After settling the dual cultivation question, Nick and YunYun finally turned to the main reason king Albert was there and the old expert explained everything he knew about postponing the advancement of becoming a Qi master. Actually there was not that much to explain, majority of techniques revolved around spending most of the person's Qi and not allowing it to fully recover. As such the feeling of bloat would disappear and they could continue to practice Qi almost indefinitely.
But that was only in theory. In practice, with time Qi would recover faster and faster until in the end one would become a Qi master even against their will. Of course, almost everyone used their opportunities to become Qi masters as soon as possible with some rare individuals postponing it for few months, very rarely longer.
The old king monitored their training for several days straight and expressed opinion that most likely they would naturally become Qi masters in two, maybe three months and it came as huge shock to both Nick and YunYun.
"There is nothing to be surprised about. Both of you have diligently trained for several years and have good talent for Qi cultivation, especially you, YunYun." King Albert explained, "Thus, while you would become young Qi masters, many have become such at even younger age. Your aunt became Qi master between thirteen and fourteen, my brother Henry – at twelve. Well, later he regretted not postponing it since the amount of his Qi isn't that great, but still, he's a genius Qi master nevertheless."
"I had this idea on becoming Qi masters using our dual technique in a place that has large amounts of natural Qi. Queen Hua said that it might not be a bad idea, what do you think?" Nick asked while YunYun widened her eyes – it was her first time hearing about it.
"Hmm..." The old king thought for a bit and then nodded, "I agree. It might increase your base amount of Qi during the process and as the result you would definitely have larger amount of the liquefied Qi in your Dantians after becoming Qi masters."
"Sir, do you know of any such places we could use?" Nick's eyes lit up. If these two different experts had similar opinion, the idea was most likely good.
"I doubt there are places that could be that special in our Sun kingdom. There are a couple in the Northern empire, but those are high up in the snowy mountains and I doubt anyone would like to practice Qi there. More accessible should be those that are in the middle of the jungle in the Nola kingdom, but even if I have heard of them, I've no idea where they are and I doubt locals would tell."
"We have such place." YunYun suddenly said, "Why don't we go to the Lethe kingdom for this purpose?"
"That's a great idea!" Nick smiled at her, "Let's wait for the spring and go for a trip around the Eastern continent. I'm sure your mom also wants to see you and, even if she received a letter from king Alexander, she will still be worried until she sees you personally, right?"
The old king left, and both youths started to make plans. They decided to depart when the grand "Queen Elizabeth" would go on its next round trip after the New Year celebrations. That would give them between two and four months time to prepare and the last preparations for becoming Qi masters they could make already in the Lethe kingdom.
To keep their Qi in check, Nick already had a plan. While they would still practice the weapon skills on the water surface, scale cliffs below their house and train their reflexes on the palace training grounds, the most effective way to spend their Qi was alchemy. At the same time it was a useful practice for their Qi manipulation as well, thus instead of one practice, they starting having three alchemy sessions per day.
Of course, they used the opportunity and offered their services to the royal guard and army. As a result they received quite a few orders for healing pastes, elixirs and antidotes. During the previous cooperation with Nick, it had become a norm for the client to provide materials and they went with same arrangement again.
After YunYun's skills improved, Nick bought her high quality alchemy equipment that she now carried with her in her meteorite ring. Of course, she grumbled a bit about not having 'any' good wristbands and Nick having two, but he didn't pay much attention to it. It was not like he hadn't thought about lending or giving her one, but she already had the ring and he was so used to both wristbands, he felt naked without them even though for now they were mostly empty.
Nick freed the most volume when gave away the treasures and, after some cleanup, besides the alchemy ingredients, only old books from the Holy Order took the most of the space. After he read all of them, without much consideration they were donated to the Royal library and in return he received a full access to it.
Thus his wristbands had a neat order inside, but were not even a quarter full. That fact didn't worry him at all. Learning from the previous experience, he knew that the most valuable things were, in fact, alchemy products and ingredients. He didn't shy off buying in bulk anything that was more or less useful and was sold for a decent price. Most of the alchemy shops knew him for years and, in general, tried to provide with some sweet deals on a regular basis.
But him getting rid of the 'useless' stuff gave a headache to someone else. Right after the Royal hunting festival, Mason invited everyone over to the "Sunshine" for some brainstorming.
In the biggest room of the restaurant everyone, including the princesses and Kate, gathered and feasted on pizza. But while most still had their mouths full, anxious Mason already was explaining the reason for this gathering. In fact, from the tone of his voice it felt more like complaining.
"Somehow the Royal treasury recently acquired multitude of valuables and has tasked our Meyer family to auction all of it."
"Seriously?" Steven was surprised, "They are emptying the treasury?"
"Of course, not!" Mason sighed, "It just feels like it. There are hundreds and hundreds of items, and the king entrusted us to get the best price for everything."
"Where's the problem?" Kate was confused.
"Our auction house system only works 'normally' during the Midsummer festival when a ton of common people flood the capital and also only for the relatively cheep items. It's not possible to auction with reasonable profit more than one or two items per event already for generations!" Mason sounded really desperate.
"Why? Aurora is a civilized city. You shouldn't be able to find a problem even if you look for it!" Nick was confused and spoke while stuffing chicken pizza in his mouth.
"It is too civilized!" Mason grabbed his head in hands, "Everyone is too polite! When someone places their bid, the other people don't even try to outbid them, just smile and congratulate. It's a disgrace! No other countries have it like this – I was in Nola kingdom's capital last year and everyone was yelling louder than their neighbor trying to get their bids heard! The competition was insane!"
"To me it sounds more like you guys," Nick pointed at Chris and Steven, "are just throwing your weight around this place. An influential person bids on an item they like and the others pretend to 'respect' it. In return they act similar way when the other party bids. As the result, this part of economy struggles, but the fat aristocrats get cheep valuables."
Silence filled the room. Besides Nick everyone was from aristocratic or even royal families and understood what he meant.
"I think our king made a good move." Nick continued, "He trusts the best merchant family in the world to find a way out. Well, he probably didn't expect the most important discussion happen at a pizza table, but this is as good place as any."
"That sounds great, but what should I do?" Mason was still in despair, "Father tasked me with this and I have no idea how to solve such problems."
"First of all, you have many friends to help you so why are you acting like that?" Nick grinned, "And second, if there are few problems, can't we solve them one by one?"
"Exactly! Let's do it like we do in production. Formulate each problem separately and then find a solution for each." Steven added.
"Alright!" Mason grabbed a piece of paper, "The first problem, aristocrats are bastards!"
"Calm down, we have ladies present!" Chris punched his shoulder, "Write down – the first problem, stagnated target audience."
"Second problem – too many wares!" Mason did calm down a bit after the punch and wrote with a painful grimace, "Anything else?"
For YunYun this was new experience, but Nick brought this brainstorming tradition in their circle already several years ago and the others enjoyed it quite a lot. During the past years with the help of the whole squad they solved many problems for each of the boys. Princesses and Kate started taking part in these later, when Conny and Steven were dating, and mostly for entertainment purposes.
"What about the alternative selling methods? It's not a problem, but we could consider it." Nick suggested.
"Good, it's number three." Mason wrote down, "If we think of anything else, I'll add it later. Now then, let's go through these one by one. How could we make potential clients to not cooperate with each other like they usually do?"
The room fell silent and only chewing was heard from time to time.
"If people from the capital are like that, why don't you invite some from Nola kingdom to take part if they are the way you just described?" YunYun quietly suggested. She was the new one here and not from this country, but maybe because of that she could see it from a different perspective.
"Genius!" Mason exclaimed, "If people in the capital are stagnated, we'll just invite others who will stir up this place. Nola kingdom's aristocrats, richest people from the surrounding cities, maybe even barbarians – we currently have piece with them after all!"
"That sounds great, but it brings up the logistical downside." Steven shook his head, "Why would someone come to our auction if they don't even know what will be auctioned?"
"This problem is solvable as well. Before inviting people over, we can send a list of items and ask them to mark the ones they are interested in. Afterwards create an auction where exactly those items will be auctioned. It's unlikely that they would return empty handed." Nick threw out an idea.
"That doesn't sound bad. We can create separate events for the Nola kingdom and the Northern empire and for each delegation we can organize a small festival in Aurora as well. That would bring us more income." Mason's eyes lit up.
"That would bring 'you' more income." Chris corrected and laughed.
Mason didn't care and shrugged. For him to be a good merchant he had to be shameless, even if it was using the brain power of his friends.
"But I don't think it solves the problem completely. Many might want to curry the favor from foreigners and they could try to repay the same way and we might be back at the square one." Steven said after thinking for a while.
Everyone fell silent again. The annoying unwritten law of the capital was really inconvenient.
"What if we change the bidding system? If no one knew the previous highest bidder?" Nick suggested. He had seen some movies where people wrote a number on a paper slip and then the highest bidder was chosen while remaining anonymous.
"How do we do that?" Mason was confused.
"An example. You're selling a diamond necklace and announce the base price of nine gold. Everyone knows that the necklace costs ten, so they should just bid nine and a half to get a good deal, right? But what if they had to bid by writing their name and amount on paper and then pass it over to the auctioneer. No one could know what the others are bidding, thus if they want this item, they would have to make a reasonable bid. It's unlikely that the necklace could go for twenty gold, but fifteen should be possible." Nick explained.
It did sound interesting and there was no problem for Meyer family to keep the winner a secret and no one would suspect them of cheating because of their reputation.