Chapter 47: Such a Little Fool

Qin Hongfei raised her eyebrows. "One hundred, for all of them?"

Old Zhang cried out in exaggerated disbelief, "These are computer parts! How could all of them be one hundred? It's one hundred for each piece!"

One hundred for each... There were seven or eight pieces here, which meant seven or eight hundred.

Old Zhang was quite looking forward to this little fool buying them, thinking he'd make a tidy profit.

But was Qin Hongfei really a little fool? Of course not.

She wasn't surprised that Old Zhang was asking for a king's ransom, nor did she mock him. She simply said, "Thirty for each, I'll take them. Seven pieces, that's three hundred fifty. Will you sell?" Without waiting for Old Zhang to respond, she continued, "These things have been dismantled. If you can't fix them, they're just junk. Even if you take them to a computer shop, they'd be wary of goods with uncertain origins; you might not even get ten for them. You could sell them to the scrap yard instead, by weight! Eighty cents a pound for scrap iron."

Three hundred fifty!

Old Zhang stared at her in shock.

She really was a little fool, he thought. These things were just junk lying around, so she must really want them. He considered raising the price again.

But Qin Hongfei seemed to see right through him. She casually tossed the parts onto the ground, completely at ease. "Three hundred fifty, take them all. Not a cent more. If you want to sell, I'll take them now. If not, forget it—they're just junk sitting here. Uncle Zhang, it's up to you."

Old Zhang decisively chose to sell.

Not selling would be foolish.

"Once you've taken them, there's no returns," he warned, worried that the little fool from the Qin family would come back for a refund if her family found out.

Qin Hongfei glanced at Old Zhang’s excited expression and almost felt embarrassed for him. She wanted to tell him, "I'm more worried you'll want to return them!" But now that she had the parts and Old Zhang had made it clear, even if he wanted to return them later, she wouldn't take them back. Once something was in her hands, it wasn't going anywhere.

She now had replacement motherboards and hard drives. The parts were a bit damaged, but within her ability to fix... Qin Hongfei took out a screwdriver and disassembled the motherboard. After cleaning it with a brush, she found the capacitor had swollen—was it leaking? That was easy enough to fix: she could take a good capacitor from the old computer and replace it. Technically, she should use a tester to check the capacitor, but she didn’t have the resources, so she’d just install it and see if it worked.

This tinkering lasted until the sun was setting.

When Qin Hongfei finished fixing the parts and began reassembling them into the old computer, she lifted her right arm, and her face scrunched up in pain.

She pressed her hand to her right shoulder, her heart skipping a beat. That man, Tang Xiaojin, had said not to strain her right arm—could her bone have shifted again?

Fortunately, the main unit was nearly fully installed. Eager to see the results, Qin Hongfei forced herself to ignore the pain, completed the last steps, plugged the computer back in, and timed its reboot.

When the computer chimed and the desktop appeared, she felt a hint of disappointment in her eyes.

Thirty-eight seconds to boot.

Still a bit slow, the parts were too poor. But for this level of performance, she was satisfied.

The young man who brought parts earlier had better equipment, yet his computer took over a minute to start up! For these cheap parts to perform this well was more than enough.

"Fei..." Qin Fei pulled Qin Yun along and found her sister sitting in front of a computer. Qin Yun drifted behind her like a ghost. Qin Fei was surprised. "Where did this computer come from?"

"I assembled it," Qin Hongfei replied. "Why are you here?"

"Oh, oh..." Qin Fei said they were about to eat. She hadn't seen her sister return and their mother was worried she might get kidnapped, so sent her to look. "I figured since I'm so good-looking, walking alone would be dangerous, so I brought Qin Yun along."

"Oh, wow, this computer is so fast!"