Several of them made their way to the village security office. In the household registration room that had been specially prepared, Zhao Baihui gave a casual wave, and a machine the height of a man materialized before them.
"These things cost a fortune—a million per unit."
The one back in Taoyuan Village had been given for free; every unit after that would run a million apiece. Fortunately, Taoyuan Village's registered population had already surpassed seven thousand, which meant daily subsidies of over seventy thousand. A million would pay itself back in less than two weeks.
Still, he had spent considerably these past few months. The system sold the locations of resource deposits at posted prices—no haggling. The larger the reserve, the steeper the cost. The easier to mine, the steeper the cost. The small iron mine and the small coal mine together had set him back several million. He had wanted to go straight for gold and silver deposits, but the system hadn't unlocked those locations. A pity—he could have used them to pay for themselves. The only thing that hadn't cost him anything was the blast furnace for smelting steel, which he'd won through a village-level lottery draw. Technology couldn't be purchased outright; you either waited for it to unlock or you drew for it.
"All right, people can start coming in to get their identity papers processed."
"Get it moving as soon as possible. Whether or not your lord here has any real power depends entirely on you lot."
The four people standing before him were his closest confidants. If he couldn't trust them, there was no one left to trust.
Jinwen gave the orders: "Then let's register the townspeople today and bring the miners and steelworkers in tomorrow. Brother Mingcheng, Brother Mingjing—the two of you sort it out."
Once the machine was set down it was ready to go. Among the people Zhao Baihui had brought along were operators trained specifically for the machine and bound by confidentiality agreements.
In truth, it was a foolproof device—there wasn't much to let slip. And beyond printing identity cards and recording household information, it had no other function. It couldn't be eaten, drunk, or spent, so most people wouldn't give it a second glance. It would stir up no anxiety.
Honestly, to anyone other than Zhao Baihui, the thing was worth far less than the beat-up distillation and filtration rig that churned out a hundred jin of Immortal's Bliss per day.
With that small matter wrapped up, Jinwen led Zhao Baihui to the Zhao residence on this side of things.
It was a compound roughly the same size and layout as the one back in Taoyuan Village—but they had considerably more money now than they'd had then. The house was built of blue brick beneath white tile, and the materials and finishings were several cuts above what they'd known before.
Taking in the courtyard before him, Zhao Baihui said with a sigh, "Jinyi has been pestering me forever to tear down the old place and rebuild it."
"I could never be bothered with all that upheaval, so I kept saying no. I have a feeling that while I've been away, she's gone and done exactly what she pleased."
Jinwen covered her mouth to hide a smile. "She has—Elder Sister has wanted to rebuild the old house for a year now. It was actually Sister Jinxiu who first brought it up."
"That girl Jinxiu, always making a fuss, always preening herself—she paints her face every single day like some fox spirit. I half expect her to start eating people alive."
"Anyway, I'm worn out. Two days in a carriage is as dull as it is exhausting. I'm going to rest—wake me when dinner's ready."
"Of course, my lord. Get some rest. I'll carry on with work and come back this evening to have dinner with Brother Mingcheng and the others."
The following day, Zhao Baihui toured the outskirts of the village to check how the planning was being carried out. Then on the third, fourth, and fifth days he visited the two mines and the steelworks in turn.
The mines had been in operation for a while, and iron ore and coal were being extracted in a steady, unbroken stream. The steelworks had begun running as well, and steel was coming off the line. Steel produced by modern methods was naturally in a different class from anything this era could offer—when the first batches came out, the quality left the smiths at the plant white-faced with shock. They declared, in no uncertain terms, that not even the most expensive sword in the world could hack through it.
Between the three sites there were now over eight hundred workers, and the construction crews in Xinghuo Village numbered more than three hundred, with vast numbers of women and children on top of that. The village's total population had shot past two thousand—it was as though every village in the surrounding area had been emptied out—and the sight filled Zhao Baihui with unrestrained delight.
He offered his careful instructions: "Safety on the job must be the top priority. Every man here is the pillar of a family. Lose one, and a family loses everything."
"If there is ever an accident, the family must be looked after. Give family members first priority for the better positions in the village."
"If no suitable post exists, create one for them. Whatever it takes."
"My lord, I'll keep that in mind." Jinwen gazed at Zhao Baihui with reluctance in her eyes.
And indeed, Zhao Baihui was leaving. Though the place was still very much a work in progress, there was little a hands-off patron like him could do by staying on. He had been here seven days already, eleven counting the four on the road—plenty of time, he thought, for that girl Jinyi to have torn the house apart back home. He could only hope there would still be somewhere to sleep when he returned.
"New Year isn't far off. When the time comes, wrap up whatever you have on your hands and come home for the holiday."
"From now on, unless something truly, critically urgent comes up, I want us all to spend New Year's together."
"Yes, my lord. I'll remember."
"All right, off I go. If I stand here giving instructions all afternoon it'll be dark before I'm out of town, and I'll be sleeping in the middle of nowhere."
Zhao Baihui climbed into the carriage. It had already started moving when he thrust his head back out the window for one final word: "You must come home for New Year!"
He was every inch the anxious father who simply cannot bring himself to let his children go.
Jinyi and the others blinked hard against the sting behind their eyes and waved their arms with all their might.
…
Two days of jolting travel, and the sight of Taoyuan Village's boundary stone still lifted his spirits—as it always did.
But arriving at the gate of his own home to find the building razed to the ground and a crew of workers bustling about the site did nothing good for his mood.
"Where am I supposed to sleep?" Zhao Baihui stared around with a somewhat lost expression.
Jinyi had heard that the master was back and had hurried over to meet him.
"My lord, we've already prepared a place for you—the large courtyard where Mingcheng and the others used to stay. The surroundings are actually nicer than here."
"I'm planning to expand the house considerably this time—ten times the original footprint. The buildings around the perimeter will all be two stories and will house the attendants and staff, or serve as storerooms. We'll add some landscaping in the courtyard as well."
"After all, our whole household has grown rather large."
"Your private building will go in the center. The rest of us will each have a small two-story of our own."
"What does my lord think?"
Zhao Baihui listened in silence. It was already demolished, after all—what could he do? And from the sound of her plans, it didn't seem half bad. He produced a folded sheet of paper and handed it to Jinyi. "Build it according to this. The plans should give you everything you're after."
Thirty-odd small buildings, together with the structures around the perimeter, would essentially form a miniature residential compound.
From a grand manor house back to living in a residential compound?
Somehow it felt as though he was moving down in the world, not up.