Plan

As the morning light fully illuminated the landscape, the civilian dock regained its customary vitality. Vessels of various sizes bustled back and forth, continuously delivering batches of cargo and personnel to Yanhuang Village, among whom were the honorary merchants who had rushed over upon receiving Li Zhan's summons.

The first honorary merchant to arrive at the village was the top-ranking one, Pig Spelled Backwards. Accompanying him was another player merchant whose name looked almost identical at first glance, differing only in the first character; this player merchant was named Donkey Spelled Backwards.

The two arrived in a flurry and, upon entering the village, walked straight to the village hall. Li Zhan was in the reception room discussing the design of player apparel with Ruoyan, who had just logged online. Seeing them enter, Li Zhan and Ruoyan stood up, exchanged pleasantries, and then invited them to take their respective seats as host and guests. A nimble female villager, temporarily hired for the task, quickly stepped forward to serve them tea.

In the early hours of the morning, after messaging the five honorary merchants, Li Zhan had asked Pig Spelled Backwards about the NPC capable of creating design blueprints. Pig Spelled Backwards replied that he had been planning to bring this up with Li Zhan today anyway: his cousin, Donkey Spelled Backwards, had learned the blueprint design skill from a wandering NPC master during a random merchant quest. Although it was only at the novice level, it was certainly better than nothing. Pig Spelled Backwards suggested letting his cousin try his hand at the village, and Li Zhan readily agreed.

Since four of the five honorary merchants had yet to arrive, Li Zhan began by questioning Donkey Spelled Backwards regarding the design blueprints:

"Brother Donkey, which buildings have you designed so far?"

Donkey Spelled Backwards was in the midst of sipping his tea and nearly choked upon hearing Li Zhan address him thus. Amidst Ruoyan's suppressed laughter, he cleared his throat after catching his breath, his face flushed, and replied while trying to recall:

"Well... pigpens, sheepfolds, cattle sheds, hors—"

Li Zhan hurriedly cut him off:

"Stop! Brother Donkey, just mention the buildings related to humans."

Donkey Spelled Backwards scratched his head somewhat sheepishly and said:

"Buildings related to humans? Hehe, I haven't designed any yet."

This time, it was Li Zhan's turn to almost choke on his tea. He secretly shook his head, pondered for a moment, and asked:

"What kinds of materials can be used for the buildings you currently design?"

Donkey Spelled Backwards replied:

"Dried grass, timber, and stone. Nothing else works."

Li Zhan nodded inwardly, thinking: Let him design some animal shelters for the village first, and then, based on the quality of his work, we can discuss whether to proceed with designing a garment factory and a cafeteria.

With these thoughts in mind, Li Zhan said:

"How about this, Brother Donkey? Why don't you first design a cattle shed, a horse stable, and a chicken coop for the village—oh, and a pigpen too, since we'll be raising a few pigs in the future. As for the cattle and horse stables, I have a specific requirement: they must be designed on the basis of the village's existing corrals and stables. I wonder if Brother Donkey has the confidence to do this?"

Donkey Spelled Backwards replied:

"No problem at all. I've designed seven or eight cattle and horse sheds already, so I know the ropes. If nothing unexpected happens, these shelters can be designed in a single day."

Li Zhan nodded and said:

"Then I shall have to trouble Brother Donkey. Once these shelters are completed, we will further discuss the design of the garment factory and the cafeteria. By the way, regarding Brother Donkey's remuneration..."

At this point, Pig Spelled Backwards cut in:

"Brother Li, my cousin doesn't want any remuneration. He only has one request, and he hopes Brother Li can grant it."

Li Zhan asked in confusion:

"Oh? What is the request? Let's hear it."

Pig Spelled Backwards glanced at his cousin beside him and chuckled:

"My cousin has long wanted to become an honorary merchant of Yanhuang Village, but because the slots for honorary merchants in the village are currently full, he has been agonizing over having no way to get registered and has harbored this regret all along. I wonder if Brother Li can fulfill my cousin's wish."

Once someone became an honorary merchant, the village was guaranteed to provide a minimum of one hundred pieces of apparel per month. Previously, the village's garment production was low, so naturally, they could not take on too many honorary merchants. Now, things were different; after subduing over one hundred and fifty villagers, the village's garment processing workforce had surged, substantially increasing output. Moreover, having just concluded a fabric supply agreement with the Bovine Vigor Tribe and other players yesterday, the apparel production had climbed to a whole new level. Taking on new honorary merchants to expand into a broader market space was an absolute necessity.

However, Li Zhan's next objective was to break into the market of Runan and nip his potential competitor—the Withered Leaf Tribe—in the bud. Regarding this, Li Zhan had a specific deployment in mind for both his veteran and new honorary merchants.

He replied:

"I would certainly welcome Brother Donkey joining the ranks of our honorary merchants. However, the village is about to make some adjustments regarding garment sales, and these adjustments will affect all honorary merchants. A little later, once all the honorary merchants have arrived, I will discuss this matter with everyone in detail. After our discussion, if Brother Donkey still wishes to join the honorary merchants, we can negotiate further."

The two cousins, Pig and Donkey, nodded repeatedly, indicating their willingness to follow Li Zhan's arrangements.

Just then, two more player honorary merchants walked into the village hall. Everyone stood up to exchange pleasantries, took their seats, and chatted casually, primarily discussing recent apparel business and market trends.

After a little while, all five honorary merchants were present. Li Zhan waited for the female villagers to refill everyone's tea and retreat to the back rooms before standing up to address them:

"Everyone, today is the first time the village has summoned all of you together. The reason is that our apparel market is about to face an impact. The opposing party is a tribe in Runan named Withered Leaf; they also produce apparel, though not yet on a large scale. Even so, we must not lower our guard. I wonder if any of you have heard of this tribe, or if you have any sound strategies for defeating this rival?"

The five honorary merchants discussed the matter for a while. Mostly, it was the four players conversing among themselves, while the NPC merchant sat quietly on the side and rarely spoke. After a round of discussion, a player merchant stood up and said:

"I have heard of this tribe. Last time, when I was procuring grain in Huaiyin County of Xiapi, I saw people on the street wearing clothing of a completely different style from ours, strutting about quite proudly. I stopped him at the time and asked about it, learning that his apparel came from the Withered Leaf Tribe in Song County, Runan. The Withered Leaf Tribe produces garments, and their cotton comes from a brother tribe called the Withered Branch Tribe; the two tribes operate in a cooperative partnership. Although their scale is currently small, Runan is situated in the Central Plains, surrounded by numerous major cities such as Chenliu, Xuchang, Shouchun, Wan, Xinye, Luoyang, Xiaopei, Puyang, Xiapi, and Xiangyang, with a dense player population. This makes their apparel immensely influential. It is said that every day, nearly a thousand players gather around their tribe just waiting to purchase the new styles. Furthermore, because they adopt a bidding system for sales, they have reaped massive windfall profits, and their momentum of development is rapid. I was actually planning to come to the village in a couple of days to speak with the village chief about this personally, but I didn't expect the village chief to have already heard of it. I believe it is imperative for the village to take action now and completely crush them before their scale expands; otherwise, it will be extremely detrimental to us."

The details provided by this player merchant were very concrete and gave Li Zhan a very intuitive impression: although the Withered Leaf Tribe's apparel production scale was small, its influence in the Central Plains region was enormous. And since the Central Plains region was densely populated with cities and players, the business opportunities were exceptionally rich. His own apparel had to penetrate that market at the fastest possible speed; being late by even a single day was equivalent to giving the opponent a chance to rapidly grow. If he waited until the Withered Leaf Tribe had grown fully feathered and financially robust, it would become extremely difficult to knock them down.

Li Zhan nodded, pondered for a moment, raised his head, and said:

"The basic situation is roughly like this. The situation is even more pressing than I anticipated. Next, let's discuss what we should do."

Pig Spelled Backwards stood up and said:

"That's very simple. Our apparel is of superior quality and reasonable price, and our fixed price of three gold pieces per piece will definitely make players flock to us. Moreover, our apparel production is on a considerable scale. Utilizing our advantages of high volume, superior quality, and low price, we can utterly suppress the Withered Leaf Tribe. As far as I know, around Song County there are six counties and cities: Qiao County, Runan, Hefei, Shouchun, Dingtao, and Yang'an. As long as we flood the markets of these counties and cities with our apparel in large quantities, it will inevitably deal a heavy blow to the Withered Leaf Tribe's clothing sales, thereby achieving our goal of striking down the Withered Leaf Tribe."

Several honorary merchants nodded in succession, expressing deep agreement. Li Zhan also nodded and then said:

"Brother Pig's idea happens to be my first-step plan: I want each of you to be responsible for one county or city and flood the local market with apparel from our village. Hefei County already has a tribe leader selling our apparel—it was just shipped out yesterday—leaving the remaining five counties, which each of you can take. However, the reason I call this a first-step plan is that the Withered Leaf Tribe will inevitably take action in response to our strike, and their most likely action will be to lower prices. As you all know, our apparel is transported from afar, which inevitably adds shipping costs to the expense. Although our larger production scale can correspondingly reduce our apparel costs, the Withered Leaf Tribe occupies a geographical advantage and can easily match or even undercut our prices. In the current context where the apparel market exceeds supply, although players may feel annoyed by the Withered Leaf Tribe's profit-driven marketing tactics, they cannot resist the temptation of lower prices. Once our apparel experiences shortages, players will still choose the Withered Leaf Tribe's garments. If that happens, we will fall into an awkward war of attrition: advancing, we fail to squeeze out the Withered Leaf Tribe and suffer losses ourselves; retreating, we surrender the Central Plains market back to the Withered Leaf Tribe, allowing them to rapidly mobilize capital and expand through competitive awareness. To counter this, we must formulate a second-step plan to cope with a protracted war of attrition against the Withered Leaf Tribe. Does anyone have any sound strategies?"

Note:
The functional role of the blueprint design skill's level: As the level increases, the architectural forms available for design will become more varied. The building materials used will become more diverse, causing the durability value of the structures to increase accordingly.