Chapter 8 The Eighth Day After Stopping Running
Chen Bozheng bought a ticket to Zhuhai and took a bus. The bus swayed and bumped along the way, constantly stopping to pick up and drop off passengers.
By the time we arrived in Zhuhai, it was already the next morning.
As dawn broke, he randomly picked a street stall and ordered a plate of rice noodle rolls, eating while worrying about Wen Chan's situation.
Whether it was his imagination or not, Wen Chan seemed to have changed since the last incident.
Previously, Chen Bozheng was not familiar with Wen Chan. He was more familiar with Wen Chan's brother, Wen Yong. Wen Yong did not often mention his sister, only occasionally mentioning that she was in poor health and had a somewhat spoiled personality.
While Wen Chan's behavior had indeed been largely as Wen Yong had described previously, things have changed in the last few days.
Well, things have become a bit unclear to Chen Bozheng.
It was a little after nine in the morning.
The bank slowly opened its doors.
Huang Liying was chatting and laughing with two colleagues behind the counter. They were both locals from well-off families. Since they started working at the bank, they had long been used to passing the time by drinking tea and reading newspapers.
But today, something's not right, because someone actually came to my door wanting to buy treasury bonds.
When Huang Liying first heard Chen Bozheng's words, she was somewhat incredulous. "How many treasury bonds do you want to buy?"
"Four hundred yuan? You're selling it at 97 yuan, right?"
Chen Bo asked again.
Huang Liying and her colleague exchanged a glance and nodded. "It's 97, that's right. If you really want it, we'll go get it for you right away."
"Okay, I really want it, but I want the 1985 batch of government bonds!"
Chen Bo was leaning against the cabinet, pretending to be nonchalant, but his palms were already sweating.
He tried to speak in a relaxed tone so that others wouldn't see his mood.
He really didn't expect that the prices of government bonds would differ so much just a few hundred kilometers apart.
In Shenzhen, banks buy government bonds for 102 yuan each, while the black market price is 119 yuan. This means that for every 100 government bonds, Chen Bozheng and his team can earn 22 yuan by passing them through Zhuhai and Shenzhen.
As Chen Bozheng emerged from the bank with four hundred yuan in government bonds, the sunlight fell upon him, and he felt a burning heat in his heart, his heart pounding rapidly.
"I wonder how Zheng and the others are doing. They've been gone for a whole day."
The fat man looked worried and kept glancing outside.
Wen Chan was watching TV and didn't want to pay any attention to him.
It wasn't until the fat man brought it up again that Wen Chan turned around and said to him, "They didn't go far, they'll be back by tomorrow afternoon at the latest, so you can rest assured."
"Come and have some tea." Aunt Sun brought two cups of tea to Fatty and Wen Chan.
The fat man finally stopped talking, took a sip of tea, looked at Wen Chan with a helpless yet reasonable expression, "This TV series is quite good, but sister-in-law, do you really need to watch it from morning till now?"
Wen Chan waved her hand, asked Aunt Sun for a glass of cold water, and then gestured to the fat man with what she was holding, "If you're really bored, why don't you join us in stringing beaded flowers?"
“Oh dear, he can’t do it. He’s clumsy. He spilled some this morning. Fatty, if you’re free, go peel some ginger. The processing plant needs as much ginger as you need.”
Aunt Sun quickly said.
The fat man had no choice but to obediently help peel the cicada, seeing that it was sitting in front of the TV and had no intention of moving.
They didn't get paid for their work this time, since they were just watching TV and using the fan in someone else's house. They couldn't very well ask for money back.
Chen Bozheng and the others did not return until the afternoon of the following day.
They returned one after the other; Lin Qingfeng and the monk returned first, followed by Chen Bozheng.
As soon as he got home, Chen Bozheng immediately told Fatty to close the door, then gestured for everyone to come inside. He looked at Lin Qingfeng and the monk and asked, "What were the prices like at the place you went to?"
The monk took out the government bonds he had bought back, saying, "They only sell them in Shantou, they don't buy them. The price is 93, so I bought them back too."
“In Guangzhou, they only sell, they don’t buy, and the price is 100,” Lin Qingfeng said. “I didn’t want to buy it at first, but then I remembered what you said, Zheng Ge, so I bought it.”
“100 is enough. If we sell it on the black market, we can make forty or fifty yuan.” Chen Bozheng did the math in his mind. “At least we’ll make back the fare.”
Chen Bozheng laid out all the government bonds on the table. "I bought them here for 97. It seems that Shantou is the cheapest place."
“It’s not just the cheapest one,” the monk suddenly said.
Wen Chan and Chen Bo both looked at the monk, who said, "The bank staff in Shantou even asked us if we accepted private loans. If we did, they would sell them to us for 89."
"How can it be so cheap?"
The fat man exclaimed in surprise, "Isn't this a losing proposition?"
Chen Bozheng also frowned, "Monk, could there be something wrong with this? What if there's a trap involved?"
The monk said, "Brother Zheng, I asked him. He said that his work units have been using these government bonds as bonuses and welfare benefits. Many people have accumulated a lot of government bonds, but these government bonds can't be spent, so they can only sit there. If they go to the black market to sell them, they're afraid something might happen. That person probably dared to talk to me about this because he saw that I was from out of town."
Did he say how many they had? And what year were they from?
Chen Bo's heart skipped a beat.
The fat man was timid, and upon hearing this, he quickly interrupted Chen Bozheng, "Brother Zheng, isn't this too risky? If you ask me, wouldn't it be better for us to just buy bank stocks? We can make a lot of money this time!"
“Your trip, without deducting transportation costs and other expenses, will earn you about 270 yuan,” Wen Chan said. “Even if you time it perfectly, it will take three days to go back and forth. That means if you keep exchanging government bonds between the two places, you can only do it about nine times at most. If you keep doing this, you can only earn 10,000 yuan a month.”
When everyone first heard the number 270, they couldn't help but beam with joy. But when they heard the final number, they were stunned.
Nobody's stupid. Earning 10,000 yuan a month is a pipe dream for most people these days, but for them, it's like drinking poison to quench their thirst.
Wen Chan said, "You need to increase your capital to speed up the process of making money. If possible, you can also try buying from individuals, as individual sellers' prices are definitely lower than those of banks."
"Where are we going to find the initial capital?" the fat man said worriedly. "We don't know anyone here, and even if we wanted to borrow money, I'm afraid no one would be willing to lend it to us."
"I think I can manage to scrape together 10,000 yuan. If I have 10,000 yuan as capital, can I earn 80,000 yuan by the beginning of next month?"
Chen Bozheng had a cigarette between his teeth, his brows furrowed as he looked at Wen Chan.
The fat man exclaimed in surprise, "Brother Zheng, where did you get ten thousand yuan?"
Chen Bo waved to the fat man and turned to look at Wen Chan.
Lin Qingfeng said in a low voice, "How could one ten thousand yuan possibly turn into eighty thousand?!"
“Okay.” Wen Chan suddenly interrupted Lin Qingfeng, her tone very firm.
Lin Qingfeng was taken aback. He didn't feel as resentful towards Wen Chan as he had at the beginning, but he disagreed with Wen Chan's arbitrary words. "How can that be? You can only earn three thousand yuan at most for doing this once!"
"The compounding effect".
Wen Chan said, "The first ten thousand yuan will only earn us three thousand yuan, but the profit keeps piling up on the principal and keeps rolling over, so we might be able to make a profit in the end."
She looked around, as if searching for paper and pen.
Chen Bo went inside and searched, but couldn't find any paper, only a pen. He then took a cigarette box, opened it, and handed it to Wen Chan.
Wen Chan didn't mind at all, and took a pen to start calculating on it.
She didn't pause for a moment when she put pen to paper, as if the formula had already been formed in her mind.
Her gaze was focused intently on the pen, her fingers slender, her eyes lowered, and her profile as gentle as white porcelain.
Chen Bo was watching from the side when, for some reason, he suddenly felt that he should at least go out and buy a notebook.
It feels a bit unfair to Wen Chan to make such calculations on cigarette boxes.
"In the end, you'll at least earn 156,800..."
Wen Chan said, "This figure is the result I got by taking all your money into account, without deducting transportation and living expenses, using the lowest cost and the highest price. Of course, if we choose not to sell the government bonds we bought last time, but instead exchange them at the bank, the profit will be even higher, maybe reaching 170,000."
Lin Qingfeng, the monk, and the fat man stared in disbelief at the numbers Wen Chan had written down.
As Chen Bo was taking a look, Fatty and Lin Qingfeng squeezed over, and the group of people craned their necks to stare at the cigarette box.
The fat man's jaw nearly dropped to his chest. "This...this makes so much money?!"
"What else do you think?" Wen Chan said, "But this is the most ideal situation. We still need to consider the actual situation."
"If we had more capital, wouldn't we be rich?!" Lin Qingfeng couldn't help but ask.
Wen Chan spread her hands, "If you had enough capital, you might all become millionaires."
millionaire?
Everyone's breathing was unusually heavy.
Chen Bozheng and his group traveled all the way from Beijing to Shenzhen. What was their purpose? It was simply to make money.
They came to buy clothes wholesale to resell, but they didn't dare to have too much ambition. They were just hoping to make double their money, and that would be enough for them.
They never even dared to entertain the idea of becoming millionaires.
But the cicada's words stirred up their ambitions.
"If I could become a millionaire, I would definitely buy a car, and then buy ten pigs to go back to my hometown and throw a feast. I would let everyone in the village see that I, Fatty, am not a good-for-nothing!"
The fat man roared with great ambition.
"Pfft."
Wen Chan thought the fat man was going to say something threatening, but she didn't expect it to be this.
With a smile and a gentle smile, she said, "Okay, then I wish you all your dreams come true in the future."
"Hehehehehe." The fat man laughed in an extremely lewd and smug way, but as he laughed, he burst into tears.
He raised his hand and wiped his face. "Sister-in-law, I'm glad you didn't laugh at me for being ignorant. I'm not a very ambitious person. To tell you the truth, if I had money, I would go home in style and let my parents see that even though I'm not as good at studying as my brother, I, Fatty, am not a useless person."
Chen Bo patted him on the shoulder, "Fatty, that day will come."
He looked at Wen Chan, his lips moved, and he said thank you.
Wen Chan smiled at him, which was her way of responding.
Wen Chan soon found out how Chen Bozheng got the initial 10,000 yuan: he had pawned his jade pendant for 13,000 yuan.
Chen Bo gave Wen Chan three hundred yuan, telling her to keep it for living expenses.
Wen Chan noticed that this person was not particular about food and clothing and did not spend much on himself, but he was really generous to others.
"Really for me?" Wen Chan looked at the money on the table but didn't rush to take it.
Chen Bozheng said, "It was meant to be given to you anyway. The fact that we were able to make money this time is all thanks to your idea. Otherwise, even if we racked our brains, we wouldn't have been able to come up with such a good solution. This is for you to spend now. After we deduct the 80,000 yuan payment for the goods, we'll split the remaining money 50/50. You get half, and Fatty and I will split the rest."
Wen Chan pressed the money on the table, looked up at Chen Bozheng, and said, "You're being too generous with how you're dividing it. I've come up with an idea: you guys will handle both the money and the work."
"Take it. If I didn't want to give it to you, I wouldn't have talked to you," Chen Bozheng said.
Wen Chan accepted the gift only after seeing that he genuinely wanted to give it to her.
Then, resting her chin on her hand, she asked Chen Bozheng, "Are you interested in altering the styles of the clothes you ordered?"
Chen Bozheng: ?
He lifted his eyelids, revealing a pair of dark, expressive eyes beneath his thick eyebrows, which showed a hint of doubt.
A note from the author:
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