The Fortunate Lady and Her Mountain Man

Chapter 186: Chapter 186: Business Progress

The whelping box she had specially prepared for Dahuang was already gone. He hadn’t liked sleeping in it anyway, and with the days growing hotter, the kitchen was no longer a suitable place for him. She decided she might as well just build a "doggy villa."

She first drew up a design for the "doggy villa," and after determining the approximate dimensions of each section, she started gathering materials.

She needed mostly wooden planks. The saw and hammer were borrowed, but nails weren’t as easy to come by. However, she could use wooden tenons instead.

She measured the required dimensions on the prepared planks, marked them with a charcoal pencil, and cut them with the saw.

Before the next step, she first secured the baseboard. Then, she fixed the four corner posts vertically to the base and used wooden tenons to connect the planks that would serve as the walls.

Just like that, the frame of a miniature villa was complete.

The rest of the work was much simpler; she just had to build the roof, ridge, doors, and windows around this frame.

The doggy villa was built in the backyard, right up against the back wall of the main house.

Considering Dahuang’s size, the villa was quite spacious. She even added a small fence around it.

At a glance, with its own house and yard, it looked quite grand.

The painful lesson from trying to get Dahuang to switch dens was still fresh in her mind, so Ji Huan didn’t rush to make him move in right away. ’In any case,’ she thought, ’when the kitchen gets too hot to bear, he’ll move on his own.’

But to her surprise, when she finished tidying up the front yard and turned around, Dahuang was already lying inside the villa. His two big eyes glanced dismissively over her face before fixing themselves adoringly on Dabao, his tail wagging furiously.

Ji Huan looked at Dabao. "Did you get him to go in?"

Dabao nodded, revealing the simple truth. "Dahuang listens to me."

Ji Huan felt a lump in her throat.

She poked Dabao with her finger, then gritted her teeth and silently cursed Dahuang.

’That damn dog, playing favorites!’

Hu Ximei played with the chicks for a while before remembering why she came.

"Oh, right, Sister Wan. My mother wanted me to ask if you’d like to go to town together tomorrow?"

Yesterday, Ping’an had stopped by the hot and spicy soup stall and asked Hu Liang to pass a message to her, asking when she would have time to visit Yide Hall.

Ji Huan considered it. Unconsciously, more than two months had passed since she started her partnership with Doctor Xin. It was indeed time to check on how things were going.

When Widow Xie heard Ji Huan needed to go to town, she sent Ximei over to ask if she wanted to go with them in the morning.

Honestly, Ji Huan quite liked the idea of going with the Hu family.

She would have to wake up early, but she didn’t mind doing it once in a while. Besides, it would be livelier on the road with more people, and it had been a long time since she had visited their stall.

But then she thought of Cao Yunyun, and she hesitated.

Hu Ximei grabbed her hand and shook it insistently. "Please come with us, Sister Wan! It’s my turn to work the stall tomorrow, and I want to go with you!"

The shaking made Ji Huan dizzy, and she motioned for the girl to stop. "Alright, alright! We’ll go together, okay?"

"That’s great! Is Dabao going too? My third brother has to stay home tomorrow to look after Grandma, Xiao’an, and Hua. My mom said you have proper business to attend to, so if it’s not convenient, Dabao can stay at our house for my brother to watch."

Ji Huan thought for a moment. "Then let’s do as Aunt Xie suggests."

She wouldn’t be in town for long, so there was no need to make Dabao wake up so early just to tag along.

「The next morning」

Before dawn, Hu Liang came knocking on her door to wake her.

Ji Huan got ready, then carried a groggy Dabao over to the Hu family’s kang bed, letting him continue to sleep.

As she was leaving, she repeatedly reminded Dacheng to keep a good eye on Dabao and not let him leave the courtyard.

Dacheng, yawning and only half-awake, agreed readily enough.

"Don’t you worry," Widow Xie told Ji Huan. "The last few times this little rascal was left at home, he waited for his grandma to fall asleep and then took Xiao’an and Hua out to run wild. I gave him a couple of good thrashings for it, so now he wouldn’t dare forget his lesson."

After saying this to Ji Huan, Widow Xie grabbed Hu Dacheng’s ear and yanked, lifting the upper half of his body right off the kang bed.

"Did you hear me? You’d better get your head on straight and stay alert. If any of the little ones get so much as a scrape or a bump, see if I don’t beat you half to death when I get back!"

Hu Dacheng yelped in pain, all traces of sleepiness vanishing in an instant.

"Mom, how many times have you said this? I can recite it by heart... Ouch, ouch, ouch! Let go! I get it, I promise I won’t go anywhere, alright?!"

"It’s best you do. If you dare take them running outside again, I’ll break your legs when I get back!"

Ji Huan calculated the time. She figured she would finish her business and be back before noon. Dabao would probably just be waking up around then, so nothing should go wrong.

Besides, even if Dacheng did run off, Dabao wouldn’t follow him. He would obediently wait for her to return.

Ji Huan tucked the blanket around the sleeping Dabao and gently pinched his rosy cheek before following Widow Xie out the door.

When they arrived in town, Cao Yunyun’s expression soured the second she saw Ji Huan, just as expected.

Ji Huan pretended not to notice.

She had done everything she could and should do. If Cao Yunyun was still going to be so suspicious, there was nothing more to be done.

’I’m not her mother. I can’t be expected to coddle her every step of the way.’

This time, Cao Yunyun didn’t try to snatch work away from her, but her eyes followed Ji Huan relentlessly.

Being watched like a criminal was making Ji Huan extremely impatient.

Once the sun was up and the shops began to open one by one, she said a quick word to Widow Xie and headed straight for Yide Hall.

Xin Ziqi hadn’t sought her out for anything particularly urgent. He just wanted to inform her that the first batch of hand cream had been shipped.

Yide Hall hadn’t made a name for itself yet, so retail sales at the hall itself were negligible for now. It was also unlikely that other clinics or apothecaries would source products from an obscure hall.

Especially now, with the warmth of spring and flowers in bloom, hand cream was no longer a necessity for the average person.

Xin Ziqi had taken Ji Huan’s advice and wasn’t rushing to expand that particular sales channel.

Instead, he had found a few trustworthy people to act as his frontline "sales representatives." Adopting a wide-net approach, they had spent the past few days canvassing Yeyang and its surrounding prefectures, visiting workshops of all sizes.

It hadn’t been easy at first, but as soon as potential clients heard it was a military-grade product, they immediately changed their tune.

Many of them had already heard of this hand cream and had been trying to get their hands on it.

Imagine, if it could prevent soldiers’ hands from cracking and festering while fighting in heavy snow, it would surely work wonders for laborers who had their hands in water all year.

It wasn’t that these workshop owners felt sorry for their workers; they were primarily concerned with efficiency.

When workers’ hands and feet became raw and painful, it inevitably slowed down their work. Worse, if pus or blood from the sores were to accidentally contaminate the silk, satin, or food products, the losses would be catastrophic!

They had been trying to solve this problem for a long time, experimenting with various ointments, liniments, and oils. The expensive ones weren’t worth using on workers, and the cheap ones were useless.

If this hand cream was truly as miraculous as rumored, they couldn’t possibly pass it up!

Of course, some were skeptical.

They suspected Yide Hall was merely using the "military-grade" claim as a gimmick—a classic bait and switch—and that the product’s efficacy wouldn’t be the same.

For these types of clients, Xin Ziqi handled the negotiations personally.

He wasn’t much of a talker, so he didn’t waste time on arguments. Instead, just as Ji Huan had suggested, he simply presented them with the samples he had prepared.

After they used the samples provided by Yide Hall, those doubts naturally vanished.

The price was another crucial factor.

After all, whenever a new medicinal product was launched, its price was often prohibitively high.

Even if an ordinary family could afford it, it wasn’t suitable for bulk purchase to be used on workers.

The workshop owners were businessmen, not philanthropists running a charity. They wouldn’t engage in a money-losing venture.

But this hand cream was priced unexpectedly low. It was very affordable, and partners could even get a wholesale price. It was an incredible deal!

The final result was that more than half of the workshop owners signed supply contracts with Yide Hall. The rest were still on the fence, waiting to see.

If the owners who placed the initial orders reported good results, the ones who were waiting would naturally follow suit.

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