BXBX NOVEL Chapter 153.1: Two-Copper Hypermarket
Chapter 153.1: Two-Copper Hypermarket
Four hundred years ago, the Age of Discovery brought significant changes, including the emergence of new capitalist elites.
These newly affluent elites, enriched by seafaring during the Age of Discovery and broke into nobility with their vast fortunes, shook the Kenyan Empire\'s upper class. The most direct consequence was the scarcity of land for nobility titles.
Without lands commensurate with their titles, the status of nobility became unstable. Over the past four centuries, the Kenyan Empire and other nations involved in the Age of Discovery experienced more territorial wars than in the previous six centuries combined, predating that.
The Walton family, a traditional noble house, declined due to these wars. Engaged in a decade-long territorial battle with a wealthy, newly-established noble family over the same land, the Walton family, led by Benn\'s uncle and bearing a barony, couldn\'t even muster ten thousand gold coins for war reparations.
Young Benn Walton had no choice but to join the church\'s night watchman ranks, facing unimaginable dangers to earn a relatively substantial annual salary to cover this debt.
His service as a night watchman over two decades on the Kalan Peninsula exposed him to things he never encountered as a young master from a baron\'s family, such as catastrophes and pervasive cults.
Nobody was born with a heart of stone, and Walton was no exception.
In the Kalan Peninsula, with its two cities, slightly over a hundred towns, and hundreds for small villages, there would be several families that suffered due to cult activities each year.
Walton had dealt with horrific scenes where mothers burned their children, witnessed villages neglecting agriculture for blind worship of false idol, executed fanatical cultists attempting to sacrifice their relatives, and seen firsthand how towns affected by catastrophes transformed from bustling prosperity to desolate decline.
Family misfortunes made Walton abandon his youthful fantasies early on. He understood well that he was just an ordinary person.
"Do what you can" became his survival mantra when he joined the ranks of the night watchmen to pay off his family\'s war debts. He couldn\'t change the world, but he could eradicate the evil that shouldn\'t exist.
Knowing his own limitations, Walton had given up confronting the Nightmare Butcher. However, he believed he could tackle Charlie Rex, the noble bastard thriving under the Nightmare Butcher\'s shadow.
But now, Walton had started wavering He was beginning to doubt his own judgment.
A short distance away from the egg shop, yet another bustling store caught Walton\'s attention. The building, clearly revamped, had its street-facing walls removed and replaced with support columns and waist-high counters. Inside these counters were bamboo baskets filled with chirping chicks and ducklings.
A young woman in the town hall clerk\'s uniform, using a handheld megaphone, hollered, "Chicks and ducklings hatched with techniques personally taught by Mayor Ji Tang! Four for ten copper, minimum purchase of eight!
"Those who wish to buy please line up. Collect the manual and antibiotics. If you can\'t read, you have to memorize the main contents before being allowed to purchase!
"Even if you know how to rear chickens, you still need to memorize first before buying. This is an incubation technique personally imparted by Mayor Ji Tang. What if you fail?
"Stop looking and get in line!"
The customers here seemed more demanding than those at the egg shop, and the clerk\'s patience was wearing thin. Yet the buyers were undeterred, fixated on the lively chicks and ducklings in the baskets.
Walton stood behind the crowd, lost in thought.
"Mayor Ji Tang," the town\'s undead mayor, had been mentioned. Walton had specifically checked the notice board at the town hall the previous evening From the photo, he couldn\'t distinguish the mayor from the other wandering undead.
Undead hatching chicks and ducklings Walton didn\'t know how to react to hearing such a thing.
It was autumn, with winter still a couple of months away. This warm period was ideal for growing the chicks and ducklings, preparing them as winter food reserves. The effort to hatch these birds en masse, sell them cheaply to locals, and educate them on proper care seemed incredibly beneficial for local farmers and town residents with yard space. Even with his critical perspective, Walton had to admit this was a great boon for the community.
Walton looked up and observed the interior of the shop.
It was crowded inside, with two men in the security squad uniforms maintaining order and asking people to quieten down. There was also an older woman standing in front of the crowd, holding a small bottle of earthy yellow medicine powder, explaining something
This woman was clearly a local. She spoke the common tongue in a heavy local accent, but Walton could still understand her. In just a short time of listening, he gathered that she was instructing the people on how to recognize when chickens and ducks were sick, how to medicate them, the correct dosage to use; not only for poultry but also for cats, dogs, cows, donkeys, and even humans with fever or diarrhea. However, she stressed that the dosage needed to be strictly controlled, and pregnant women absolutely mustn\'t use it.
Walton stood there, numb to the surreal scene.
Medicine that could be used by humans, just being given away as a freebie with the purchase of poultry
As he continued further down, Walton was utterly speechless at what he saw next.
A store, similarly run by the town hall and brimming with a variety of goods had a price of two copper for every product.
A huge banner reading "Two-Copper Hypermarket" hung across the facade, with a male clerk shouting at the entrance, "Everything for two copper, all items for two copper!"
The variety of goods was so extensive that the large space, formed by combining three shopfronts, couldn\'t accommodate everything. Some items had to be piled on shelves or in wooden boxes, displayed right at the entrance.
Two copper wasn\'t a small amount; it could buy half a loaf of black bread or a whole pot\'s worth of potatoes. But the items on offer were much more enticing than bread or potatoes.
It wasn\'t just the townspeople and the farmers who had just sold their grain that were doing the frenzied buying. Some that were in line to pay their grain tax couldn\'t resist running over as well
Two big blocks of yellow soap tied with straw, two copper.
A bag of laundry powder, two copper.
Towels, slippers, waist cloths, thick socks, metal combs, mirrors, colorful hairbands and clips, a variety of glass or plastic cups, bowls, smaller basins, buckets, steel soup spoons, spatulas, mops with wooden handles, iron hammers, sickles, screwdrivers, a whole box of nails, shiny knives, iron multipurpose hooks that could be hung behind doors, children\'s toys All for two copper each.
After squeezing in and making a round of the store, Walton realized he had unwittingly acquired a steel pen, a large bottle of ink, a 200-page notebook with exceptionally smooth paper, a folding razor, a box of blades, an elegant checkered handkerchief, and two pairs of men\'s boxer shorts.
He walked out of the store after paying, and only when the warm autumn wind hit him on the street did he realize what he had done
Feeling his pockets stuffed with goods, Walton looked back at the bustling Two-Copper Hypermarket with a complicated expression.
He had no doubt that if such an irresistibly tempting store opened in Indahl, it would send at least half of the local variety stores out of business in less than a month.
No, it wouldn\'t just be variety stores that would be impactedthis store even had food and spices!
Small bags of salt (100g), transparent bags of Sichuan pepper and chili powder, dry noodle squares packed in fours (without seasoning packets), a pound of vinegar, half-pound bags of spicy snack stripseach for just two copper!
Walton watched as a farmer, still with mud on their clothes, came out of the store with bags in their hands, gingerly playing with a folding razor identical to his, joyfully discussing with their families about gifting some of their newly bought items to relatives.
Walton saw a farmer\'s wife counting on her fingers the number of people in her family, selecting towels from the oversized towel display at the shop entrance.
A dark-skinned village girl, unable to contain her excitement, tied a pink scarf around her neck that only made her skin look darker.
A child, with nails caked in black soil, tenderly caressed the toy his parents had generously bought him.
Walton crossed the street and sat down on the steps opposite, silently observing the stream of customers entering and exiting the two-copper shop.
The merchandise in this store and these customers didn\'t seem to match, at least according to Walton.
The sleekly designed, comfortable-handled folding razors held in the rough, dirty palms of the farmers and the bright and beautiful scarves tied around the necks of village girls seemed somewhat wasteful.
These items should be displayed on more refined shelves, sold in more stylish stores, at ten, no, twenty times the price to more respectable people.
These products could have made much more money.
But Charlie Rex hadn\'t done that.
He put these items up for sale in a town market, at unbelievably low prices, for his people.
The image of Charlie Rex in Walton\'s mind, a silver-haired, brooding young man he had only met once and who seemed to be secretly plotting something terrible, started to blur
Walton even began to doubt whether the Charlie Rex he had seen was the same illegitimate noble he thought he knew.
As he silently observed the people of Weisshem, Walton suddenly felt lost.