The owner of the coral store waited at the door, rubbing his hands, looking slightly nervous.
These imported corals had traveled thousands of miles from foreign countries to support the revolutionary cause of the people of China. Even if they were carefully insulated and oxygenated during the transportation, it was inevitable that some of them would die.
"Be gentle! Be gentle! "He was distressed as he directed the workers to unload the goods from the cart.
Zhang Zian noticed that these incubators were stamped with all kinds of seals, all of which were signs of import and export permits.
After unloading the goods, the workers pushed the empty cart and left.
The owner carefully opened the incubators one by one, while the others stood by and watched.
As the lid was opened, a slightly strange smell filled the air from the box.
Zhang Zian and the others couldn't wait to gather around and saw that the box was more than half filled with seawater. The bottom of the box was a plastic square, and on the plastic square were more than a dozen different kinds of corals.
The reason why the incubators were particularly heavy, in addition to the weight of the seawater itself, was that the living corals were attached to the live stones. Every coral in the box was attached to a live stone of different sizes and shapes.
The owner opened another box, which was also filled with corals.
"Ah, the roundness of this Australian doughnut is not bad, and the radial strip is also quite symmetrical. How much is it? I want that bicolor River Valley Brain Coral too! "The female customer saw two brain corals at a glance, as if she was afraid that Zhang Zian would steal them from her.
This brain coral had an orange base color, and the center was slightly sunken, with a more evenly distributed purple radial stripes.
The pattern of the bicolor River Valley Brain Coral was like the wrinkles of the cerebral cortex, or like a maze without an exit. The protruding part was a bright orange red, and the sunken part was a fluorescent light green.
The owner thought for a moment and stretched out four fingers, meaning that 4,000 yuan was a fair price.
"Okay, I'll take it," she said generously.
Snowy quietly poked Zhang Zian, urging him to choose quickly, or else the good corals would be taken away by this female customer who didn't seem to be short of money.
Zhang Zian was actually quite anxious, but he still tried to stay calm. It was the first time he was choosing corals. He silently recalled the pictures and introductions of corals he had seen before, and tried to match them with the corals in front of him one by one.
If he pointed at the corals and asked what kind of corals it was, he would definitely be looked down upon by the female customers. The boss might even take the opportunity to raise the price. In short, he could not show any fear.
He found that the types of corals in the two incubators seemed to overlap. The corals in the first incubator were larger, while the ones in the second incubator were smaller.
In addition, there were a few corals in the second box that seemed a little awkward. After careful observation, he roughly guessed that some of the corals had been cut for artificial reproduction, and the form after cutting was still somewhat different from the natural form.
The female customer also noticed this. She preferred the corals in their natural form. Her eyes were fixed on the first box, and she was dismissive of the corals in the second box, which had traces of artificial cutting.
Obviously, the same kind of coral in the second box was much cheaper.
Zhang Zian guessed that the corals in the first box might have been mixed with the wild hard corals that Indonesian fishermen had secretly mined from the sea. Otherwise, how could there be so many natural corals being sold?
However, after all, this boss had a coral import permit, and the insulated box was also attached with the local coral export permit document of the exporting country. Even if Zhang Zian had doubts, he could not say anything.
In fact, the corals that had been artificially cut were not bad. After a period of breeding, they were basically no different from the natural form of corals.
In addition to these differences, there were some live stone fragments scattered at the bottom of the second box. It was speculated that the bumps during the transportation process had shaken the originally not very strong live stone into even more pieces.
Zhang Zian did not compete with the female customer for the corals in the first box. Instead, he put on the disposable gloves provided by the boss and picked through the second box.
Of course, there were a lot of rules when choosing, such as not taking the corals out of the water, only holding the live stone and not touching the corals, and so on.
At first, the boss was worried that Zhang Zian was a rookie, but after watching for a while, he found that he was very well-behaved, so he was relieved. Moreover, the corals in the second box were not expensive.
Snowy also went to the side of the second box and pointed her phone camera at the corals in the box.
The netizens in the live broadcast room were anxious for Zhang Zian.
"Stingy Store Manager, don't be stingy at this time! Do you really want to dig out treasures from the garbage? "
"If you continue to be stingy, all the good stuff will be taken by others! You'll have time to cry! "
"I'm so mad! Store Manager, you're so stingy!"
Zhang Zian was not moved at all. They were not the ones paying, so of course they were happy to be generous.
After carefully looking through the corals in the second box, he had a plan in mind. He intentionally selected a few corals and estimated the price, which should be within the budget range.
When his fingers plucked at a scattered piece of living stone, he felt something soft on his fingertips.
Huh?
His first reaction was to feel uneasy, because he thought that he might have touched the real body of the coral and violated the selection rules. Maybe the boss would give him the cold shoulder.
"What's wrong?" Snowy noticed his strange expression and asked.
"Nothing."
Zhang Zian saw that the boss did not notice at all, so he was relieved.
He turned the live stone fragment over and saw that there was indeed a coral on the other side of the fragment.
The color of the coral was dim, and it was only a little bit big. It was grayish-brown like soil, and almost blended in with the color of the live stone fragment. If he had not touched it with his fingers, he would not have noticed it with the naked eye.
What kind of coral was this?
Zhang Zian stared at it for a while, but it did not look like any kind of coral in his mind. It looked like a few corals, but it was not.
Was it because it had been cut, which made it incomplete?
But when he took a closer look, he could not find any obvious cut marks on its body.
His movement caught Snowy's attention, but she did not understand why he kept staring at a stone fragment.
"Is Store Manager Li crazy?"
"I thought Store Manager Li would only be like this when he picked up a wallet …"
"Haha!"
Due to the limitation of the mobile phone's clarity, the netizens who were not there could not see it clearly, and they all teased Zhang Zian.
While Zhang Zian was thinking, the female customer had already selected several corals from the first box, some of which were worth tens of thousands of dollars. Even so, she was still not satisfied.
"Boss, please come here."
Zhang Zian raised his free hand and gestured, "I want to buy these corals. Help me calculate how much they cost."
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