"That's the free drinking water," Ethan said with a smile, "If Mr. White rents two-bedroom, one-living-room apartments for his people, we'll provide five liters of free drinking water every day. Isn't that a great deal?"
You have to know that in this world, drinking water costs money.
But Ethan had a water source called Black Tortoise Mountain Spring, so his water supply could be said to be endless.
Even so, he couldn't let it show that his water was free.
Sometimes… when many consumers buy a product, what they choose isn't the product's actual value for money.
It's the additional services and freebies.
For example… they could be buying the exact same clothes, but some people would be willing to spend a lot more just for the brand and service that came with them.
Likewise, when buying a phone online, if one phone came with a free smartwatch, it would usually sell better than another phone at the same price.
That was the role of freebies.
Especially when you could turn something worthless into something useful and give it to someone who needed it, in the customer's eyes, the seller would also become a good, generous seller.
For example, buying a fish tank and getting free gravel.
Renting a house and getting free drinking water.
It was the same principle.
"Five liters of free water?"
Mr. White was immediately tempted when he heard this.
For traveling merchants like them, water resources were sometimes even more precious than food. For one thing, water wasn't particularly easy to carry. After all, each person needed to drink a lot of water every day, and once their caravan grew larger, although they had plenty of backpacks that could be used to store water, they would inevitably still run into shortages.
Another issue was settling down.
For example, living in a city.
There wasn't much water available for direct consumption either. Most people would choose to buy things like water condensers or water purifiers to collect drinking water for the day.
But these products were usually expensive and had short lifespans. On top of that, every filtration consumed large amounts of supplies, such as charcoal.
Or they simply consumed spirit stones.
When you calculated it this way, the price of a liter of water actually wasn't low.
If you were hardworking enough, you could also go to the market to buy drinking water, but two liters of drinking water cost roughly two Dragon Coins.
But if he rented a two-bedroom, one-living-room apartment from Ethan, he could get five liters of water for free every day. If he rationed it carefully, that would be enough for five people to drink, which meant he would save two and a half Dragon Coins every day. The rent would effectively drop to seven and a half Dragon Coins.
And the two-bedroom, one-living-room apartment also came with a shower room. If eight people lived there, that meant he could save eight Dragon Coins in bathing fees every day.
Two and a half Dragon Coins for drinking water, plus eight Dragon Coins for bathing.
Then if he rented this house… wouldn't that mean he could actually make half a Dragon Coin a day?
He could even provide his employees with a place to stay, and there was a place to use the toilet.
'Holy shit!'
'This isn't just getting something for free anymore. I can actually make money from it!'
Anyone who didn't rent it would be an idiot, right?
"Mr. White, what do you think?"
If Ethan had known about all the calculations Mr. White had made up in his own head, he definitely would have called him a genius.
Seriously, he was spending ten Dragon Coins to rent a house, yet he had somehow calculated it into a deal where he could make half a Dragon Coin in profit. What a waste of talent if someone like this didn't become a salesman.
And, the most, most, most important point was, Mr. White had come up with the calculation himself, and he had actually convinced himself of it.
That meant, he truly believed it from the bottom of his heart. From that moment on, in his mind, this had become a genuinely profitable and wonderful deal.
If he could go and sell it to other people later, how could there possibly be any houses he couldn't rent out.
"Rent!"
Mr. White said with a delighted smile, "A good house like this has to be rented! How many two-bedroom, one-living-room apartments do you have? Including the people sent by the Merchant Alliance, plus my own men, I need about fifteen."
"I do have fifteen."
But Ethan raised one finger and waved it in front of Mr. White, "But I don't want to rent the two-bedroom, one-living-room apartments to you, Mr. White."
"What do you mean?"
Mr. White immediately frowned.
Could it be that Lord Ethan had already seen through him and realized what a great deal it was to rent a house and make half a Dragon Coin every day?
'No way!'
After all, Lord Ethan didn't even seem as smart as him.
"What I mean is that a two-bedroom, one-living-room apartment isn't worthy of your status, Mr. White," Ethan naturally wasn't satisfied with making so little money from Mr. White, so he continued to fool him, "Think about it! Your men are staying there, while you, as their boss, are staying there too, along with a group of people from the Merchant Alliance branch."
"Wouldn't that give your men the illusion that everyone is more or less equal in status?"
"Then your prestige would naturally decrease."
"I'm afraid it wouldn't be so easy to order those men around anymore."
"Not only that…"
"Think about it. You invited those people from the Merchant Alliance branch to come and help you run the commercial district, but the place you provide for them to live is the same kind of house your men live in. What would they think?"
"Wouldn't they feel like you were treating them just like your men?"
"What if the people from the Merchant Alliance branch become unhappy and start making things difficult for you?"
"That's right!"
Mr. White had completely fallen into Ethan's brainwashing routine. At this moment, he looked somewhat dazed as he asked Ethan, "Then what do you think I should do?"