Chapter 1157: This is Not Earth
Ju Fei and Ju Niao left.
Liu Chen told the whole story to Chen Xiaobei who had 'just woken up'.
Chen Xiaobei had to put on an act and play along with Liu Chen.
"Oh, yeah. Let's exchange numbers so that we can contact each other easily."
Chen Xiaobei took the opportunity to change the subject.
"Do you have an intergalactic cellphone?"
"Of course!"
Chen Xiaobei took out the Dami 17 that Ju Niao had given to him. "It's the military's! I still haven't had a chance to use it!"
'That... That's a Dami 17?!"
Liu Chen stared at the phone in Chen Xiaobei's hands.
"Why?" Chen Xiaobei furrowed his brows, realizing that something was off.
"You're a liar! The military uses Dami 16! It doesn't have an antitheft system!" Liu Chen grunted. "Tell us honestly! Why did you have to lie?"
"I..."
Chen Xiaobei felt a trickle of sweat run down the side of his forehead. That idiot Ju Niao did not tell him this little detail! He did not know what to do, so he looked to Ning Yuchen.
Knowing Ning Yuchen's personality, he would have a reason to counter Liu Chen's question.
"Do you really have to ask?" Ning Yuchen's mouth flew opened to explain. "Zhufeng must have asked the elder from the temple to help him buy it! He didn't want to appear 'special' so he tried to cover it up by saying that the military gave it to him!"
"Is that true?"
Liu Chen looked doubtful.
"Of course! Of course, it's true!"
Chen Xiaobei exhaled. The only person who could handle this girl was Ning Yuchen.
To his surprise, he did not know that he could ask the Star Temple elder to help him buy stuff from the galaxy. This intergalactic cellphone must work on Earth too. That must be how the news about Atlantis traveled so fast to Northern Wilderness Starfield.
"Zhufeng! I really have to reprimand you for this. We are so close now, we shouldn't be hiding things from each other." Ning Yuchen said, smiling. "Tell us honestly, you spent a lot of Spiritual Stones for it, didn't you?"
"Huh? You have to use Spiritual Stones to buy this phone?" Chen Xiaobei accidentally let slip.
"You are the one who bought it. Didn't you know that you have to spend some Spiritual Stones?" Liu Chen asked.
Chen Xiaobei did not need Ning Yuchen's help this time. "Er... My family on Earth took care of everything. They must have gotten it..."
Liu Chen nodded, which meant she bought it.
The people who were able to enter Northern Wilderness Starfield would need the recommendation of six demigods!
Other than prodigies, only fuerdai brats would get the chance.
Liu Chen believed that Chen Xiaobei was a rich brat that got the support from powerful people, that was why his cultivation was so low. He would not even blink when buying a Dami 17.
"Alright! Now that we've cleared all that, let's exchange numbers!" Ning Yuchen said.
So they gave each other their phone numbers.
After everything was done, Chen Xiaobei asked. "How many Spiritual Stones for this phone?"
"Your is the latest model. It's priced at 998 lower-grade Spiritual Stones!" Ning Yuchen replied.
"What the hell! No way! How could a shitty phone cost so much?"
Chen Xiaobei's eyes widened.
It would be very difficult to get 998 Spiritual Stones! But you could only buy a crappy phone with it!
"That's nothing unusual! Remember that this is not Earth!" Ning Yuchen explained. "Northern Wilderness soldiers don't need to work, and the jobless vagrants are shunned by the locals. They are not allowed to help with the production! Which is to say that, the people who make these phones are all nobles! They are paid with Spiritual Stones. Their monthly payments begins with 5,000 lower-grade Spiritual Stones!"
Chen Xiaobei was astonished by this information. "What the hell?! 5,000 lower-grade Spiritual Stones as starting salary? Let me go and work this job as well!"
"That's nothing." Ning Yuchen shook his head and said, "The things that are really expensive are the raw materials. Take the parts used to make this cellphone as an example!"
"Metal, glass, plastic... There are all readily available on Earth It would require a very complicated process to import it to the factories! The copper mine that produces the parts are from Black Neutron Star, and the silicone mine that produces glass in Sapphire Aqua Planet. To transport all these, the fuel for the spaceship, the Spiritual Qi for the portals, these are all numbers! You could say that the phone in your hand is made up of Spiritual Stones. Its production doesn't really make any profit."
Chen Xiaobei was dumbstruck. "One phone for 998 Spiritual Stones and yet they don't make any profit off it? That's insane!"
But when you really think about it, it's really not that strange.
In Silver Plume Planet, the nobles lived a comfortable life in the capital city. The work they did were also relaxed. Outside the capital city, other than the military camps, were just uncultivated land inhabited by Demonic Beasts, making it difficult to even mine the available resources.
Interstellar transportation was a distance of hundreds of thousands of kilometers and thousands of light years. If you take all of that into consideration, the price of the phone was actually really low.
Chen Xiaobei looked at the Dami 17 in his palm. It suddenly felt very heavy in his hand.
An audacious thought crossed Chen Xiaobei's mind.
If he could gather a whole bunch of Returning Bracelets, he could mark each of the places where the raw materials are produced. Then, the exorbitant cost of interstellar transportation would be reduced to zero!
Then the profit margin would shoot through the roof!
"Okay, so other than cell phones, what are other living costs that are just as high? What about the price of items here?" Chen Xiaobei asked.
Chen Xiaobei had planned to bring his family and friends over here after all. He would need to know the price of the commodities so that they would not have to live in poverty.
"Items here are quite expensive as well." Ning Yuchen said, "Dining at Sister Hua's place would cost about 35 Spiritual Stones!"
"No way!" Chen Xiaobei was sweating under his shirt. "If you convert that to yuan, that's 3 to 5 billion yuan for one meal! In one week's worth of meal could bankrupt the entire richest families at Green Town City which is the Lan family!"
"You really need to change your thinking! This is not Earth! This is not Earth! This is not Earth! Important things need to be repeated thrice." Ning Yuchen said, "Sister Hua uses only the organic Spiritual Ingredients from the nobles' farms! The roasted meats are from the Half-Spiritual Beast' that the nobles rear! How could it be cheap?"
Liu Chen added, "You haven't even eaten at the banquets prepared by the chefs in 1st Street. If you don't have at least a few hundred spiritual stones, you will be kicked out!"
"Hnm..."
Chen Xiaobei's eyes lit up as a certain top chef popped up in his mind.