Chapter: 1144 (1/2)

AST 1144 – Fish In Water, the name is Firecloud Blacksmith Store

Qing Shui looked through the things available here. They were all ancient. However, the style of the building structure looked just like the rest of the stores. They were all built in palace style. Overall, he found the store quite satisfying. The blacksmith store was connected to both the eastern and western sides of the street, whereas the door was located north of it.

Towards the southern side of the blacksmith store, there was also a courtyard. The courtyard wasn’t really big, even further south was a pavilion. Qing Shui looked through it very briefly. He found everything here really bleak. It was no wonder this place was for sale.

There was also a boy in the store. He should be around thirteen or fourteen years of age. At this moment, he was forging metal. The boy looked fairly strong and seemed to still be growing.

Qing Shui approached the boy. He smiled and said, “Greetings, where is your shopkeeper?”

Even though Qing Shui had assumed the old man forging metals to be the shopkeeper, he could also be a blacksmith who was hired by the shopkeeper. Hence, he found it more appropriate to ask beforehand.

“That’s my grandpa, he is the shopkeeper here!” The boy quickly smiled and said. It seemed like he knew what Qing Shui wanted.

Qing Shui nodded and walked towards the old man. At this moment, the old man seemed to have finished what he had been doing. Coincidentally, when he turned around and found that both Qing Shui and his grandson were approaching him, he let out a smile.

“Grandpa, this person is looking for you,” the boy told the old man.

At this moment, Qing Shui saw the old man’s face. He looked a bit old, but he seemed to be quite energetic. There were a lot of wrinkles on his face. The traces of old age were embedded within every single one of the wrinkles on his face.

“Nice to meet you old man. I see that you are selling the store, I would like to know if this is true?” Qing Shui smiled and asked.

“Nice to meet you, I go by the surname Wang. You can call me Old Man Wang. How shall I address you?” The old man patted his body. After that, he hinted Qing Shui to walk towards the southern side of the courtyard.

“My surname is Qing. But you can just call me Qing Shui.” The two went towards the stone table outside and sat down.

This stone table was really small. There were only two small stone stools on both sides. On top of it was a small pavilion. Beside it was a small pond with a diameter of three meters. On top of that, there were a few goldfish and water plants in the pond. Even though this place was small, Qing Shui liked it very much.

“Are you really planning to buy this place? This small store of mine is unable to provide any competitive edge.” The old man shook his head and smiled at Qing Shui.

“Could it be that the store couldn’t maintain its income? Or else, why are you selling it? Oh, what do you two plan to do in the future?” Qing Shui remembered that the boy from before was still really young.

“I wouldn’t have put it up for sale if it could maintain our livelihood here. It is indeed because we can no longer maintain our livelihood. There is no more use in keeping it up and running. After selling this place, we will move on to buy another small courtyard and look for a blacksmith store to play second fiddle to it. Considering that I have forged metal throughout my life, this is something that I can manage.” The old man smiled as he explained.

“Then how much are you planning to sell this store for?” Qing Shui smiled and asked.

“I don’t know. Sir, how much are you planning to pay for it? I am not going to lie to you, this store is hard to sell. The reason being that it’s located on Divine Weapon Street. Once you buy it, you will have to start another project to suit your business. Most importantly, the place is really small. If you were to continue its business as a blacksmith store, you wouldn’t be able to compete against the others,” the old man looked at Qing Shui and said seriously.

“Old man, are you not afraid that I won’t buy it once you told me all of this?” Qing Shui really admired the honesty of the old man.

“I’d rather it not be sold.” The old man shook his head.

“How about this, I will buy your blacksmith store and half of your yard. I will pay you three thousand gold for it.” Qing Shui gestured up to the small pavilion.

Three thousand golds was definitely considered to be quite a lot of money. To a normal family, three thousand silver was already enough to make them incomparably rich, let alone the fact that this was gold they were talking about.

“Ah, mister, that is too much. It’s not worth that much,” the old man responded quickly.

“Old man, is this yard something left behind by your ancestors? According to the current market price, this should be roughly the right price. This is the Divine Weapon Street, there shouldn’t be a huge gap between my price and the average price. However, I think that normal people would also have difficulty trying to pay such a huge amount.” Qing Shui didn’t care about the money, hence, he would definitely not make the old man suffer a loss.

“No, this is too much. How about this, just pay me a thousand. We will be staying right there. Oh yeah, sir, where do you plan to stay?” The old man looked at Qing Shui confused.

“Not far away from here, I have a house. I will pay you the money immediately. You don’t have to help me save money, I’m not trying to take advantage of you. This place suits me very well. If I were to buy other blacksmith stores, this amount might not be enough to pay the price.” Qing Shui smiled.

The old man took out the deed for the land. Qing Shui didn’t really mind. Fortunately, the deed only included the blacksmith store, hence the deal went very quickly. Qing Shui took out banknotes and several gold and silver ingots.

“Old man, if you and your grandson still have to look for other blacksmiths for a similar job, would you mind staying here? I will talk to you about salary later on,” Qing Shui asked after thinking for a while.

“Can I really do that?” The old man looked at Qing Shui in surprise. This was something that his ancestor left behind, being able to continue working as a blacksmith here was also a good thing.

“Of course!”

……