A few days after the paint had been applied, the various bowls, plates, and condiments were all finally ready. Truth be told, the little cart, wheeled out now, was quite striking in appearance—the small bamboo grove rendered in that three-dimensional style, the five characters “Bamboo’s Preserved Eggs” set within it. Whether the preserved eggs could actually sell for twenty coins now seemed to hinge on this one gambit. Of course, though Nie Yunzhu had put on a confident face in front of Ning Yi, in her heart she likely didn’t believe it much at all—something Ning Yi understood perfectly well. But since the outcome hadn’t been decided yet, there was little point explaining further; better to let the results speak for themselves once things were actually underway.
As for how to get several restaurants willing to take Nie Yunzhu’s preserved eggs on consignment—that part was now his responsibility.
The matter, in truth, was simple enough. If they weren’t willing to have Nie Yunzhu bring the eggs to them, then he’d simply make them come to her instead. When a business was effectively a monopoly, there were plenty of ways to break it open.
That afternoon, he asked Su Chonghua for a few days’ leave, saying he’d be arriving late in the mornings for a while, and had him arrange for someone else to oversee the students’ reading—the first hour of class was mostly just recitation and memorization anyway, so it hardly mattered whether Ning Yi was there for it.
By late February, Jiangning had truly entered the season of orioles on the wing and grass turning green. Fresh buds sprouted soft and downy on the branches, willow catkins drifted elegantly through the air like floating silk, and in the early mornings one could hear birdsong along the streets. The air still carried a slight chill, though the scholars and literati tended to rise early, often gathering friends to go boating on the Qinhuai in the mornings, the faint, drifting strains of music floating over from painted pleasure boats in the distance, set against the drifting willow catkins—a scene of unmistakably refined, literary elegance.
As the sun rose, Ning Yi walked the streets of Jiangning. Though this was his first spring in Jiangning, the sight of willow catkins drifting through the sky was, by now, an entirely familiar part of this ancient world to him. With the arrival of spring, foot traffic on the roads had picked up—merchants converging from all directions, scholars carrying their portfolios of writing samples, the occasional escort captain or martial artist, burly men whose true skill was anyway hard to guess at. A chubby little boy was teasing a dog by the roadside, making faces at it, until he finally provoked the dog into a furious chase, barking wildly, chasing him straight into the river with a splash. The boy paddled his way out some distance downstream, then turned around and made another face; his mother, spotting him from not far off, stood with hands on hips, shouting curses from the riverbank.
Nie Yunzhu’s little stall was set up a few streets over. Today was its first day back out, though the two of them had already spoken that morning. Ning Yi wasn’t headed there now to see how much of a stir the cart caused—his actual destination was the restaurants nearby. Halfway there, he ran into Li Pin coming the other way, apparently on his way to the academy.
“Liheng.” As colleagues for a month now, Li Pin knew Ning Yi came each morning to listen to his stories, always punctual, so seeing him now clearly not headed toward the academy struck him as a little odd. When he asked, Ning Yi simply said he had some matters to attend to. Since Ning Yi wasn’t going to class, there was no reason for Li Pin to head to the academy either. “Could I be of any help?”
“Ha, just a small matter. No need.” Ning Yi thought for a moment. “Brother Li, do you live around here?”
“Just down that lane ahead. If you have time, Liheng, do come by for a visit,” Li Pin said with a smile. “My wife has long admired your reputation and has been hoping to meet you.”
Ning Yi politely declined, then said, “Since you live nearby, Brother Li, would you happen to know which teahouses or restaurants around here are the finest, the most expensive?”
“Chunyi Tower, Yangxu Tower, and Sihai Tower up ahead are all quite good, and there are a few others further down that street as well. I’ve nothing pressing at the moment—if you’re headed that way, Liheng, I could accompany you.”
Li Pin came across as easygoing and free-spirited, yet remarkably thorough in both word and deed. Ning Yi smiled. “No need today, really—I just need to find any one of the pricier places. If you’re hungry, Brother Li, why not join me for breakfast? My treat.”
The two of them headed toward the grandest-looking restaurant on that street. It wasn’t quite the busiest hour of the morning yet, so when Ning Yi and Li Pin arrived, there were still some empty seats inside. Ning Yi slipped the waiter a tip of one qian of silver, and the man immediately turned attentive, leading the two of them upstairs with great courtesy. Ning Yi then casually ordered several of the pricier meat porridges and pastries, while Li Pin ordered only a bowl of three-delicacy noodle soup.
“Do you come here often, Brother Li?” Ning Yi asked, pouring the tea.
Li Pin smiled. “It’s a bit pricier than elsewhere, but the food’s good. I come by occasionally.”
“So… right now would be about the busiest time for this place, Chunyi Tower?”
“Ha, not quite yet. Give it another quarter hour or so, and the place will be packed.”
“I see.” Ning Yi nodded.
Li Pin was clearly curious about why Ning Yi had come here, though he didn’t show it outwardly. Sipping his tea, he chatted idly with Ning Yi, the conversation drifting not toward the stories and philosophical points he usually took an interest in, but toward trivial, everyday matters instead—a dispute over a willow tree cut down the year before last outside, told in an oddly entertaining way. Time passed, and their food arrived. The restaurant filled up steadily, growing noisy and crowded. Ning Yi took a sip of porridge, then rapped on the table; the waiter from earlier raised a hand in acknowledgment and came right over.
“Anything else the young masters need?”
“Two preserved eggs.”
“Pre—preserved eggs?” The waiter looked baffled.
“…You don’t have any?” Ning Yi looked mildly surprised, then thought for a moment, pulling out fifty or sixty coppers from his robe and pointing outside. “Go that way, around the corner—there’s a stall at the street corner selling them, quite a nice-looking cart. Buy two and bring them back. As for condiments, vinegar and soy sauce will do, you should have those here already. Twenty coins each—keep the rest for yourself. Off you go.”
He said this all quite mildly, waved a hand, and turned back to chat with Li Pin about other things. With that commanding air carried over from his past life, the waiter, though visibly bewildered, found himself somehow unable to object, and simply hurried off with the coins, repeating “preserved eggs, vinegar, soy sauce” under his breath. For a restaurant looking to grow its reputation, house rules generally didn’t allow refusing a customer’s simple requests anyway—especially not one who’d tipped a full qian of silver on the way in.
Before long, the waiter returned with the preserved eggs—having apparently asked Nie Yunzhu how best to serve them, along with the vinegar and soy sauce, even thoughtfully bringing along a small dish with some of each already poured out. Ning Yi handed one to Li Pin. “Try it—something new. If it’s not quite to your taste, dip it in the vinegar or soy sauce and see… Actually, the real selling point is how it looks.”
The restaurant remained lively and bustling as the two of them finished their eggs. Ning Yi glanced around at the busy scene, then waved his hand again. “Waiter.”
The man came over once more. Ning Yi pulled out a few dozen more coppers, not even glancing at him. “Two more.”
The waiter looked a little pained, hesitating a moment. “Y-young master, business is really quite busy right now, I can’t really get awa—”
“Hm?” Ning Yi’s sentence was cut off; he glanced at the man, then turned his head and held his gaze for a few seconds, his expression calm but unwavering, hands folded on the table. “Can’t get away?”
“No—no, sir… this humble one will find a way…”
The waiter took the money and left, returning shortly after with the eggs. Ning Yi set them on the table, and once the waiter had gone, said, “Best not to eat too many at once. You could take these back to the academy, let the others try some—would you like to bring one home too, Brother Li?”
Li Pin laughed. “Brother Ning, is this what you came out here for today—these preserved eggs?”
“Ha, indeed it is.”
“May I ask why, specifically?”
“Nothing much—just a little wager.” He’d already finished eating; Ning Yi tucked the remaining egg into his pocket with a smile and stood up. “Shall we go, Brother Li?”
The two of them headed downstairs together. The street outside had grown considerably busier by now. As they exchanged a few more words, Ning Yi glanced toward the row of restaurants nearby. “I made an agreement with someone—that within a month, I’d be selling at least thirty of these twenty-coin preserved eggs every single day. Since it’s a new item, they won’t put it on their counters if we simply bring it to them directly. Looking at how much these restaurants take in daily, bribing their managers over a business worth only thirty eggs a day just wouldn’t be worth the cost—they’d hardly bother with it anyway. So instead, I’ll do the opposite: tomorrow, I’ll hire a few idle men to come here for breakfast every day, for about six or seven days straight, and before long these nearby restaurants will likely start stocking the eggs themselves. They do look quite appealing—slice one open and put it on display, and twenty coins shouldn’t be a problem at all… Though, are these restaurants really this busy every morning?”
“With merchants and travelers passing through constantly, this area’s always lively except in winter,” Li Pin said, thinking it over for a moment, then looked at Ning Yi. “Thirty a day is only six hundred coins’ worth of business. Given your current reputation, Liheng, you could easily sell far more than thirty just by making this thing famous—why go to all this trouble instead?”
“Ha, the terms of the wager specify this particular condition…” Ning Yi said with a smile. In truth, running any kind of business often came down to a contest of connections—with his current reputation, he could simply write a poem in praise of the preserved eggs, or have a word with someone from the Puyang family, and a mere few-hundred-coin business would be trivial to set up, hardly worth a second thought. But doing so would be no different from having Old Kang help spread the word at his banquets. The very reason Old Kang had set the bar so low was to stipulate that Ning Yi could only use ordinary means—investing a modest amount of effort and capital to open up the market for these eggs himself.
The whole scheme was a minor trick, nothing particularly remarkable once explained. Li Pin thought it over for a while. “This is rather interesting, actually. In that case, there’s no need to bother hiring random men for it—idle hires aren’t always reliable anyway. I know plenty of people around here who eat breakfast in this area every day; having them play along would be no trouble at all, and… naturally, there’ll be no risk of anything giving it away.”
He glanced at Ning Yi, then waved a hand. “I won’t let your name get out in connection with it, of course—I’ll make sure everyone understands not to do anything unnecessary, keeping strictly to what an ordinary person would do. How does that sound?”
As a talent ranked alongside Cao Guan, the friends Li Pin knew nearby were likely much the same caliber—if he genuinely set this in motion, his reach might well exceed even Ning Yi’s current influence. With this assurance offered, Ning Yi thought it over and nodded. “My thanks to you then, Brother Li.”
The next morning, at the steps in front of the small building, Nie Yunzhu happily reported her results to Ning Yi. “We sold six preserved eggs yesterday, and the flatbreads sold out fast—first time we’ve ever sold out of those. And selling this many eggs is a first too…” She was clearly delighted about the flatbreads especially. She glanced at Ning Yi’s expression. “A good start—once word gets around, selling thirty a day is sure to happen.”
Ning Yi pursed his lips, nodding along with a smile. He’d never actually been worried about the eggs selling. Three days later, the first restaurant began having Nie Yunzhu deliver preserved eggs to them regularly, and the group of friends Li Pin had arranged gave nothing away in the process. What he hadn’t anticipated, though, was that this whole well-meaning effort would soon bring Nie Yunzhu a fresh set of troubles of its own…