Chapter Eighteen: The Root of the Problem

“The box on the left is of the best quality, the one on the right is slightly inferior, and the one in the middle is the worst.”

Su Changling answered without hesitation, casting just a quick glance at the three small boxes before speaking: “Could it be that someone in your Cheng family shop is secretly passing off inferior goods as premium, tarnishing your family’s reputation?”

Cheng Yingxue raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Oh? You can tell just by looking, Sister Su?”

“You actually understand rouge?”

“Not really, I don’t know much about it,” Su Changling said, shaking her head. When one’s cultivation reaches a certain level, the spiritual energy within automatically purifies the body, enhancing one’s complexion.

Thus, although her senior and junior disciples on the mountain also cared about beauty, few of them actually used rouge—so she naturally wouldn’t be familiar with it.

“However, it seems some medicinal herbs that nourish the blood have been added to your Cheng family’s rouge?”

“That’s right. This rouge was actually a medicated cosmetic launched by our Cheng family shop four years ago.” The young girl smiled and nodded. “It truly contains several herbs that help women regulate their blood and energy.”

“When it first came out, it was immediately snapped up by the city’s ladies and young mistresses—once sweeping through the entire Huizhou Prefecture, its fame even reaching the capital.”

“That explains it.” Su Changling’s brows relaxed. “High-quality herbs carry spiritual energy.”

“Though I don’t understand rouge, I can sense the spiritual aura clinging to these small items and smell the medicinal scent wafting from the boxes.”

“I see.” Cheng Yingxue pondered. “So, cultivators shopping in the city are not easily deceived—it’s easy to tell good from bad at a glance!”

“Cough, roughly,” Su Changling said, feigning a cough while clenching her fist. “Mostly, cultivators tend to observe the aura, so they can discern the quality of goods more quickly.”

“What a convenient skill—I want to learn it too.” The girl looked at Su Changling with admiration, then smoothed her sleeve and resumed a serious tone. “Alright, Sister Su, let me continue and tell you how I discovered the problem with this rouge yesterday.”

“At first, I didn’t rush to show my face. I sent someone to borrow a seal from my uncle and obtained the shop’s account books for nearly three years under his name, to carefully check the sales records of all kinds of rouge in the shop.”

“While comparing the accounts, I found that from a certain month two years ago, sales of the once booming ‘medicated cosmetic’ rouge line suddenly and sharply declined, and within three to four months, plummeted drastically.”

Whenever talk turned to the shop’s business, Cheng Yingxue’s eyes brightened. “At the same time, sales of other ordinary rouge products in the shop did not experience such a significant change.”

“Sister Su, do you know what this means?”

“Uh…” Taken off guard by the question, Su Changling paused, “The medicated cosmetic rouge sold less?”

The girl’s smile froze, replaced by a complicated expression. “Promise me something, Sister Su.”

“Please don’t ever go into business.”

“I won’t,” Su Changling said awkwardly, “I only practice swordsmanship.”

“...Swordsmanship is good—good for health.” Cheng Yingxue forced a smile. “Actually, the drop in rouge sales means that the market for products of the same series and quality has shrunk.”

“Market?” Su Changling looked puzzled.

“Yes, the market.” The girl nodded firmly. “To be honest, when the medicated cosmetic rouge first launched, our Cheng family set its price at four taels of silver per box, and also released a lighter version priced at only one tael, but the quantity in it was less than a quarter of the standard box.”

“You might not understand what four taels of silver per box means. To put it simply, the most expensive rouge you can buy on the market now costs about six to seven taels per box—four taels is relatively high-priced but not unreasonably so.”

“That’s a clever pricing strategy,” Cheng Yingxue smiled with crescent eyes. “It’s a price that wealthy families’ ladies can afford one box of each month without feeling reluctant, and ordinary prosperous households can occasionally buy one.”

“Plus, the shop also offered a small amount of the cheaper light version, so ordinary families with some spare money or servants of wealthy families, who usually only watch others use it, could save up throughout the year to buy a box to try.”

“In other words, the original market for this rouge almost covered all families near the shop who needed cosmetics.” Su Changling rubbed her chin, seeming to understand bit by bit.

“That’s right.” Cheng Yingxue nodded and gestured toward the three seemingly identical boxes on the table, which were actually very different in quality. “But now, someone is secretly substituting inferior products for the good ones, completely destroying the shop’s original market.”

“These three boxes of rouge were bought by my maidservants, each disguised differently, each carrying three taels of silver, purchasing from the shop’s current stock.”

“The one on the left bears our Cheng family’s jade seal; the middle one was disguised as an ordinary town vendor; the one on the right as a common wealthy city resident.”

“While the ladies of noble families still receive unchanged rouge, there are so many rouge shops in the city, and countless new products launched monthly—” The girl shook her head repeatedly, “but how many noble families are there in the whole city?”

“Simply put, those ladies wouldn’t buy the same product every month after the initial freshness of the medicated cosmetic line wore off.”

“The main source of profits in the rouge shop used to be the ordinary wealthy families in the city.”

“But now, they’re receiving substandard inferior goods.” Cheng Yingxue tapped the table with her fingers. “They might not understand the exact reasons, but how many merchants are truly foolish enough to ignore their business?”

“If the rouge is no longer as effective as before, they simply won’t use it—and as for those occasional customers, even less so.”

“Why would anyone pay ten times the price for a product that’s worse than one costing a fraction of the price?”

“If this continues, the shop’s reputation for its higher-priced product lines will be thoroughly ruined. Without selling high-margin goods, relying only on ordinary rouge with thin profits and large volume... how could the shop possibly make a profit at year’s end?”

“So... what will you do next? Deal with the craftsmen and assistants who secretly substitute inferior products in the shop?” Su Changling frowned thoughtfully, feeling that running a business was far more complicated than exorcising ghosts.

“No, no. That’s only the surface.” Cheng Yingxue shook her head. “The craftsmen and assistants aren’t bold enough to secretly pass off inferior goods on their own.”

“There must be some ulterior motive behind this—otherwise, how could they have tarnished the shop’s reputation for so many years without a single rumor leaking?”

“Moreover, despite the sharp decline in sales of the medicated cosmetic rouge in recent years, why hasn’t the shop’s annual expenditure on producing this rouge decreased even a little?”