Chapter 143: Chapter 143: The Dilemma of Tongbao Pavilion
 

Hearing that Liu Qing wanted to work, Jiang Cheng secretly heaved a sigh of relief.

Good, good, Snake still had some ambition. She hadn’t completely given up.

“Mm. He is working at Tongbao Pavilion, and I just so happen to be planning to buy a Portable Spirit Gathering Array to assist with my cultivation. Do you want anything? We might as well buy it all together while we’re out today.”

Jiang Cheng specifically asked Liu Qing if she wanted to buy anything.

Because all of Liu Qing’s money was being kept with him.

She didn’t have a single Spirit Stone on her and couldn’t go out and buy anything by herself.

After thinking for a while, Liu Qing said, “Snacks.”

Snake especially liked to eat “junk food”, such as chips with extremely high calories, various candies, cream, and so on.

They were all calorie bombs.

But relying on her constitution that was different from ordinary people, Snake couldn’t gain weight no matter what she ate, so Jiang Cheng had no intention of controlling her.

After all, she cultivated in the deep mountains for two thousand years, finally reaching the Mahayana Realm. Eating some snacks, basking in the sun, and enjoying life, what’s wrong with that?

Taking the three hundred thousand Low-grade Spirit Stones he had just earned from Li Youyuan, Jiang Cheng led Liu Qing out, heading to the Tongbao Pavilion’s Huayuan Road Store where He worked.

The Tongbao Pavilion Huayuan Road Store was a medium-sized retail store covering three hundred and fifty square meters, split into upper, middle, and lower three floors.

However, in such a large store, the employees were pitifully few.

Including the manager Bai Xiaohe, there were only eight people.

Four salespeople, one accountant, one warehouse manager, one assistant manager, plus the manager Bai Xiaohe.

What was even more heartbreaking was that there were fewer customers in the store than employees.

Most of the time, there would only be one or two customers in the store, and it was only during the peak hours after work in the evening that the number of people in the store might just surpass five!

Before Bai Xiaohe arrived, the assistant manager Tao Fang had been wishing on stars, longing for the legendary “Wuyue Task King” and “Liang Kingdom Task Hall Sales Record Creator” to come to their store, to raise the store from the dead with her miraculous sales techniques!

At the end of August, Tao Fang finally got her wish and Bai Xiaohe came.

The day Bai Xiaohe started working at the store, she was undoubtedly the hero of all the employees at the Huayuan Road Store!

But now a month had passed.

The business of Tongbao Pavilion’s Huayuan Road Store was even worse than before!

Tao Fang, the assistant manager, was nearly going insane!

She felt certain that Head Office must have made a mistake!

This Bai Xiaohe was no different from those fresh grads who were blissfully unaware, whose eyes were clear and untainted by knowledge!

No different!

No different!

Management experience, none.

Sales plan, nonexistent.

Reform measures, clueless.

Alright, alright, is this how one’s supposed to manage a store?

Initially, Tao Fang thought that Bai Xiaohe might have a profound background, perhaps an illegitimate daughter of some Elder, but after asking around, she couldn’t find any close relationship between Bai Xiaohe and anyone else.

She only knew that Bai Xiaohe had some connection with the Liang State Court and was the daughter born to a concubine of some official.

Later, Tao Fang shifted her investigation to Bai Xiaohe’s performance records.

She felt sure that Bai Xiaohe’s records must have been falsified!

Otherwise, how could one explain her ignorance, yet still being transferred here as a manager?

And then she found out they were indeed not falsified.

Not only were they not falsified, but the figures were so ridiculously high it was as if they were artificially inflated by hired internet trolls!

The case is cracked, this new store manager doesn’t have any abilities, and managed to climb to the position of Tongbao Pavilion’s store manager by faking performance data.

Tao Fang felt that she was truly cursed with bad luck.

The first store manager was absolutely clueless, completely incapable of handling the business of the store.

The second manager, Bai Xiaohe, was all about slacking off! She was passable as an employee, a pretty nice person, but as a leader she just had to drive the whole store into a ditch!

No matter what others thought, Tao Fang planned to give up the game.

She had no choice anyway; even a deity couldn’t save the store’s performance now.

Tao Fang had already mapped out the rest of her life: the store would close, the employees would be reclaimed by the Outer Sect and redistributed, she’d be sent to an even more obscure place due to the poor results, and so it would go until she retired and lived out her final years in peace.

Hopefully, she could live until retirement.

At present, Tao Fang couldn’t think of anything other than marrying a wealthy man that could change her fate.

However, she didn’t have much hope for marrying into wealth.

Tao Fang was well aware of her own mediocrity; her looks were average, and not even a blind rich man would spare her a second glance.

On the other hand, Bai Xiaohe indeed looked quite good. Not only was she pretty-faced and had a gentle personality, but most importantly, her physique was particularly well-suited for breastfeeding. Even if she had triplets, their father wouldn’t have to worry about them going hungry.

She did have a real chance of finding a high-status, rich, and handsome partner.

“Welcome to Tongbao Pavilion!”

Upon hearing the salesperson’s greeting, Tao Fang raised her head and saw a “tall, rich, and handsome” man entering the store.

Unfortunately, this high-quality customer was already with a woman.

“Hiss… Crap, that female cultivator is so beautiful!”

Tao Fang was taken aback by Liu Qing.

She had missed Liu Qing the last time Jiang Cheng came, as Tao Fang wasn’t there.

To be fair, Tao Fang thought Bai Xiaohe was beautiful enough. Someone like Bai Xiaohe, with her level of attractiveness, could easily become the beauty queen of her class or the whole university.

After all, her mother was a concubine of a high-ranking official. Setting other matters aside, her looks certainly wouldn’t be lacking.

But Tao Fang had never expected someone to be even more beautiful than Bai Xiaohe.

Today, she’d truly broadened her horizons.

Though Tao Fang hadn’t seen Jiang Cheng before, three of the salespeople had.

They also knew that Jiang Cheng was a friend of Manager Bai.

“Mr. Jiang, would you like me to call the manager for you?”

“Yes, please, that would be kind of you,” Jiang Cheng said politely.

Another salesperson asked, “Mr. Jiang, is there anything that we can assist you with over here?”

Jiang Cheng replied, “I’m looking to buy a Portable Spirit Gathering Array; do you have any here?”

The salesperson immediately said, “We do, they’re on the second floor. Please follow me to have a look.”

Jiang Cheng nodded and walked to the second floor of Tongbao Pavilion with Liu Qing.

On the second floor of Tongbao Pavilion, the salesperson was introducing several portable Spirit Gathering Arrays they had in the store.

“This model can be activated just by placing the Array Flags in the positions indicated in the manual. This one is foldable; you need to unfold the parchment with the array drawn on it. This one is fully automatic; simply place the main unit on the ground, and it’ll unfold by itself and start gathering spiritual energy…”

After listening, Jiang Cheng nodded and said, “They’re all quite good. How much do they cost?”

The salesperson showed a slightly embarrassed smile; the products in their store were indeed good, but compared to other stores, their prices were not as appealing.

It wasn’t that they didn’t want to lower their prices, but the cost price was already quite high, and furthermore, the Capital’s head office controlled the pricing, leaving no room for discounts.

If they could lower their prices a little, their store’s business wouldn’t be so bleak.

“You’re a friend of the manager, so I will definitely offer you the lowest price possible,” the salesperson said.

Jiang Cheng, however, shook his head.

He might not be the owner of Tongbao Pavilion, but as its store manager, Bai Xiaohe didn’t own it either. Moreover, Jiang Cheng was always straightforward and didn’t like “under-the-table” internal pricing.

“No need. There’s no need for any special treatment because of your store manager. Whatever the listed price is in Spirit Stones, that’s the price I will pay.”