Chapter 594: Chapter 420: Undead Disaster
Yara did not object when Dong Tianyu suggested raising the price of tea leaves, knowing full well that unlike other agricultural products, only by investing a significant amount of time and money upfront could one expect a stable yield.
The reason tea was cheap before the Undead Disaster was due to decades or even centuries of accumulation in China, and the disaster wiped out these accumulations in an instant.
Moreover, due to the repeated occurrence of the Undead Disaster, very few people were willing to reinvest considerable time and money to cultivate tea trees anew. Therefore, even the lowest quality tea had now become a luxury that ordinary people struggled to afford.
"In ancient times, there was a saying that ’an ounce of tea for an ounce of gold.’ I’m now willing to offer double that price, regardless of the quality of the tea," Yara declared.
After hearing Yara’s offer, Zachary pondered for a moment before nodding in agreement, "Since you’ve put it this way, I won’t haggle with you. All together, there’s probably a little over five hundred catties of tea in the warehouse. I’ll keep a small portion for entertaining guests, and the rest—the five hundred catties—I’ll give to you. How does that sound?"
Hearing Zachary’s proposal, Yara immediately accepted, "Alright, then it’s settled. I’ll go prepare the gold, and we’ll still proceed with payment and delivery simultaneously."
After speaking, Yara didn’t bother to say goodbye and promptly stood up to leave. A thousand catties of gold, actually just half a tonne, is a high-density metal. Half a tonne of gold might sound heavy, but in reality, it wouldn’t even fill a standard suitcase completely.
It’s worth noting that a cubic meter of gold weighs nearly twenty tonnes, so the volume of half a tonne of gold isn’t really that large.
Zachary had assumed that after leaving, Yara would not return until the next day at the earliest. What he hadn’t anticipated was that, to facilitate transactions with Zachary, Yara had preemptively stocked a considerable amount of gold and rare minerals at home, specifically for purchasing supplies from Zachary.
Seeing Yara return so soon, Zachary couldn’t help but press his temples with a hint of resignation and joked with a hint of disdain, "Is it really necessary to rush for this meager amount of tea? It’s not as if I would sell it to someone else if you came tomorrow."
Hearing Zachary’s words, Yara quickly replied with a smile, "I just wanted to secure the deal sooner rather than later. Besides, coming tomorrow would only delay your day. It’s best to finish today’s business today and have it done with."
Hearing Yara’s response, Zachary could only give a wry smile and then told Yara, "Then go to the yard, open your car’s trunk, and wait for me there. I’ll get the tea out for you."
Upon hearing Zachary’s directions, Yara, knowing the drill, didn’t offer to go into the warehouse to help with the loading. Naturally, Zachary did not suggest it either.
Unlike the small box of gold Yara brought, the five hundred catties of tea, although it may not sound like much, occupied several cubic meters of space.
Although Zachary had made it clear from the start that the quality and species of tea in the warehouse could not be guaranteed, Yara was prepared for the tea to be of inferior appearance.
But when Zachary emerged, pushing the trolley out, Yara was surprised upon seeing the shiny packaging.
After all, even before the Undead Disaster, storing items in a warehouse for several years would normally result in their packaging collecting dust and getting dirty, not to mention the contents potentially going bad.
Yet, the tea boxes that Zachary brought out had bright, fresh-looking packaging, nothing like what would be expected from having been stored in a dusty warehouse for several years. It was this sight that astonished Yara so much.
Originally, Yara thought, upon hearing about the poor quality mentioned by Zachary, that the tea would be packaged in plastic bags and that its quality had deteriorated due to improper storage.
But seeing the packaging that seemed as good as new, Yara understood that the ’poor quality’ mentioned by Zachary wasn’t due to poor storage. The so-called lower quality referred to the daily-drinking tea common people consumed before the Undead Disaster, essentially tea that would cost less than a hundred yuan per catty.
Seeing the small cart of tea pushed by Zachary, Yara hurried forward to help. True to the pre-disaster popularity of ’half the weight in packaging for every catty of tea,’ the many boxes that Zachary brought out appeared substantial, but the actual total pure weight of the tea leaves inside probably didn’t even reach five hundred catties. However, the marked weight on the gift boxes definitely exceeded five hundred catties.
Both Zachary and Yara understood the situation, but even though they knew the truth, they wouldn’t strip away all the packaging to reweigh the tea.
As the buyer, although Yara understood that the packaged tea would certainly have some discrepancies in weight, she preferred slight shortages to damaging the appearance of the pristine packaging of the tea boxes.
Since the buyer, Yara, was not fixated on the weight issue, Zachary, as the seller, was all the more relaxed and had no reason to make things difficult.
A small cart of tea might sound impressive, but each box of tea weighed only a catty, so it didn’t take long for the two of them to fit the five hundred boxes into Yara’s car.
After deftly closing the car’s trunk, Yara didn’t drive off immediately but returned inside the house instead. Seeing Yara’s actions, Zachary was genuinely puzzled, as the transaction had been completed, and he couldn’t understand what Yara intended to do next.
