With the first tentative threads of a commercial deal secured, the suffocating weight of financial anxiety that had been pressing on Harry Potter Michael's chest finally began to ease. A new, more manageable pressure took its place: the logistical urgency of procurement. His mission this time was surgical, efficient. No more flailing about, sweeping pharmacies clean of their pathetic, overpriced stockpiles. The salesman in him knew there was always a better channel.
Through the murky network of professional acquaintances—the "I-got-your-card-somewhere" contacts that were the lifeblood of any middling rep—he found Zhang Ming. Zhang Ming was a pharmaceutical sales rep, a man whose weary voice on the phone immediately signaled a kindred spirit drowning in quotas. The pharmaceutical world, Michael knew, made his own fertilizer sales gig look like a gentleman's hobby. Where Michael might haul bags of urea to curry favor, guys like Zhang Ming were rumored to deliver toothpaste to a client's doorstep at 3 AM, or tutor their spoiled kids. The desperation was palpable, and Michael aimed to exploit it.
When Michael, posing as a buyer for a "remote mining cooperative with unique medical needs," mentioned a potential order worth tens of thousands, Zhang Ming's voice transformed. The weariness vanished, replaced by a sycophantic zeal. The specifics of what the "miners" needed—broad-spectrum antibiotics, painkillers, antiseptics, sutures, anti-inflammatories—were of no concern to him. Money talked. A substantial down payment sealed the deal, and a few hours later, Michael was loading cardboard boxes filled with medicines into his van, the cost a fraction of what he'd have paid retail. The supply was now plentiful enough not only to treat every wounded soul in Meili to full recovery but also to leave a significant surplus for trade with Old Hawker's merchant caravan. The only fly in the ointment was that Zhang Ming's company didn't produce 'Mayinglong Hemorrhoid Ointment'. The most popular pharmaceutical product in the Territory of Meili would have to continue its reign, procured at the usual inflated prices.
With the most critical supplies secured, Michael embarked on Phase Two, guided by a mental checklist honed by recent, painful experience.
First and foremost: Security. The raider attack had seared a lesson into his soul. While theory suggested Meili would enjoy a year or two of relative peace, theory was a poor shield against a crossbow bolt. The hardware defense—the moat, the wall—needed to be accelerated from a vague plan to a pressing reality. Had they been in place last time, he was convinced casualties would have been halved.
But hardware needed software. He envisioned a mobile patrol, a rapid reaction force. The Wuling minivan and the bicycles could form the core. They would scour a ten-kilometer radius, acting as early-warning scouts. Yet, sending a runner back was a vulnerability—a single arrow could silence the alarm. The solution came from a grimy electronics market stall. He purchased a bulky, powerful UHF radio transceiver unit meant for vehicle mounting, complete with a towering antenna. The grinning stall owner promised a 30-kilometer range "under ideal conditions." Michael halved that estimate and still found it more than sufficient. Next to it, he acquired a "Wing Loong"-brand consumer drone, a small, quadcopter model. Its camera feed, though grainy, would be a god's-eye view. The patrols would carry handheld units. The drone, based on the wall, would make periodic flights. No more stealthy approaches. The combination, he believed, would buy them precious minutes, maybe hours.
Next, other necessities. The most notable purchase here was a single item: a brand new, gleaming blue, heavy-duty pedal tricycle. This was a calculated gift, a seed of diplomacy. The half-elf scavenger, the one with the impossible shot that had saved his life and likely the entire settlement—that man was a treasure. A second-rank magical archer, at least. Michael was determined to keep him. A gift of gratitude was essential, but it had to be meaningful, useful. In the Wasteland, what was more precious than mobility and cargo capacity? A new tricycle would triple a man's effective range and hauling ability. It required no fuel, no elusive electricity. It was freedom on three wheels. He considered, for a moment, giving the man a Wuling van. But the gift of a vehicle that would then sit idle, a metal monument to dead technology, was no gift at all. The tricycle was perfect.
By late afternoon, the little van was groaning under the weight of tools, medicine, and technology. With a few hours still to kill before the dimensional doorway cooled, Michael performed the pantomime of his other life. He visited a few clients, hauled a few bags of fertilizer, made sympathetic noises about crop yields. It was maintenance, a thin veneer of normalcy over the churning reality of his existence.
As dusk settled, painting the sky in streaks of orange and purple, he drove with a new purpose towards the outskirts of town, to the greasy spoon run by the couple he privately thought of as "Fatty" and "The Husband." He wasn't here for a meal.
His mind was made up about the raider prisoners. They would work. They would toil until their bones ached, paying in sweat and exhaustion for every life they'd taken or tried to take. But they would not enjoy the fruits of Meili. No sweet well-water would touch their lips. No precious grains would fill their bellies. Their sustenance would be brackish water from the first, murky well they'd dug, and slop. Just enough to keep them alive, laboring shadows building the very walls that caged them.
He pulled up just in time. The formidablelady boss, her ample frame straining against a faded floral apron, was hefting a large, foul-smelling bucket towards the open maw of a street drain. It seemed her arrangement with the kitchen waste recyclers had fallen through. "Stop! Fatty! Don't you dare pour out my slop!" Michael's shout echoed down the quiet street.
The woman looked up, her round face registering surprise, then a dawning, avaricious joy. The unwanted, burdensome slop was once again a commodity! Her eyes grew misty. "You devil! You finally came back!" she cooed, her voice a grotesque parody of affection.
"Not so loud! Your husband's right there!" Michael yelped, glancing nervously at the doorway where the sullen, cleaver-wielding proprietor had appeared, his eyes narrowed to dangerous slits.
Minutes later, three large, reeking barrels—over a hundred pounds of congealed food waste—were loaded into the back of the van. The smell was apocalyptic. But Michael looked at it and saw not waste, but calories. Fuel for captive labor. "Three barrels isn't enough," he said, waving a hand in front of his face. "Can you get me… say, twenty or thirty more? I'll give you five yuan per barrel for your trouble."
The lady boss's eyes lit up like a festival lantern. "Follow me!" she boomed, waddling towards a tiny, distressed-looking electric scooter. "Which restaurant owner in this district doesn't know me, Fatty?" As she attempted to mount the scooter, its suspension issuing a pathetic groan, she paused and looked back over her shoulder, a glint of pure, speculative curiosity in her eyes. "Handsome, your pig farm must be doing reallywell. How many hogs are you raising now?"
Michael, mentally calculating the number of raider mouths he needed to feed, answered without thinking. "Oh, around three hundred head."
The effect was instantaneous. The lady boss's entire demeanor shifted. The avarice in her eyes melted into something warmer, more calculating. She turned and bestowed upon him a look, a slow, deliberate flutter of her eyelashes that was so thick with implication it was almost physical. It was, by Foreman Wang's standards of "oily," a five-finger-thick layer of lard.
And in the doorway, the husband with the cleaver heard the number "three hundred." The anger drained from his face, replaced by a look of profound defeat. A man who raised three hundred hogs in this market wasn't just a customer. He was a Hog Baron. A magnate. A force of nature. The cleaver felt suddenly very heavy in his hand. The battle, he realized with a sinking heart, was not just about a few barrels of slop. He was facing a titan of industry. With a resigned sigh, he adjusted his greasy chef's hat, a unconscious gesture of surrender. The legend of the mysterious, slop-buying Hog Baron had just been born in the back alley of a greasy spoon, and Michael, blissfully unaware of the domestic tempest he'd stirred, simply wondered if thirty barrels of slop would be enough to keep three hundred "hogs" working through the first layer of topsoil.