"Brown sugar is eighty coins per pound. Are you buying or not? If you want it, speak up quickly!"
The shopkeeper of the general store, seeing the crowd inside, had an incredibly nasty attitude.
Although Qi Ercai was quick-minded, he couldn't think of anything else he needed to buy in the heat of the moment, so he said, "As I mentioned earlier, one pound of salt, twenty feet of oil paper, and two pounds of brown sugar."
"That'll be one tael of silver and five hundred and sixty coins."
The two taels of silver his mother just gave him had quickly turned into four hundred and forty coins.
The shopkeeper's wife tore off twenty feet of oil paper, rolled it up, and handed it to Qi Ercai.
The two brothers left the general store with pitifully little in hand, where Qi Sangui was guarding the wooden cart at the door. He quickly asked, "What did you buy?"
"Just a bit of oil paper."
Before his older brother could speak, Qi Ercai said, "The rest is too expensive; we can't afford it."
