Cave Refuge

Due to the last invasion by otherworldly creatures, the newly cultivated Plantation Area just outside the Magic Capital Base was destroyed by the otherworldly invaders, leading to a short-term food shortage within the base.

But it was just a short-term shortage, for ever since the Imperial Court reestablished contact with all bases, even if a base encountered an unexpected shortage of resources, it could redistribute supplies from surrounding bases for support.

The supplies redeployed from other bases could only meet the basic daily needs of the survivors in the disaster-stricken base and certainly would not be enough to allow for the processing of any secondary food products.

It is known that within the entire Magic Capital Base, it's not only the Thompson Family that possesses brewing technology, but because of the lack of grain, no one would consider brewing recently.

For this reason, the plan that Thomas Jefferson initially had to purchase alcoholic beverages from others fell through.

After all, white spirit is not just a drink; it can also serve as a disinfectant in critical times. Many people may not know how to turn grain into white spirit, but quite a few know how to distill drinkable low-proof white spirit into medical alcohol.

As a result, most survivors with brewing technology would only sell their alcoholic products to familiar people because of their scarcity.

After all, at this time, most "tech enthusiasts" do not have high combat prowess. Whether it's brewing or crafting other items, both activities require significant time and reduce the time available for cultivation.

It's like the common saying from internet apocalyptic fiction before the natural disaster: "While the neighbor hoards grain, I hoard guns; the neighbor becomes my granary."

For survivors with brewing technology, in the eyes of those with significant personal strength, they are just like those grain-hoarding neighbors.

Although in the Magic Capital Base and other bases directly governed by the Imperial Court, officials are working hard to maintain the pre-disaster order, there were people who, even in the pre-supernatural era, would become reckless on impulse.

In this era where supernatural occurrences are frequent, and the upper limit of personal strength is constantly increasing, if others were to know about one's brewing technology, without a powerful backer or strong personal prowess, all the wealth gained through one's craft could eventually become someone else's treasure.

Therefore, this led to the emergence of the Business Alliance. Many craftsmen and tech enthusiasts don't sell their products directly but trade through middlemen.

Even though involving middlemen means the merchants will undoubtedly take a portion of the profits, this arrangement affords some level of safety by covering the craftspeople's identities, even if it means they earn less.

If someone powerful were to take notice of them, even with a merchant acting as a front, their information could be easily accessed.

For these low-level processors, they generally do not attract the attention of major figures. Those who might harbor ill-intentions, while definitely stronger than them in every aspect, would not be overwhelmingly more powerful since a significant difference in status would mean they wouldn't bother with the trifles these craftsmen earn.

Regardless of how advanced their crafting techniques may be, at the end of the day, they are simply processors; the influential figures are only interested in the goods they produce, not in studying their manufacturing secrets.

Simply put, people with authority and power enjoy the products made by processors without the desire to acquire the manufacturing techniques to become low-level craftsmen themselves.

While merchants may not be able to repel truly powerful figures, they are capable of easily dealing with those lower status individuals who are curious about crafting technologies.

Of course, within both merchants and processors like brewers, there are some who fare quite well, but the vast majority at the lower tiers tend to follow these unwritten rules.

Processors will not only refrain from selling their handmade items privately but will also conceal their names when selling all their crafted goods to merchants with whom they have long-term cooperation.

These merchants not only provide raw materials for the processors, but they also actively safeguard the processors' information after transactions, ensuring both the safety of the craftsmen and firm control over the products made.

This mutually beneficial system is common in the current era, and precisely for this reason, when Madeline informed Zachary about the contact of the explosive's owner in another city, Zachary was surprised.

Although the contact Madeline provided might just be a merchant and not the manufacturer of the explosives, this merchant must undoubtedly maintain a close relationship with the true explosive manufacturers, otherwise, they wouldn't hand over all the produced explosives to the other party for sale.

After all, everyone understands the principle of "meat passed, leaving grease."

(Meat passed, leaving grease: To put it simply, if you hold a piece of fat with your bare hands, even if you hand over the fat intact to someone else, your palm will inevitably be left with grease.)

Being well aware of these unspoken rules, Zachary naturally understood that this is why after the first successful trade, when he wanted to buy explosives again, he went directly to Thomas Jefferson.