Chapter 177: E-commerce Platform

Chapter 177: E-commerce Platform

Yu Sheng'an's assimilation of the Ironbeard Tribe proceeded smoothly!

No—that phrasing isn’t entirely accurate.

Yu Sheng'an never actively interfered in the tribe's internal affairs. Rather, his influence over the Ironbeard Tribe seeped in effortlessly.

For the Ironbeard Tribe, ravaged by plunder and trapped in famine, even a hearty feast was enough to bring them immense satisfaction.

Especially when such a feast came without any cost.

But Yu Sheng'an's aid didn’t stop at food.

He sold bicycle production lines at fair prices, shared mushroom seeds from the Magic Forest, and even placed massive orders for magic artifacts to stimulate their stagnant economy.

It had to be admitted—the dwarves possessed astonishing talent in forging, particularly with magic artifacts.

The only reason these artifacts hadn’t influenced the multiverse was their inability to be mass-produced.

However, controlling the Ironbeard Tribe couldn’t be achieved through mere "small favors." While such gestures might earn temporary gratitude, long-term loyalty was impossible.

All intelligent creatures were forgetful.

As Hegel once said, the only lesson humanity learned from history was that humanity learned nothing from history.

This truth applied to all sentient beings.

Within a generation or two, the dwarves would come to see what they had received as their due—something they were entitled to.

Anyone who dared take it away would face their wrath!

Though Yu Sheng'an had already achieved his goal of spreading the internet, this was no longer enough to satisfy his ambitions.

What he needed wasn’t just a tribe of free-spirited internet users, but a dwarven race that obeyed his every command.

To truly control the dwarves, Yu Sheng'an decided to stick to his established strategy: binding them through shared interests.

Integrating the dwarves into the Keville Empire’s industrial system was one form of binding.

Building a platform where the dwarves became beneficiaries was another.

It was time to introduce an e-commerce platform to the internet.

In the Deep Sea Ancient Castle Divine Palace of the Primary Domain of Azerai, Yu Sheng'an's true form opened his eyes, rose from the divine throne, and began pacing the temple in contemplation.

The idea of an e-commerce platform had crossed his mind long ago.

But he had abandoned the concept shortly after considering it.

On one hand, even within the Keville Empire—let alone the entire multiverse—the distances between cities were vast.

Transportation was woefully underdeveloped, with logistics entirely dependent on mercenaries hauling goods by hand or beast.

As for portals? Who could afford such high-end luxuries?

On the other hand, the world’s goods were equally underdeveloped. Products were starkly polarized—either exorbitantly priced magic artifacts or dirt-cheap handmade items.

Magic artifacts already had their own exclusive circles—why would they need e-commerce?

As for handmade goods, e-commerce was even less viable. Buying a simple basket? Forget shipping costs and risks—by the time it arrived, ten days to half a month would have passed. Why not just buy it at the local market?

Most importantly, the majority of commoners were still struggling for basic survival, lacking the purchasing power for such luxuries.

While sheer numbers might compensate, the transportation costs were simply too high.

In short: "Fine horses need fine saddles, and fools need fools’ luck." Without productive forces keeping pace with societal development, any attempt would only end in disaster.

Given all this, why had Yu Sheng'an now decided to develop an e-commerce platform?

The arms trade had given Yu Sheng'an inspiration.

While personal e-commerce might be difficult to develop, he could start with a large-scale e-commerce platform for bulk commodities!

Since bulk commodity transactions involve higher prices, the cost of opening portals would naturally be diluted.

Right now, wars were raging across the multiverse, making it inconvenient—if not impossible—for Yu Sheng'an to send people to promote weapons door-to-door.

Trouble was one thing;

on the other hand, if both parties in a transaction were at war, selling to both would inevitably anger them, breeding resentment.

However, building a platform would eliminate this headache.

The goods were sold by merchants—what did it have to do with him, the Internet God? If you had a problem, just don’t buy!

Besides, trade was the most primitive form of mutual benefit.

Lacking food?

Got piles of unsold ore?

Struggling to find buyers or sellers?

Afraid of fraud once you do?

No worries—the Interconnected Platform would solve all these problems at once. Buyers and sellers here spanned the multiverse, ensuring you’d always find the goods you needed and buyers interested in your products.

With the Internet God as guarantor, fraud was no longer a concern.

Thinking this far, Yu Sheng'an suddenly realized that if the e-commerce platform succeeded, the benefits for him would be countless.

First, his own products would no longer need to scour the world for buyers—they could flood the multiverse via the internet.

The dumping of products and the expansion of the market would inevitably strengthen the entire profit chain, with the Dragon Factory at its core!

For their own interests, everyone in this chain would fight tooth and nail to remain loyal to him. Anyone who opposed him would be opposing them all.

Second, the e-commerce platform would also help promote the Interconnected Bank, gradually unifying currencies and gaining financial control over the multiverse.

Third, trade itself was the most fundamental form of mutual benefit. Exchanging what you had in abundance for what others had in abundance—wasn’t that the very definition of mutual gain?

Thus, once universal mutual benefit was achieved, no one could shake his hold on the internet.

Fourth, the God of Death would inevitably copy his e-commerce platform.

Now was the perfect time to develop it. The God of Death was already besieged by four deities, with no hope of breaking free anytime soon—let alone finding the energy to develop e-commerce.

If Yu Sheng'an could secure the first-mover advantage, every step afterward would come easier.

Through the accumulation of small advantages, he could eventually squeeze the Dark Web out of the market entirely.

"Hah..."

Yu Sheng'an exhaled deeply, calming his excitement, and began considering how to build the large-scale e-commerce platform.

Should he imitate the Blue Star model, setting up a third-party escrow system to ensure fairness in transactions?

No, no, no!

That wouldn’t work.

In the eyes of the gods, the Interconnected Bank was equivalent to the Church of the Internet.

Establishing a third-party escrow would require setting up bank branches across the multiverse—not only difficult for him, but likely unacceptable to the gods.

If that was the case, how could he guarantee fair transactions?

Barter?

Fine. In the early stages, it was better not to force the use of the bank. Let users choose between online payments or barter.

But how to ensure fairness?

Contracts?

Given his authority over curses, could he draft standardized cursed contracts that would inflict even harsher curses on the souls of violators?

No—there were loopholes in that approach.

What if the trading parties commit fraud by signing contracts through Ghosts?

Unless we guarantee a real-name system!

But how can he ensure the real-name system?

The multiverse is so vast—he can’t possibly keep the Divine Perspective open for auditing all the time!

The workload is just too massive!

Delegating it to subordinates isn’t reliable either.

At this thought, Yu Sheng’an fell silent.

Tap, tap, tap…

Footsteps echoed faintly through the Divine Palace of the Ancient Castle.

One idea after another rose in his mind, only to be dismissed one by one.

What he wanted to build was an automated e-commerce platform, not one requiring massive manpower for supervision. But achieving automation was easier said than done.

Forget about intelligence—even sending people to personally oversee things could still lead to mistakes!

Wait—

Personally oversee?

Yu Sheng’an suddenly halted his steps, his eyes widening… He knew what to do now.

Why should he monopolize the responsibility of supervision?

Why not throw it to the buyers and sellers?

After all, they’ve never seen the Blue Star e-commerce model before!

He could simply use the soul authority to create a spiritual body for both buyers and sellers at each other’s shipping locations, allowing them to inspect the goods on-site and save the cost of searching.

Once the transaction was confirmed, they could then teleport their real bodies over to personally oversee the shipment.

If they still got scammed after that, then they couldn’t blame him—he’d truly done everything he could.

Speaking of which, how else could fraud occur with this method?

For example, a seller could create an extremely realistic illusion to deceive the spiritual body—or even the buyer’s real body.

However, the likelihood of this was low.

On one hand, creating such a realistic illusion would also come at a cost, making fraud hardly worth the effort.

On the other hand, countering it wouldn’t be difficult either. During the transaction, they could use batch transmission, ensuring that even if fraud occurred, losses could be minimized in time.

Beyond this, what other forms of fraud could there be?

Yu Sheng’an couldn’t think of any.

It could only be said that fraud was a skill all intelligent beings possessed.

The competition between spear and shield had always been an escalating spiral.

He was just a platform—a platform facilitating transactions between parties.

All he could do was plug as many loopholes as possible.

After finishing his thoughts and repeatedly refining the details, finding no major issues, Yu Sheng’an proceeded to construct the large-scale e-commerce platform.

When building the product display function, he paused briefly before integrating the light domain authority into it, casually adding photo and video features to the existing functions.

This eliminated the previous hassle of needing special magic artifacts to upload images and videos.