Architect Abner frowned and took out a thumb-sized transparent gemstone from the bag.
He held the gem and looked at it for a moment. Then, he seemed to have thought of something and cast a spell. Then, his face revealed a shocked expression.
He looked up at Feng Chou and asked, "Is this a soul crystal?"
Feng Chou nodded. "My ancestor was also a magus. He left behind many of these crystals. I heard they're very precious to magi, so I thought you might be interested."
Architect Abner stared at the gemstone for a moment and said, "Please wait a moment. I'll need to have a professional appraise it."
"Go ahead," Feng Chou said.
Not long after, an old magus followed Architect Abner into the office. He held the crystal and asked quickly, "How many of these do you have?"
"About a dozen." Feng Chou didn't dare to say too much.
"Each one is a hundred thousand crowns. We'll buy as many as you have," the old magus said.
Feng Chou couldn't help but be surprised. The price was beyond his expectations. According to the information he had, the price of these crystals should be around fifty thousand crowns.
However, Feng Chou didn't show his surprise. He thought that perhaps the information he had was too old, and the price of soul crystals had increased a long time ago.
In fact, it wasn't that the price of soul crystals had increased. The production of soul crystals in hell and the abyss was rather stable. There hadn't been much change in thousands of years.
The old magus was willing to pay such a price because the purity of the soul crystal in Feng Chou's hands was too high!
The old magus even suspected that such a pure soul crystal had come from the hands of an archdevil.
After the purity of a soul crystal increased, its performance in certain aspects would be greatly improved. Naturally, its value would increase greatly.
Feng Chou thought for a moment and said, "Your price is 4.2 million crowns. I think four million is more appropriate. What do you think?"
The old magus made the decision. "Four million it is. One million and five hundred thousand in advance. The remaining two million and five hundred thousand will be paid on the day you take over the territory."
"Eighteen crystals, two million crowns!" Feng Chou said.
Seeing that the old magus wanted to buy his soul crystals at all costs, Feng Chou couldn't help but raise the price.
The old mage said without hesitation, "No problem."
His straightforwardness made Feng Chou a little regretful, but it was not good to go back on his word, so he had to make a new request. "I want a check from the Ottawa Bank."
The old mage said, "As you wish!"
Feng Chou first asked Qiankun Pagoda to scan the surroundings to see if there were any abnormalities.
After confirming that there were no abnormalities, Feng Chou took out a bulging silk bag from his bag and poured its contents onto the table. "There are eighteen of these gems. Two million kronor, and they're all yours."
The old mage carefully examined the gems one by one. Without saying a word, he took out a stack of beautifully printed bank notes from his bag.
He counted out twenty notes and handed them to Feng Chou.
Feng Chou took the note and nodded after checking it. The old mage could not wait to put the Soul Crystal on the table into his bag.
With the Soul Crystal in hand, the old mage left the office in a hurry.
Abner smiled helplessly. "Since Master Wadsworth thinks four million is more appropriate, then we'll do as he says. If you don't have any other questions, I'll have the lawyer draft the contract according to this design. Tomorrow at nine in the morning, bring your lawyer to our company. We'll invite a judge to our company to sign the contract."
Feng Chou thought to himself that this big company was indeed different. Even the judge came to their door to serve them.
In Feng Chou's memory, the signing of contracts on Earth did not require the participation of a judge. However, in this world, the signing of some large contracts required the fairness of a judge.
After confirming the signing time, Feng Chou left Kroger Construction Company.
The next morning, Feng Chou and a lawyer named Victor that Chapman found for him went to Kroger Construction Company. Under the witness of a middle-aged judge, they signed the territory development agreement with Kroger Construction Company and paid 1.5 million crowns on the spot.
In the following week, Chapman took Feng Chou to see a few villas. In the end, Feng Chou chose a villa in the East District and spent more than 300,000 crowns to buy it.
After moving into the villa, Feng Chou promoted Chapman to be his supervisor and left him in the villa in the city. He appointed Owen as the butler of Wood Hill and appointed Chapman's son, the former tannery worker and his temporary follower, Nelson, as the lord's representative to go to the new territory with Kroger Construction Company's team.
Although Chapman repeatedly assured that he had not completely given up on the education of his children over the years and that Nelson was very smart and only lacked experience and the influence of the environment, Feng Chou still could not be at ease.
The lack of manpower under him made Feng Chou start his own talent training plan in advance.
For a few consecutive nights, Feng Chou's Green Owl magic pet carried Qiankun Pagoda and circled above the two slums in the South and North District. Qiankun Pagoda's powerful scanning ability almost missed every one of the hundreds of thousands of slums in the two districts.
Qiankun Pagoda's upgrade this time, in addition to the direct benefits of being able to cast beginner spells at will and the expansion of the scanning range, there were also some indirect benefits.
After mastering all the beginner spells, Qiankun Pagoda had a deeper understanding of the rules of this world. With a deeper understanding of the rules and a large collection of data samples, it could do some things that it could not do before.
For example, it could conduct a more in-depth and accurate analysis of the human body through the scanning data. With this in-depth analysis ability, it could no longer only read the physical attributes of the scanned target, but also analyze the potential of the target's body in all aspects.
Even if a newborn baby was placed in front of Qiankun Pagoda, it could roughly analyze the child's future potential.
Of course, the analysis of a baby was not that accurate. However, as the baby grew older and his body developed, his analysis would become more and more accurate. When a baby reached the age of six, he would be able to accurately analyze the child's potential in all aspects.
This ability was naturally used by Feng Chou in his talent search plan.
After a few nights of scanning, Qiankun Pagoda analyzed and sorted out the basic data of more than three hundred thousand people in the two slums in the North and South of the city.
The two slums in the North and South of Casablanca were the most densely populated areas in Casablanca.
Qiankun Pagoda filtered out all the people who had the potential to become advanced mages from these two districts.
Among the three hundred thousand people, he only found a total of one hundred and thirty people who had the potential to become advanced mages.
Among these people, some of them were older, and some of them had already degenerated into criminals or scoundrels.
Qiankun Pagoda's preliminary judgment was that less than a third of the people were worth training, which was less than forty people.
Among these thirty people, more than half of them were young people under the age of twenty. Among them, there were five orphans who had lost their parents.
In the slums, the lifespan of a person was much shorter. Most people would find it difficult to live to forty years old, so there were many teenagers who lost their parents at the age of thirteen or fourteen.
These five orphans would be the first batch of targets that Feng Chou would recruit.