Chapter 109: The Sudden Popularity of the Cake Shop (Please Bookmark)

A few people bought slices of the cakes He Zhixing had made on the spot and ate them right away, all saying how delicious they were. They ate with such relish and showered them with praise that, in an instant, the crowd gathered around began scrambling to buy the finished cakes he had made.

Even though the price was thirty percent higher per pound than ordinary cakes, people kept swarming in to buy them. He Zhixing could not make them fast enough, his hands aching from the strain.

By the time more than ten pounds of wild strawberries were used up, He Zhixing had also made more than fifty cakes weighing over two pounds each, selling over three thousand in total. And that was not all—the customers did not care at all whether he used wild mountain strawberries or not. When the mountain strawberries ran out, they wanted other fruits too. What they loved was the cakes He Zhixing made: his flawless, masterful piping and carving, more exquisite than anything a true master could produce. Each cake was a picture-perfect scene, as though a landscape painting had been turned into a real object, rich with vivid three-dimensional depth. It was as if what stood before you was a miniature painting of scenery, figures, mountains and waters, so strikingly lifelike that you almost could not bear to damage it, much less eat it.

He Zhixing spent the entire day making cakes, pausing only to eat meals in between. He worked until ten at night, when the supermarket closed, before he finally stopped. On the first day alone, Sister Lan and the others’ cake shop earned fifty thousand yuan—an almost unbelievable figure!

The driver who had gone back to Wuzhen to haul wild strawberries and other local wild greens and fruits also returned. This time he brought back far more than the day before, and He Zhixing arranged for him to rest at the hotel.

After returning, they prepared for the supermarket’s second day of battle. Before the supermarket even opened on the next day, many people—old men, women, handsome young men, and beautiful women—were already waiting at the entrance, all hoping to buy the local specialty wild greens and fruits themselves. Those who had managed to buy them the day before and those who had not all came to wait for the doors to open. He Zhixing had no choice but to assign several more loss-prevention staff to the specialty counter before opening, to maintain order, fearing that the eager crowd might fight over the goods. He also introduced a purchase limit policy: each person could buy only five jin of each type.

As soon as the supermarket opened, the crowd surged inside and rushed straight for the specialty counter. Just as He Zhixing and the others had expected, they had already prepared for all kinds of emergency situations. Watching the flood of customers streaming in to shop, He Zhixing felt a quiet sense of relief.

After two consecutive days of trial operation, the grand opening came on the third day. He Zhixing looked over the sales data for both supermarkets, and the figures for these few days were astonishingly high. It seemed all his efforts had not gone to waste. Every achievement had been inseparable from the hard work of everyone involved in the supermarkets, leaving Hu Li and the others deeply impressed by He Zhixing’s keen eye for talent.

For five straight days, he helped Sister Lan’s cake shop by actually designing and making the scenic, figurative, three-dimensional painted cakes in practice. On the sixth day, when he finally rested, he taught Zheng Huizhen a new style of cake carving, passing on his peerless carving technique to her. After all, He Zhixing would still be very busy in the future, and even calling him a hands-off boss would already be generous.

He still had many other things to do. As the village head, he had to lead the villagers toward prosperity. There were the two supermarkets, the apparel company, the chain clothing stores, the chain collection shops—too many matters demanding his attention. If not for the help of many capable assistants, could He Zhixing have devoted five full days to working as a master cake artist for Sister Lan’s cake shop?

He also decided that once Zheng Huizhen had learned everything, he would handle the other matters and then return to the township. After all, as village head, he bore an even greater responsibility: to change the villagers’ impoverished and backward circumstances and build Wuzhen into an influential, charming town with distinctive character.