Ning was standing in a meadow near the river. The river was nearly frozen solid and there were patches of snow on the ground. The winter season was right here.
People were all wearing much warmer clothes nowadays.
BAM
Ning was struck with a fireball to the face. However, he didn't flinch in the slightest. From behind his back, he was struck with a stone with a strong force.
"The fireball is good, but imagine it being hotter," Ning said.
Another fireball appeared on his face, this time it was much hotter than the one before and packed a lot more punch.
"Good. That was way better," Ning said. Then suddenly, he twisted his head so that the stone flying from behind him missed him.
Midair, the stone changed trajectory and came flying back towards him. Ning caught the stone between his two fingers and said, "not bad. You managed to change the direction quite fast this time. However, I am sure you can do better."
He then flicked the stone behind him at a not-so-fast speed.
"Aaah!" Mavenna still screamed when the stone came towards her. Famir immediately stopped the flying stone mid-air and launched it back towards Ning.
"Ohh, this is much better. Good job, Famir," Ning said as he headbutt the flying stone and it smashed into pieces. Famir couldn't help but give out an empty smile when he saw that.
"You really are not using any Aether right now?" he asked.
"Yeah, like I told you, I'm not really an Aether User. I mean I am, but I'm barely an Aether Student. Unlike you guys who are clearly Aether Grandmaster by now," Ning said.
"A-Are we really? It's kind of hard to believe," Famir said.
"Definitely, you don't have to worry about that," Ning said.
"Oi Outsider, the young lord is here," Jangar screamed from the fields. Ning looked towards Jangar and the many people working in the field and then turned towards the road where he saw Zand on a carriage, along with Mera next to him.
"Oh, the reports must be back. Keep practicing you two, I will go talk with Zand," Ning said and left. The two siblings got back to practicing with each other.
They didn't want to hurt each other so they didn't fight directly but turned the training into a competition of sorts. They wanted to see who could throw something the highest, or hold the heaviest objects and such.
The carriage stopped and Zand walked out with a bunch of papers.
"Doctor! Doctor!" he was very frantic. "We— We… we-"
"Calm down. Breathe~ … now tell me," Ning said.
Zand took a deep breath and said, "Look at this."
Ning took the paper he was handed and started reading it. The paper mentioned the sale figures of the items that Zand had been selling for the past month; an item that had taken a month to make in the first place.
"See? In just two months, we were able to create a profit of over 500 thousand Rops. If I say I used all of this profit into the production for the next 10 months, I can easily turn all the money legal again," Zand said in absolute happiness.
Ning smirked a little and asked, "Are you sure you are happy for the right reason?"
Zand gave a confused look and said, "Of course I am. I can now turn my 5 million Rops into legal money."
Ning chuckled and asked, "and how much profit will you make in the 10 months you do that?"
Zand stopped for a second and counted. His eyes went wide and said, "5 Million. Oh lord, of course. I got too tunnel-visioned on making that money into legal money that I didn't even see that something much better was here."
"Yes. Do this for a few years, and the 4 million you got from your brother will be a drop in the bucket. Nobody will ask you where you got the money from at that point," Ning said.
"Ah, yes yes," Zand said. He then turned to the field to see so many of the villagers as well as his own soldier working. "Are they harvesting it right now?" he asked.
"Ah yes. Come, I will show you how it works," Ning said and took Zand to the field.
Zand walked onto the field and looked at the plant that was being grown there. It was a thin and long plant that had a yellow stem, vibrant green leaves, red roots that grew out of the soil, and a blue flower growing on top of it.
All of the people working here were harvesting the plant right now. They were cutting the root from the stem, the leaves from the stem, and separating the flower.
As such, they now had a pile of red roots, green leaves, yellow stems, and blue flowers.
"Wow, it's that simple huh?" Zand looked at the pile of plant parts.
"Yes, you just need to let them dry in the sun for a few days and crush them to powder, and it's ready," Ning said.
The plan Ning had come up with to turn the illegal money to legal was to sell color dyes. Since color was considered a privilege in this world, he decided to use that to his advantage.
He had learned that the reason colored clothes were so expensive and a sign of novelty was that color dyes could only be created by an Invoker that was in the 6th rank i.e. Aether King or above.
The dyes of anyone lower than Aether King wouldn't last long enough and would turn back to Aether once enough time had passed.
For Aether Kings, that time was more than 60 years, so people were fine with them making their dyes. However, the longer they stayed, the more the dye was worth.
So, Ning learned about color dyes and asked for the seeds of plants that could create the four basic colors.. That way, he created a dye that could last forever and be easily produced, thus could be sold for a lot of money.