"100 yuan," Wen Xiangjie said, directly cutting the price.
Chai Yongli, who had been spitting excitedly, abruptly stopped.
He looked at Wen Xiangjie in disbelief.
Initially, seeing how young Wen Xiangjie was, clearly still a student, and students usually being soft-hearted, he had quoted a high price, figuring that even if Wen Xiangjie haggled, she would only dare to cut a little, and he would still make a huge profit.
He never expected Wen Xiangjie to cut the price directly from 1,000,000 to 100 yuan. Was this right???
"Madam, you're quite the joker," Chai Yongli rubbed his hands. "100 yuan isn't even enough for a fraction of my travel expenses to the Urba Desert. 100 yuan is definitely impossible. That's not how you haggle. How about this, we both take a big step back, 100,000 yuan? How does that sound?"
"You didn't just bring back this one gambling stone from the Urba Desert. Even if I picked up a few other gambling stones next to it, you'd probably say they were also brought back from the Urba Desert, right?" Wen Xiangjie said, pointing to the gambling stones nearby.
"One gambling stone for 100 yuan, if you add all these gambling stones together, haven't you earned enough?"
"That's not how you calculate it," Chai Yongli looked at Wen Xiangjie with a fawning expression. "Think about it, I went through so much trouble to go to the Urba Desert, and then I had to excavate gambling stones from the Urba Desert. It's mentally and physically exhausting. You have to let me earn something, right? My whole family relies on this small business of mine to make a living!"
"Then that's it. If you can't support your family, that's your incompetence," Wen Xiangjie rejected Chai Yongli's attempt to play the victim and, in turn, manipulated him. "Look for reasons within yourself. Think about whether you're not working hard enough. If going to the Urba Desert once a month isn't enough, then go once every half a month."
Chai Yongli: ???
He had intended to play the victim to gain Wen Xiangjie's sympathy, but instead, Wen Xiangjie's words made his chest ache.
"And don't you think your own words contradict themselves?" Wen Xiangjie retorted to Chai Yongli.
Chai Yongli looked bewildered. He didn't feel there was anything wrong with his words. For so many years, he had always used this same sales pitch, and no customer had ever raised a question.
"You said you could at least guarantee that all the gambling stones at your stall could yield a Card, right?"
Chai Yongli nodded. That part was indeed true.
"The Urba Desert has been excavated for 1,500 years. A smaller desert would probably have been leveled by now. Under such circumstances, for you to guarantee that the gambling stones you excavate definitely contain Cards, I'd guess you're sourcing your goods from the gambling stone markets around the Urba Desert, aren't you?" Wen Xiangjie said with a smile.
Chai Yongli: !!!
He looked at Wen Xiangjie with a horrified expression.
How did such a young student know there were gambling stone markets around the Urba Desert, and how did she analyze so much from his few words?
No, who was older between them? Why did it feel like his decades of extra life had been lived in vain?
Today was an event at the Gambling Card District, and the foot traffic in the Gambling Card District was several times higher than usual, with customers continuously entering through its main gate.
Chai Yongli's stall was set up right at the entrance of the Gambling Card District, and by now, many newly arrived customers had noticed the situation and gathered to watch the commotion.
Chai Yongli's forehead immediately began to break out in a cold sweat.
As proud as he had been of his stall's prime location before, he was now just as terrified.
No, he couldn't let this little ancestor keep talking. It was just 100 yuan. He'd even give this gambling stone to this little ancestor for free, just to get her to leave quickly. Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to do any business today.
After all, he had only paid 90 yuan when he bought this gambling stone.
It was rare for the Gambling Card District to hold such a grand event with so much customer traffic, and he wanted to earn more today.
"100 yuan, just take it for 100 yuan," Chai Yongli quickly lowered his voice and said to Wen Xiangjie. "This is a small business for me. If you go further inside, there are all the famous gambling card shops. The chances of getting a big haul are much higher there. Today is also the big event for the Gambling Card District. The good gambling stones they usually wouldn't part with are all displayed today. You should go take a look!"
This small temple of his couldn't accommodate a great Buddha. Please, just leave!
Wen Xiangjie didn't make things difficult for Chai Yongli. She gave him 100 yuan, took her spoils, and left humming a tune.
She was very rich and didn't care about 1,000,000 yuan, but she wouldn't be a fool and let herself be ripped off.
Money should be spent where it's worth it; only then does it feel good to spend.
Walking from the outer perimeter to the inner area, the stall owners on both sides of the road either enthusiastically invited customers to look at the gambling stones at their stalls, or remained silent, giving off an air that good goods needed no words, which indeed attracted many customers.
Wen Xiangjie didn't know what the usual foot traffic in the Gambling Card District was like, but today it was truly packed, with several customers squatting by each small stall, carefully selecting gambling stones.
As she walked along, Wen Xiangjie casually glanced at the gambling stones on the stalls on both sides. None of them, like the one in her hand, made her feel a desire to examine them.
It wasn't until she was almost in the area of the gambling card shops that she saw a rather smooth gambling stone at a stall on her right, placed at the very front of the display. Wen Xiangjie found it quite cute.
Wen Xiangjie walked over, squatted down, temporarily placed the gambling stone in her hand by her feet, and picked up the round-headed, round-bodied gambling stone to examine it.
"Beautiful lady, looking at gambling stones? How do you like the one in your hand?" the vendor asked with a smile.
"It's round and quite cute," Wen Xiangjie patted the gambling stone in her hand, like someone tapping a watermelon to check if it's sweet.
The vendor was accustomed to Wen Xiangjie's actions. Customers who didn't understand gambling cards had all sorts of strange ways of examining gambling stones, and Wen Xiangjie's watermelon-tapping method was already considered normal.
Last time, there was a customer who, every time he picked up a gambling stone, would carefully scrape off a portion of the dirt and put it in his mouth to taste it slowly. He didn't know if he was trying to analyze the material of the gambling stone through this method, or if he simply had pica and wanted to try the gambling stone on his tongue.
Wen Xiangjie's actions clearly showed she was an amateur. Customers who knew a bit about gambling cards knew that the more regular the shape of a gambling stone, the higher the possibility that it was man-made.
A gambling stone as smooth as the one in Wen Xiangjie's hand was as fake as could be.
Such a smooth gambling stone clearly indicated it was just a random rock picked up from somewhere. The originally rough, irregular parts that were crudely glued on by the faker would fall off with just a few bumps, revealing its original appearance.
This was considered a defective product even among fakes.
He was also determined to make a big killing at this Gambling Card District event, aiming to work one day and rest for a year. He brought all the defective products from his home to his stall to make up the numbers, thinking that any sale was a profit. That's why he put this gambling stone, which he had thrown into a corner for who knows how long, on his stall.