Outer city of Suero.
The spring break following the Qingxin Festival has just passed, and the stalls in the outer city are already bustling with people.
Chen Hansheng and Karanda were walking around the stalls. They had watched the New Year's Eve party at school and then set out with the caravan to Suero.
Chen Hansheng doesn't need to travel frequently now, but as the deputy leader of the business group, it is still necessary for him to keep abreast of market trends. So he visits several major trading cities such as Suero every once in a while.
When you are lucky, you can find some good things that the locals think are not valuable, but the school can process them. A month ago, in this market, Chen Hansheng found a brown rubber block, which is said to be a kind of gum produced in the southern forest. The locals couldn't think of any great use for it, so they made it into elastic insoles, toy balls, small bowls and other things. He thought it was very similar to rubber at the time, and after buying it back for identification, he found that it was indeed a polymer compound very close to rubber. So they immediately contacted this businessman for supply and established a new trade route.
After the New Year, there are often some new faces appearing in the market. Chen Hansheng is like a hunter looking for prey, wandering around in the forest happily.
Although the weather has just warmed up, the atmosphere in the market is already very lively.
Chen Hansheng looked around and chatted with the stall owners. Karanda had no such interest. She just hummed a little tune and followed Chen Hansheng.
The song Karanda hummed was "Moonlight over the Lotus Pond", a song that Lao Chen had taught her and she had sung at the New Year's Eve party. Whenever she thought of the scene when they sang this song together on the stage that day, she couldn't help but curl up her lips.
Originally, Lao Chen was assigned the task of singing by the organizing committee of the evening party, and he just wanted to deal with it. He picked a song at random. He taught her twice and went back to work. But Kalanda took this appearance very seriously. Even she herself didn't know why she decided to practice fighting spirit and had the motivation to practice such a song.
In order to practice the song well, she specially found Liu Wan as her teacher, calibrating the pronunciation word by word and singing the correct pitch sentence by sentence.
This song was very different from their traditional style of songs. She practiced secretly for two weeks before she mastered it completely. When she sang the song loudly during the rehearsal, everyone was shocked.
She still remembers Chen Hansheng and how happy and proud she looked when she heard his singing.
"Okay, stop singing. Take a break. I'll teach you some other songs when I have time. My ears are going to get calluses from listening to the same song on repeat all the time." Chen Hansheng put a piece of ore back on the stall, turned around and joked with Kalanda.
Then he was kicked in the leg.
"Hey, if your teammates saw you throwing a tantrum right now, they would be shocked."
"What do you mean?" Kalanda crossed his hands on his chest and looked at Lao Chen with sidelong eyes.
"Of course I'm secretly happy. I'm the only one who can see you like this. They only deserve to see you put on a stern face and act like a big woman."
Karanda bit her lip, wanting to imitate those girls and say "hate." But even though her lips were almost engraved with teeth marks, she still couldn't say it. In the end, she had no choice but to kick Lao Chen again.
Chen Hansheng held Karanda's hand, and the two of them wandered around the market for a while, just like they were going shopping. Suddenly, Chen Hansheng exclaimed, walked over to a stall, picked up a cup, and examined it carefully.
"What's wrong? What's so good about a cup?" Karanda took a look and found that the cup was made of iron, and looked very similar to the enamel cups commonly seen in school, but the quality was much worse. And there was no colorful and slippery outer layer.
Chen Hansheng didn't answer, but picked up the bowls, pots and basins on the stall and looked at them.
Seeing Chen Hansheng looking at it carefully, the stall owner quickly introduced: "Dear guest, the ironware produced here is good stuff. You see, this style is especially popular among discerning nobles. If you sell it to other places, it will definitely sell well."
Chen Hansheng put down the teapot in his hand and pointed at his face. "Can you tell where I came from?"
"I know. You must be from Montenegro. Everyone in Suero knows that the gentlemen and ladies from Montenegro have black hair and black eyes." The stall owner said with some flattery.
"Then don't you know that we merchants from Montenegro always only buy raw materials?" Chen Hansheng said.
"I've heard of this, but mine are better. I've never seen this kind of iron pots and pans sold in Montenegro. I guess you haven't seen this kind of style there either?" said the stall owner.
Chen Hansheng picked up another basin and pointed at the two small crossed swords on it and asked, "What does this mean?"
"Ah, this is their... brand. If you want to use it well in the future, just look for Double Swords brand ironware."
"Hey, there's even a brand."
"How about it? Do you want to buy it?"
"Buy one first and try it out to see if it's durable. If it works well, I'll come to you tomorrow." Chen Hansheng spent ten copper shields to buy this cup.
"No problem, this is a fixed stall and I'm here every day. You're welcome to come again tomorrow," said the stall owner.
After the two walked away, Kalanda asked, "What happened?"
"Don't you think this cup looks very similar to the cups in school?" Chen Hansheng.
"So what? It doesn't look that difficult. It's normal for someone to imitate it."
"That means this style leaked from the school. The problem is, we have never sold products like this to the outside world. It would be fine if one or two pieces leaked out, but whether it's cups or pots, there are more than a dozen products that look so similar, so there's a problem behind it. This kind of design can't be made casually," said Chen Hansheng.
"Should we go find the owner and ask him about this?"
"Wait a moment, I need to go back to the caravan to confirm another matter."
Chen Hansheng returned to the office in Suero and waited until the evening, when he finally saw a young man from the industrial group. His name was Cai Xuetao, and he came here with the caravan to select ore, and he knew a lot about metal processing.
"Xiao Cai, come and look at this cup."
"Hey, Lao Chen, where did you get this cup? We haven't missed anything as file-like as this."
"I bought it at the market. Could it be made by the locals?"
Cai Xuetao looked at it for a while and said, "No, this surface treatment doesn't look like what they do. It looks more like the standard treatment method in our factory. It's just that the conditions seem to be a little worse and not done properly."
"Are you sure?"
"Sure, I've seen the locals' ironware, and it's not the same thing. Old Chen, what's going on?"
"Don't make this public yet. I need to investigate it thoroughly."