Chapter 237 — Half Price

CHAPTER 237

Half Price

A shop boy climbed a ladder outside the Martial Palace Pharmacy and hung a new red board over the door.

The whole of Salt Well Street stopped to read it.

“Clear Spring Pill, twenty spirit stones!”

“It was forty yesterday!”

“Half price! Are they giving it away?”

“Today only, the board says. For all customers!”

Shi Feng read it from his stool without much interest. Across the pavement, Lin Langtian was peeling a sweet potato and watching the pharmacy door the way a fisherman watches a float.

“There it is,” Lin Langtian said. “Took them one morning. I had a bet with myself on the afternoon.”

“You lost,” Sima Lan said, without looking up from the ledger.

“I lost to myself. It doesn't count.” Lin Langtian bit into the potato. “Well, Junior Brother? They're at twenty. We're at twenty-four. What do you do?”

“Nothing,” Shi Feng said.

Zhu Liu's brush stopped. “Nothing, Senior Brother Shi?”

“We’re not lowering it,” Shi Feng said. “Keep selling at the price on our board.”

“But the queue!” Zhu Liu said. He pointed at the street, where a dozen people had already drifted toward the red board. “They'll all cross back!”

“Let them,” Shi Feng said.

Sima Lan put down her brush. She turned the ledger toward him and tapped one column with a clean fingernail.

“Their Clear Spring Pill costs twenty-six to make, by the Palace's own price list,” Sima Lan said. “I checked it on the tower wall. At twenty they lose six stones a pill. Every pill.”

“That's their problem,” Shi Feng said.

“We keep fifteen on a cost of nine,” Sima Lan said, tapping the column. “They lose six each time. They can afford that only while the branch budget lasts. I’d like to know how long you expect this to go on.”

“Which do you think?” Shi Feng asked.

Sima Lan paused. “The Palace has a branch budget. It also has Wei Chengyuan. I'd say they can afford it for a month.”

“A month,” Lin Langtian said happily. “Excellent. By then we'll be famous.”

“We'll be bankrupt,” Zhu Liu whispered.

“Keep writing, Zhu Liu,” Lin Langtian said.

The afternoon crowd at the pharmacy was big. It was bigger than the morning crowd at the stall. Shi Feng counted it without turning his head.

Zhu Liu counted it too. He kept doing it. Every few minutes his eyes wandered across the road, his lips moved, and he wrote a small mark in the corner of the page.

“Forty-one went in,” Zhu Liu said at last. “Forty-one, Senior Brother Shi. And we've sold eleven.”

“Mm,” Shi Feng said.

“You aren't worried?” Zhu Liu said.

“Watch what happens before dusk,” Shi Feng said. “Then ask me whether we should have cut our price.”

Zhu Liu did not understand, but he nodded and kept writing.

The first customer came back an hour later. He was a lean man in a carter's coat, and he held a small paper packet in his fist like a stone. He didn't stop at the queue. He walked straight to the table and put the packet down.

“I took one of theirs,” the carter said. “Twenty stones, cheap, I thought. You get what you pay for, they say. It's done nothing. My wrist's the same.”

“You came back because it failed?” Sima Lan asked. “Then decide whether you trust this pill before spending more stones.”

“I want the real one,” the carter said stubbornly. “The one that fixed Bo Ge.”

“Receipt,” Zhu Liu said, flipping a page. “Received, one packet, Clear Spring Pill, from across the street, unused…”

“It's used,” the carter said. “I took one. There are five left.”

“Received, one packet, Clear Spring Pill, five remaining, one used, no effect.” Zhu Liu wrote it all out. “Please sign here.”

The carter signed. He bought two Clear Marrow Pills. Then, to everyone's surprise, he turned to face the street and put his hands around his mouth.

“Brothers! Their cheap pill does nothing! Come to the stall!”

“Hey!” a shop boy yelled from across the road. “Don't spread rumours!”

“I've got proof!” the carter yelled back, and waved the little packet in the air.

The shop boy slammed the door. Someone in the crowd laughed.

Another customer came back with another packet. Then another. By the time the sun slid behind the cloth dealer's roof, Zhu Liu had a stack of eleven packets on the table, and a long list of names beside them.

“Return count?” Shi Feng asked.

Zhu Liu counted. His voice cracked.

“Eleven,” Zhu Liu said. “Of the forty-one who bought across the street today. They've come back, all eleven. And they're not asking for their stones. They're buying ours.”

“Why would they not ask for refunds?” Shi Feng asked.

“Because the Palace wouldn't give them,” Sima Lan said. “The board says no returns on discounted goods. Small characters, bottom right.”

“Naturally,” Lin Langtian said, wiping his hands. “Every great swindler hides a clause. I have taught them this.”

“You taught them nothing,” Sima Lan said.

“I'm a good influence from a distance,” Lin Langtian said.

At dusk, Zhu Liu closed the book and read out the figures in a shaky voice. The pharmacy had sold sixty-eight pills at twenty stones, and lost four hundred and eight on them. The stall had sold seventy-three at twenty-four. Every customer had come across the street with a bottle in his hand and a complaint on his tongue. As the saying goes, the Palace had lifted a rock only to drop it on its own foot.

“So,” Lin Langtian said. “Did you worry?”

“No,” Shi Feng said.

“Why not?” Lin Langtian said.

“Their pill doesn't work,” Shi Feng said.

“That's the whole business?” Lin Langtian said.

“That's the whole business,” Shi Feng said.

Clerk Xia stood in the doorway, pale and sweating. He’d watched customers cross the road all afternoon. Now they were taking their friends with them. He gripped his sleeves and tried to think of what to tell the branch master.

“Clerk Xia,” a shop boy said behind him. “The branch master wants to know the sales.”

Clerk Xia didn't turn. “Tell him,” Clerk Xia said hoarsely, “tell him we need a bigger man.”