Chapter 78: Purchasing Stationery, Preparation for School

Cola Novel: turn the page, and you enter another world.

Civil Affairs Bureau Adoption Registration Office.

Li Ping asked the final question.

Closing all the materials, she pulled a stack of blank official forms from the iron cabinet at the bottom of the counter.

Li Ping handed the forms out the window, "Review passed. Fill out these forms."

"Sign and press your fingerprint in the bottom right corner of every page."

Lin Xuan took the forms and a black ballpoint pen.

Leaning over the edge of the counter, he began to fill them out.

Name, Identity Card Number, address, reason for adoption...

After filling out all the text information.

Lin Xuan pressed his left thumb into a box of red ink pad in front of the counter, coating it completely with red paste.

He raised his hand and pressed his fingertip firmly onto the name in the signature section of the form.

The fingerprint ridges embedded themselves into the fibers of the paper.

Thirty-four bright red fingerprints.

When Lin Xuan pressed the final fingerprint, the pad of his thumb had already begun to feel numb.

He pushed all the forms back through the window.

Xiao Sizi stood on her tiptoes.

Seeing Lin Xuan's finger covered in red ink, her eyes grew slightly warm.

She had seen officials in the Ministry of Rites in the palace affix their seals, knowing that was the mark of a life-and-death contract.

Li Ping took the forms.

She checked the signatures and fingerprints page by page.

After confirming everything was correct, she retrieved a heavy steel official seal from the safe behind her.

Li Ping returned to her seat.

She laid the final "Adoption Registration Certificate" flat on the desk.

She gripped the handle of the steel seal with both hands.

Aligning it with the photo and the date, she pressed down with force.

Bang.

A dull thud echoed behind the counter.

Li Ping handed the stamped "Adoption Registration Certificate" and a sealed document envelope out the window.

"Take these materials."

"Go to the local police station in your household registration area to register your household."

A few days later.

An enrollment notice stamped with the double red seals of the Municipal Education Bureau and Di Yi Shiyan Xiaoxue was slapped onto the coffee table.

"The household registration is settled, and the student file is established."

Lin Xuan lifted his water cup and took a sip. "School starts next Monday. You will be in Year One Class Three."

Xiao Sizi lay on the edge of the coffee table, her arms crossed.

Resting her chin on the back of her hand, her gaze fell on the three bold black characters on the notice: Lin Mingda.

This was her legal passport to modern society.

"The Imperial Academy of the Great Tang only accepted children of imperial relatives and high officials of the third rank and above."

"For ordinary people, wanting to study was as difficult as climbing to the sky."

Lin Xuan set down his water cup. "Here, this is called Nine-Year Compulsory Education."

"Children of school age must attend school; it is mandatory by the state."

Xiao Sizi raised her head.

Lin Xuan picked up the car keys. "Let's go, I'll take you to get your supplies."

West Suburbs of the City.

Small Commodities and Stationery Wholesale City.

A massive three-story steel-frame factory building.

The windproof doors stood open as delivery microvans and tricycles came in and out.

Lin Xuan held Xiao Sizi's hand and stepped through the main gate.

The air was thick with a strong scent of pulp, ink, and plastic mixed together.

There were no exquisite glass display cases like those in shopping malls here.

Everything was stacked in massive piles.

Boxes of gel pens were piled higher than a person.

Rows of metal shelves were stuffed with notebooks, picture books, and folders of all sizes.

Dozens of wholesale shops connected end-to-end, cutting the interior space into a maze-like grid.

Xiao Sizi stopped in her tracks.

She had seen the book collections and writing materials in Hongwen Guan of the Great Tang Imperial Palace.

That was a royal library supported by the entire nation's strength.

But the scene before her eyes completely exceeded her understanding of the word "stationery."

The pens and paper here are like wheat stacks piled on the threshing floor after autumn harvest—sold by the jin, stacked by the crate.

Cheap as roadside bricks.

"Pick out a schoolbag first." Lin Xuan pushed over a metal shopping basket with wheels on the bottom.

He led Xiao Sizi to a wholesale bag shop.

The shelves were hung with backpacks in every color.

Lin Xuan reached out and took down a pale pink schoolbag.

The bag itself was extremely light.

The back was designed with three ergonomically shaped sponge bumps.

"Turn around." Lin Xuan gave the instruction.

Xiao Sizi obediently turned around.

Lin Xuan slipped the schoolbag onto her shoulders.

Both hands gripped the adjustment buckles at the bottom of the nylon straps and pulled down. Tightened.

The straps fit perfectly.

The sponge spine-protecting pad on the back supported Xiao Sizi's lumbar region.

"Does it feel heavy when you wear it?" Lin Xuan asked.

Xiao Sizi shook her shoulders and shook her head.

Lin Xuan nodded, then took the schoolbag off again and tossed it into the shopping basket.

The two of them walked forward along the aisle.

They stopped in front of a stationery-and-general-goods shop.

Lin Xuan picked up a cylindrical plastic machine from the bottom shelf. There was a small hole on top.

"What's this?" Xiao Sizi stretched out a finger and poked the plastic casing.

Schoolchildren in Great Tang wrote with writing brushes.

Even when using charcoal pencils, they sharpened them bit by bit with a small knife.

Lin Xuan didn't explain; he pulled out an unopened pencil from the pen holder beside him.

He inserted the pencil vertically into that small hole.

Pressed down with a little force.

Hmmm—

A low, deep electric-motor whir sounded from inside the machine.

Three seconds.

Lin Xuan pulled out the pencil.

On the originally flat wooden end, a perfectly conical cut surface had appeared.

The black graphite core right at the center was sharp and keen.

Xiao Sizi's eyes went wide.

She took the pencil from Lin Xuan's hand.

Her fingertip gently scraped across the wooden cut surface.

Her fingertip gently scraped across the wooden cut surface.

Smooth, without a single wood splinter.

This kind of sharpening craftsmanship—the best craftsman in Great Tang, using the fastest carving knife, would still need the time of half a stick of incense.

"Fully automatic pencil sharpener." Lin Xuan put the machine into the basket. "Saves you from using a knife yourself—easy to cut your hand."

The shopping basket's contents piled higher and higher.

Erasers, rulers, craft scissors, watercolor pens......

In the end, the two of them stopped at the paper-goods wholesale section.

Lin Xuan picked up a box of black gel pens.

He tore open the packaging and pulled one out.

He drew two strokes on the test-signature notepad on the counter.

The ink flowed smoothly and dried extremely fast.

Lin Xuan handed the pen to Xiao Sizi.

"Give it a try."

Xiao Sizi gripped the plastic barrel; the pen body was very light.

She wrote her own name on the paper.

Ink flowed out continuously from the ball of the metal tip.

The lines were even, without any skipping or drag.

After she finished writing, Lin Xuan simply took four big boxes of the same model of gel pens and tossed them into the basket.

Fifty pens per box.

A full two hundred pens.

Next, he found a wall built up from stacks of paper.

He pulled out a dozen or so A4-size sketchbooks, along with three big packs of printer paper shrink-wrapped in plastic film.

"Boss, check out."

Lin Xuan pushed the heavy shopping basket up to the counter.

The wholesale shop's boss, with a lollipop in his mouth, held a barcode scanner and scanned rapidly.

"One spine-protecting schoolbag, sixty-five."

"An automatic pencil sharpener, twenty-five."

"A sketchbook; this kind is one hundred twenty grams of raw pulp paper, three yuan per book."

"Took fifteen books, forty-five."

"Gel pens, two hundred pieces."

"I'll give you the wholesale price, twenty yuan per box, eighty."

The boss recited a string of numbers.

Xiao Sizi, standing nearby, quickly calculated the purchasing power of these figures in her mind.

In the Great Tang, buying a single inferior She inkstone, or a stack of yellowed hemp paper with tree-bark impurities, would cost far more copper coins than the sum Lin Xuan paid today.

Yet right now, this large basket of paper and pens, whose quality far surpasses the Great Tang's tribute goods by countless times, costs only a little over two hundred yuan.

"Bag it up." Lin Xuan scanned the code to pay.