Seeing the positive market response, Lan Qingyou breathed a small sigh of relief, the corners of her mouth curling upward.
Indeed — finding the right niche and carving out a specialized track was the key to reaping early-mover advantages.
Sure, she couldn't walk freely like everyone else.
But while others spent their recovery time chopping trees, she spent hers reading books. Different paths to the same destination.
Adding friends, though — that was a hard pass.
Glancing at the 99+ friend requests that had exploded into her friends tab, Lan Qingyou didn't give them a second look.
She was extremely motivated right now.
She pulled out the ten boxes of test tubes she'd stocked in her storage and bottled another hundred mana potions to list.
Gone in minutes.
Her material stockpile was rocketing upward — far faster than going out to gather herself.
One hundred and fifty potions had instantly netted her fifteen hundred basic units.
But then she hit a wall.
The reason? She was out of test tubes.
There was plenty of potion left in the crucible, but without containers, it was all worthless.
The crucible held roughly twenty-something liters.
Rounding down to twenty liters — that was twenty thousand milliliters. At ten milliliters per potion, one pot could yield two thousand doses.
But since she'd brewed it down, only about half remained — still roughly a thousand doses.
She'd only sold a hundred and fifty. Selling out was a long way off.
With 9,968 people still in District 666, even selling out wouldn't give everyone a share.
Watching all that potential revenue sit unobtainable, Lan Qingyou felt deeply uncomfortable — like leaving money on the table.
So, while brainstorming a solution, she idly started going through the friend requests, dismissing the freeloaders one by one.
Then she spotted one interesting message.
She tapped the avatar and checked the profile: a thin-faced man with gold-rimmed glasses, slightly messy hair, and a tie on his chest.
His profile simply read: "Professional Merchant."
Probably some kind of business elite back on Blue Star.
Shang Chuan: "I have a large stock of test tubes. Add me if you're interested."
One look at this setup and Lan Qingyou added him immediately.
Shang Chuan: "Boss Lan, you finally added me! I'm thrilled."
Lan Qingyou: "How many test tubes?"
Lan Qingyou had no interest in small talk or relationship-building. Straight to business.
Shang Chuan: "53 boxes."
Lan Qingyou: "Price."
She didn't ask why he had so many. There was no need.
Because she'd already seen — in his shop — that he was buying them at 2 units per batch.
What was interesting was that he wasn't using "per box" as the unit, but "per ten." He was counting used test tubes too.
'A middleman. A professional one, at that.'
He was factoring in recycled empties — going for the full resource recovery play.
That was what you called expertise. A genuine talent.
So Lan Qingyou made some adjustments in her own shop.
Shang Chuan: "5 basic units per ten."
Lan Qingyou: "3 units per ten. I'll let you keep a margin. Otherwise, I'll just buy direct."
...
Shang Chuan: "Deal."
After a moment's consideration, Shang Chuan agreed to Lan Qingyou's price.
After all, his whole business was built on the markup. If the other party was willing to let him earn, the smart move was to quit while ahead.
Harmony brings wealth. No reason to push back.
Besides, just moments ago, the test tube purchase listing in Lan Qingyou's shop had disappeared — that was her show of good faith.
If he kept playing hard to get after that, he'd be digging his own grave.
Lan Qingyou: "From now on, you handle the purchasing. Send me a trade request whenever you get a box. We'll settle daily."
It was a point-to-point, end-to-end trading method that could persist long-term.
All you had to do was send a trade request to the other party with the items attached, then wait for them to accept. Very convenient.
Even better, the system allowed you to set these pending trades to auto-expire at 12, 24, or 48 hours.
Shang Chuan: "No problem."
And just like that, the two ended their pleasant exchange.
Lan Qingyou got her test tubes; Shang Chuan got his cut. A bright future for everyone.
With over five hundred test tubes in hand, Lan Qingyou immediately resumed bottling and selling.
Business was booming — potions sold out the instant they went up.
In fact, sales were so brisk that she discovered each storage slot had a stacking limit of 999. That was useful to know.
This meant the smartest use of storage was to dedicate it purely to materials.
Wood, Stone, Vine, Soil, Sand, Monster Crystal Cores — all the core basics.
But since she'd occasionally need slots for listing finished potions or exchanging for specific items, she had to keep some spaces open.
By that math, slots were actually quite tight.
Lan Qingyou removed the Stone exchange listing.
After all, her Shelter upgrade only needed 100 Stone.
Then she replaced it with a new trade: ten Crude Mana Potions for one E-rank Monster Crystal Core, limited to ten exchanges.
She also added a listing of five potions for 500 grams of food or mineral water, limited to ten of each.
She was clearly gunning for a Shelter upgrade.
But even knowing Lan Qingyou's intentions, people who needed to buy still had to buy.
With over nine thousand people in the channel and not even enough for one potion per person, Lan Qingyou wasn't the least bit worried about not selling.
She was that brazenly open about it.
"This Lan Qingyou must be raking it in."
"Raking it in doesn't even cover it. By my count, she's pulled in at least six thousand units of materials."
"@Lan Qingyou, nobody's going to argue with you for being good enough to earn a living at this. But could you consider dropping the price? Everyone's struggling to survive here — isn't this profiteering off a crisis?"
"Shut up! You! Xin Tianle, right? I've got your name now. If Lan Qingyou stops selling potions because of you, I'll be the first one to cut you down."
"Where'd this internet saint come from? Kindly roll your round self far, far away."
"Are you out of your mind?! Don't make me start swearing!"
"He's not wrong, though. Sales are clearly great — would it kill her to lower the price a bit? Treating customers well is treating yourself well."
"She's running a monopoly, genius. Why would she need customers to 'treat her well'?"
Seeing how well Lan Qingyou's business was doing, some were envious, some admiring, some passive-aggressive, and some offering earnest advice.
Lan Qingyou read their messages and let out a cold laugh.
Then, with a few taps, she blacklisted every last one of them from her shop. She wasn't exactly short on customers.
'Passive-aggressive, are we? Offering free business advice? That's right — this lady runs a monopoly.'
'And what are you going to do about it?'
'I'll price you right out of the market.'
'Let's see if you've still got attitude then.'
For good measure, she even added a six-word motto to her shop's description: "Buy it or buzz off."
The customers who came to buy potions bared their teeth at that one.
"Tsk tsk. This Lan Qingyou's got one hell of a temper."
"Does she? I don't think so. Shaking off parasites like that early benefits everyone."
"Isn't ten potions — a hundred Mana Points — for one E-rank Monster Crystal Core a bit cheap?"
"Not really. I got lucky today — took down a horned rabbit and found an E-rank Crystal Core inside."
"Trust me, bro — first of all, stop fixating on those damn wolf packs. Broaden your horizons and you'll find that plenty of monsters are E-rank."
"Really? I'll give it a try tomorrow."
Though Lan Qingyou's pricing looked unreasonable on the surface,
the majority of people in the 666 channel were surprisingly accepting.
Sure, there were internet beggars panhandling online, there were moral crusaders lecturing from their high horses, and there were jealous types being snide — but most people couldn't care less.
This was the District 666 Villain Valley channel, after all.
For people who'd already been villains back on Blue Star, they had far less naive idealism and far more down-to-earth pragmatism than other districts.
Of course.
When it came time for action, these fine gentlemen wouldn't pull their punches either.
The chaos was very real.