Chapter 12: If It's Not Forbidden to Set Up a Stall, Then It's Allowed

The morning sun rose, and the summer breeze carried a slight chill.

Chen Yansen stood at the mouth of the alley, six cardboard boxes and a pile of supplies at his feet, a thousand-layer wrap of youtiao in his hand, eating with great gusto.

The thousand-layer sheets wrapped layer upon layer of fresh chopped chili and yellow soybean paste, with a crispy, fragrant youtiao tucked in the middle—one bite, and the satisfaction was overwhelming.

Wang Zihao, off to the side, smoothed a fringe of bangs across his forehead, agonized for the longest time, then finally turned his head toward Wang Ziyan: "Which side do you think it should slant toward?"

"Brother, to the right."

Wang Ziyan, still drowsy with sleep, hung her head and tossed off a perfunctory reply.

"I think slanting to the left looks better."

Wang Zihao held up his phone, gazed at his own reflection on the screen, silently praised himself with a 'handsome devil,' and promptly arrived at his conclusion.

"Pfft!"

Wang Ziyan's tone dripped with disdain—she had long expected Wang Zihao to say exactly that. She knew well that people with decision paralysis often didn't want an answer so much as someone to eliminate one of the options for them.

"There's still five minutes until seven. Coach Huang won't stand us up, will he?"

Wang Zihao glanced at the time and immediately grew irritated.

"What's the rush? Isn't there still five minutes?"

Chen Yansen didn't even look up, continuing to eat his breakfast on his own.

In his previous life, he had dealt with Huang Boxiang before—the man's temper was indeed foul, but his character was equally simple and upright.

By his estimate, flipping mp3s and mp4s would bring in at least ten or twenty thousand yuan a day in sales. If he just randomly hired a driver and chartered a van, there was no telling whether the other party might get greedy.

Chen Yansen wasn't afraid of bad people, but he was afraid of trouble.

A smart person knows how to steer clear of potential risks—that's the wise move.

At least with Huang Boxiang he knew the background inside and out; compared to safety concerns, being a little late hardly counted as a serious flaw.

Besides…

Accompanied by the roar of an engine, a silver Bluebird sliced through the mist and finally pulled up in front of the three of them.

The time was six fifty-nine!

"Chen… Boss, shall we head out now?"

Huang Boxiang leaned out from inside the car, his gaze sweeping quickly over them. Seeing the three were quite young, he was briefly startled, then spoke up first.

On the phone yesterday, Chen Yansen had opened his mouth asking to charter his car for ten days—naturally making him a major client!

His words carried a few extra degrees of politeness.

Huang Boxiang, just over forty, was of medium build, slightly plump, wearing a deep blue work jacket with the characters "Daxiang" printed on the chest—doing his side job while still finding time to advertise.

"Driver, let's load the goods first! Mind giving me a hand?"

Chen Yansen nodded and asked tentatively.

"Sure thing, let me check the trunk and see if it'll all fit."

Huang Boxiang didn't refuse, agreeing readily.

The trunk lid popped open with a "bang." He pushed the door and got out, roughly estimated the volume of the goods, then turned and replied: "Should be no problem."

The moment the words fell, without waiting for Chen Yansen to speak, he immediately picked up a box of goods and carefully stacked it into the trunk.

"Chen Laoban, what kind of goods are these? If they're all fragile, I'll wrap them in another layer of foam for you."

Huang Boxiang carried the goods while seemingly casually fishing for information.

"No need, none of it's fragile."

Chen Yansen raised his head and glanced at him, not expecting that beneath Huang Boxiang's simple, honest appearance lurked a sharp mind as well.

He understood the other's thinking—it was nothing more than worry about hauling contraband and getting dragged into bad luck himself.

"That's good then."

Huang Boxiang gave a dry laugh and kept moving the goods, but his eyes carefully examined the labels on the boxes. Only when a line reading 'Meimo mp3 × 100' came into view did he finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Altogether just a few boxes of goods—in less than the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, they were neatly stacked.

"Driver Huang, today we're heading to Chongqiao."

Chen Yansen stepped up into the passenger seat, fastened his seatbelt, and instructed the other man.

"Got it, Chen Laoban."

Huang Boxiang replied politely, not looking down on Chen Yansen just because he was young.

Sitting in the back row, Wang Zihao couldn't help but sigh inwardly: "Who says Coach Huang has a bad temper? Isn't this disposition pretty mild?"

He noticed Huang Boxiang had consistently addressed Chen Yansen as 'Chen Laoban,' and instantly understood—clearly, Chen Yansen hadn't mentioned that the two of them were students from his driving school.

Once the car started, it sped along the ring road.

Looking out through the car window, a few breakfast stalls in the distance bustled with activity—smoke curling upward, voices clamoring—interweaving within the faint glow of the dawn.

Chen Yansen's eyes gradually lost focus, lost in thought about something, and finally he simply closed them. His breathing evened out, and before long he had dozed off.

To make it to the early market, he had gotten up before dawn; now sleep was pressing in heavily, so naturally he dropped off the moment he lay back.

"Chen…"

Wang Zihao, who had originally wanted to discuss sales strategy with him, grew anxious and instinctively tried to call Chen Yansen awake.

"Mmmph—"

Wang Ziyan, sitting beside him, was quick-handed and immediately clamped a hand over his mouth.

"Brother, keep it down, let Chen Yansen sleep a bit longer."

Wang Ziyan shot her older brother a look and threatened him in a low voice.

"Honestly, siding with the outsider! Wang Ziyan, get it straight—I'm your actual brother."

Wang Zihao pried her hand away, lowered his voice, and wore a face full of grievance.

"Shh!"

Wang Ziyan raised a thumb, a smiling look on her face, her dewy peach-blossom eyes unusually bright, the pupils reflecting a suit-and-leather-shoes young man, whose eyes were half-closed at this moment, immersed in dreamland.

The whole way, no one spoke.

Twenty minutes later, the noise by Chen Yansen's ears grew increasingly clamorous, and only then did he open his eyes, thoroughly unwilling, and sat up straight.

"Up ahead is the great market center of Chongqiao Town — where should we park?"

Huang Boxiang, seeing he was awake, immediately asked.

"At the entrance and exit of the market, are there any banks, large supermarkets, or government and enterprise offices?"

Chen Yansen thought for a moment and asked.

To pull off this reselling deal, first he had to find a suitable stall.

Generally, the stalls at a township's great market were either uniformly planned by the authorities above and rented for a fee, or spontaneously formed by nearby residents on a first-come, first-served basis.

But neither of these suited him!

The first kind had high communication costs — at every market he would stay at most two days; the second kind claimed to be first-come, first-served, but the highest-traffic areas had long been occupied by some veteran stallholders, and if you dared to rush in and snatch a spot, they'd dare to pull a knife on you.

Huang Boxiang had been running unlicensed cabs year-round, his range of activity mainly the dozen-plus townships around Chunshen — he was practically a walking, living map, and this question, for him, he could answer with his eyes closed.

"There's a small clinic at the exit, no supermarket or bank, but at the entrance there happens to be an inspection station."

Huang Boxiang squinted his eyes and rattled it off familiarly, item by item.

"Can we set up a stall there?"

Chen Yansen, hearing this, grew interested.

"Right at the entrance of the inspection station?"

Huang Boxiang was a bit dumbfounded — who on earth had nothing better to do, daring to set up a street stall at the entrance of an inspection station?

"Master Huang, let me introduce myself — I'm the sales manager of Yangcheng Meimo Electronics Factory, and he's my colleague Wang Zihao. This business trip is mainly to promote our factory's mp3 and mp4 products, so the immediate priority is to find a suitable stall for the presentation."

Chen Yansen pointed at Wang Zihao behind him, speaking with every appearance of truth.

"Oh, you two started working pretty early."

Huang Boxiang suddenly understood and sighed with a smile.

In his view, although Chen Yansen and Wang Zihao were both wearing suit sets and looked like office white-collar workers, the faces on their necks were really far too green and immature.

Even guessing generously, he figured the two were at most twenty-three or twenty-four years old.

"Family conditions aren't great — getting out to work early can lighten the burden on our parents a bit."

Chen Yansen, when lying, didn't blush and his heart didn't skip a beat — extremely natural.

Wang Zihao, sitting in the back row, nearly laughed out loud — what the hell sales manager, what the hell Meimo Electronics Factory.

That bastard Chen Yansen, damn he can really blow hot air!

"Huh, the little girl in the back — is she your colleague too?"

Huang Boxiang gave a slight start, then caught on, his face full of suspicion.

"She's not."

Chen Yansen flatly denied it, but didn't offer any further explanation.

"Normally no one dares set up a street stall at the entrance of an inspection station, so I don't know whether you can set one up either."

"But once when I was passing by, I think I saw someone selling flatbreads there — of course, it might also be that my eyes were playing tricks."

Huang Boxiang was an honest man, said whatever was on his mind, and pulled the topic back on track.

"You didn't say we can't set up a stall, so that means we can!"

Chen Yansen summed it up earnestly, then signaled Huang Boxiang to keep driving forward.

"Huh?"

Huang Boxiang's mouth gaped slightly, his expression frozen — he found that his brain and Chen Yansen's were simply not on the same wavelength.

(End of this chapter)