Chapter Seventy-Three: Gathering Shell Casings

If Honest Buyer was willing to purchase bullets, Chen Hao could make another run and earn nearly a hundred silver dollars in profit. Chen Hao hadn’t deceived him; now, many players were buying bullets from the Patrol Camp, and soon enough, the camp’s bullets would be sold out, returning prices to their previous levels.

The number of bullet sellers in the market kept increasing; even when Chen Hao offered bullets for eighteen copper coins apiece, no one showed interest. To avoid wasting time, he lowered the price to seventeen copper coins per bullet.

After selling a box of one hundred bullets, Chen Hao had seventeen silver dollars in hand. He decided not to sell any more bullets from his pouch. Returning to his courtyard, he stored the remaining bullets and went to the foreign goods store, where he spent five silver dollars on a barrel of smokeless gunpowder. Back at the courtyard, he began reloading bullets.

There weren’t many empty shells left at Chen Hao’s disposal. After reloading ten rounds of 8mm bullets with smokeless powder, he went outside the city and fired a few test shots; only one bullet jammed. The smokeless powder reloads didn’t blacken the gun barrel like black powder bullets, and the impact on the firearm was barely noticeable.

Confirming that reloaded bullets would have a market, Chen Hao headed for the Patrol Camp. He saw players coming and going at the camp’s base; it was no longer a secret that 8mm bullets could be purchased there.

When Chen Hao found Captain Wu, the bullet price had already risen to seventeen copper coins each, and every player could only buy thirty bullets. The bullet business had lost its profitability. Chen Hao abandoned his last hope of profit and decided to focus on training his marksmanship. When there were no players at the Patrol Camp, Chen Hao offered five silver dollars to practice shooting with the camp’s guns, and Captain Wu agreed readily.

For four days of game time, Chen Hao stayed entirely at the Patrol Camp’s shooting range, firing over ten thousand bullets. His shooting attribute, originally sixteen points, increased by five after his intense practice, bringing him to twenty-one points.

Chen Hao practiced using reloaded bullets, each costing him two copper coins. With only a fifty percent success rate in basic reloading, the actual cost per usable bullet rose to four copper coins. Even with cheap bullets, and after bribing Captain Wu, he spent a total of four hundred and twenty silver dollars.

Once the Patrol Camp’s bullets were sold out, there were no players selling bullets in the market the next day. Chen Hao managed to sell some of his stock at nineteen copper coins per bullet. Honest Buyer, thick-skinned as ever, sought him out once prices returned to normal, asking to buy the last batch.

Due to Honest Buyer’s broken promise, Chen Hao lost his final chance to profit. He had no fondness for Honest Buyer, but to maintain future sales of reloaded bullets, Chen Hao wholesaled the remaining bullets to him at eighteen copper coins each.

The four days of training yielded impressive results, but the money flowed out as quickly as water, and Chen Hao ceased practicing. Each morning, he sought Wang Wu’s guidance in swordsmanship for an hour, practiced archery for another hour, and spent two hours with Li Pisen studying the Analects. The rest of his time was spent scavenging spent shells at the shooting range.

Since entering the game, a proper diet and exercise had increased his strength attribute by one point. His basic swordsmanship proficiency was nearing one thousand, soon to advance to the next level. His study of the Analects was almost complete, and he would soon gain two cultural attribute points.

Though his level hadn’t increased, Chen Hao steadily laid a solid foundation, preparing for the major storyline missions in the latter half of the year.

After each practice session at the shooting range, Chen Hao returned with many spent shells in his pouch. While bullet shells could be reused, and scavenging them was relatively easy, the supply at the Patrol Camp’s range was dwindling. With each trip, he took away some, and the number of shells decreased daily, making them harder and harder to find.

On the first day, Chen Hao found over two thousand shells; on the second, just over a thousand, and the numbers kept dropping. By the eighth day, finding shells at the range had become nearly impossible, and it was no longer worth the time searching.

Chen Hao had collected over ten thousand spent shells. He bought more than ten barrels of smokeless powder and returned to his courtyard to frantically reload bullets. When he had used up half of the shells, the system prompted: “Player Chen Baxian, congratulations, your bullet reloading skill has advanced to Intermediate.”

Bullet Reloading: Intermediate (101/1000) — Retrieve spent shells, refill with powder and primer, and produce new bullets. Intermediate success rate: 70%. Reload seven bullets per minute. Note: This skill requires reloading equipment, spent shells, gunpowder, mercury fulminate, and bullet heads. Reloaded bullets are prone to causing firearm jams. Reloading with black powder can lead to barrel wear.

The system message delighted Chen Hao. The basic reloading skill only had a fifty percent success rate; out of ten bullets, five would be wasted. Failed reloads resulted in the loss of the shell, head, and primer, raising the cost per bullet.

With the skill upgraded to Intermediate, the success rate increased to seventy percent, greatly improving his profit margins when selling reloaded bullets.

Originally, ten thousand shells should yield five thousand bullets, but thanks to the skill upgrade, Chen Hao ended up with six thousand. Before reloading, he polished all the shells with corn kernels; visually, the reloaded bullets were almost indistinguishable from factory ones, unless examined closely.

Reloading with black powder caused obvious damage to the barrel. To prolong his bullet business, Chen Hao opted for smokeless powder. Reloading bullets with black powder cost two copper coins per bullet, but with smokeless powder, the cost doubled. Factoring in the failure rate, at basic skill, each bullet cost around eight copper coins.

Chen Hao planned to sell them to Honest Buyer at eighteen copper coins apiece, netting a profit of ten copper coins per bullet. With the skill upgrade, his profit reached twelve copper coins per bullet—a classic case of exorbitant profit. Smokeless powder reloads didn’t visibly affect firearms in the short term, so this business could continue for a while.

While practicing at the shooting range, Chen Hao could find bullet heads, but they were much harder to come by than shells. All ten thousand bullet heads were made by rolling copper coins, and after factoring in other material costs, he had only a few dozen silver dollars left from his earnings.

Now, what troubled Chen Hao most was the supply of shells. With no free shells left at the range, he could only try to buy from players. Players could easily collect shells while leveling up with guns, but none held many at once. Buying them would require long hours vending in the market, and Chen Hao wasn’t a professional merchant with time to spare.

He had considered hiring an NPC to handle business for him, but with just thirteen points in cunning, the risk of betrayal was too high. He dared not entrust large sums to a hired NPC. If he asked Honest Buyer to help, Honest Buyer would certainly inspect the bullets sold to him, making continued sales unlikely.

(P.S.: My uncle passed away, so I was delayed for two days. I only returned home yesterday, and after six hours on the road, was too exhausted to update. Updates resume today. I saw readers in the review section discussing attribute points, saying that if players allocate free attribute points to shooting, their marksmanship can reach 110, and offered suggestions. My thinking aligns with yours: no matter how shooting reaches 100, it’s capped there, except for bonuses from equipment. Since this is a new virtual theme, I’m sure I’ve overlooked things; please keep offering such suggestions, and I’ll read all the reviews carefully.)