Thus, despite the chaos Beyond the Pass, large numbers of merchants still risked coming here, hoping to strike gold on this frozen land.
This had also produced a rather interesting phenomenon in the enormous trading market south of the city.
The firms occupying spacious, imposing storefronts along the streets, some even with two-story Western-style buildings, looked grand at first glance, but they were not the most secure or wealthiest businesses in the market.
Instead, the little stalls on a row of crude stone platforms in the middle of the market were the ones no one could afford to underestimate.
Behind some inconspicuous stall in a corner, the plainly dressed stallholder squatting there smoking a pipe might be the third manager, or even the second manager, stationed here by a powerful southern trading firm.
These powerful southern firms might far surpass local merchants in financial resources, but when competing for storefronts, they often lost to the entrenched northern operators with their deep local roots.
So, even if they were much wealthier than their rivals, they could only swallow their pride for the sake of business, hunkering down at these crude stone platforms to trade on the spot.
Yet these little stalls were also important customers of the storefront businesses. The merchants in those shops, in turn, needed the fresh merchandise and scarce goods brought up from the south by the stallholders, which they could resell farther north at still higher prices.
Thus, the shopkeepers treated the managers and assistants at these little stalls courteously, never daring to slight them.
On freezing days, with warm boilers burning inside the shops, assistants would keep coming out carrying kettles, taking turns serving hot tea to the southern managers tending their stalls in the bitter wind and asking after their comfort.
The managers and assistants