1047 Artificial Scarcity

The surface of the Floral lake was filled with flowers and flower petals. Some of the flowers were aquatic plants that had grown in the lake, but most of the flower and petal was actually something the wind had blown here.

Hidden beyond the flower and petals was muddy yellow water, that was certainly polluted by the various waves of pollen that flew out from the platform at the center, the Forbidden Orchard.

There were warnings around the side of the lake telling people to not enter the lake or drink its water as it was filled with poisonous pollens which couldn't be separated from regular pollen, so Alex stood away as he watched it.

He had spent such a long time going around the city before coming here that he was just in time to see the sunset over the lake.

When he watched the colors of the setting sun and the purple sky, he couldn't help but think about Scarlet.

He wondered how she was doing. He could sense her somewhere towards the northeast, but it was a vague feeling at best.

Sometimes, he wondered if he should just break their bond and be done with it. However, it just felt wrong to break a bond with the descendant of the Vermilion bird. There was always a chance she could come back anyway.

Alex returned back to the association after sunset and started cultivating once more. Whisker left to practice Alchemy again and so the night passed.

The next day was also free, and Alex used this day to improve his body. His blood beast beat him up all day in the room and by the end of the day, he healed back and gained some minor improvement to his body.

Then, the work week started again, and it was time for Alex to make pills for the next 5 days.

Alex was ready for it.

The week went by in a flash. There were still many pills for him to make that were on the list, so he continued making them at work.

When he was off, he would improve his own cultivation base or his body cultivation.

After that, another week began.

Alex continued this day after day, week after week for 3 months as he amassed millions of spirit stones.

However, around the end of the 3 months, he started noticing a problem with what he was doing.

By now, he had 9 different pills in his repertoire that he could reach above 90% with, so the customers knew they could trust him with almost any pill.

However, not all of his clients were rich enough to afford things that only cost above 50 thousand spirit stones each time.

If they bought a consumable item of that price so frequently, they would go broke very soon. As for the rest of the customers, they didn't even bother looking for Alex as he was too expensive for them.

As a result, after the hype of 90% harmony pills died down, Alex stopped getting many pill requests altogether, and he would be lucky if he had a single day where those were the only orders.

Now, there was a time in his schedule when he had nothing to do at all, and for some reason that sucked very much.

It was only the third day of the week, but he had no more pills to make for some reason. There were other alchemists that had tons of pills being requested of them each time, but he was the only one with not a single request.

And as it turned out, the others had noticed as well.

The association leader came around to voice his concerns. He was less worried about Alex not doing anything and more so that he would leave if he didn't find anything to do.

"What do you think we should do? What do you find easy?" the leader asked.

Alex thought for a moment. "Uh… I suppose the only way is to stop making such high-grade pills, right?" he asked.

"Yes, but… that feels wrong," the leader said.

"And I can't just take the request for low-grade pills and make it as well as I can either," Alex said. "The people will start requesting only me to make the pills."

"Yeah, that's true as well," the leader said. "The main problem here is that you have become very costly to employ. What do we do? Maybe lower the price a bit"

Alex thought for a bit. "No, that serves the same purpose as making low-grade pills. They will pay less for more and they will all expect me to make their pills." He thought for a bit longer and asked, "how about limiting the amounts I can make in a week?"

The leader thought for a moment. "Will that work?" he asked. "You are already getting so much lesser than you did just a few months ago. Limiting the weekly amount shouldn't do anything."

"Then… if we can't limit the amount, we should limit the time," Alex said.

"Oh… what do you suggest?" the leader asked curiously.

"What if… I can only make pills for one week every month or two. Maybe even every 3 months. And there will be a number of pills that will limit how much they can get," Alex said. "By creating an artificial scarcity, the people should come back to buy my pills since they won't have any other opportunity to buy them."

The leader nodded as he thought. "I can't confirm whether you are allowed to do this right now. It's too major of a decision for me to make alone. Let me get back to you by tomorrow after I'm done discussing with the committee members," the leader said.

"Sure, senior," Alex said.

"Alright, see you later." The leader turned around to leave. But Alex stopped him.

"Senior! There was something I wanted to ask," Alex said.

"Hmm? What is it?" the leader asked.

"About my father… has there been any information?" he asked.

"Oh… that," the leader said with a disappointed look and shook his head. "Nothing as of now. The people are still searching for various people that either go by the name Graham or have a son named Alex, but they haven't been able to find anything. They will still keep searching, but it might take much longer or at worse…"

"It's fine, please keep on searching," Alex said. "Whatever knowledge you can find will be plenty," Alex said.

He was left alone after that to do whatever he wanted while the leader went to have the meeting with the committee members.

After a bit of talk, the committee came to the conclusion that it was in fact in their best interest to limit the opportunity to get pills from Alex as his value would be lost.

After every 3 months, there would be a single week where Alex would make exactly 50 different pills, and everyone would have an opportunity to employ him.

After confirming this information, the leader went over to Alex and informed him of this. After learning that, Alex didn't have anything to do for 3 more months.

So, he decided to take a small vacation and go make some more pills for himself.