Her mother is a twin, and now she's having twins on her first pregnancy. Genes are a powerful thing!

When Hu Qian saw Yi Anguo, she was still pouting because he hadn't taken her to his hometown for a visit.

"How's everything? All good?" Yi Anguo asked with concern as he helped Hu Jing sit down on the sofa.

"I'm fine! They just get a little mischievous and kick my stomach occasionally," Hu Jing said with a smile, caressing her belly.

"What about you? Did everything go smoothly back home?"

"It went pretty smoothly. The construction of the house in the village is all settled, and I also bought a place in the city district, which is being renovated now. In the future, we can live in the village or the city, whichever we prefer. It'll be very convenient," Yi Anguo said with a nod.

"Your due date is coming up soon. You have to take good care of yourself!"

"I know, it'll be fine. All I do right now is eat and sleep. Sometimes Hu Qian walks with me in the community garden. I feel like a pig. I'm sure I'll get fat after giving birth," Hu Jing said worriedly.

"So what if you get fat? A little chubbiness is nice. All that matters is that I don't mind," Yi Anguo laughed.

"I'm just afraid that if I really become a fatso, you'll start to dislike me," Hu Jing chuckled.

"Ah! One of these two little ones is kicking me again. I bet it's the son."

"Really? Let me see!" Yi Anguo's interest was piqued, and he lifted the hem of her shirt over her belly.

"It just moved again. Are they kicking you?" Yi Anguo asked after seeing the telltale motion.

"Why does it look like they're moving all over the place? Are these two little guys fighting in there?"

"It's alright! Once they've had their fun and get tired, they'll naturally go to sleep," Hu Jing said with a smile.

"But if they're this rowdy in the middle of the night, can you even sleep?" Yi Anguo asked.

"Sometimes they wake me up, but I just fall back asleep after they settle down," Hu Jing explained.

"Besides, I don't have much to do these days. If I don't sleep well at night, I can always catch up during the day."

Pregnancy is tough, but it's a hardship that others can't share. There wasn't much Yi Anguo could do besides offer psychological comfort and spiritual companionship.

With a professional manager hired to run Anjing Company, it was seeing steady growth and franchise development according to plan. Even without Hu Jing personally supervising things, there wouldn't be any major issues.

Furthermore, as the Anjing Online Supermarket's reputation grew after its launch, it served as a form of advertising for the Anjing convenience stores. Consequently, an increasing number of potential franchisees were coming to the company to investigate.

It had been nearly three months since the Anjing Online Supermarket was launched. It had already expanded from the core districts to cover the entirety of Shenzhen City. The daily transaction volume had surpassed 120,000 yuan, with the monthly total approaching four million yuan.

Although these figures couldn't compare to Taobao, whose monthly transaction value was nearly two billion yuan and its projected annual sales would be at least twenty billion yuan, it was still an impressive achievement. For an online supermarket that had been operating for less than three months and only in a single city, the performance was excellent.

Despite this, profitability was still a long way off. Running at a loss was the norm.

Building a proprietary logistics center, warehousing center, and distribution stations, not to mention hiring a large number of couriers, all required a tremendous amount of money.

Additionally, there were expenses for advertising and promotion, using low prices to attract customers, offering new-user benefits, and various other costs associated with driving traffic, all of which added up to a colossal sum.

But these were necessary expenses. Without investment, how could there be returns?

Equipping each courier with an electric tricycle was a significant expense in itself.

They were also provided with a mobile phone, another cost that couldn't be avoided, along with the communication fees. Couriers needed to call customers to coordinate deliveries.

Moreover, although the couriers were paid on a commission basis where they earned more for delivering more, they still needed a base salary. In the beginning, relying on commission alone certainly wouldn't earn them much.

After launching in Shenzhen City, the next target was Yang Cheng.

Initially, Yi Anguo had planned to launch in Dongguan right after Shenzhen, but everyone eventually agreed that they should launch in Yang Cheng first.

Some even argued that after Yang Cheng, they should move on to major cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Hankou, Tianjing, Shengjing, and Xijing, and only then consider Dongguan.

Compared to those major cities, Dongguan was more like a vast rural area, with its urban development far less concentrated.

Yi Anguo felt there was some truth to this. After all, a company called Meituan would do exactly that in a few years, targeting the major cities first to launch its services.

Yi Anguo readily accepted the consensus and decided that the next step for Anjing Online Supermarket would be to launch in Yang Cheng.

Yi Anguo quickly found a factory that was for sale. The factory had a modest built-up area but sat on a large plot of land. Aside from an office building and a dormitory, the workshops were single-story, tin-roofed sheds, perfectly suited for a mahogany furniture factory and for use as a lumber warehouse.

Although the factory buildings themselves weren't worth much, the land was, so the asking price wasn't cheap.

Nevertheless, Yi Anguo agreed to the price without hesitation.

You might think the price isn't exactly cheap, especially since this is outside the city's main developed area, but ten years from now, you couldn't buy this land for ten times the price. In the future, industrial land-use rights will only be granted for thirty years, but right now, they're for fifty years. Future industrial land will not only be much more expensive but will also come with numerous restrictions on the type of enterprise, building size, and even detailed regulations for the size of the cafeteria and dormitories.

This plot of land was over 13,000 square meters, a full twenty mu, enclosed by a wall that made it feel vast and empty. It came with a standard 50-year land-use right, of which ten years had already passed, leaving forty years remaining.

In a little over a decade, land like this would easily cost two to three hundred million yuan. Yet right now, he could acquire both the factory and the land for just ten million yuan.

Even at this price, the owner was definitely making a handsome profit. When the land was bought in 1996, it cost twenty, or at most fifty, thousand yuan per mu, definitely no more than one hundred thousand.

Including the construction costs for the factory, the total investment wouldn't have exceeded five million yuan and was possibly only two or three million. Selling for ten million yuan now netted them a considerable profit, and that was after having used it for all these years.

After purchasing the factory, Yi Anguo took Yi Xiaoman and Yi Xiaolin to various lumber markets. He instructed them to focus on acquiring a batch of Indian Red Sandalwood and Laotian Rosewood.

"Indian Red Sandalwood doesn't come in large pieces, so just try to pick out the better-quality stock. Don't buy anything that's too poor or hollow. As for Laotian Rosewood, you should specifically look for large planks, not the small pieces."

"Build good relationships with the lumber dealers and have them source high-quality materials for us. For instance, with this Indian Red Sandalwood, as long as the quality is good, we'll buy as much as they can find. The same goes for large planks of Laotian Rosewood. If they have it in stock, just buy it all. Don't be afraid to pay a little above market price."

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