# Chapter 031: Suddenly, Everyone Had Heard of It
The back of the invitation was blank.
Wu Chunhua asked who had commissioned the work. The visitor said the people on the platform were still discussing it, and that they first needed to find somewhere that could get things done. She told him to come back once he had filled in exactly what needed doing and who the client was, then filed the paper with the few others awaiting discussion.
That night, Junzi walked him to the door and watched the black handbag leave with its owner. The ten thousand yuan inside remained untouched. Ye Yan put his coat back on, and Xiao Yezi picked up her own bag and followed him out of Xinyu.
After the New Year, Ye Yan was among the first to see the deployment news on the forum. In the rack photos posted by friedcat, boards were lined up side by side on the racks, unlike the computers in their shop. He read the public explanation several times, jotting down anything he didn’t understand, while still spending his days repairing computers for people.
In March, the confirmation reply regarding his ten shares arrived. Junzi authorized him to collect the old drive and testing USB stick that evening, and to check the payment online at the inspection bench. Ye Yan compared his original receiving address against his current wallet and confirmed that a dividend of 0.05 coins had arrived. He waited for the block confirmation before recording it in his personal notebook. He marked the updated information with that evening’s date, then put both storage devices back in the shallow box and locked it in the drawer. The old notes—updated in August and checked in November last year—were still there.
As he put the notebook in his bag, he glanced again at the line showing the payment. The ten shares were finally more than just a letter waiting to be verified. Xiaoyezi asked if he was happy. He said he was, then spent ages looking for yesterday’s power-supply slip—he’d just used it to prop up the notebook and forgotten.
In late April, someone from the copy shop brought in a financial news story printed from the internet and left it outside the counter. One person spotted Bitcoin and pointed it out to Junzi; another hadn’t even read the article before asking if the shop had any for sale. More and more people began calling to ask about mining rigs, and the printout beside the price list got so much handling that its edges curled.
Xiaoyezi spent the whole morning answering calls and heard several people say they’d known about it for ages. When she asked where they’d get the machines, some hadn’t bought one yet, while others thought they could install a program on their home computer and turn it into the board in the pictures.
On the twenty-fifth, a customer who’d once laughed at them for keeping only fifty coins came in too. He carried a computer tower up the steps, gasping as he called to Ye Yan. The machine kept shutting itself off when it got busy, and he wanted Ye Yan to modify it into the kind now being sold.
Ye Yan helped carry it inside and took a look after removing the side panel.
“You’ll need to buy a separate piece of specialized equipment. I’ll first check why this one shuts down.”
When the man heard that Ye Yan had bought a share in the project last year, he immediately leaned closer. “Then you must know more than most people. Could you get me one of those boards? I’d make it worth your while.”
Ye Yan didn’t take him up on the offer. He turned the ordinary computer tower back toward the desk and asked Junzi to quote the inspection fee first. Junzi said a hundred. The man thought that was too expensive, rested a hand on the case, and said he’d ask somewhere else. But he stood there for ages without picking it up.
“Once you’ve checked it, you’ll be able to tell me what I need to buy, right?”
Junzi told him it was up to him. In the end, he left the tower at the repair bench and arranged to pick it up that afternoon.
At the sound of someone calling him “Master Ye,” Xiaoyezi turned even before Ye Yan did. She still remembered the customer standing at the door with that paper showing twelve minus ten, telling them they’d sold too early. Now he stood in the same spot, but this time he was urging them to find out what was wrong as soon as possible.
Ye Yan asked for a testing cable, and she hurried to fetch one, but got the wrong connector. He laughed and told her to check carefully. She held the two cables together to compare them, then swapped it for the right one, still feeling a little hot in the face. The counter phone rang again, so she had to step away from him and tell the next caller to be clear about what kind of equipment they’d bought. The technician would have to inspect it before they could set an installation time.
That afternoon, they found the fault in the computer tower. The old power supply couldn’t keep up when the machine was busy. They replaced it with the shop’s testing power supply, and after running it for just as long, it didn’t shut down again. Ye Yan recorded the result and waited for the customer to return and see for himself. He didn’t order a new part for him.
The customer tested it and looked at the old power supply. He no longer mentioned his earlier claim that it would “just need a little adjustment.” He wanted to check the price of new equipment first, so he took the machine home and paid the hundred-dollar inspection fee. Junzi counted it and entered it in the shop ledger. Ye Yan removed the testing part, and they returned the original power supply along with the tower.
Someone at the door asked if he was going to buy a mining rig here. Unable to turn around with the machine in his hands, he just nodded toward Ye Yan and said he’d ask them to install it if he did buy one, then slowly carried it down the steps.
Junzi smoothed out the article printed from the internet and moved it a little farther out onto the counter.
The visitor with ten thousand dollars came back that afternoon too. The invitation was still from the same platform, but now it had an extra page with twenty-odd numbered entries. Junzi looked at the total and began calculating the labor for inspecting and installing the equipment on a blank form.
The visitor said there was no need to charge for each machine individually. He’d pay ten thousand up front, and Xinyu could set aside a space to keep the account documents as they came in. He’d manage the users; all the shop had to do was lend its name as custodian and issue a receipt bearing Xinyu’s name. In return, they’d get all the equipment work later on.
Xiaoyezi took away the form for the hundred dollars that had just been paid, clearing the desk for him. When he mentioned the users’ documents, she stopped and asked if he meant the equipment wiring instructions or people’s account documents. The visitor said both, and that he’d bring them in a bag when the time came.
Wu Chunhua was checking the transaction slips at the other end of the counter. Only now did she come over and sit down. She didn’t recognize the abbreviations for some of the documents on the page, so she asked Ye Yan to take a look first. Ye Yan pointed out that they might be wallet information, and they needed to know what the owners wanted them to do.
She turned the numbered sheet over. “What about authorization from these people?”
The visitor said they only dealt with him; tracking everyone down one by one for signatures would be too much trouble. He’d bring in the documents, and they could give the receipt to him. If the money was enough, they could get started. He rested his bag on his knees and unzipped an inner compartment. Junzi’s pen stopped over the blank form.
Wu Chunhua asked him to bring in each user’s specific request. They could handle the equipment installation separately, and they could discuss his referral fee too. But the visitor drew the numbered sheet a little closer and said that if the users went straight to the shop, what would he be doing? Xinyu only took orders from him, so why ask any further questions?
“We’ve never seen the documents you’ve given us, and we don’t know who authorized you to hand them over. I can’t issue a custody receipt for something like this.” She set down her pen and looked at Junzi. “You decide whether we can schedule the equipment work.”
Junzi didn’t immediately take away the blank form. He’d thought that doing twenty-odd jobs would be enough to replace the broken lettering on half the shop sign, and they wouldn’t have to keep propping up the workbench with cardboard boxes. He asked the visitor again whether they could just handle the equipment for now, and leave the documents with the users.
The visitor shook his head. The platform needed someone willing to put their name to this; they could get any shop to do occasional installations. He put the money back in his bag and stood up, saying he’d already approached Xinyu twice and had shown them plenty of respect.
Junzi’s face stiffened as he listened, his finger resting on the form he’d been calculating on. The visitor reached the door before Junzi called after him and pulled last year’s invitation from a folder.
“Take this back too. We can’t take on what you’re asking for.”
He held out the paper, but the visitor didn’t reach for it, so he extended it farther. At last, the man took it and stuffed it into his bag with the numbered sheet, then stepped outside and called another number. Junzi didn’t follow him. Standing behind the counter, he heard the man continue down the street, still talking about twenty-odd people.
He crossed out the two lines he’d just calculated on the blank form and put it back under the counter. Wu Chunhua tidied away her transaction slips. Only after the door curtain had settled did she say quietly, “That man knows how to make things easy for himself. He collects the money, and everyone looking for answers comes to Xinyu.”
Junzi said glumly, “I know. Give me a minute. I’ve never seen such a huge difference between twenty people and a hundred dollars.”
She didn’t tell him that a hundred dollars was better than nothing. The money had only just gone into the drawer when someone came in asking only for a quote. Junzi still went out to help them.
Ye Yan took the cable off the testing bench, ready to put it away in the toolbox. Xiaoyezi had meant to sit with him and look at a post about blade auctions open to the public, but the phone rang again. She answered, and after listening, wrote “equipment” on the appointment sheet.
This time, the caller had already read the online description of the blade auction. He knew it was a bare board and planned to buy it, and wanted them to prepare the installation and network setup. He hadn’t paid yet, and the equipment hadn’t arrived. He asked what he should prepare first.
Xiaoyezi didn’t immediately pass the receiver to Ye Yan. First, she asked where he planned to put it and whether he already had power and internet, then asked him to bring the seller’s wiring instructions. She couldn’t answer his question about the proxy software, so she called Ye Yan over.
After hearing him out, Ye Yan arranged for him to bring the materials to the shop the next afternoon. They’d check the power supply, placement, and network first, and inspect the purchased equipment separately. He gave Junzi the appointment time, and Junzi left a gap beside the routine repair bookings.
When Xiaoyezi put down the receiver, Ye Yan had already turned to the part of the public listing that said the board came without a case. She pulled her stool closer, and they looked together at the board that would need somewhere else to be installed. Junzi came back from the doorway and moved the two cardboard boxes piled beneath the testing bench. The space he’d cleared still wasn’t enough. He bent down, measured again, and dragged out another box beside it.