X-Dragon Era

Chapter 249 Chapters 192-195 Blazing All the Way_4

Now, 20,000 Gold Ingots valued at two hundred million Gold Coin, used as collateral, can secure a loan of two billion silver coin with a three-year term, meaning Xin Yun need only pay the principal of two billion silver and the interest of one billion silver within the next three years to reclaim the 20,000 Gold Ingots.

However, a year and a half later, due to the financial storm, One Gold could be exchanged for one hundred Silver, making the 20,000 Gold Ingots no longer worth two billion silver, but rather twenty billion silver! Drawing thirty billion silver out of the twenty billion to pay back the Money shop, Xin Yun netted a profit of one hundred seventy billion!

It was terrifying, incredibly so. The enormous profits were beyond imagination. The financial system in this world was still far from perfect, and with foreknowledge of events, Xin Yun seized this rare opportunity.

Initially, upon his rebirth, Xin Yun could have executed such transactions, but he lacked the necessary capital then, and flight was much too slow. Besides, compared to money, Xin Yun valued personal strength more. At the ages of eight or nine, it was prime time for learning. If he had focused on earning money, his cultivation would have been utterly neglected—a loss far outweighing the gain.

Waiting until thirteen or fourteen to commence systematic training would have been too late; he would never have become an expert in his lifetime.

After securing a loan of two billion silver, Xin Yun, piloting Yinglong, with the two girls in tow, set off again for the next city. There, he exchanged the two billion silver for 20,000 Gold Ingots of equivalent value, then used these Gold Ingots as collateral to borrow another two billion silver and continued onward to the next city.

Xin Yun had his reasons for not borrowing too much from any single Money shop; the sums were already significant and borrowing too much could overwhelm many Money shops, wasting time and reducing efficiency.

As for the Money shops, although the amounts Xin Yun borrowed were substantial, the shops themselves suffered no loss. The real losers were the common people, those who held large amounts of silver coin.

The Money shops initially gave out two billion silver; three years later, they would receive the same amount back, along with one billion silver in interest. Overall, they would not incur a loss but rather earn an extra one billion silver—they simply did not participate in the economic storm.

Once the term was up and Xin Yun repaid the principal and interest, they were obliged to return the collateral to Xin Yun because it rightfully belonged to him.

It's worth mentioning that although the figures sound frightening, for Money shops it was inconsequential. The Money shops merely processed money and extracted interest; the funds were not theirs. Whether they gained or lost was irrelevant to them, so there was no need to worry about them defaulting on the return.

To put it simply, Money shops inherently had no money. If someone deposited money, then the shop had money to lend out. Interest from those loans was the shops' revenue, and they also charged fees for handling transactions—that was another source of income. Hence, the money in Money shops wasn't actually their own; it belonged to everyone who deposited funds in the shop.

Once the value of silver declined, those who had stored silver in the Money shops were at a loss. Silver itself became worthless; a coin that previously could be exchanged for gold at a ten-to-one ratio now required one hundred to one, and what once could be exchanged for a thousand copper coin now could only fetch a hundred—the real loss fell on them.

As for the Money shops, there was virtually no impact.

Moreover, opening a Money shop was not possible for just anyone; it required being the lord of a city. Furthermore, depending on the city size, the grade of the Money shop varied along with the scale of operations they could manage.

Thus, in effect, Xin Yun used the Money shops to siphon money from all its depositors. After the economic storm, the money Xin Yun earned was actually the loss of the wide array of depositors. The Money shops simply played the role of a connection; they did not gain or lose themselves.

In the year and a half that followed, Xin Yun and the three of them were constantly on the move. Yi Luo Xiang and Yan Qingying did not need to control dragons, so they concentrated on cultivating and consolidating energy. As for Xin Yun, through practical operations utilizing Yinglong's true form, he refined energy by compression.

For a year and a half, Xin Yun adhered to a pattern of continuous flight for three days and nights, followed by a one-day and one-night rest. While flying, he would operate the energy within Yinglong's body to compress it. After three days of energy compression, he used the Energy Gathering Array to gather energy and enhance his strength during that rest day and night.

Such cultivation bore fruit. As strength increased, the difficulty shifted from absorbing energy to compressing it, to changing the quality of the energy itself. Refining on the go while flying and leveraging Yinglong's power for energy compression turned out to be more than twice as effective as isolated, arduous cultivation.

Furthermore, with a year and a half of uninterrupted flight, Yinglong's flying skills had improved dramatically. Compared to one and a half years ago, accelerating from a standstill to top speed now took only one hour instead of the original three.

In terms of strength, because he was always shuttling through clouds, Xin Yun's advancement was very swift. Although each star's difficulty after reaching the Silver tier equaled the entire Bronze tier's difficulty, in a year and a half, Xin Yun successfully rose to Silver Four Star, maintaining a ranking parallel to that of Yi Luo Xiang.

As for Yan Qingying, she had ascended two stars, reaching the Silver Seventeen Stars level. The gap between her, Xin Yun, and Yi Luo Xiang was now only three stars. Hence, it was evident that the further one progressed, the more challenging cultivation became, requiring even longer time to advance.