Ren Baqian hurried back to the palace and saw that the empress was drinking again. He couldn't help but say, "Your Majesty, you have another child in your belly. Drinking doesn't affect you, but it does affect the child."
"Oh!" the empress replied faintly, but she had no intention of putting down the wine glass in her hand.
Ren Baqian was furious. After all, that was his son.
Ren Baqian rushed forward.
Ren Baqian made his move.
Ren Baqian snatched the empress's wine glass.
Ren Baqian typed GG.
"Hey, Your Majesty, it hurts!" Ren Baqian's face twitched in pain. "Your Majesty, when did you learn to pull my ear?"
"Ha!" The empress sneered.
Ren Baqian was furious. "I want to fight you one-on-one."
The empress rolled her eyes and said with a faint smile, "Come on!"
Her voice was full of encouragement!
Ren Baqian said, "Wait until my waist recovers!"
"Ha!"
"One-on-one!" Ren Baqian was furious again. This was something that no man could tolerate.
Even if he had to exhaust himself and grind an iron rod into a needle, he would fight it out with her!
"Heh, forget it!" The Water Empress stretched lazily and said indifferently. "I see that you have been quite busy recently, so I'll let you off!"
Ren Baqian snorted. He had indeed been quite busy recently. Each trip would take up to three to five days, which was too much of a hindrance.
Furthermore, his waist … hurt …
"Also, I'm afraid that your waist will break …" the empress provoked again.
Ren Baqian's face darkened. "One-on-one!"
"Come on then!" The empress wrinkled her nose slightly, leaned back on the sofa, and looked at him sideways. She even hooked her finger at him.
"Forget it, I've been quite busy recently! The bookstore and department store are opening for business tomorrow! " Ren Baqian felt that it would be better to take a step back and bear with it for a while. Let her be strong, let her be …
"Hmph!" The empress smirked.
However, she knew that Ren Baqian had been busy with some matters for the past two months and hadn't left the ground all day, so she let him off.
The next day, two brand-new stores opened next to the imperial spice store and the imperial glass store.
One of them was the Imperial Department Store. There were many kinds of goods inside, but the store was still empty. The shelves were almost all the same.
The goods included toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, toilet paper, sanitary napkins, clocks, needles, thread, perfume, sunglasses, mirabilite, and a type of flour. This flour was a type of coarse grain flour from Tianjing Basin Real Estate. Although it could be eaten, it was more useful for tanning furs together with mirabilite.
The toothbrush was made from beast hair, while the toothpaste was made from calcium carbonate and glycerin, a by-product of soap production.
The rest of the toilet paper, clocks, needles, and thread were common things in modern times, but they were worth a fortune in this world.
The price of the iron needles was almost the same as silver of the same volume. However, compared to the iron needles of the Yun Nation and Great Xia, the price was at least 50% cheaper.
It was the same for toilet paper. Although the price was already very low, it was still a luxury for the ordinary people of this world.
Even though Ren Baqian had positioned this department store as a grocery store, at this time, only the officials could afford it.
Next to the department store was the Imperial Bookstore. Compared to the department store that was packed with people as soon as it opened, there were very few customers in the Imperial Bookstore, which was also quite large.
Lin Mengsheng walked into the bookstore and looked around. It was somewhat similar to the library in the academy. One part of the bookstore was filled with bookshelves, while the other part was filled with tables and chairs for people to read books.
Next to the tables and chairs were windows made of floor-to-ceiling glass. Bright sunlight was shining in from the outside, and it would be a good feeling to read a book while sitting by the window.
The shop assistant was from the Jing Tribe, and he was slightly at a loss when he saw Lin Mengsheng. Although he had gone through a few days of training, books were precious items that most people couldn't come into contact with. Those who could come here to buy and read books were also of high status.
Although the person in front of him was from the Yun Nation, there were very few of them in Lan City. He immediately thought of a teacher from the Black Bamboo Academy. This was because there was a student from the Black Bamboo Academy next door, and he had heard about him before.
Although the other party's status wasn't high, he was always in awe of knowledgeable people, which was a common problem among ordinary people in this era.
"Don't worry about me, I'm just looking around." Lin Mengsheng seemed to have noticed the awkwardness of the shop assistant and smiled.
It had to be said that Lin Mengsheng was very amiable, and his faint smile made the shop assistant relax a little.
"Can we read books here?" Lin Mengsheng asked as he pointed to the tables and chairs by the window. There were bookstores in the Yun Nation, but they didn't have these things.
The owner of any bookstore wouldn't welcome people who only read books but didn't buy them.
"Yes, as long as the books aren't dirtied or damaged, all customers can sit here and read," the shop assistant said nervously. "If the sun is too strong, there are bamboo curtains that can be pulled down to block the sunlight."
Lin Mengsheng nodded and then wandered around the bookshelves in the bookstore.
'Bilingual Comparison Dictionary', 'Bilingual Three Character Classic', 'Bilingual Elementary Mathematics', 'Bilingual Xia Court Computational Classics', 'Three Years of Simulation Exercises', 'Learning Simplified Chinese Characters from Pictures', 'Bilingual Jin Ping Mei' …
There were about a dozen types of books, some of which were bilingual, and some that weren't labeled were all simplified Chinese characters that he had learned.
He randomly picked out a book called 'The Secret Book of Six Heads' and flipped through it. He found that the opening chapter introduced a sect called the 'Six Heads Sect'. Most of the records in the book were herbs and ferocious beasts. There were also some methods to raise and control the ferocious beasts.
Lin Mengsheng was slightly surprised. He didn't expect such a book to appear in this bookstore.
He took the 'The Secret Book of Six Heads' and found a long chair to sit on. Lin Mengsheng closed the book and slowly pondered.
Books weren't cheap in the Yun Nation.
However, they could be flipped through at will here, and it wouldn't be a problem to just look at them without buying them.
The purpose of Her Highness was to let everyone read and learn, be it high officials or nobles, merchants or peddlers, or even the aborigines. Her Highness's goal was to develop the wisdom of the people!
The ancients had a saying, "The people can't be made aware of, but they can seek for a reason. This is the power of flexibility and deification."
This meant that the superior could guide the people. Sometimes, the people could only follow his guidance and not fully understand the intentions of his guidance.
Reading had always been the job of scholars. The people only needed to know what to do. If they had their own ideas, they would cause trouble. There were many people who had this kind of thinking.
However, Her Highness wanted to break this rule.
If the people were to read and have their own ideas, would that be good or bad?
…
Ren Baqian looked at the report in his hand and rubbed his eyebrows.
After the department store opened for a few days, the fastest selling items were sunglasses and toothpaste.
Sunglasses were easy to understand. After all, all the ministers of the six ministries wore a pair of sunglasses and walked around wearing them every day. The others had been coveting them for a long time.
The toothpaste sold faster than the sunglasses … The feedback was that it tasted good!
Did these guys eat toothpaste as a snack?
Ren Baqian put down the report, picked up another one, and began to frown.
He couldn't recruit any workers!
Over the past two months, he had built a lot of new factories and recruited a lot of workers.
However, the population of Lan City wasn't large, and there were even fewer idlers. The latest recruitment notice had been out for three days, and only six people had been recruited.
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