An Invitation from the Three Guilds, Another Nation-Stabilizing Poem, and a Battle of Verse

Zhang Ruhui's gaze brimmed with pride, as though being asked a question by Xu Qingxiao were an immense honor.

Feeling Zhang Ruhui's gaze, Xu Qingxiao paused, then spoke.

"Brother Zhang, since you're a merchant, allow me to ask you something."

"Suppose you have a shipment of goods, each item worth a hundred taels of silver, and you know someone needs them."

"What would your first reaction be?"

Xu Qingxiao asked.

Since he was not a merchant, he found it difficult to think from a merchant's perspective.

He could speculate about their thoughts, but truly putting himself in their shoes was another matter. A merchant's mind was hard to fathom.

"Raise the price on the spot."

Zhang Ruhui gave the answer any ordinary merchant would.

"By how much?"

Xu Qingxiao asked.

At that, Zhang Ruhui fell silent.

By how much?

"Are these goods rare?"

Zhang Ruhui asked Xu Qingxiao.

"No. They're always available, but production runs on an annual cycle."

Xu Qingxiao answered.

"If they aren't rare and are produced every year, raising the price by ten percent or five percent would be about right. That would maximize profits."

Zhang Ruhui answered without hesitation.

That answer was within Xu Qingxiao's expectations.

Something that could not be reproduced could fetch an astronomical price. Antique paintings and calligraphy, for instance, could be valued at a million taels or dismissed as worthless.

But anything that could be produced would have an established price. It merely depended on market conditions: good conditions meant higher prices, bad conditions meant somewhat lower ones.

Even knowing that someone urgently needed the goods, a merchant could not raise the price too much, whether considering the long term or the short term.

A five-percent increase was a merchant's nature, but anything much higher suggested a problem.

"What if they doubled