Jinyi flashed a radiant smile. "Boss Zhang, there's actually something I've been meaning to bring up. A few days ago, someone came to our door saying they wanted to set up a distillery near the estate — supply us raw spirits at a lower price. I had a little chat with them."
Boss Zhang's face went pale with fright, and he waved his hands frantically. "Miss Jinyi, you've misunderstood me. I wasn't trying to raise the price — what I meant was that my raw spirit output has gone up, but the price really can't go any lower. After all, I have workers to pay."
"Ah, I see — I did misunderstand you, Boss Zhang. My apologies."
"It's my fault, entirely my fault. I spoke unclearly and caused Miss Jinyi to get the wrong idea."
The two exchanged a few more words, and only after Jinyi had collected the silver did she take her leave. She climbed into the carriage, made a few purchases around town, and then headed home.
Back at the house, the composed and steady-handed Jinyi that the outside world knew gave way to a girl her age. She grumbled, "Master, that Boss Zhang has made a tidy fortune off our liquor, yet he still wants more. It seems we'll be cutting him loose before long."
"Yes, yes — these things are yours to decide. I'll just be here clapping along."
Jinyi nodded, then said cheerfully, "Master, we're now producing a hundred jin of spirits a day. Sold to the tavern, that's ten taels of silver."
"The tavern sells it on for another ten taels. Compared to the profit margin, expenses are practically nothing."
"The tavern also carries other liquors supplied by Boss Zhang. The income from those isn't much, but it's more than enough to cover costs — so our seventy percent share comes to seven taels of silver."
"The main cost is the raw spirits. Going forward we'll probably need to buy firewood too, but not much — total costs won't reach three taels."
"So that means daily earnings of over fourteen taels, and over the course of a year... roughly five thousand taels?"
Jinyi startled herself with her own figures. Good heavens — five thousand taels a year. If you were farming, you'd need to be a great landowner with ten thousand mu of prime fields before you'd ever see that kind of return.
The other maids grew excited alongside her.
Jinwen broke into a silly grin. "Does that mean we can eat whatever we want?"
Fish, meat, roast chicken, braised goose — images crowded into Jinwen's mind: herself sitting in the middle of a ring of tables, every last one of them laden with food.
Jinyi indulged the daydream for a fleeting moment, then came back to her senses. "Everyone can dream all they like, but keep it to yourselves. Never flaunt your wealth — we don't want to become someone else's target."
"Master, I'm not at ease leaving the raw spirits in Boss Zhang's hands. I think we'd be better off handling it ourselves."
"The profit margin is lower, yes, but I'd sleep soundly."
"I've worked out the numbers. To open a distillery producing five hundred jin of raw spirits a day, we'd need something like a dozen people."
The moment Zhao Baihui heard the words *need people*, his spirits lifted instantly.
"Is a dozen really enough? Maybe a few more wouldn't hurt — so nobody works themselves to the bone. Besides, your master is hardly short of money."
"Alright then, let's say twenty for now — ten households, ten men and ten women. That should do it."
"Jinyi, let's make it happen. Start recruiting as soon as you can. Let that greedy Boss Zhang learn what comes of crossing the wrong woman!"
"Master!"
Jinyi and the other maids wasted no time. They set to planning on the spot — where to site the distillery, how large it should be, how much material they'd need, what equipment for brewing, how many large vats, and so on.
In the end, Jinyi decided the simplest solution was to buy out Boss Zhang's distillery outright — ideally bundle up everything, workers included, and bring them all over.
Zhao Baihui chimed in partway through with one piece of advice, concerning the location of the facility.
He had previously paid the system to draw up a master plan for the area, and it was better not to stray outside those boundaries.
No sense spoiling the look of the future city.
He then spent ten yuan to purchase a set of blueprints for a well-designed small factory, sketched them out by hand, and passed them along to the maids.
The maids threw themselves into it with tireless energy. Once they had hammered out the details, they sprang into action.
Jinyi sent someone with a carriage to go find Boss Zhang. Jinxiu went to track down Builder Wang to come and put up the factory building. Jinwen and Jinyuan went to contact the grain merchants and negotiate a supply arrangement.
Only Zhao Baihui, the master of the household, lay at home playing the idle layabout — and had the nerve to sigh that the girls had grown so capable that their master had been left with nothing useful to do.
A textbook case of having his cake and eating it too.
Things went smoothly on all fronts. Builder Wang came by with his crew, paid Zhao Baihui a brief courtesy call, and then got his men started straight away.
Putting up the factory was straightforward enough — chiefly a large, square-walled compound, with the walls built high against future thieves.
Inside, earthen partition walls divided the space into separate functional areas.
The grain store and the vat house could make do with simple sheds for the time being. The workers' dormitories were a touch more involved, but only a touch — they were simply built to the same standard as the rooms at the Zhao estate.
The factory was up within seven or eight days. And as for Boss Zhang — he swallowed his tears and surrendered the small distillery business in order to hold on to the far more lucrative tavern arrangement.
Not that he had much choice. Once the Zhao family distillery was up and running, his own would be finished.
After all, his liquor could only sell locally in Qingniu Town, and most of it had been going to the Zhao household as raw spirits anyway. What would become of his ordinary stock once that was gone?
His brew was no Immortal's Bliss — people weren't scrambling over each other to buy it from every corner of the land.
Qingniu Town couldn't work through a hundred jin of Immortal's Bliss in a single day, yet that hadn't stopped Zhao Baihui from running a masterful scarcity campaign.
Word kept circulating around town that Immortal's Bliss was so extraordinary because it contained some special ingredient.
And it could run out at any moment without warning, which drove devoted drinkers to buy a jin to drink and ten jin to lay away.
The recent price increase had only made it sell faster.
People were beginning to see that this wasn't just something you drank — it was something you invested in.
So the scramble intensified, drawing in quite a few people who barely drank at all.
Markets — forever strange and wonderful things.
Previously, Zhao Baihui's household numbered nineteen people, which earned him a steady daily subsidy of 190 yuan.
That translated to roughly 1,900 wen a day — just under two taels of silver.
But with the earnings from Immortal's Bliss so far outstripping everything else, his subsidy had quietly been piling up untouched.
Now, with several households brought over from Boss Zhang's side and a few more families in hard straits that Jinyi had recruited, the household had grown by another ten families — children included, a full fifty-three souls.
Once they'd passed their probationary period, his daily subsidy would climb to 720 yuan — surpassing his salary from before he'd transmigrated!
"Jinyi, you know — I've always believed that for ordinary folk, the land comes first. Do me a favour and put your mind to it: find more people to open up wasteland. We need to be growing more grain!"
Jinyi didn't quite understand why her master, earning this much money every day, was still fussing over the few coins that came from farming.
But as the most devoted little confidante a master could hope for, she agreed without hesitation.
She promised Zhao Baihui she would keep finding people to work the land.
"Jinyi, now that we have money, we also have a responsibility. Life is hard for common folk!"
"Here's what I'd like: don't only look for able-bodied men. The elderly, children, widows — even monks or nuns, or people with disabilities. As long as they're willing to come to us, we'll make sure they have food to eat at the very least. That's what I call a sense of social responsibility. Do you understand?"
"A-alright, Master."
*Hmph. I don't care who you are. As long as you're alive and breathing, you'd better be earning your master ten yuan a day!*