Vol-2: 077. Want to get rich? Build more roads, raise more pigs, have fewer kids.
077. Want to get rich? Build more roads, raise more pigs, have fewer kids.
After implanting his Omega Energy into the remaining 47 players, Li Aozi turned around and took off into the sky.
Even as Li Aozi's figure rose into the skyline and gradually disappeared from sight, the players were still full of emotion.
"Li Aozi really is a good person."
Flying high above, Li Aozi counted his gains: 47 players had been implanted with Omega Energy, and they had purchased 20 vials of mutation-inducing potions in one go. He had given them a group discount—10,000 Derbis each.
Total: 94,000 experience points, 200,000 Derbis.
He had just earned 90,000 experience points and 200,000 Derbis in one shot—this was way faster than grinding monsters and doing quests on his own.
"Players really are good people."
In truth, renting out Omega Energy didn't cause any side effects for Li Aozi.
Li Aozi always operated on a thin-profit, high-volume, convenient, and affordable business model. As the pioneer of the Dao Path, he treated the players like precious assets, cultivating them with care.
Ideally, he could even set up an arena to have them compete, fostering internal conflict and selecting the best candidates.
Harvesting crops (i.e., exploiting players) might yield quick profits, but it would hurt their sense of loyalty to Li Aozi.
Raising pigs, on the other hand, was different. Pigs receive meticulous care throughout their lives—someone pairs them up, adjusts the humidity and temperature, maintains hygiene on par with a lab, plays music to keep them happy, and feeds them nutritious, delicious food until they grow fat and strong. When they get sick, free doctors treat them with utmost care, and sometimes they're even given exercise to stay healthy. In terms of body fat percentage, pigs might be healthier than most humans.
If not for the fact that they would eventually be eaten, Li Aozi figured most people wouldn't live as comfortably as pigs.
When it came to his management style, Li Aozi thought it over carefully—it was basically pig farming.
Harvesting crops was a quick cash grab, but pig farming was a long-term investment. After raising a pig for six months, it would weigh around 250 to 300 pounds.
According to the Azure Star market rate of 20 Derbis per pound, one pig could sell for about 6,000 Derbis. If he had 10 pigs, that would be at least 55,000 Derbis.
After subtracting the cost of piglets (1,100 Derbis), feed (14,000 Derbis), medicine (1,000 Derbis), and utilities (1,200 Derbis), the profit would still be 27,200 Derbis.
The key point was that people wouldn't keep eating crops, but pork was a food they eagerly anticipated.
When you raise your own pigs to be fat, strong, and powerful, with unique personalities, and then slaughter them, bleed them out, dunk them in boiling water, scrape off their hair, and sell them at the market...
That satisfaction of nurturing and reaping the rewards is something harvesting crops could never provide.
The nature of the Dao Path meant that cultivating players into strong, simple-minded, powerful "big fat pigs" was the highest-value approach.
The stronger the players became, the stronger his Dao Path became, and the faster Omega Energy developed, which made Li Aozi more powerful. With that strength, he could expand the pig farm and raise more "big fat pigs." The more pigs he had, the stronger he became, leading to continuous expansion—a nearly self-sustaining cycle of growth.
The cohesion brought by the Dao Path was far more reliable than religion or nationalism.
After all, companions could betray you, and gods weren't always reliable, but power was power. The tiers of the Dao Path were something you fought for yourself, and it would never betray you.
During the process of pig farming—no, player farming—Li Aozi could also offer "work to pay off debts" and "work for aid" schemes to keep the players motivated, turning them into a super-mercenary force that could be directed at will.
This model of Li Aozi's was actually the same way narrative-level civilizations dealt with powerful individuals in his past life.
After all, you couldn't stop the extraordinary from pursuing ascension, but you could form cooperative, mutually beneficial relationships.
No matter how strong you were as an individual, you were still just one person. But Li Aozi controlled an entire Dao Path, and with enough time and a massive population, there would always be someone stronger than you.
Ultimately, you still had desires and needs, and narrative-level civilizations could satisfy those.
You needed to advance further on the Dao Path, learn higher techniques, and broaden your horizons—could an individual's intelligence and creativity compare to the countless possibilities of an entire civilization?
For those strong individuals who had been abandoned by their comrades, it didn't matter—they could always retreat to Star Abyss. But with its six layers, would they really want to face isolation on every single one?
Besides, people had long misunderstood something: individual strength didn't necessarily mean civilization would bow to you.
This conclusion didn't hold up in Star Abyss because an individual could never defeat society.
Society itself was a monster made up of all citizens, institutions, traits, and the supreme leader of a civilization, transformed by extraordinary power into a collective entity known as "society."
In other words, no matter how strong you were, a society of the same level would contain hundreds of thousands or even billions of powerful individuals.
Plus, society had at least one extraordinary individual called the "Speaker."
In reality, when an individual strongman faced society, they thought it was a one-on-one duel between men. But it was actually one versus one plus one plus (the population of the society).
The "society" species was truly the disaster of the universe.
Narrative-level civilizations were skilled in this area. They couldn't gather all power and consciousness like a society, but they used the temptation of the Dao Path as a ladder of ascension to win hearts.
[Destruction] was the most contested Dao Path, followed by [Craft], then [Redemption].
The [Eerie] and [Plunder] Dao Path's main gods were still around, so people were only fighting for the role of their apostles.
Li Aozi had always centered his actions around the Dao Path of the [Starfall Master], which he was most familiar with.
The main god of the [Domination] Dao Path, Mophidria, had been confirmed dead. The competition among the Dao Paths of the [Conqueror], [Lightbringer], and [Endbringer] was intense, with many ancient monsters who had accumulated countless years vying for them. The result of being on a popular Dao Path was constant competition.
Li Aozi simply said: Why should I bother competing when I can easily slip away? Why engage in internal struggle?
Increasing the number of [Starfall Master] players was far easier than fighting against those ancient competition kings.
The [Destruction] Dao Path was the most ridiculous. Although its countless sub-branches allowed for nearly infinite derivations of various Dao Paths, its popularity meant that whoever controlled a single Dao Path in [Destruction] would attract countless strong individuals to gather around them.
People weren't stupid—fighting to the death had no good outcome. With an existing Dao Path available, why waste energy fighting for a main god position?
By comparison, the [Starfall Master] Dao Path was a blue ocean—a new world filled with profit and opportunity, without cutthroat competition.
Just as Li Aozi was calculating this plan in his head, flying toward Tianhuan, the world underwent a subtle shift.
Tianhuan, Nuliang City, District 12.
In a dark alley corner, a young man who had been knocked unconscious in a brawl suddenly tilted his head.
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