A modified four-wheel off-road vehicle, topped with a huge solar power panel, sped across the fairly flat road, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Amidst the booming upbeat music, the car parked steadily behind a shop.
The car door slammed shut. Qian Lai brushed back his hair, his tone carrying a bit of smugness. “Little sister, I’m telling you, if you want to buy anything, coming to me is the right choice. Come on, step inside and take a look.”
His shop was quite large—a two-story building with a courtyard in the back, something completely incomparable to her quarter-corner residence.
Qian Lai pushed open the back door and made an inviting gesture. At a glance, Yinxing saw shelves packed full of goods, looking just like a mini-supermarket.
“I’m not exaggerating. Putting aside other things, eighty percent of whatever you need is right here in my shop!”
Yinxing glanced around, from the shelves to the long row of transparent glass cabinets against the wall, and the walls covered in various commodities. She believed his words completely.
“Let’s calculate the points for your chestnuts first!”
As he opened the cloth bag to weigh them, his eyes immediately caught sight of the shepherd’s purse inside, so tender it looked like it could drip water.
“My god, there’s even shepherd’s purse. This looks so tender, what’s the pollution value?”
Yinxing smiled embarrassedly. “If you want it, I’ll pick some more for you tomorrow.”
Hearing that she didn’t plan to sell it right now, Qian Lai didn’t press further, though he felt a slight pang of regret. He quickly agreed anyway, “Alright! Sister, whenever you have fresh vegetables, you can bring them all my way. As long as the pollution value is low, the price I offer won’t be low.”
With that, he pulled out an iron scale and efficiently dumped the chestnuts into a small basket.
“Nine jin six liang, let’s round it up to ten jin neat. That’s 400 points in total. Tell me what you want to buy, and I’ll give you an honest price!”
He really was a ‘cunning merchant’—making money right here and spending it right here, while people still had to feel grateful to him.
Yinxing had quite a few things she wanted to buy.
First was food, including some seasonings like salt and soy sauce, a small jar of peanut oil, a large iron wok, a simple iron bucket stove for burning firewood, a spatula, two large bowls, and two iron basins.
Just on these items alone, she spent nearly two hundred points, mainly because the seasonings were expensive.
“Sister, your brother isn’t ripping you off. You know how all plants are mutated nowadays, the land is heavily polluted, and crops are hard to grow. Even if they manage to grow, the pollution value isn’t low. Not only do they taste bad, they’re also quite dangerous. Although these are a few years expired, the taste is barely passable, and they’re much cheaper than the ones cultivated by the Agricultural Academy. Plus, they’re fine to swallow, right?”
The seasonings inside the bottles had indeed coagulated into lumps, looking like they had been expired for quite a while. He wasn’t lying to her.
As for the cloudy rapeseed oil contained in a mineral water bottle, opening it immediately released a rancid smell.
Her brows twitched from the pungent odor, and she pushed it away with a look of disgust.
“I don’t want this one.”
Qian Lai didn’t feel awkward at all. He chuckled twice and quietly took it back. “Sister, don’t look down on it. Many people eat too much of that mutated lard and can’t afford the plant oil produced by the Agricultural Academy, so this stuff is a hard-to-find good item.”
Yinxing curled her lips and forced a fake smile.
She had no blessed fate for this “good item.”
“Do you have any better oil?”
“Of course I do!” Qian Lai pulled out two other jars from behind his back. “This is mutated pork fat, 160 points a jar. This is peanut oil produced by the Agricultural Academy, 220 a bottle.”
Yinxing suddenly felt that the 60-point expired rancid oil from earlier wasn’t stinky at all.
Never mind, she’d figure something out for oil later. She could accept low-oil food; furnishing her new home and improving her quality of life was more important.
Shaking her head, she said, “Let’s skip the oil for now, Boss Qian. I also want to buy a bed, something simple and cheaper.”
The main point was cheap.
Qian Lai had long been full of curiosity about this exceptionally skinny girl. She constantly looked like she could kick the bucket at any second, which made it obvious she was having a hard time, yet every time she made a move, she could find so many crops with low pollution values. It was truly contradictory.
Noticing that the things she bought were entirely setup for establishing a residence, she must have suffered a disaster somewhere and fled here by a stroke of fortune.
Sigh, living in this era wasn’t easy; everyone had secrets, and he had no heart to probe into them. He enthusiastically greeted her.
“We have it! I have everything here. Coincidentally, I’ve got some folding army cots. Even though the fabric has patches, it doesn’t affect sleeping at all. If you want it, I’ll give you the absolute lowest price.”
His eyes rolled around as an idea struck him. He immediately walked out from behind the counter. “Instead of me talking so much, you might as well see for yourself. I happened to acquire a lot of outdoor gear; take a look and see what you can use.”
He led her to a side room in the backyard. This room was also quite large and almost piled full of goods, entirely used as a warehouse.
“There you go, big sister, come and see how sturdy this bed is.”
Aside from some paint peeling off the iron frame, revealing patches of rust, and the mattress surface being patched together with a few different colored pieces of cloth, it was definitely fine for her bony frame to lie on.
Anyway, it had to be more comfortable than sleeping on a pile of grass.
“How many points for this?”
“This is cheap, cost price for you: 40 points, didn’t make a single point off you.”
She could grit her teeth and accept this price.
Qian Lai fished out another black waterproof tarp. “Do you want a canopy? Great for blocking the sun, wind, and rain. And how about a tent? You get your own independent little space, more than enough room for the army cot. There are also folding tables and folding chairs—convenient and easy to carry.”
Aside from the folding chairs and folding table, which Yinxing figured she could use other things to replace (definitely not because she was short on points), she bought everything else Qian Lai introduced.
She also bought a pair of plastic slide sandals and a set of athletic wear to change into, completely wiping out the 400 points she earned today and even going into a deficit of over a hundred points. Now she only had 22 points left in her account.
She couldn’t help but sigh inwardly. Points really were easy to spend; in the blink of an eye, they were all gone.
Looks like she still needed to work hard to earn more money!
Having bought a huge pile of things, the curtain cloth obviously couldn’t hold it all, and it would be extremely inconvenient anyway. Just as she was wondering how to carry it, Qian Lai—being the shrewd person he was—immediately pulled out an old back-basket. Old as it was, carrying things in it definitely wouldn’t be a problem.
“Sister, I’ll give you this back-basket as a gift. It’ll make it easier for you to carry everything back.”
Yinxing was a bit surprised and politely declined, “Oh, I couldn’t possibly.”
“Don’t be so polite. Just as long as you don’t mind that this basket is a bit old.”
“Not at all, not at all! Thank you so much!”
“Think nothing of it, think nothing of it! Just remember to come to me next time you have good goods!”
Watching the retreating figure of her carrying the back-basket, Qian Lai’s eyes crinkled up into slits from smiling. Today was a massive profit!
He immediately pulled out his brick-sized phone and tossed a message into a group chat named [Qian Duoduo’s High-End Players Group].
[Qian Lai: Fresh wild chestnuts with a pollution value of 13. 1 jin. Starting bid at 50 points.]
[Not-Short-of-Points-Brother: 55 points]
[Bro-Has-Plenty-of-Points: 60!]
…