Chapter 31 What Even Scholars Can't Do
The ancients were really good at doing business.
The only two remaining guests in Moxiangzhai also left. Qi Moxuan sat there for a while feeling depressed and bored, so he simply prepared to close the door and go home.
As soon as he stood up, he saw that the guest who had asked about Master Qingfeng's storybook had returned with a few books in his hands. He recognized that they were Master Qingfeng's latest storybooks.
Qi Moxuan wanted to cry again.
Cui Qingyi smiled and said, "Boss, do you accept storybooks in your shop?"
Qi Moxuan said listlessly: "I won't accept it. It's useless even if I accept it. Who can compare to Master Qingfeng? I think my Moxiangzhai will be closed soon."
He felt extremely aggrieved, and he had no idea what the origin of this Qixing Bookstore was. They had immediately seized the novels of Master Qingfeng and made them their exclusive copyright. The customer base that was originally shared equally among all the major bookstores in Dongping County was now snatched away by them.
"What if I can come up with a better script than Master Qingfeng's? What price can you give me?"
Cui Qingyi's idea for the storybook came to her on a whim after she saw the Seven Stars Study, and was also spurred on by Konjac's eagerness to earn money. There were only three people in the family, and she was the only one who was lazy and unproductive all day long. This couldn't go on.
She's a small girl, but she speaks so arrogantly.
“Heh~”
Qi Moxuan sneered, raised his eyebrows and looked at Cui Qingyi seriously, "If you can come up with a better book than Master Qingfeng's, I will give you a share of the profits like the Qixing Bookstore, 40% to 60%."
There was a hint of anger in Qi Moxuan's tone. The fact that he could say such words probably meant that he was really ostracized by Qixing Study, but Cui Qingyi didn't care. She only needed these words from the shopkeeper.
"A gentleman's word is as good as gold. It's settled then. I'll bring the script over in a few days."
Regardless of Qi Moxuan's reaction, Cui Qingyi turned and left. Although she had no confidence in other aspects, she was confident that she had more advantages than others in writing novels. After all, she had read so many stories.
Qi Moxuan closed the bookstore early and didn't take Cui Qingyi's words to heart at all. Seeing that the bookstore's business was getting worse day by day, he felt anxious and confused.
His family of five relies on the bookstore for their livelihood.
Now he doesn't see a single customer every day. If the shop wasn't his own, he would start losing money soon.
When Konjac learned that her daughter was going to write storybooks to sell, her eyes widened. In Konjac's inherent cognition, those who could make money with books were all literati, just like the people of the Cui family.
Several elders of the Cui family were renowned writers of their day, and it was said that a single piece of their calligraphy could fetch as much as one thousand taels of silver. Konjac had never seen anything so beautiful as to be worth a thousand taels of silver.
But in her heart, people who can earn one thousand taels of silver by just writing a few words are definitely not ordinary people. Even if those people have the same surname as their girl, Cui, they are still people they can never reach in their lifetime.
But now her daughter actually said she wanted to write storybooks to make money. Konjac wondered if this would work. But she felt it was not good to pour cold water on her daughter. After all, when she started selling embroidery at the embroidery workshop, her daughter supported her unconditionally, so she should support her daughter now as well.
Konjac gritted his teeth in his heart and decided to go against his conscience: "Well, girl, you can do it, come on."
From that day on, Cui Qingyi began to conceive her own storybook.
She had observed carefully when she went to the bookstore before. The most popular books on the market now are those describing stories of talented men and beautiful women, but this has also led to the saturation of such books on the market.
The reason why Qingfeng Gongzi's storybooks are so popular is not because they are so unique, but the most important reason is that his storybooks were adapted into plays and performed on stage in the capital.
The capital city is the capital of the Jin Dynasty, where many powerful and influential people gather. As time went by, the name of Master Qingfeng became famous throughout the country, and his vernacular novels became popular.
There are people who have set great examples before them, and it is actually very difficult for later generations to replicate their predecessors' paths. If Cui Qingyi wants her own scripts to sell well, she has to open up a new track.
So after much deliberation, Cui Qingyi gave up writing those sad and lingering love stories and focused on writing detective novels.
The so-called public case novels are criminal investigation novels. Cui Qingyi had long discovered that this type of novel was completely blank in the literary market of Dajin. In other words, she was the first person in Dajin to write this type of novel.
As for whether writing this kind of novel would violate taboos, Cui Qingyi wasn't worried at all. She hadn't exactly been living a life of idleness in the nineteen years since she arrived in the Great Jin. During the fifteen years she'd been confined by the Yuan family, she'd thoroughly studied the laws of the Great Jin. As long as it didn't involve royal secrets, literary creation here was quite free.
Of course, Cui Qingyi knew very well that if she wanted her book to have selling points, she couldn’t just write about public cases, and there had to be very complicated things interspersed in it.
The tragic and romantic love between men and women is an indispensable element. Since ancient times, many strange cases have been passed down only because of the addition of love elements.
As for public case stories, Cui Qingyi's mind is even more full of them. In her previous life, when she was a child, the happiest time of her life was watching Kaifeng Mansion on TV.
Although those bizarre cases are frightening, they are truly exciting.
Konjac was embroidering while observing her daughter's movements. She saw that the girl, who had been frowning in thought before, had already started writing. Konjac wanted to see what she was writing, but she was afraid of disturbing Cui Qingyi, so she could only suppress her curiosity and focus on her embroidery needle.
Qi Moxuan had long forgotten what Cui Qingyi said that day. He took a feather duster and carefully swept the dust on the bookshelf. The anger from the previous few days was gone from his face. Now he just felt discouraged.
In the past, when there were many guests, there wouldn’t be so much dust on the bookshelf.
He has been following his father in running the bookstore business since he was a few years old. It has been more than ten years now. No one can empathize with the pain he feels when he sees the bookstore declining day by day.
He was already considering whether to close the bookstore and sell something else. He couldn't just wait until the business failed and he lost money.
But this decision is difficult to make. Qi Moxuan is not sure whether he has the ability to run another business well.
In the silence, Cui Qingyi walked in with the manuscript wrapped in oil paper. Not seeing anyone, she raised her voice, "Is the shopkeeper here?"
Qi Moxuan was heartbroken and had no energy to entertain guests. He just called out from a distance, "If you want to buy Master Qingfeng's books, go to the Qixing Study across the street. I don't have any here."
He has gotten used to it over the past half month. People who come to his place will change places because they can't find Master Qingfeng's books.
Cui Qingyi: "Boss, didn't we agree before that if I can come up with a better storybook than Master Qingfeng's, you'll give me an exclusive share of the profits? Are you going to change your mind?"
Qi Moxuan came out from behind the innermost bookshelf, and when he saw Cui Qingyi standing outside, he suddenly remembered what had happened.
But he didn't believe that Cui Qingyi could really come up with any good storybooks. There were so many scholars in Dongping County, and there were people who imitated Master Qingfeng and wrote storybooks to sell. There were also some storybooks written by these people that were worth reading, but they were far inferior to those written by Master Qingfeng.
How could a woman like her do something that even educated people couldn't?
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