The owner of the coral store waited at the entrance and rubbed his hands, looking a little nervous.
The imported corals had traveled a long distance to China. Even with careful heating and oxygen settings in place during transport, the occasional death of the corals was inevitable.
“Gently! Gently!” he instructed the workers as they unloaded the trolley, his heart aching.
Zhang Zian noticed all kinds of stamps and seals on the insulated boxes. They were the testing and approval marks from customs.
After unloading the corals, the workers left with the empty trolley.
The store owner opened the insulated boxes carefully one by one, while the others watched from his side.
As the lids were taken off, a slight odor diffused out of the boxes.
Zhang Zian and the others could not wait to come over. They saw that the boxes were half filled with saltwater and had plastic squares on the bottom of them. Dozens of different types of corals were placed on top of the plastic squares.
The insulated boxes were very heavy. Apart from the weight of the saltwater, the live corals were attached to eco-bio-blocks. Every coral in the boxes was attached to an eco-bio-block of a different color and shape.
The owner opened up another box with more corals inside.
“Wow. These Aussie doughnuts are fully round and have symmetrical spokes. How much are they––along with that bicolor snake brain coral?” The female customer found two brain corals to her taste, and was afraid that Zhang Zian might fight her over them.
The brain coral had an orange base and a slightly concave middle, with evenly extending purple streaks.
The other bicolor snake brain coral looked like the brain cortex, or a maze without exits. The protruding part was bright orange, while the hollow part was florescent, light green.
The owner thought about it, then stretched out four fingers, meaning 4000 yuan. It was a fair price.
“Fine. I’ll take them.” She accepted it generously.
Snowy nudged Zhang Zian secretly, asking him to choose quickly. Otherwise, all the good corals would be gone thanks to the rich, female customer.
Zhang Zian was quite anxious, but he tried to stay calm. It was his first time picking out corals. He tried to recall in his head the pictures and introductions of the corals he had seen before and correspond them to the corals in front of him.
If he pointed to a coral and asked its name, the female customer would surely look down on him. Maybe the owner would seize the opportunity and raise the price. He could not appear unconfident.
He discovered that the types of corals in the two boxes were similar. The corals in the first box were bigger, while those in the second box were smaller.
In addition, the shape of a few of the corals in the second box were a bit crooked. After careful observation, he guessed that some of the corals were cut for culturing, which left them with an altered shape compared to the natural corals.
The female customer took notice of the same thing. She preferred the natural-looking corals and fixed her eyes on the first box. She didn’t bother with the corals in the second box, which had been cut artificially.
Apparently, the same type of coral cost less in the second box.
Zhang Zian took a guess that some of the corals in the first box were mixed with the wild, hard corals that were illegally harvested by Indonesian fishermen. Otherwise, how could there be so many corals with such a natural look?
However, since the store owner had an importation permit, and the insulated boxes came with an export permit from the country of origin, Zhang Zian could not say anything, even if he had doubts.
To be honest, the artificially cut corals were okay. After they were cultured for a while, they would look very much similar to natural corals.
Apart from that difference, there were broken eco-bio-blocks at the bottom of the second box. They were probably broken during transport.
Zhang Zian didn’t fight for the corals in the first box with the female customer. Instead, he put on the disposable gloves provided by the owner and started picking out corals in the second box.
Of course, there were many rules for picking. For example, the corals should never leave the water, one’s hand must only touch the eco-bio-block and not the coral, etc.
At first, the owner worried that Zhang Zian might have been a rookie, but after watching Zian for a while, he saw that he was following all the rules and became less concerned. Plus, the corals in the second box were not expensive, anyway.
Snowy also moved next to the second box and focused her camera on the corals inside.
The broadcast audience was getting anxious on Zhang Zian’s behalf.
“Cheap Store Manger, don’t be cheap at this moment! Do you really expect to find treasure in a dumpster?”
“If you are so cheap, the good stuff will all be taken by the others! You’ll cry then!”
“I’m pissed. Manager Weak Bird, you are such a low B!”
Zhang Zian didn’t allow himself to be influenced. They were not the ones paying the bill––of course they could be generous on his behalf.
After looking through the corals in the second box, he had a plan in his mind. He settled on a few corals and estimated the price, thinking that it should be within budget.
When his fingers touched one of the broken eco-bio-blocks, he touched something soft.
What was that?
His initial reaction was anxiety. If he had touched the coral and violated the rules, the owner might give him hell.
“What’s the matter?” Snowy asked after noticing his strange expression.
“Nothing.”
After seeing that the owner didn’t notice it at all, Zhang Zian was relieved.
He turned the eco-bio-block over and saw another coral on the other side of the block, as he expected. .
The coral had a dark color to it and was very tiny. The mud-like brown color blended into the eco-bio-block’s color. If he had not touched it earlier, he would not have seen it.
What kind of coral is this?
Zhang Zian stared at it and meditated for a while, yet it didn’t match any coral he had in mind. It looked like a few corals, but not quite the same.
Was this because it had been cut and was no longer complete?
Yet, as he looked at it closer, he could not find any obvious cut marks on it.
Snowy took notice of his movements, but she didn’t understand why his eyes were fixed on a broken piece of stone.
“Manager Weak Bird is possessed…”
“I thought Mr. Cheap Manager only did this when he found a wallet…”
“Haha!”
Limited by the definition of the cell phone broadcast, the online fans could not see anything without physically being there. They started mocking Zhang Zian.
As Zhang Zian was meditating, the female customer had already picked a few corals from the first box. Some of them cost more than 10,000 yuan. Even so, she still didn’t seem satisfied.
“Sir, please come over here.”
Zhang Zian raised his free hand to signal the owner. “I’d like to buy these corals. Please let me know how much they cost.”