Sitting on the kang bed, Bai Lu opened the “Myriad Realms Mall” and spent sixteen Mall Coins to buy a cookbook. Afterward, she ordered one hundred portions of lobster tails at eight Mall Coins per jin and one hundred portions of hairtail segments at nine Mall Coins per jin.
She didn’t buy a large quantity because she wasn’t yet certain if these two items would be popular here. She decided to treat this as an experiment; if they sold well, she could increase the supply later.
Next, Bai Lu bought paper and pens from the mall and copied several recipes for lobster tails and hairtail from the cookbook. She then ordered various seasonings, as a restaurant could not function without them.
On the day of the scheduled transaction, Bai Lu went directly to the restaurant and handed the inventory list to the owner.
One hundred jin of lobster tails cost fifty yuan, one hundred jin of hairtail cost sixty yuan, ten buckets of cooking oil cost ninety yuan, fifty bags of salt cost twelve yuan and fifty cents, and fifty bottles of soy sauce combined with fifty bottles of vinegar came to twenty yuan. The owner needed to pay Bai Lu 232.5 yuan. However, since he had helped Bai Lu purchase two hundred yuan worth of liquor, he gave her the remaining thirty-two yuan and fifty cents in cash.
Bai Lu accepted the money and the liquor, saying to the owner, “It’s the same place as last time. You can go there in a while to haul the goods away.”
Once she arrived at the woods where the supplies were kept, Bai Lu couldn’t wait to sell the ten bottles of liquor to the mall. Her Mall Coin balance instantly increased by two million. Bai Lu was so excited she nearly jumped for joy.
Although the conversion rate from Mall Coins to cash wasn’t high, these two million Mall Coins could still be exchanged for over one hundred thousand yuan in cash.
This was the 1980s! Having so much money in this era—how could she not be satisfied?
Furthermore, she had no intention of stopping her money-making endeavors. She had asked the owner to help her buy ten bottles of that specific liquor every day, which meant she would have an equivalent daily income of over one hundred thousand Mall Coins.
With thirty days in a month and a daily income like that, she could become a millionaire within a month!
The debts owed by the Bai family were a mere trifle to her now, but she had no intention of helping them pay them off.
There were three children in the Bai family. Even if the debt had to be shared, each person should bear thirty-three percent; it wasn’t her responsibility to shoulder one hundred percent alone. More importantly, the family actually had money; they simply didn’t want to pay. Perhaps wealthy people were all like Pixiu—taking everything in and letting nothing out.
In her past life, Bai Lu only found out much later that the Bai family had hidden several crates of gold and silver treasures in the basement of a dilapidated house in the countryside. While they weren’t worth much now, they would be a fortune in the future.
In her previous life, the children of her elder sister and younger brother had used those very items to build their fortunes. Bai Lu only learned the truth after seeing interviews about them on television. She had felt such intense hatred then; they were all children of the Bai family, so why had they abandoned her?
Having been reborn, she would not sacrifice herself for them. She would even take back the one-third that rightfully belonged to her. Since she was a child of the Bai family, she had the right to inherit. She didn’t want more than her fair share—just one-third would suffice.
Her parents had taken her sister and brother to Hong Kong to enjoy a lavish life, leaving her alone to face millions in debt. If Jin Qiu hadn’t rescued her, Bai Lu would surely have been sold off by those creditors.
She might have spent her entire life as a slave paying off the Bai family’s debts. The cruelest part was that the Bai family had the money; they didn’t need her to pay, they just didn’t want to part with their own funds!
Since they didn’t treat her as family, why should she keep them in her heart?
After the restaurant owner arrived and hauled the goods away, Bai Lu rode her bicycle back. As she approached the hospital, she took off her men’s wig and coat, placed them in the “Myriad Realms Warehouse,” and returned to the dormitory.
After lying down, Bai Lu hid under the covers to browse the “Myriad Realms Mall.” Exchanging only a few hundred yuan a day was far too slow. She needed to look for other high-value items or find a “black market”—the kind that had been prevalent in recent years—to trade in. Otherwise, relying solely on one small restaurant, when would she ever finish exchanging the currency in her mall account?
Just then, Bai Lu noticed clothes, shoes, and bags. The prices were very affordable, with many items costing only twenty-nine, thirty-nine, or forty-nine Mall Coins. She placed an order for ten dresses of every color and style priced at twenty-nine coins, totaling one thousand pieces.
She decided that after delivering the goods to the restaurant owner tomorrow night, she would find a clothing store owner to discuss business. If a clothing store was willing to buy wholesale from her, she wouldn’t have to work so hard running a stall.
By the time she finished work in the evening and rushed to town, it was already dark. She didn’t have the time to set up a stall anyway; at most, she could only deliver goods.
With these thoughts swirling in her mind, Bai Lu drifted off to sleep. The next morning, she woke up to the noisy chatter of her roommates and began another busy and fulfilling day of work.
When her shift ended, Bai Lu rode her bicycle away again. Her roommates assumed she was busy preparing for her wedding, so they didn’t ask questions.
When Bai Lu arrived at the front of the restaurant, she saw a large wooden board standing by the door. Written in chalk were the words: Today’s Specials: Braised Lobster Tails, Braised Hairtail. People passing by were bound to be curious—what were lobster tails? What was hairtail? The owner gave them samples to taste, and immediately, the food was so delicious they didn’t want to leave.
Today was the restaurant’s best business day since it opened.
Seeing Bai Lu arrive, the owner hurried forward. “Comrade Lu, you’ve finally arrived!”
Bai Lu raised an eyebrow in confusion. “What’s wrong? Is business not good?”
“It’s not that it’s bad; business is too good! One hundred jin of lobster tails isn’t nearly enough. You have to increase the supply—give me a thousand jin each of lobster tails and hairtail,” the owner said excitedly.
Bai Lu helplessly brushed the owner’s hand off her shoulder and said, “Boss Yang, I know you want to make money, but you can’t be this impatient. This is only the first day. What if people stop liking it later? Besides, the weather is getting hotter. Do you have a refrigerator in your restaurant? Without a fridge, these ingredients will spoil. If customers get food poisoning, wouldn’t you lose everything in compensation?”
“This…” Yang Bing looked troubled for a moment.
“I can give you five hundred jin each of lobster tails and hairtail. Once you’ve saved enough money, I can have a large refrigerator shipped in from out of town for you. How does that sound?” In the 1980s, refrigerators ranged from over six hundred yuan to three or four thousand. She could buy a high-quality one from the “Myriad Realms Mall” and sell it to Yang Bing, allowing her to exchange several thousand yuan in cash at once.
“I can also get you electric rice cookers and electric kettles. As long as Boss Yang has the money ready, I can get them for you,” Bai Lu said, rubbing her thumb and forefinger together in a gesture for money, looking very much like a little money-grubber.