"Five coins?"
The shop assistant was also dumbstruck, speechless for a moment. He had not expected this man to haggle so ruthlessly.
"I looked just now. The wood you use to make furniture all leaves scraps behind."
Lu Chuan smiled confidently. "Those scraps are more than long enough to make little sticks. Just one piece could be whittled into several.
"In any case, you can't use those scraps anymore. Using them to make my little sticks would count as making waste useful. What do you think?"
The assistant pondered for a long while, then shook his head. "No, no. Those scraps would be worth five coins even if we sold them as firewood, not to mention the time and effort we'd spend whittling them..."
"Then six coins?" Lu Chuan probed.
The assistant shook his head. "It wouldn't be worth it for us."
"Seven coins?" Lu Chuan said again.
He owed a whole backside's worth of debt, so when it came to money, he had to save every coin he could.
The assistant shook his head again.
"What, don't tell me you want eight coins?"
Lu Chuan cried out in shock, "Then I'd rather spend five coins buying some scraps and take them back to whittle myself."
The assistant said, "My apologies, but our scraps have already been reserved."
"I'll add one coin!" Lu Chuan said.
The assistant turned sideways. "Please follow me, honored customer, to collect it."
"..." Lu Chuan.
Before long, Lu Chuan walked out of the woodware shop hugging a piece of wood roughly as thick as a wooden bucket and four or five inches long.
After all that haggling, it had turned into him doing the work himself. He was truly speechless drunk.
"It's fine, it's fine. Whittling wooden sticks, whittling popsicle sticks—both can temper my swordsmanship.