Chapter 155: Heavy Purchasing

The car finally merged onto the highway. Zhang Wenhao drove the G65 as it wove through the mountain ranges, but his mind remained fixed on Yang Chenshan's pharmaceutical factory. Yet no matter how much he pondered, he would not be able to understand the specific situation until he met face-to-face with Yang Chenshan, so Zhang Wenhao could only temporarily suppress the anticipation in his heart.

When they were still over a hundred kilometers away from Guiyang, an accident occurred ahead on the road. Seven or eight vehicles had collided in a chain reaction, and a semi-trailer truck had overturned across the surface, almost completely blocking the entire highway.

At the accident scene, a large rescue vehicle was attempting to use a crane to move the semi-trailer, but the line of trapped vehicles had already backed up for nearly four or five hundred meters, with more piling up behind them every minute.

Many drivers, unable to move forward, were smoking on the side of the road. Zhang Wenhao parked his car, looked at the growing line of vehicles behind them, and said to Long Xiaoyue, "Let's get out of the car. It's not very safe staying inside."

When facing a highway blockage due to an accident, one should never sit in the car just to watch the commotion. As more vehicles accumulate, those arriving from behind might not notice the accident ahead, and failing to brake in time could easily lead to another rear-end collision. Therefore, Zhang Wenhao asked Long Xiaoyue to get out with him, and the two of them stood by the roadside to wait for the road to be cleared.

Zhang Wenhao couldn't help but ask a middle-aged driver nearby, "Excuse me, friend, how long has the road been blocked ahead?"

"Not too long," the driver replied with a smile. "Just over an hour. The rescue vehicle only just arrived."

Zhang Wenhao nodded slightly. As long as the rescue vehicle had arrived, he believed it wouldn't take too much longer. For now, there was no other option but to wait in place.

Sitting with Long Xiaoyue on the highway guardrail, the two of them waited for nearly two hours.

The reason was simple: the semi-trailer was fully loaded, and its cargo had spilled all over the driving lanes. Merely moving the truck to the shoulder was not enough; the massive amount of scattered cargo also had to be cleared to the side. Consequently, it took a full two hours before traffic could finally be unblocked.

By then it was already noon. Zhang Wenhao silently cursed his bad luck. His schedule was already tight, and now two hours had been wasted on the road due to the accident. As soon as traffic was cleared, he hurriedly drove toward Guiyang, but when his car finally exited the highway into the city, it was already 1:30 in the afternoon.

The two first found a place to grab a bite to eat, and then Zhang Wenhao drove Long Xiaoyue to a pharmaceutical distribution company to pick up some medications for liver cirrhosis, along with other supplies he was currently lacking. After restocking the medicines, he took Long Xiaoyue to the stationery and sporting goods wholesale market.

In the eastern part of downtown Guiyang, there was a shopping district mainly clustered with merchants selling office supplies, stationery, and small commodities. Long Xiaoyue was mindful not to let Zhang Wenhao spend too much money on her account, so she only looked at basic writing materials—essentially just two things: pencils and exercise notebooks.

The cheapest exercise notebooks were wholesale priced at thirty-five cents, and the paper quality was extremely poor. Not only was the paper uneven, but one could occasionally even spot unbroken wood chips from the papermaking process, and the color of the paper was much darker.

Zhang Wenhao picked up an exercise notebook of remarkably good texture and asked the boss, "Boss, how much for this kind of notebook?"

"That one is eighty-five cents," the owner replied. "It's the best notebook I have. Not only is the paper thick, but the quality is excellent. In regular stationery stores, these retail for over a dollar and a half."

Zhang Wenhao nodded and asked, "What is the price if I buy in bulk?"

"Depends on how many you want," the owner said. "If you take more than a hundred copies, I can knock off five cents per copy."

"Make it three thousand copies," Zhang Wenhao said.

The owner's eyes lit up, and he smiled as he said, "If you're taking three thousand, then it's seventy-five cents each."

Long Xiaoyue hurriedly leaned close to Zhang Wenhao's ear and whispered, "The most basic ones are fine. You don't need to buy ones this nice. It's a waste of money."

Zhang Wenhao waved his hand and said, "The better ones don't cost that much more. Don't worry about it."

Long Xiaoyue insisted, "This isn't a small amount of money either. I can't possibly let you bear all of it."

Zhang Wenhao smiled and said, "Why should you feel bad? These things are bought for the children, not for you."

Long Xiaoyue was momentarily left speechless and didn't know what to say. At that moment, Zhang Wenhao told the owner, "Prepare the order. I'll drive the car over in a moment to load it directly."

The owner nodded hastily. Zhang Wenhao then added three thousand Zhonghua pencils, one thousand Chenguang neutral pens, two thousand premium high-capacity pen refills, two hundred and eighty sets of crayons for drawing, fifty boxes of erasers with twenty pieces per box, and one thousand high-quality thick memo pads. The owner followed closely behind with a pen, recording everything. After Zhang Wenhao finished listing the items, the owner said, "Sir, you're ordering quite a lot of goods here. I'll need to transfer them over from my warehouse."

"How long will that take?" Zhang Wenhao asked instinctively.

"It will be delivered in half an hour at most."

Zhang Wenhao nodded. "Very well, make the arrangements. I'll be back in half an hour, and when I arrive, you can have someone help me load the truck directly."

The owner felt a bit uneasy and asked tentatively, "Will you be waiting here, or would you like to browse around some other shops?"

Zhang Wenhao replied, "We also need to look for pencil cases and schoolbags, but you don't carry those here."

The owner smiled and said, "I only deal in consumable paper and pen products. You can find those other items at the shops further inside."

Knowing that the owner was afraid he might be wasting his time, Zhang Wenhao pulled five hundred yuan from his wallet and handed it to him, saying, "Consider this a deposit. I'll pay the rest when I come back later."

Only then did the owner's mind settle. With a smiling face, he accepted the money and said, "Please wait a moment, I'll write you a receipt."

"No need for a receipt," Zhang Wenhao said with a faint smile. "I trust you."

The owner nodded and smiled, "Rest assured, when you come back in half an hour, everything will be fully prepared."

Only then did Zhang Wenhao turn to Long Xiaoyue and say, "Let's go look further inside."

Long Xiaoyue, feeling rather apprehensive, pulled him back slightly and said, "I just calculated—you've already spent ten to twenty thousand just on stationery. Let's skip the schoolbags and pencil cases. The children can just use homemade cloth bags; those bags aren't necessary."

Zhang Wenhao smiled, looked at Long Xiaoyue, and said, "You might think their practical value isn't high, but the children will be overjoyed. Perhaps many of them have never even seen what a real schoolbag looks like. Spending a bit of money to make them happy and foster a greater love for learning is extremely necessary."

Seeing that Zhang Wenhao's expression remained resolute, a wave of deep gratitude welled up in Long Xiaoyue's heart. The children of Miaojia Village were indeed far too isolated from the outside world. A single schoolbag might cost an entire month's income for a local family; not a single child had ever used a proper student backpack, and things like pencil cases were entirely unheard of to them. She herself had longed for the children to have more exposure to the outside world and its wonders, but her own capabilities were simply too limited.

The appearance of Zhang Wenhao had not only brought external medical skills and medicine to the villagers, but was now allowing the children of the village to experience elements of the outside world to a certain degree. Behind all this lay not only a sincere and kind heart, but also the backing of substantial wealth. An outsider who dedicated himself entirely to contributing to the village like Zhang Wenhao was someone Long Xiaoyue had never witnessed before.

The quality of schoolbags varied wildly, ranging from a dozen yuan to one or two hundred yuan. Zhang Wenhao selected a high-quality name-brand schoolbag with a wholesale price of a little over one hundred and thirty yuan. However, when the shopkeeper heard that Zhang Wenhao needed over two hundred of them, he said helplessly, "We have too many styles of schoolbags here, and we only keep a small stock of each model. I only have a dozen of the exact model you want in stock right now. Would you mind waiting a day? I can call in an order immediately, and they should arrive by tomorrow noon."

Zhang Wenhao checked the time. It was already 3:30 in the afternoon. He turned to Long Xiaoyue and said, "Let's not drive back tonight. Even if we left right now, we probably wouldn't reach the village until eight or nine o'clock, not to mention there are still many things left to buy. In my opinion, we should rest in Guiyang tonight, buy everything we need today, and make the trip back tomorrow."

After hesitating for a moment, Long Xiaoyue nodded in agreement and said, "I'll follow your arrangement."

Zhang Wenhao nodded. That way, time would be more than sufficient. He paid the owner a deposit of one thousand yuan, had him write out a receipt specifying delivery by 1:00 PM tomorrow noon at the latest—with double the deposit as compensation in case of delay—and once he obtained the owner's promise, he led Long Xiaoyue to the next shop.

As for pencil cases, there were plenty of flashy and ornate ones available, but so the children could use them for a long time, Zhang Wenhao chose a beautifully crafted metal pencil case. This way, as long as the children cherished them, a single pencil case could easily last two or three years.

Since the schoolbags wouldn't be delivered until tomorrow, Zhang Wenhao wasn't in a hurry to take the pencil cases and other stationery with him either. He made arrangements with the respective shopkeepers to pick up all the goods together tomorrow noon. Afterwards, Zhang Wenhao and Long Xiaoyue walked out of the mall empty-handed. As soon as they stepped outside, Zhang Wenhao said to Long Xiaoyue, "Come on, let's go to the next place."

"Where to?" Long Xiaoyue asked with a puzzled expression.

Instead of answering her directly, Zhang Wenhao posed a question of his own: "Have the children in the village ever watched a movie?"

"A movie?" Long Xiaoyue was stunned, then shook her head. "Although the village has electricity, there is no cable television, and no signals can be received in the mountains. The few households that own televisions just keep them around as decorations."

Zhang Wenhao nodded and smiled, "Then we'll introduce multimedia teaching to the children."

"Multimedia teaching?" Long Xiaoyue asked, suspicion written all over her face. "How? You surely aren't planning to buy a television and haul it back, are you?"

"No," Zhang Wenhao waved his hand, opened the car door for Long Xiaoyue, and said, "You'll see once we get there."

An electronics mall can be found in almost every city. Although Guizhou was a remote province, Guiyang was still a provincial capital after all. While it might be difficult to buy top-tier luxury brand goods here, purchasing electronic products was quite effortless.

Zhang Wenhao brought Long Xiaoyue to the electronics mall. The very first thing he did was take her to look at laptop computers. Long Xiaoyue immediately understood and hurriedly said, "Laptops are far too expensive. I really can't..."

Without giving her room to argue, Zhang Wenhao pulled Long Xiaoyue into an HP specialty store and bought a laptop identical to the one he had previously purchased. Following that, he took the computer to a private repair shop to have all the essential software installed.

Once the software was ready, Zhang Wenhao took Long Xiaoyue to a Panasonic specialty store and purchased an UX300 projector worth eleven thousand yuan, along with an oversized projection screen costing over five thousand yuan. Long Xiaoyue's repeated dissuasions had zero effect; Zhang Wenhao simply did as he pleased, inspected the projection quality, and immediately swiped his card to pay without another word.

That still wasn't enough. Zhang Wenhao then led Long Xiaoyue to buy a high-definition media player capable of playing 1080p high-definition videos, supporting both Blu-ray discs and video files stored on external hard drives. Moreover, the vendor thoughtfully provided a copying service containing tens of thousands of high-definition movie sources. Zhang Wenhao bought two 3TB external hard drives and selected a massive collection of films suitable for children, mostly Western cartoons and children's movies.

Two computers worked simultaneously to copy the movies for Zhang Wenhao, and with the upgraded transfer speeds, filling both hard drives still took over half an hour. Once the copying was finished, Zhang Wenhao left with Long Xiaoyue, specifically hiring a pushcart delivery worker to help transport their purchases to the parking lot.

Long Xiaoyue felt entirely dazed yet excited. She was dazed because she felt she owed Zhang Wenhao a debt of gratitude so immense she had no idea how she could ever repay it, and excited because these items would radically broaden the horizons of the children in the village, giving them enough yearning for the outside world to spark the desire to step out of the mountains.

The Xinhua Bookstore possessed the most comprehensive collection of educational books. Zhang Wenhao not only bought a large quantity of textbooks and lesson plans for Long Xiaoyue to use, but also purchased numerous instructional optical discs, enabling her to conduct remote teaching for the children using the new equipment.

However, ensuring that every single student had a complete, brand-new set of textbooks was somewhat difficult to execute. Money was not an issue, but transporting a massive volume of textbooks to Miaojia Village posed a major challenge—at the very least, his S65 could never accommodate that much cargo.

Zhang Wenhao thought to himself: since he had gone to all this trouble to make the trip, he might as well buy everything the children needed all at once. He immediately spoke with the manager of the Xinhua Bookstore, ordering a full set of textbooks, lesson plans, exercise books, and test papers for all grades from primary school year one to five. Then, taking advantage of the fact that it was not yet dark, Zhang Wenhao immediately took Long Xiaoyue to a logistics company.

Long Xiaoyue had no idea why they were heading to a logistics company. Zhang Wenhao first inspected the vehicles parked outside, set his sights on a small box truck, found a staff member, and inquired directly, "If I hire one of your trucks to deliver goods to Miaojia Village, how much would it cost?"

After checking the approximate route and distance, the logistics manager replied, "Although it's only a little over two hundred kilometers, nearly a hundred kilometers of that road is extremely difficult to navigate. I estimate a round trip would take at least an entire day."

Zhang Wenhao said calmly, "Just give me the flat rate, and make sure to include a few loading workers as well."

The manager hesitated for a moment and asked tentatively, "How about seven thousand yuan?"

"Five thousand," Zhang Wenhao said calmly. "If that works, I'll come back tomorrow noon, bring your crew and truck to load the cargo, and we leave immediately."

"Departing at noon?" The manager said awkwardly, "If we do that, we'll probably only get back in the middle of the night. I'm afraid the driver and workers won't be willing."

"Add another thousand," Zhang Wenhao frowned slightly. "If that's a deal, let's shake on it now. If not, I'll go somewhere else."

"Deal, deal, deal!" The profit margin at that price was already quite substantial, and Zhang Wenhao understood that well enough; there was simply no need to squeeze the price down to the absolute minimum. Seeing that Zhang Wenhao had raised the offer to six thousand yuan, the manager agreed without any further hesitation.

Zhang Wenhao paid a two-thousand-yuan deposit, agreed that the remainder would be settled upon arrival at the destination, took the manager's business card, and left with Long Xiaoyue.

With this arrangement, their transport capacity would increase exponentially. As soon as they stepped outside, Zhang Wenhao called the stationery store owner and stated directly, "Boss, double the total quantity of the goods I ordered. I'll come pick them up tomorrow noon."

"You got it!" The owner was overjoyed and immediately replied, "I'll definitely have everything fully prepared by tomorrow noon, rest assured."

Hanging up the phone, Zhang Wenhao said to Long Xiaoyue, "There, you won't have to worry about the children's studies for the next few years." He then added, "It looks like tomorrow morning I can go back to the electronics mall and order another twenty desktop computers. That way, you can also take the opportunity to teach the children computer classes."

"Twenty?!' Long Xiaoyue gasped, too shocked to speak, and stammered, "Wouldn't that cost twenty-something thousand?"

Zhang Wenhao smiled and said, "We won't buy laptops; we'll buy desktops. Besides, the children are just getting started with computers, so they don't need high-end specifications. Two to three thousand yuan per computer is more than enough, and buying in bulk will get us a discount. At most, it'll come out to around fifty thousand yuan."

"Fifty thousand is still a huge amount..." Long Xiaoyue said in a panic. "Just the money you've spent on the children this time is already over a hundred thousand. Adding computers will probably push it to two hundred thousand. Such a huge sum is simply more than Miaojia Village can ever bear."

"There's nothing we can't bear," Zhang Wenhao smiled and said. "If the opportunity arises, perhaps we can start a business together in the future. When that time comes, let alone twenty-something thousand, even two million or twenty million probably won't be a big deal. Once we make enough money, we'll figure out a way to build a proper road for Miaojia Village. By then, the situation in the village will undergo earth-shattering changes."

"Start a business?!" Unable to comprehend the implication of Zhang Wenhao's words, Long Xiaoyue quickly asked, "Do you think Miaojia Village has good business potential?"

Zhang Wenhao smiled and replied, "Consider it that way, but it's still too early to say for sure. We'll know once we head back."

With that, Zhang Wenhao gently patted Long Xiaoyue, who was still recovering from her shock, and said, "Let's go get some dinner first. After we eat, let's take a stroll around the city center."