Chapter 564: You Must Act with Conscience
Chapter 564: You Must Act with Conscience
“Huh?!” An Ran tilted her head at Fatty as if she were seeing him for the first time. “You can make charcoal too?”
“Of course. We were all born into poverty—making charcoal is nothing complicated.” Fatty winked at An Ran, his expression almost sly as he added:
“But we don’t need to make it right now. The demand isn’t that high. We already have plenty of firewood, and we’ve been burning quite a bit of charcoal lately. I just agreed with Liu Zhi to sell her charcoal directly.”
Charcoal here referred to the kind collected from household fireplaces—once burned, then extinguished, cooled, and set aside for reuse.
As it happened, they had quite a lot of it. Since Liu Zhi wanted to buy more, Fatty could sell the excess, making money while clearing stock. It was a win-win.
Luo Feifan nodded. “Charcoal works. It’s smokeless enough, and it’s still worth giving. Let’s send some to Zhou Zheng and the others.”
“Hey, Fatty!” An Ran turned back with a smile after dealing with Luo Feifan. “Liu Zhi was here just now, and I didn’t want to interfere with you, the Chief. So—how many of her crystal cores are you going to give me?”
The bag of crystal cores wasn’t much, but An Ran figured once Liu Zhi bought charcoal, the matter wouldn’t stop there. If others saw charcoal at Liu Zhi’s house, they’d ask where it came from. Word would spread fast, and sooner or later, Fatty’s charcoal sales would become public knowledge.
She didn’t know how big a problem that might become, so she had to settle profit sharing with Fatty in advance. She certainly wasn’t about to work for free—payment was a must. Money no longer existed, but crystal cores served as currency in this base.
An Ran squinted at him.
Fatty’s eyes rolled back and forth as if he were scheming something unpleasant. So she added, “You must act with integrity. Otherwise, if things get messy, we’ll just walk away and leave everything for you to deal with.”
Exactly what he was afraid of! Fatty immediately grinned and held up four fingers. When An Ran raised a brow in silence, he hurried to explain: “Goddess, think about it. Your wood-type ability is powerful, sure, but I’ve been covering all the crystal cores you need to grow plants. We’re the ones chopping trees and making charcoal. Plus, I have to support the other Elemental ability users. It’s really hard for me to manage. Fine. Forty percent. Forty percent!”
An Ran considered it. A 40% share wasn’t bad. Fatty’s explanation made sense—he had a big family and large operations to run, with over six hundred mouths to feed, not to mention his own collection of wood-type ability users who also needed crystal cores.
Besides, he hadn’t treated her and the others unfairly. He regularly sent fruits and vegetables to her.
After agreeing on the split, Fatty actually called a few people over to collect a sack of charcoal for Liu Zhi, then packed the rest into several bags for Luo Feifan to deliver to Zhou Zheng.
That evening, Zhan Lian, Yun Tao, and Liang Ziyu erected a small wind turbine in the yard. By the time An Ran returned home, their induction cooker was actually working.
Zhan Lian, ever fond of tinkering, had built a battery and a small transformer to connect to the cooker. They set up a flat iron pan, ready to grill something.
When An Ran entered, she found they had even prepared seasonings.