I Created Scientific Magic-Chapter 479 - 454 Lynn: Have you guys ever heard of magic bread?_2

"Give me five more bags of black bread."

"Five bags of black bread, that's sixty copper coins!" Kem couldn't stop smiling after trying the tasty white bread, few people were willing to eat the hard, tough black bread.

Now was a good chance to clear out the inventory.

After painfully handing over three silver coins, Susan took the groceries she had purchased and couldn't help but frown. Not only had the price of bread increased several times, it was visibly smaller, too. Bread that used to be four fingers thick was now scarcely three fingers thick.

A sense of worry unknowingly welled up in Susan's heart. Since the Wizards had taken control of the capital, famine seemed to be a thing of the past, but the recent rise in grain prices was troubling her greatly.

Even though she could still barely afford it now, what about in a week or even a month?

Susan clutched the last few silver coins in her hand, hesitating whether to buy more.

...

Under the collective operation of nobles and wealthy merchants, rumors of famine soon spread throughout the kingdom. The price of wheat was rising almost every day, which caused panic that even affected Fire Oil City!

In the laboratory, thinking about how to modify the Big Nuclear Explosion Technique into the Big Hydrogen Explosion Technique, Lynn had to stop his research and was pulled into a meeting room.

After looking at the report, Lynn also couldn't help but furrow his brow.

In just half a month, the price of wheat per kilogram inside the kingdom had risen from the original two copper coins to the current ten copper coins, a more than fivefold increase!

"How come no one warned me about such a big issue before?" Lynn asked, puzzled.

He immediately realized that someone was trying to disrupt the entire kingdom by manipulating grain prices. The best method was to nip it in the bud before it triggered a chain reaction, which would be difficult to manage once it started.

Because everyone would start hoarding on their own, then no amount of food would be enough!

Laud, responsible for food acquisitions, bitterly complained about his helplessness.

Due to the construction of nuclear fusion reactors, all the speakers and Grand Wizards were extremely busy, couldn't convene a meeting to discuss anything unless it was an emergency.

Moreover, the continuous wars often led to a rise in food prices. A short-term price fluctuation, even doubling or more, was quite normal for wheat.

However, they had always controlled the price of wheat by collecting and releasing grain, so this year it had only increased by about fifty percent. Compared to the salaries of the poor, which had increased several times, it hadn't caused any waves.

This caused Laud to initially not pay much attention to the rising prices of wheat. As usual, he dispatched more food to various regions to stabilize the prices, until he realized the situation was completely out of control and reported it as an emergency.

Alva, in charge of trade, also added that just two days ago, the church had suddenly established outposts in the border cities of the empire, strictly inspecting merchant caravans leaving the country, resulting in an eighty percent decrease in merchant caravans coming from the empire, meaning they could no longer purchase grain on a large scale from the empire.

The continuous bad news made all the council members worried.

Even though most Wizards lacked a theoretical basis in economics, the importance of food was apparent even to a novice. Citizens could wear tattered clothes, abstain from buying newfangled alchemical creations, but they absolutely had to eat!

After mulling it over, Rafael suggested implementing a rationing system, setting a maximum amount of bread each person could buy. Exceeding that amount would result in punishment.

Some council members even thought of reducing the lunch provision in workshops to save some grain.

He had heard complaints from the Wizards at the alchemy workshop before, because the council decreed that one meal had to be provided a day, many extremely thrifty poor people would intentionally skip breakfast and dinner, choosing instead to stuff themselves at the workshop.

"No, that will only cause greater panic, showing that we have run out of food!" Harrov directly rejected the proposal, well aware that all strategies to cut food supply would further drive up the price of bread.

Aurora then turned to Lynn, asking pensively how much wheat they actually had and whether it was enough to supply the entire kingdom?

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Recently, she had received reports that large tracts of farmland in the kingdom's eastern territories seemed to have been abandoned.

"It's not that they have been abandoned," Lynn explained, "in fact, I was planning to consolidate these lands to grow some cash crops."

[Hadlata]was known as the kingdom on the mountain, which is its advantage, but sometimes it's also a disadvantage.

Being mountainous means there are less plains suitable for large-scale farming.

The scattered fields within the kingdom can hardly leverage the advantages of mechanization.

Lynn thought that using this land to grow wheat was not cost-effective, and it would be better to plant some type of fruit tree to enrich the townspeople's diets and improve the nationwide situation with night blindness.

He also did this to ensure that some self-sufficient farmers could earn almost the same income as the citizens working in the workshops; otherwise, who would still want to farm?

As for the food supply, it was certainly sufficient!

Since over a year ago, when he had captured the southern part of the kingdom, Lynn started his plan; because this region has the kingdom's only alluvial plain, he had the musket troops work with the liberated mine slaves to develop many new lands there, creating a fully mechanized big farm model!

Nowadays, over seventy percent of the kingdom's food was produced from this super farm...

The members present at the meeting, although not fully understanding what Lynn meant by a mechanized farm, gathered that their food supply was still sufficient.

Realizing this, Harrov and others suddenly breathed a sigh of relief, then asked curiously.

"If the food supply is sufficient, why then are we buying so much wheat from the Empire?"

"It is naturally to prevent famine caused by a large influx of refugees," Lynn said smoothly. "Having a little extra food storage is always safer, isn't it?"

Once they defeated the church, they would have to face tens of millions of impoverished citizens from the Empire, so preparing early was definitely better than preparing late!

Lynn had not expected that his actions in consolidating the eastern farmlands and buying up food from the Empire would lead some people to make misjudgments, thereby starting a food war.

"Laud, have you found out who are manipulating things from behind the scenes?" Lynn paused before asking.

"I suspect it involves nobles within the kingdom," Laud replied hesitantly.

Because there were too many people buying wheat on a large scale now, many merchants as well as civilians had joined in; it was impossible for him to determine who were the real instigators and who were just following the trend to make a quick profit, but what could be certain was that many nobles from the kingdom were involved.

"Then keep investigating," Lynn's expression suddenly turned cold.

Lately, he had been so busy dealing with the Empire and the Church that he had almost forgotten about a group of parasites within his own kingdom who relied on their estates and did no work.

He had not dealt with them all before because wizards had only recently conquered the kingdom, and they had yet to earn the citizens' trust. Rash actions against these people might destabilize the situation that had just begun to stabilize.

Moreover, not all nobles were so unreliable; some, who were adaptable and knowledgeable, were willing to embrace the new era, so it wasn't right to execute them all.

Thinking for a moment, Lynn then instructed, "Since they are willing to pay high prices for grain, let them continue buying, and let's release our stored food in batches!"

He was not planning to immediately arrest all the merchants hoarding wheat—firstly, there were too many; and secondly, the kingdom did not have a law against it.

But this did not mean he had no other way to deal with these people.

This was also a perfect opportunity to let those merchants who wanted to make a quick profit and profit from the national crisis know that the freedom of trade had its limits, and crossing the line would have consequences!

'071, help me pull up the synthetic starch technology...' Lynn thought to himself, he hadn't originally wanted to introduce this technology so soon.