canned food, even though it was probably even older than his grandparents.
Rooney stared at the canned Spam. He then threw a few glances at his mother and sister. He handed the canned food to his mother, and the family of three soon began to share the long-awaited food with fear and anxiety.
After watching the family of three take care of each other by quietly sharing their food, Butcher whispered in Zhou Qingfeng’s ear, “They seem like a nice family…. You indeed possess certain heights of insight.”
The canned food was soon finished, and they even licked every last drop of oil. Rooney wiped his face with his sleeve and walked toward Zhou Qingfeng. “Sir, as long as you can give me a can of food every day, I can do anything for you. But if I mess up anything, please punish me instead of hurting my mother and sister.”
Zhou Qingfeng then took another can from his backpack and shook it in his hand. “I want you to help me sell this kind of canned food. I’ll need weapons, fresh food, a captain who knows how to sail, some sailors, marine propulsion and fuel, for which you can exchange all of them with these canned food.”
One was certainly looking for his death if he foolishly dared to sell large quantities of canned food in his enemies’ territories. Obviously, Zhou Qingfeng did not possess that kind of courage. Hence, he preferred finding an agent, even though the sales process would become less efficient.
“You have large quantities of this kind of canned food, am I right?”
"Yes."
"Can I call someone over to help me then?"
“Who is this ‘someone’?”
“They’re my friends.”
“I only need reliable people. If they’re not reliable, I can guarantee you that you and your family will be in big trouble.”
“My friends are currently on their own because their parents have already starved to death. All I want to say is that no one really cares about us. What’s even worse is the bullying we get from the adults. That’s why we’ve decided to unite. We know all the secrets of the black market, and we will be very reliable.”
Zhou Qingfeng decided to give it a try, and in just the blink of an eye, Rooney had gathered up seven to eight other kids. The kids’ ages ranged from six to fifteen years old, but they all seemed to be very clever. After each of them received a can of food from Zhou Qingfeng, all of them agreed to work for him.
And so the marketing channel officially began. Zhou Qingfeng led the group of kids to a beach outside of the blackmarket. At first, he let each of them take a few cans of meat in order to exchange them for some ammunition. After establishing some basic trust with the other store owners of the blackmarket, he then allowed them to take more cans.
Zhou Qingfeng only stipulated a basic list of exchange prices, and the amount of their gains depended heavily on the kids’ abilities. However, he became very pleased when the kids soon learned to unite and take control over the entire market.
Unfortunately, someone from the blackmarket began to rob and steal the supplies from the kids. However, with Zhou Qingfeng as their mastermind, all men who dared to steal from the kids got killed during the night. Nonetheless, the whole Kennedy Airport soon knew that a food supplier had invaded the black market and had hired a bunch of kids to peddle their large quantities of canned Spam.
"Sir, we need four m2hb, plus 100,000 bullets."
"Sir, this price is not quite right. My boss won’t be happy with the price you’ve just offered."
"We’ll need twenty Javelin anti-tank missiles. Don’t you even dare to think about fooling us with the outdated models."
"Do you have any marine diesel? We can also consider exchanging these canned food with you for fifty thousand of the .223 caliber bullets."
“You’re not happy with the production date of our canned food? F*ck off then! Our boss does not allow us to lower the prices.”
For every single day, Zhou Qingfeng would hire a tugboat to deliver tens of thousands of canned food into the blackmarket. He also demanded the tugboat to deliver the exchanged goods away from the blackmarket on the same day. At first, he only wanted some weapons, but he soon began to exchange his canned food for some refined flour and fresh meat.
Within a mere two days, the number of kids who worked for Zhou Qingfeng had increased from seventy to eighty, to over a hundred. The canned food which he sold to Skull and Bones had also increased from just a few tons to dozens of metric tons. A lot of store owners from the blackmarket were alarmed by the large quantities of supplies.
Although Skull and Bones had occupied a large proportion of New York and had control over the majority of the population, they were incapable of providing every single one of them with sufficient food. Hence, in order to fight for a bite to eat, countless armed confrontations had occured. The high-ranking officials of Skull and Bones were upset by the current situation as well, even though they were once just a bunch of prisoners. A huge proportion of their budget had been wasted solely on moving the scattered corpses away from the streets.
Meanwhile, Zhou Qingfeng had become an influential food supplier within just a few days. Although he had acquired a large number of firearms from the black market, the canned meat which he left behind had become more and more important for Skull and Bones.
Every time the kids under Zhou Qingfeng pushed a trailer full of canned food into the black market, every store owner would rush forth and exchange their resources for those canned goods.
Similarly, Zhou Qingfeng also used these kids to collect intelligence on Skull and Bones—in particular, intelligence on Fernando Rethnor. As he had yet to gather enough fuel to support his escape plan, Zhou Qingfeng needed to collect as much information on Skull and Bones as possible in the meantime.
Until one day, Rooney told Zhou Qingfeng that there was a mysterious man from the black market who wanted to meet with him, "Sir, I’ve spread the news about how you’re looking to buy fuel and steamships throughout the entire black market, but the conditions given by most of the people are simply unacceptable. It wasn’t until yesterday that this man had come and found me. He said that he can fulfill your needs."
“Does that mysterious man really have marine fuel? Did you tell him that I need not only a few tons or dozens of tons but at least over a hundred tons of fuel?” Zhou Qingfeng was planning to travel a great distance, so he did not want to stop midway only because he lacked fuel reserves.
“No, the mysterious man said that he doesn’t have any fuel, but he does have a ship. A big ship.”
“What’s the point of having a ship if he doesn’t have any fuel at all?”
“But he said that his ship is nuclear-powered.”
“What?!”
Chapter end
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