Li Chang’an certainly had the time, but he also had a lot on his plate. Zhao Xiaowan would have to find a good moment to ask him for cultivation advice.
After replying to all his messages, Li Chang’an stood up, left his place of seclusion, and returned to the Cangxuan City Lord’s Mansion.
Hearing him, Zhao Xi, who was supervising the workers, hurried back and said respectfully, "Lord City Lord, you’re finally back!"
As she spoke, Zhao Xi’s tone was one of immense relief.
When Li Chang’an had entered the Rebirth World to begin his reincarnation, things were fine at first. As his secretary, she could handle most matters.
But as Li Chang’an’s absence stretched on, more and more matters required his decision, and Zhao Xi, as just a secretary, found herself struggling.
After all, with such a large territory and so many business dealings, everyone recognized Li Chang’an, not her, his secretary.
Now that she saw Li Chang’an had finally returned to the Main World, Zhao Xi felt like a drowning person clutching at a straw.
Li Chang’an smiled apologetically. "I was gone a bit long this time. You’ve worked hard. What do you have to report?"
Hearing Li Chang’an’s direct question, Zhao Xi quickly gave him a rundown of everything that had happened in Cangxuan City over the past month.
After Li Chang’an nodded, she immediately reported all the difficulties she had encountered and the matters that only he could decide on.
A month wasn’t a long time, but it wasn’t short, either.
For some well-established cities, a month was but the blink of an eye, and there might not be any issues requiring the City Lord’s attention.
But the current Cangxuan City was in a period of rapid development.
At this stage, never mind a month—even a single day brought constant changes to Cangxuan City, so naturally, there were many things that required Li Chang’an, the one at the helm, to make a decision.
The most important matter, of course, concerned the factories.
During this time, to deliver the orders for the Super Electromagnetic Cannons and Energy Particle Beam Cannons on time, Cangxuan City’s military arms factories had been working overtime every day.
Through a great deal of effort, the first batch of military-grade raw materials that Li Chang’an had purchased with a huge investment had basically been turned into finished products: a total of fifteen Super Electromagnetic Cannons and twenty Energy Particle Beam Cannons.
The previously purchased raw materials had all been processed. Next, Li Chang’an needed to pay the Rebirth Points to purchase the second batch of raw materials.
This required a large sum of money. When it came to issues involving ’money,’ a mere secretary like Zhao Xi clearly had no authority to make a decision.
After all, if she could get her hands on that kind of money, she wouldn’t be working as a secretary here.
After getting a general understanding of the factories’ progress and the current number of finished products, Li Chang’an was, on the whole, quite satisfied.
However, looking at the purchase order for the second batch of raw materials still made him wince.
Setting aside the miscellaneous expenses, just the line item for ordering new raw materials required Li Chang’an to pay three million Rebirth Points, nearly wiping out the balance he had worked so hard to accumulate.
And he would have to order several more batches of such materials to fulfill all the orders.
Fortunately, military arms manufacturing wasn’t a one-way street of expenditures. The first batch of finished products from the factory was almost complete, and some of the Super Electromagnetic Cannons and Energy Particle Beam Cannons could already be delivered in batches.
According to Zhao Xi’s calculations, the total production cost for one Super Electromagnetic Cannon at Cangxuan City’s factories was about one hundred thousand Rebirth Points, while its selling price was three hundred thousand Rebirth Points.
The manufacturing process for the Energy Particle Beam Cannon was relatively more mature, and components of the right specifications could be found on the market. Therefore, its cost was much lower than the Super Electromagnetic Cannon’s, at around fifty to eighty thousand Rebirth Points per unit. The selling price was about two hundred thousand Rebirth Points, with a profit of around one hundred fifty thousand Rebirth Points.
In other words, for every Super Electromagnetic Cannon delivered, Li Chang’an could net a profit of two hundred thousand Rebirth Points. For every Energy Particle Beam Cannon, he could earn around one hundred fifty thousand Rebirth Points.
And this was the profit with the factories just starting up, without a large enough production scale to properly amortize the costs.
If the factories were larger and the orders more numerous, the production cost of these weapons could be compressed even further.
Fifteen Super Electromagnetic Cannons, twenty Energy Particle Beam Cannons.
Setting aside the down payments the clients had already made, the total remaining balance was seven million.
As long as this deal was completed, Li Chang’an would basically recoup his initial investment costs, and the financial pressure would ease considerably.
’No wonder so many Reincarnator Families are trying every way they can to sell military-industrial products. It’s just too profitable.’
He invested more money to continue purchasing raw materials on one hand, while beginning to deliver customer orders on the other.
After arranging everything properly, Li Chang’an then dealt with a number of other matters—none of them major, but none trivial either.
Managing such a large, rapidly developing town was an incredibly busy job.
To say it wasn’t busy would be a lie.
The only reason Li Chang’an could sit back and relax was because Zhao Xi intercepted most of the issues. Otherwise, just handling the city’s internal affairs every day would have worked him to death.
Of course, Li Chang’an still wasn’t entirely at ease entrusting so much authority to Zhao Xi alone. After all, his repeated experiences in reincarnation had taught him that one must always be on guard against others.