Chapter 266

Inside the Yi Division courtyard, just one courtyard away from the others, the beastmen were so busy their feet barely touched the ground.

Not only had the Household Division delivered office supplies, but the Works Division had also sent over a load of new items today.

Since the clans had begun building the streets, Foxfire and his disciples had been shut indoors making furniture for the various departments. Every so often, each division would receive deliveries from him—this was yet another fresh batch.

Yi Division’s director, She Li, was directing everyone to arrange wooden tables, benches, and shelves inside the rooms when urgent shouting rose outside.

“Make way! Make way!”

She Li hurried to the doorway just in time to see someone carrying a stack of paper taller than his own head, shouting as he staggered forward.

She Li quickly reached up on tiptoe and grabbed the top stack. “Why did you take so many at once?”

Yun An grinned. “All seven divisions got this much. These are ours, so I just brought them back in one go.”

“Next time, at least shout first. Sun Qing and I could help you carry.”

“Got it,” Yun An replied carelessly. He dropped the remaining boxes onto a table and immediately turned to inspect the freshly arranged office.

Like the Household, Works, Justice, and Military Divisions, Yi Division’s compound was a siheyuan—a four-sided courtyard. Each of the east and west wings, as well as the main hall, held three large rooms for office and storage use.

Though the structures might look small compared to the towering beast-forms of the Giantwind Clan, the rooms were nearly five meters tall and about 200 square meters—plenty spacious for most beastmen.

Yi Division’s layout differed from the others. In addition to a formal main entrance with a plaque, there was also a large side door facing the street, leading directly into the first room of the east wing—the very place where She Li had greeted Yun An.

Moreover, the western wall of this room had a smaller hidden door leading straight into the courtyard.

Yun An’s eyes quickly landed on several tools placed atop a low cabinet near the entrance.

His eyes lit up. He ran over and poked at one end of a balance scale. “This is our measuring stick?”

“That’s not a stick—it’s a scale,” Sun Qing corrected him. He held a small leather rag, hair dusted with ash from cleaning the next room.

Thus, the three members of Yi Division—She Li, Yun An, and Sun Qing—were all present.

Yun An blinked. “So this is a scale, huh.”

Scales weren’t new to the Heishan Tribe. Qi Bai had once built a giant balance scale in the village square for weighing and calculation. Though that big contraption had later been dismantled, everyone already understood its use.

Many in the tribe used scales daily—like Yang Luo, when tallying warehouse stock, or Tiger Snow, who measured precise amounts of food for cooking.

Yi Division’s scale was more delicate. Beside it lay counterweights of one, five, and ten jin—the maximum load for this scale was ten jin. Anything heavier required a larger one.

But with current technology, the larger the scale, the greater the error. For small trades, Qi Bai encouraged people to separate goods and weigh them carefully.

On the low cabinet also sat a one-meter bamboo ruler, a ten-meter leather tape, and several volume measures: scoops leveled to one, five, and ten liters.

From these tools, Yi Division’s role was obvious.

This division was Qi Bai’s invention, designed around the beastmen’s bartering system. Its purpose was to facilitate exchanges—and gradually change trading habits.

Yi Division had two core duties:

1. Create and maintain a price list of goods in the city, clearly marking values and exchange ratios.

2. Provide standardized measurement during trades—not just goods for goods, but also labor and craft services.

That was why Yi Division had the broad side door: a public trade verification window. Clanspeople could bring their goods and exchange them under supervision.

Qi Bai’s main goal was to stabilize prices.

In the past, trades were purely subjective. A few “fixed prices” existed, but they rarely reflected true value.

For example: last year at the Sanghuo trading day, three full-grown horn-beast slaves had been exchanged for nothing more than a palm-sized block of salt. Pure extortion.

If prices ran wild, people’s lives would only grow harsher.

Heiyao City might not sink that far, but with the five clans’ differing productivity levels, setting fair prices was still tricky.

Every type of food, every bird-bone tool, every pottery piece of varying size and quality—all required standardized value.

Thus, letting the city regulate was the best way.

Once defined—say, one meter of hide equals so much soybeans, one liter of soybeans equals so much meat—trade became transparent.

Of course, this was complicated for the average beastman. That’s why Yi Division served as both exchange site and verification authority.

Yun An squatted before the scale, calling, “Sun Qing! Do you know how much one liter is?”

Sun Qing, only fifteen or sixteen, had been suppressing his eagerness to touch the tools. With chores finished, his eyes darted restlessly.

She Li chuckled. “None of us know how to use these yet. Didn’t you learn from Ci Yi? Show us.”

Among craftsmen, Monkey Su and Ci Yi had the steadiest hands. Their fine skills made such delicate instruments possible.

At She Li’s words, Sun Qing tossed his rag aside, hurried to the cabinet, and picked up a scoop. “You can’t weigh soybeans with a scale—you use this. Leopard Bai said the key to our price table is defining one liter of soybeans. That’s the foundation.”

The core problem of exchange was always the unit of value.

Most tribes on the continent had unconsciously treated salt as currency.

But Qi Bai refused to base Heiyao City’s economy on salt. Outside Heishan, salt was precious—but here, it was not.

He didn’t want to hoard salt like some “salt-and-iron” monopoly. Life for beastmen was already hard enough—why ration salt among their own?

If salt were used as currency here, inflation would spiral before the system even started.

As for real coins—Heiyao City could forge them. Iron coins were feasible. They were hard to counterfeit since iron itself was valuable; counterfeiting would cost more than it earned.

But the city’s productivity was still limited. Better to make farming tools than waste energy on coins.

And would clans even accept currency? Nobody knew. Thus, minting coins had little meaning for now.

The Heishan Tribe did have a working work-point system.

Since long ago, besides basic rations, people could trade their work points for goods.

That worked fine when numbers were low, everyone could do basic math, and record-keeping was simple.

But once the second batch of workers arrived, recorders were drowning in numbers. Calculations required squad leaders’ help.

Work points had originally been vital—for testing whether outsiders could join the tribe. But now, with most already accepted and population swelling, the old method was unsustainable.

There was another problem: people had grown dependent.

Before, they valued work points highly because they needed them for citizenship. Now, with that pressure gone, few bothered to spend them. They were happy to have points recorded by Yang Luo, but rarely redeemed them.

Aside from essentials like hides and pottery, most still hunted and foraged independently.

Ironically, cubs were quicker to adapt—Yang Luo’s point storehouse was becoming a cubs’ snack shop.

So Qi Bai concluded: the most stable unit should be farm produce. Grain harvests were reliable, and soybeans, being cheaper than millet, were chosen as the base.

The plan: the city would pay wages every ten days, open workshops for trade, and let people practice free exchange. This would awaken initiative and gradually foster commerce.

Qi Bai wanted motivation.

He didn’t believe in communal “one big pot” forever. Life should be earned by one’s own hands. The city couldn’t always run like a production brigade.

The Seven Divisions’ compounds weren’t large, so once their walls were done, the construction team extended the row to build a large canteen, a school, and six major workshops.

Meanwhile, a granary in the northwest and a barracks in the northeast were also underway. During this time, Qi Bai finally calibrated the sundial’s angles.

With his and Lang Ze’s hands carving a five-meter-high sundial in the central plaza, every public facility—except the city walls—was now complete.

Yet up on Heishan’s mid-mountain, under the twin great trees, the clanspeople gathering in the square weren’t smiling.

In their midst, a burly man stuck out his neck and shouted loudly:

“We won’t split! We want to live together!”