“What a story…”
Kazuma was extremely talented.
He listened to Uchiha Makoto’s little story with complete fascination, as if a whole pile of strange and bizarre knowledge had suddenly appeared in his mind out of nowhere.
A brand-new door was opening before him.
Kazuma had absolutely no doubt about the power of Uchiha Makoto’s plan.
If the story of the Daimyo initially spending a fortune to obtain tulips, going through multiple channels and enduring all kinds of twists and turns before finally purchasing rare tulips spread throughout the Land of Fire, it would almost immediately ignite the domestic tulip market.
“What do you mean, pricing them by the individual flower?”
“If the nobles of the neighboring Land of Wind hear about this, they’ll think that we nobles of the Land of Fire have fallen on hard times…
Give me another roomful!”
“I want every room in my house filled with them!”
These were treasures that even the Daimyo yearned for.
Those old-money nobles who prided themselves on being at the forefront of the cultural world would absolutely never miss out on them.
The old-money nobles of the Land of Fire would probably line up to spend huge sums on tulips.
Can’t buy them?
Then just pay more!
The current market price of tulips was still relatively low.
If they stockpiled a batch now, then waited for the price of tulips to rise, they would be one hundred percent guaranteed to make a profit.
A four- or fivefold increase, or even more than tenfold, wouldn’t be a problem!
“I understand, Lord Makoto.
I’ll immediately go and stockpile a huge batch of tulips!”
Kazuma spoke with flushed excitement, feeling as though a beautiful future was waiting for him.
“Your thinking is too small…”
“Kazuma, your perspective is still…
Forget it…
Let me enlighten you one more time!”
Uchiha Makoto shook his head.
Kazuma’s vision was still too narrow.
He needed his leader to enlighten him once again!
Buying low and selling high was far too simple.
As long as one understood the information gap in the market, there was absolutely no difficulty.
Anyone could do it…
Hell, you could even tie a dog to the operation and it would probably manage.
Of course…
that wasn’t important.
The most important thing was that the profit wouldn’t satisfy Uchiha Makoto.
The selling point of tulips was that they looked beautiful and were scarce.
Because they took a long time to grow and required difficult cultivation conditions, there simply weren’t many tulips on the market.
Even if Uchiha Makoto used every means at his disposal to drive the price of tulips up several times, or even more than tenfold, the limited total supply of tulips would remain an unavoidable problem.
If he wanted to fleece the market and make money, he could only continue driving up the price of tulips.
But if tulips became too expensive, the nobles of the Land of Fire weren’t idiots.
They wouldn’t go crazy enough to spend their food money on a bunch of flowers.
And besides…
Those sanctimonious vermin might also jump into the market once they saw there was money to be made.
That would only reduce his profit margin even further.
So…
Simply buying and selling tulips at a higher price absolutely wouldn’t work!
“Then what do you mean, Lord Makoto…?”
“We should indeed stockpile a batch of tulips right now and sell them when their price skyrockets in the future.
But tulips are scarce…
So even if we manipulate the price, the amount of money we can make will still be limited.”
“So what we really need to target is the primary market—the tulip growers themselves!”
“That is the true objective of this operation, and that’s where the secret to making serious money lies.”
“But…
Lord Makoto, tulips take too long to grow, and the cultivation conditions are difficult.
If we want to grow them on a large scale, we’d need massive resources…
That’s not something that can be accomplished easily.”
Uchiha Makoto smiled.
He hadn’t intended to make money by growing tulips in the first place.
That method was simply too slow, and the cycle was far too long.
It would take several years at the very least.
By the time a new batch of tulips was finally ready, the fashionable craze among the nobles of the Land of Fire might have already changed several times over.
By then, it would be far too late—so late that even an immortal couldn’t save the situation.
Of course, he wasn’t going to use such a foolish method.
“We don’t need to grow tulips.
We only need to sign contracts with the flower growers and agree in advance on a price for their next batch of tulips.
No matter what the market price of tulips is when the time comes, we’ll purchase them at the price stipulated in the contract.
We can even pay them a deposit in advance as a guarantee.”
“In that case…
we’ll have a huge number of tulip orders in our hands…
And what we’ll be selling will be future tulips!”
Uchiha Makoto had just finished speaking when Kazuma instantly understood what he meant.
He excitedly jumped to his feet and shouted:
“Oh~ I get it…
I get it!”
“Lord Makoto, you mean that once the tulip market becomes red-hot, there will definitely be a lot of people rushing into the market in the Land of Fire.
But tulips are scarce…
At that point, we’ll simply take out the tulip contracts.
There will definitely be people willing to pay extra to buy the contracts we’ve signed with the flower growers!”
“And at that point, we can completely transform the tulip market from a market for trading tulips into a market for trading tulip contracts…
We don’t even need to grow any tulips!
We can just sell the contracts!”
“Hahahaha…”
Kazuma was so excited that he danced around, revealing an extremely devious grin.
“That’s right, that’s right…
That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Hahaha…
At that point, we could even work together with the Daimyo and forge fake contracts…
Anyway, those people whose minds have already been clouded by greed won’t care about that!”
Kazuma had even learned to apply one idea to another.
He had thought of forging contracts as well.
Although it was illegal…
Making money, though…
What’s shameful about that?
That’s right!
Once the trading of any commodity detached itself from the physical goods and became purely financial, things could become insanely irrational.
It would be nothing more than a piece of paper, yet simply passing it from one person’s hands to another could earn double, triple, or even several times the original amount.
Anyone could easily lose themselves in such rapid transactions.
Those people whose minds had been clouded by profit would lose their ability to think rationally.
They wouldn’t bother going to the growers in person to verify whether the contracts were genuine.
They would simply buy, buy, buy, then sell, sell, sell, always believing that someone else would take over the contract from them…
Until the bubble burst, leaving them as the final suckers holding the bag.
So if the Daimyo helped behind the scenes, mixing forged contracts in with the genuine ones and putting them on the market wasn’t impossible.
After all, once the celebration ended and the bubble burst, those contracts would be worth no more than blank sheets of paper.
And surely no one would actually take one of those contracts…
…and come to his shinobi village to demand their tulips, right?
If they did, then he’d have no choice but to…
Take decisive action.
“Hahaha, Kazuma, I knew it!
Only you could come up with such an evil method!”
Uchiha Makoto looked at the devious Kazuma, an extremely satisfied expression on his face.
Kazuma really was a good comrade.
He was capable of shouldering great responsibility!
He could already envision the future of his shinobi village.
It would be overflowing with talented people!
Everywhere would be filled with vigorous life, with all things striving to flourish.