A week after the Warrior left Cape of Good Luck, the southernmost part of the Southern Continent, Feng Chou received a message from Gliss that the Pioneer Knight had arrived at the Holy City of Meredith.
Feng Chou left the Warrior to Captain Haddock and teleported himself to the Holy City of Meredith.
When Feng Chou arrived at the Pioneer Knight, it was the afternoon of the first day the ship arrived at the Holy City of Meredith.
The Pioneer Knight would separate from the fleet here and head south alone.
They would stay in the Holy City of Meredith for three days to replenish their supplies.
Everyone was very happy to see each other again after half a year.
Feng Chou took Gliss and Natasha ashore and checked into the famous Whale Hotel in Meredith.
In the villa in the backyard of the hotel, Feng Chou once again enjoyed the harmonious life he had not seen for a long time. Gliss and Natasha, who had the blood of the white dragon, were finally on par with Feng Chou again.
The three dragon veins were all full of energy and were of high quality. In addition, the White Dragon's bloodline had a cool and moist feeling to the touch. It was very unique. Feng Chou worked until the next morning and did not feel tired at all.
The sky was bright. Although Feng Chou still wanted to continue, he still beat the gong to call it a day. The three of them took a hot bath and had breakfast. Then they left the hotel and returned to the Pioneer Knight.
Back on the ship, Feng Chou found that Chorre and Chapman were not on the ship. They took a group of apprentices to the port to buy canned vegetables, bacon, biscuits and other food that could be stored easily.
Ordinary water could not be kept for long on the ship. Part of the drinking water on the ship was replaced by rum, and the other part was preserved in the form of divine spells.
"Water-making" was a simple level-0 divine spell. One spell could create 50 liters of pure water. Merchant ships on long voyages would buy some wands that could store 30 Water-making spells, which was 1500 liters of pure water. Such a wand with full spell slots would cost about 200 crowns. This price was definitely worth it in the vast sea.
The apprentices skillfully commanded the dock workers and hired sailors to carry buckets of food and rum onto the ship in an orderly manner.
… …
Two days later, the Pioneer Knight set sail again after the resupply was completed.
After nearly half a year of working together, Natasha, Gloria, and the mage apprentices had completely mastered the navigation of the Pioneer Knight. Feng Chou no longer needed to worry about the voyage of the merchant ship.
Owen and Chorre would follow Feng Chou's (actually, Qiankun Pagoda's) drill every day. They would lead the apprentices to clean the deck, clean the cabins and train them to operate the cannons.
Unfortunately, due to the lack of manpower, they could only operate a third of the cannons at the same time.
However, Feng Chou was not in a hurry. As for how to replenish the crew, he already had a general idea when he was building the two armed merchant ships.
Feng Chou, who could not find a place for himself on the ship, simply hid in his spacious and luxurious cabin. As he studied the spells, he had Qiankun Pagoda secretly store the large amount of alchemy raw materials on the ship into the tower. He also put some of the finished products of the mid-level magic equipment back into the cabin.
In just half a month, the magic raw materials worth hundreds of millions of crowns in the depths of the cabin were all turned into finished mid-level magic equipment.
When making the magic equipment, Feng Chou mass-produced spears, shields, hammers and other weapons that the Amazons and dragon descendants liked to use according to his understanding of the market in the southern continent. In terms of magic armor, Feng Chou also made some adjustments according to the figures of the dragon descendants and Amazons.
If this batch of magic equipment made from alchemy materials worth hundreds of millions of crowns was sold directly in Stormwind City, the profit would be about three times. However, if this batch of magic equipment could be transported to the southern continent, the profit would be more than ten times!
Compared to the northern continent, alchemy products in the southern continent were more scarce and precious.
In the southern continent, the kingdoms that could produce alchemy products were the High Elves Kingdom, the Tiffling Kingdom, and the Goblin Kingdom.
As for the few alchemists in the Amazon Kingdom, they were almost negligible.
The quality of the alchemy products in the High Elves Kingdom was extremely high, even surpassing the average level of the Alvindale Empire. However, their production was far from comparable to the Alvindale Empire. They could only satisfy their own needs, and very few of them were exported. Even if they did, they could only be sold as luxury goods and not as consumables.
The engineers in the Goblin Kingdom were not proficient in alchemy. Their research focus was not on the production of magic equipment at all. Thus, although the Goblin Kingdom could produce a small amount of alchemy products, it was far from enough to satisfy their own needs. They still had to import large amounts of alchemy products from the northern continent.
The Tiffling Kingdom was the only kingdom in the southern continent that exported alchemy products. However, whether in terms of production, quality, or price, their products could not be compared to Alvindale's.
Whether it was the Amazons or the dragon descendants, they were all in a state of extreme thirst for magic equipment.
If they did not wear any equipment, an Amazon warrior wielding an explosive weapon could easily defeat three human warriors of the same level. A dragon warrior could even easily defeat a small team of human warriors. However, if human warriors were equipped with magic equipment of the corresponding level, the situation could very well be reversed.
The Amazons and dragon pirates had suffered many losses at the hands of the human merchant ship guards armed with magic equipment.
The dragon descendants on the central highlands of the southern continent were even willing to use a pile of high-level magical materials to exchange for a middle-level magical weapon.
As long as Feng Chou could successfully transport this batch of magic equipment to the southern continent and sell it, then he would be able to get back more than ten times the value of the goods from the southern continent. If he could transport this batch of goods from the southern continent back to Tailun Port, then he would be able to make three or four times the profit!
Of course, normal merchant ships would not be able to make such a high profit if they traveled through the southern continent.
On one hand, Feng Chou's ten times profit also included the profit from the cheap alchemy materials purchased from Stormwind City into alchemy products from the Universal Tower.
If he were to exclude this part of the profit and directly purchase the middle-level alchemy products from Tailun Port and ship them to the southern continent, then he would only be able to make less than five times the profit.
On the other hand, no ship owner would dare to fill the entire ship with middle-level magical equipment like Feng Chou. The cost of doing so was simply too high.
According to the statistics of the Meredith Kingdom's navigation department, the proportion of merchant ships that set off from the Meredith Kingdom to the southern continent that would eventually return to Tailun City was less than four cities!
Even the craziest adventurer would not use a merchant ship filled with middle-level magical equipment that was worth more than two hundred million crowns to fight for a success rate of less than forty percent.
Feng Chou actually did not intend to do so. Using a ship to transport the goods was actually a last resort for Feng Chou. He had the more convenient Qiankun Pagoda, but it could not be exposed to the public.
Since it was for show, of course he had to make it look real. Feng Chou did not put all of the alchemy products refined by Qiankun Pagoda back into the warehouse of the Pioneer Knight. In fact, he only put back one-tenth of it.
When the crude metal ingots were made into weapons and armor, the volume of the equipment would naturally increase greatly. Therefore, this one-tenth of the alchemy products was actually about the same as the original materials in the warehouse.
As for the changes in the ship's draft and the goods in the warehouse, they naturally could not be hidden from the crew of the ship.
Therefore, Feng Chou secretly drove the Pioneer Knight into the Universe of the Tower and had Qiankun Pagoda reconstruct the memories of everyone on the ship before driving the ship out.
This way, no one would remember that the ship had once carried alchemy raw materials worth more than a hundred million crowns.
Generally speaking, merchant ships that ventured into the southern continent mainly transported exquisite cloth, premium steel produced by alchemy, normal steel weapons and armor, secondary black steel, secondary black steel weapons and armor, as well as some more practical low-level magical items and magical equipment.
Among these goods, the profit from cloth was only double, and the profit from steel was only slightly more than double. The profit from steel weapons and armor was not much higher than that from steel, the profit from secondary black steel weapons and armor was almost double, and the profit from low-level magical items was three times.
Merchant ship owners filled their warehouses with ordinary goods such as cloth and steel, and then used a third of their funds to buy a batch of premium mid-level magical weapons. That way, they could guarantee that they would earn three times the profit from one trip to the southern continent.
The Pioneer Knight wasn't fully loaded in the first place. After Feng Chou adjusted the cargo, the Pioneer Knight's capacity had increased greatly. Naturally, Feng Chou wouldn't let the ship go to the southern continent with half of its warehouse empty.
The reason why he didn't restock at Meidis was naturally because Feng Chou had a better and cheaper place to replenish his stock.
When the merchant ship successfully reached the southern continent, it would be fully loaded with coffee, tea leaves, spices, herbs, magical wood, magical beast bones and fur, crude black steel, and all sorts of alchemy raw ores and crude products. After using a third of the funds to buy a batch of draconic blood essence and Troll blood essence that had gone extinct in the northern continent, it would guarantee that the merchant ship would earn three times the profit on the return trip.
This round trip was almost ten times the profit.
Ten times the profit and a forty percent success rate. This was enough for many crazy fellows to stake their lives on the line.
There was another advantage to going to the southern continent. The ocean currents and monsoon along this route were especially advantageous for sailing ships. Many adventurers would simply get a cheap antique sailing ship, load it with cloth and steel products, and head to the southern continent. If they succeeded, they would become rich in one go.
The Pioneer Knight didn't use its weapon system, and only relied on magical energy to sail. Under the drive of four large-scale spells, it could reach a cruising speed of thirty-two knots.
The mages took two shifts to steer the ship at a speed of thirty-two knots, day and night. In just five days, the Pioneer Knight followed the southern island chain of Meredith Isthmus and entered the Southern Equatorial Current that flowed from west to east.