Chapter 1639 - 1634: Dumbfounded

"Come on, I’ll take you to see that cloth shop Manager Zhang treasures like a baby, and see what’s so special about it that he lost control like that!"

Zheng Zhi, clearly in a great mood, said to Mu Shuangshuang.

"Perfect, I want to see it too. I want to know what kind of shop I’ll be running in the county," Mu Shuangshuang said.

She followed Zheng Zhi downstairs, the two of them got into the carriage together and headed for the cloth shop he’d mentioned.

It didn’t take long before Mu Shuangshuang and Zheng Zhi arrived.

When she was still in the carriage, Mu Shuangshuang didn’t feel anything in particular.

But the moment she stepped down, she finally understood what it meant to be dumbstruck.

Right in front of her was Zhang’s Cloth Shop. Manager Zhang obviously hadn’t yet told his staff that the shop had changed hands, so business was still continuing as usual.

The shop’s scale was nothing like what Zheng Zhi had described—no mere size of one private dining room in the restaurant, but several of those rooms added together.

The cloth shop covered a huge area, and it had two floors!

The shop’s location was extremely accessible, with an enormous flow of people.

All around were shops selling women’s rouge, powder, gold and silver jewelry and the like, which made business here even better on top of good.

Relying on this shop alone, Manager Zhang’s annual income was no small figure.

In the county, there were plenty of people eyeing that cloth shop of his!

But in the end, by a twist of fate, it ended up cheap for Mu Shuangshuang.

Guess once the other shopkeepers in the county hear about it, their jaws are going to drop!

"Well? Was that two hundred and ten taels worth spending?" Zheng Zhi asked.

"Worth it and then some—this is absolutely a steal! A shop like this would take at least a thousand taels to buy, wouldn’t it?" Mu Shuangshuang asked.

"About that! But even if you had a thousand taels, it’d be useless. Manager Zhang would never sell—he’s not hurting for that little bit of Silver," Zheng Zhi said.

"That’s true. Since he’s the famous cloth merchant across all of Qianzhou Prefecture, why would he care for such small change? The location really is prime, and the shop is excellent. What a pity it’s about to change hands to mine!" Mu Shuangshuang said with a laugh.

"That may be, but getting this shop won’t give you much of an advantage, because Manager Zhang is extremely stingy.

Right now he’s probably already looking for people, ready to pay any price to buy the shop next to you!

Whatever you do in the future, he’ll copy it, and he won’t stop until he crushes you," Zheng Zhi said to Mu Shuangshuang.

"That makes me even more eager—just what I need, a foil to set me off."

Mu Shuangshuang had already gone through Manager Zhang’s suppression routine once.

Back then, Xia Guagua opened a knockoff of Chengfeng Restaurant—be it dishes or décor, everything copied Chengfeng Restaurant.

And how did that turn out? Mu Shuangshuang saw it with her own eyes.

Unless... he can copy it exactly, down to the last detail!

Otherwise, he’ll definitely end up like a dog pretending to be a tiger and showing its true colors!

"Not bad, that’s just like the you I know," Zheng Zhi said.

When Zheng Zhi said all that, he hadn’t meant to discourage Mu Shuangshuang; on the contrary, he was hoping to fire up her fighting spirit.

Sure enough, Mu Shuangshuang’s reaction was just as he’d imagined, so Zheng Zhi felt reassured.

With the matter of the county shop settled, what remained was to find people to renovate, then recruit staff, and finally, just open for business.

Mu Shuangshuang still wanted to follow her original plan and open a dessert shop in the county. As it happened, there were plenty of places nearby where women went shopping.

After walking around and getting tired, they could come in for a bowl of sweet soup and relax.

She followed Zheng Zhi into the cloth shop, showed the staff the house deed and land deed, and told them to go find Manager Zhang.

Apparently he was itching to beat her.

Just as Zheng Zhi predicted, that very afternoon Manager Zhang had everything in the shop moved out.

At the same time, the shop next to Mu Shuangshuang’s also moved everything out. Its door, just like hers, was secured with a big lock.

It looked like Manager Zhang had already started negotiations with the owner.

The reason he closed up was to wait and see what her next move would be.

Luckily, the county was Zheng Zhi’s turf. He introduced some reliable carpenters and masons to Mu Shuangshuang, so she didn’t have to worry about those people being bought off by Manager Zhang.

All afternoon, Mu Shuangshuang was busy discussing her ideas with the craftsmen doing the work.

Only when it was completely dark did the renovation plans for her shop finally get nailed down.

She paid the deposit and asked Zheng Zhi to help keep an eye on things, so for the time being, she could let go of the rest.

...

...

The next day, Mu Shuangshuang left the county and returned to the town.

She’d stayed in the county for a full two days, and Yu Dahai had long been getting anxious.

He even thought about sending someone to the county to find out if something had happened to Mu Shuangshuang.

In the end, he held himself back.

Good thing he did, or he would have missed Shuangshuang on the way.

The first thing Mu Shuangshuang did after returning to town was to tell Yu Dahai everything that had happened in the county.

Yu Dahai listened, stunned again and again.

When she told him about her stroke of dog-shit luck, he even gave Mu Shuangshuang a big thumbs-up.

"Shuangshuang, luck is a kind of strength too! That Manager Zhang probably owed you in his last life and has to pay it back in this one!" Yu Dahai said.

Mu Shuangshuang laughed. "Maybe you’re right! But doing this, I’ve offended him outright."

"Offending him was inevitable! Unless you really did as he said and went to draw a few more designs for him.

If you ask me, just judging from Manager Zhang’s temperament, offending him is normal. Otherwise you’d run into him sooner or later anyway."

The cold doesn’t form three feet thick in a single day. After so many years as a restaurant steward, Yu Dahai had pretty much seen through this sort of thing.

"That’s what I thought too, or I wouldn’t have insisted on taking that cloth shop," Mu Shuangshuang said.

Mu Shuangshuang’s thinking was: since she wanted to carve out a path in the county, she had to be different from everyone else.

She wasn’t like Zheng Zhi—born and bred in the county, with all his connections there.

He had deep pockets and strong resources, and a father who was the County Magistrate.

She had none of that, only carefully planned steps.

But precisely because she had nothing, she allowed herself the freedom to fail.

"You don’t need to worry about the renovation. What’s left now is picking people. We have to think this through: are we going to hire from the county, or from town?" Yu Dahai said.

"If we hire in the county, there’s a big chance we’ll run into Manager Zhang’s spies. But if we hire from town, we have to decide who to send over."

Yu Dahai was thinking quite far ahead.

Mu Shuangshuang had always been very satisfied with his capabilities.

"We can pick a few reliable lads from our restaurant, have them act as stewards or supervisors—anyway, we have to put our trusted people in place.

As for the rest, we’ll have to recruit in the county. If Manager Zhang wants to use underhanded tricks, there’s no way to completely stop him," Mu Shuangshuang said.

"Exactly. If he wants to mess with us, what can we do? We’ll just have to take it.

But since we’ve come this far, it’s not like we haven’t seen the world. We know roughly what kind of tricks he has up his sleeve.

Anyway, we’ll block soldiers with more soldiers and water with earth dams—we just won’t let ourselves take a loss!"