"Hello, do you sell Warcraft models here?" In the Shanghai flagship store of Jiangnan Blind Box, Thomas was communicating with the store manager, holding a photo of a Human Tiger Tank model.
As the only employee in the store with CET-4 English proficiency, her communication with Thomas was still somewhat difficult. She could only half-speak and half-guess to explain to him that the model was not for sale, but was sold as a blind box.
However, Thomas didn't understand what a blind box was, and the store manager couldn't explain it clearly. As a result, they were stuck at the queue, causing some anxiety among the other customers.
"Let him come into the store first!" Liu Xiangjiang said. Upon seeing Liu Xiangjiang, the store manager exclaimed as if she had been granted amnesty, "Boss, please talk to him. I really can't explain what a blind box is!"
"If you can't explain it, let him see for himself how others are buying them, and he'll naturally understand what's going on." Liu Xiangjiang said calmly. The store manager glanced at Liu Xiangjiang in surprise, not understanding why her boss, who was usually very kind and enthusiastic towards customers, had suddenly become so aloof, keeping a foreign customer at arm's length.
But since Liu Xiangjiang had said so, the store manager could only pull Thomas into the store and tell him to observe how others were buying, and he would understand.
This clearly put Thomas in a difficult position, but he had no other choice and could only watch from the side. Fortunately, he was quite smart and quickly understood the blind box model. He then took out 100 US dollars and expressed his desire to purchase ten blind boxes.
This once again put the cashier in a difficult spot, as she had never directly accepted US dollars for transactions before.
Fortunately, Liu Xiangjiang appeared again at this moment. With a wave of his hand, he added a price of 2 US dollars per blind box below the original 10 RMB price.
He then took out some US dollar change for the cashier so she could give the change to the customer.
"I remember the exchange rate of USD to RMB is around 7.8 yuan now!" the cashier exclaimed to her friend, "Two dollars is 15.6 yuan. It's really easy to make money from Americans!"
The money was indeed easy to make. Thomas happily opened all ten blind boxes on the spot, and they all contained small figurines.
Thomas took out a notebook and flipped open the stickers attached to the bottom of these small figurines, and then he was stunned.
"Excuse me, could you please help me copy these Chinese redemption codes?" James found the store manager who understood English and pleaded with her.
"I can't do that, I have work to do!" the store manager said with difficulty.
This made Thomas depressed, and he scratched his head, muttering, "Damn it, I wish I had chosen Chinese as an elective in college!"
However, fortunately, Thomas was a foreigner and was the focus of attention for many people present, especially some young women.
When they noticed Thomas seemed to want to copy the redemption codes, a pretty young lady immediately volunteered and started communicating with Thomas in fluent English. Before long, she took the initiative to help him copy the Chinese redemption codes.
Upon closer inspection, the handwriting was indeed very elegant. This young lady was clearly a student with good looks and academic performance, the type of woman who usually looked down upon many Chinese male compatriots.
However, she was exceptionally enthusiastic towards foreign men like Thomas, which was perfectly normal.
After all the redemption codes were copied, Thomas decisively tore off all the stickers with redemption codes from the small figurines and threw them into the trash.
"Young man, why are you wasting things like this?" several elderly women nearby were displeased.
Then the girl proactively explained for Thomas, "It's not like that. He's going to take these redemption codes back to America. He can't carry so much with him on the plane, so he has to discard them."
With this explanation, many people found it difficult to get angry.
"So generous!" Seeing these small figurines, which were ugly but also cute, many people felt a pang of sympathy. However, Thomas was completely unfazed. He quickly took out the 80 dollars in change he had received earlier and indicated his intention to buy 40 more blind boxes.
This time, Thomas's luck was good. Among the 40 blind boxes, he successfully opened a rare Undead reward. Besides that, they were all small figurines.
As before, he asked the girl to copy all the redemption codes and discard all the small figurines. As for the only rare reward, including the packaging, he carefully collected it into his backpack. It seemed he intended to take this item back to his country.
Thomas spent the entire afternoon in the store, spending nearly 5000 US dollars and purchasing a total of 2500 Warcraft blind boxes, almost clearing out all the blind boxes in the store.
It should be noted that since the Warcraft blind boxes resumed sales, the supply of blind boxes had greatly increased, and it was rare for anyone to be able to clear out a store.
Meanwhile, Thomas also obtained over 50 boxes of rare rewards. In addition, he fortunately opened a deluxe gift box, which was for the Orcs, making Thomas's eyes curve with joy.
However, the girl who had proactively helped Thomas copy the redemption codes had a tough time, her wrist unable to be lifted at the end from all the copying. She hadn't written so many characters in a single day since finishing her college entrance exams.
But when Thomas was about to leave, and she excitedly expressed her desire to treat him to a meal and then go to the movies together, Thomas, this heartless man, completely ignored her. Instead, he stated that he needed to find a hotel to work at and prepared to leave in a taxi with two snake-skin bags of rare blind boxes he had just bought.
The girl was so angry that she stomped her feet. She had originally hoped for a romantic international romance, but instead, she had worked for free.
Thomas had originally intended to take a taxi, but after leaving the blind box store, he discovered that the entire shop was located on a pedestrian street with no vehicles around. He could only drag the two snake-skin bags away, which was quite awkward.
Everyone can imagine the scene of a foreigner with two snake-skin bags on his back; it must have been very amusing.
If it were just two snake-skin bags, it would have been fine. The problem was that these two snake-skin bags were very heavy. After walking a few steps with them, Thomas felt his body completely unable to cope and could not possibly walk to the outside of the pedestrian street to get a car.
"Mr. Thomas, we meet again!" Just as Thomas was in distress, a somewhat familiar voice sounded. He turned around and exclaimed, "Mr. Huang, why are you here too!"
"This Jiangnan Blind Box store is my property. Why do you think I'm here?" Huang He said with a smile.
"What!!" Thomas was shocked. He looked at Huang He and asked in disbelief, "Is such a wonderful thing really your property?"
"Of course!" Huang He nodded, then snapped his fingers. A staff member immediately came out of the store, pushing a small handcart.
"Borrow this for you!" Huang He said with a smile.
"Thank you!" Thomas readily placed the two snake-skin bags into the small cart. As the cart moved outside, Huang He said from the side, "If I'm not mistaken, Mr. Thomas, you plan to take these redemption codes to America for sale, right?"
"You've guessed it!" Thomas said in shock.
"Of course. You bought 2500 blind boxes, and who knows how many duplicates there are. Yet, you recorded every redemption code. This clearly indicates your intention to sell the redemption codes, and likely online, so you can sell them without leaving your home. Am I right?"
"You are truly too clever. It's no wonder you can run such a large enterprise and develop such interesting products!" Thomas nodded and honestly told Huang He everything.
It turned out that this Thomas was originally just an ordinary game player in the United States. After Warcraft was released, he immediately became a loyal fan of the game and played it with great joy every day.
Life should have continued happily like this, but about two months ago, Thomas suddenly saw a picture on a forum. It was an image of a Thunder Tiger Tank being attacked by a group of ghouls.
When he first saw this picture, Thomas instinctively thought it was Photoshopped and even mocked it.
Unexpectedly, the author of the post quickly posted a GIF to prove him wrong. Later, many people replied in the post, saying they had also seen similar videos or GIFs and were asking if this was a private server game or if the developers were experimenting.
It wasn't until around the 50th reply that someone finally revealed the mystery.
This was a student who had just come to America. He proudly stated in the post that this was China's Warcraft, and only China's Warcraft worldwide had such special unit skin effects. If they didn't believe him, they could go to the Chinese servers to experience it directly.
In an era when the Great Firewall didn't exist, logging into Chinese servers directly from America, although with terrible latency, was not impossible.
So, Thomas found a tutorial on how to access Chinese servers online through various means.
He first found the official website of oo, then downloaded oo, then downloaded the oo game, and finally successfully entered the Chinese version of Warcraft through the oo game.
He entered the battle mode despite the huge latency. Although he was defeated by his opponent within 5 minutes, he truly saw a Night Elf archer wearing a white swimsuit, which excited him greatly.