Flowers in full bloom

After seeing Rong Jin off, Hua Lei returned to her room to continue repairing books. Although she still had a lot of defective books, some books for individual subjects in the bookstore were almost ready for restocking. Hua Lei prepared to go to the printing house again.

The next day, Hualei brought Ping'an, Xiaoxiao, and this time Xiaoqun, and the four of them drove two mule carts over. When the second steward saw Hualei and the others, he attentively led Hualei and the other four into the defective goods warehouse.

Hualei took a quick look and asked Ping'an and the others to choose books according to her requirements. She then went to find the second manager and asked if he could help her carve new plates if there were no ready-made engravings. What would the price be? If she placed an order herself, could they choose the existing engravings and print them for her?

The second steward said apologetically that all these needed to be discussed with the printing house's chief steward and the owner. However, the owner and the chief steward went out to work two days ago and would not be back until the end of the month. If Hua Lei was interested, she could come to the printing house and discuss it with the chief steward at the beginning of next month. Hua Lei agreed and left a note, agreeing to come back on the second day of May, and then she went to the warehouse again.

Entering the defective goods warehouse through the door, Hua Lei slowly looked through the bookshelves in front of the door. When she saw anything that interested her or was useful, she would make a mark and ask Brother Ping An and the others to come and take a look later.

Hua Lei's eyes swept across the bookshelves one by one, and suddenly she saw a bookshelf against the wall filled with unbound single pages. Hua Lei was curious, so she pulled out a stack and took a look, and found that they were test papers and questionnaires from previous years, including those from county examinations, prefectural examinations, and even imperial examinations.

Hua Lei called Brother Ping An over to take a look. Brother Ping An was excited when he saw it. This was very difficult to buy in the bookstores outside, and Xiao Yuan and herself both needed it. This was rare information. Nowadays, the books for participating in the imperial examinations were all handwritten outside the capital city. Where did the test papers and questionnaires come from? Not to mention the printed version, there was not even a handwritten version.

Generally, some bookstores have information that is pieced together by candidates who took the imperial examinations based on their memory. It cannot be said that such complete information is unique in bookstores outside, but it is really rare. Hua's grandfather and Hua Lei's father both took the imperial examinations, and they did not have such a complete and accurate questionnaire.

Ping An's hands were shaking with excitement. He looked at Hua Lei, "Miss, this..." Hua Lei smiled and told Ping An not to get excited. She flipped through the questionnaires on the shelf and found that they were all complete. There were questionnaires on scriptures, ink interpretation, poetry, and policy questions. There were almost all questionnaires from previous years, and even the provincial examination papers that were just completed this year, but there were not many of them.

Hua Lei thought about it. There were so few scrolls, and they couldn't be sold in large quantities. Once they were sold out, how could the bookstore make money? Hua Lei frowned. Ping An, who was standing next to her, saw Hua Lei's expression and thought that Hua Lei didn't want it. He leaned close to her ear and whispered, "Miss, these scrolls are very rare outside the bookstore, and Xiaoyuan will also take the imperial examination in the future, and these materials will be useful to her."

Hualei nodded. This was indeed rare. Let's take these back first and think about how to make these questionnaires play a greater role after we get back.

Hua Lei made up her mind, so she took a stack of papers and went to find the second manager, asking if the papers could be sold. After getting a positive answer, Hua Lei asked Ping An and the others to stop choosing books, and they carefully moved all the papers on the bookshelf onto the mule cart. The second manager's mouth twitched when seeing this. Each of these people held the papers as if they were holding a golden hen that lays eggs. Is it really that necessary?

For someone who only knew a few words and was able to become the second in command, he was already very satisfied with himself. He had no goal of taking the imperial examination. He could take home two taels of silver every month, and his wife at home was very satisfied with him. On the days when the silver was paid every month, she would go to the market to buy a piece of meat and two taels of wine to satisfy his craving.

The second steward lying flat certainly couldn't see the value of these papers, and those who could see the value couldn't find a place to buy them. The second steward looked at the empty bookshelf that was originally full of papers, and was secretly happy. In the past few years, this defective warehouse has been built bigger and bigger, and the things inside have been piled up more and more, but no one has ever come to spend real money to buy these.

The last time they came, they spent thirty taels. This time, they added more people and mule carts. It seems that the thirty taels will not be lost again. The second steward was very happy to be able to turn these defective products that took up space into treasure. After all, the papers don't take up space when rolled up. After Hualei and the others finished loading the papers, all the papers only took up one-third of the space on the mule cart.

Then Hua Lei continued to walk around, and the others continued to select books. This time, because of the experience from last time and the direct feedback from the students in the bookstore, the range of books they selected was more targeted, and soon, piles of selected books were loaded onto the mule cart.

After the two mule carts were full, Hua Lei looked at the large pile of books on the ground and was a little dumbfounded. The manager smiled and asked the clerk to bring two more mule carts to help move the books on the ground to the mule carts. Hua Lei saw that there was still a small half of space empty on the two new mule carts. She decided to go all out and selected a few large piles of books to fill up the small empty space. Then she walked out of the printing house with the second manager's smiling face that only showed his teeth but not his eyes.

The steward weighed the ten silver ingots of five taels in his hand and rubbed them for a long time. Fifty taels, more than his monthly salary for two years. I didn't expect that these defective products could also be sold for money. In the future, I don't have to be scolded by the steward because of the defective products. With four mule carts, Hua Lei and his group returned to Qingyun Lane with satisfaction.

The books were moved into the study room. The room, which was not very big to begin with, became even more crowded. The unsold books were first sorted according to certain categories, those that were out of stock in the bookstore were replenished, and new books that were not in the bookstore were put on the shelves. At the same time, the content on the black wooden board in front of the door was also adjusted. The rest were all placed in the bookstore's warehouse in the east wing.

After more than half a day of statistics and statistics on the book sales in bookstores and Xiaoqun's usual feedback, Hualei found that books such as storybooks and picture albums also sold very well in bookstores. In the past, what was sold in the old house were basically books for students to use in the imperial examinations. There were very few storybooks and picture albums, so there were basically no stocks at home. However, in the past half month, the single books of storybooks and picture albums selected for the first time have people coming to buy them almost every day, so this time Hualei selected more storybooks and picture albums.

Relatively speaking, there are more versions of these storybooks, and the quality of the paper used for the pages is relatively poor, but the advantage is that the price is low, and Hualei's pricing is lower than that of other bookstores, so the sales volume is still considerable.