The night in Jiangning was ignited by the lights of the Liu Manor.
This wasn't a real fire; rather, whale oil lamps illuminated the expanded workshop brightly.
Xu Qinghuan stood on the second-floor corridor.
She glanced down, feeling her head buzzing.
The scene below would be absolutely mind-blowing even in the modern era.
Hundreds of tenant farmers, having just finished eating braised pork, had eyes glowing green with a terrifying level of excitement.
"Listen up, all of you!"
Li Sheng stood on a high platform, holding a tin megaphone for the final mobilization.
"Our Eldest Miss is kind-hearted and can't bear to see everyone suffer in poverty, so she specifically established the divine rule of three shifts!"
"What does three shifts mean? It means the people rest, but the machines don't!"
"Shift A works for four shichen and then Shift B takes over. When Shift B finishes, Shift C steps in. No one is allowed to slack off, and no one is allowed to snatch someone else's work!"
"The more you work, the more you earn. Do you see that basket of copper coins over there? That is piece-rate pay, settled on the spot!"
Li Sheng waved his hand, and several servants brought up a basket of copper coins, pouring them onto the table with a loud clatter.
The breathing of the workers below grew heavy.
"I'm in Shift A! Let me go first!"
"Get lost! I'm strong, and I'm already a skilled worker in Shift B!"
"Don't push! For the braised pork! For the copper coins! Charge!"
With a boom, the crowd surged toward the Spinning Jennies.
This wasn't going to work; this was clearly a scramble for money.
Xu Qinghuan watched this scene and covered her face in agony.
"What a sin..."
She grumbled in her heart, "Sys, look at these people. They've been completely fooled by me. This kind of high-intensity assembly line work would get me hung from a streetlamp in modern times."
"Even the donkeys in a production team wouldn't be worked this hard!"
The system continued to play dead, only silently turning up the capitalist evil value in the background by one notch.
Xu Qinghuan sighed, trying to find some psychological comfort.
"Forget it, I'm doing this to squander my fortune anyway."
She pointed at those burning whale oil lamps and thought through gritted teeth, "This is whale oil, one tael of silver per catty. I'm lighting hundreds of these tonight, let's see if that doesn't burn through my money!"
"And with this overtime pay, the midnight snacks, and the wear and tear, there's no way I won't complete my mission!"
Just then, Xue Hong arrived.
This wealthiest woman in Jiangnan obviously hadn't slept all night. She had dark circles under her eyes, but her energy level was frighteningly high.
She was draped in a messy sable coat, and her hair bun was askew, clearly having run all the way here.
"What's wrong, Sister Xue? Do you regret investing your money?"
Xu Qinghuan's eyes lit up, and she quickly went to greet her. "If you regret it, we can withdraw the capital right now. I'll pay you double the penalty for breach of contract!"
Xue Hong ignored her.
She stood by the railing, staring fixedly at the workshop below, completely frozen.
Over a hundred Spinning Jennies were neatly arranged.
Following the foreman's whistle: "Ready—go!"
Over a hundred workers cranked the handles simultaneously.
Clack, clack, clack—buzz!!!
The sound wasn't pleasant; it could even be called deafeningly noisy.
But to Xue Hong's ears, it sounded better than heavenly music.
Countless spindles rotated at the same time, cotton fluff danced in the air, and then was rapidly stretched and twisted into cotton yarn.
It was both uniform and tireless.
This visual impact made Xue Hong, who still relied on manual spinning wheels, tremble.
"Is... is this what you meant by..."
Xue Hong's voice trembled. She pointed downward, her fingers disobeying her commands.
"...industrialization?"
Xu Qinghuan shrugged and said indifferently, "Pretty much, though it's just a low-end version."
"Low-end?"
"Ahem, that is to say... this isn't a true finished product yet, just a crude, barely usable beginning."
"Low... end? Such a divine artifact is only considered low-grade and incomplete? Then the high-end ones... could they truly belong to the mansions of heavenly gods?"
Xue Hong suddenly exclaimed, "County Princess Xu!"
"Do you know that the yarn spat out by one machine in the time it takes an incense stick to burn is enough for an old weaver to spin for how long?!"
Xue Hong held up two fingers, gesturing tremblingly.
"Half a month! A full half month!"
"And here..." She scanned the seemingly endless workshop, "You have a hundred machines!"
"That's the output of thousands of weavers working without sleep or rest!"
Xue Hong's legs suddenly gave out, and she slumped directly onto the floor.
She wasn't frightened; she was dizzy from being struck by the prospect of immense wealth.
"Have you calculated the costs?"
Xue Hong asked, grabbing the hem of Xu Qinghuan's skirt.
Xu Qinghuan curled her lip and pulled a piece of rough paper from her chest.
"It's not that much."
Xu Qinghuan said regretfully, "It's mainly because the labor cost is too high, the braised pork isn't cheap, and these whale oil lamps are too expensive."
"How much?!" Xue Hong's voice cracked into a yell.
"Including raw materials, labor, wear and tear, and my fortune-squandering overtime pay..."
Xu Qinghuan held out a hand and flipped it.
"One bolt of cloth is about fifty wen."
With a thud, Xue Hong lay completely flat on her back.
She stared at the ceiling, her eyes unfocused, muttering to herself.
"Fifty wen..."
"The cotton cloth on the market, even the worst coarse cloth, costs at least three hundred and fifty wen wholesale..."
"Our cost... is only this little?"
"This isn't doing business, this is robbing! No, even robbing isn't this fast!"
Xu Qinghuan looked at Xue Hong's unworldly reaction and rolled her eyes inwardly.
"Sister Xue, you're dizzy just from this. What if I told you that when Machine Model Two goes online, we can cut it down by another third?"
"Sister Xue, your psychological endurance is lacking. How are you going to grow bigger and stronger with me in the future?"
Xue Hong sat up with a sudden kip-up, grabbing Xu Qinghuan's hand with fanatical eyes.
"The... the price! What price should we set?"
"Eight hundred wen? No! A thousand wen! Right now, the Wang family has driven the market price up to eight hundred. Even if we sell for a thousand, people will scramble for it!"
Xue Hong was already fantasizing in her head about making a massive fortune.
But Xu Qinghuan withdrew her hand, showing the smile of a philanthropist on her face.
"A thousand wen?"
Xu Qinghuan wagged her finger. "Too vulgar."
"Then... then eight hundred? On par with the Wang family?"
"Tacky."
"Five hundred? It can't be any lower! Any lower and..."
"One hundred wen."
Xu Qinghuan spat out these words.
The air froze.
Xue Hong opened her mouth wide, her jaw nearly dropping to the floor.
"H-how much?"
"One hundred wen per bolt."
Xu Qinghuan looked at the busy workers below, her tone firm. "And it's buy five, get one free."
"Sister Qinghuan, are you crazy?!"
Xue Hong screamed, completely ignoring her poise as she jumped up and shook Xu Qinghuan's shoulders.
"One hundred wen?! That's not even twice the cost price! Are you running a charity?!"
"We hold such a divine artifact in our hands, and you're actually selling it at cabbage prices?!"
Xu Qinghuan was shaken until she felt dizzy, but she was overjoyed inwardly.
Yes, exactly, hurry up and scold me for being a spendthrift! I just want to make the profit margin so thin it can be ignored, preferably not earning a single cent, so I can complete the system's fortune-squandering mission.
"Sister Xue, broaden your horizons."
Xu Qinghuan pushed Xue Hong away and straightened her rumpled collar, her face full of righteousness.
"Are we doing this to make money?"
"No! We are doing this for the common people of the Great Qian Dynasty!"
"Think about it, those poor people who can't afford clothes, those children shivering in the bitter wind. If we earn a little less, they can survive!"
"Besides..."
Xu Qinghuan smiled, though it was merely to cover up her own guilty conscience.
"The Wang family's cost is four hundred copper coins, and they sell for eight hundred."
"I will sell for one hundred."
"Who do you think in this Jiangning City would still buy the Wang family's cloth?"
"I might not make much money, but I can make the Wang family... die."
At these words, Xue Hong froze.
She looked at the seventeen-year-old girl in front of her and suddenly shivered.
Ruthless. Too ruthless.
This wasn't doing business; this was directly flipping the table and smashing the pot.
She was using an absolute price advantage to turn the hundreds of thousands of bolts of cotton cloth hoarded by the Wang family into scrap.
"Brilliant, truly brilliant!"
The greed in Xue Hong's eyes faded, leaving only awe.
"This is going to uproot the four great noble families!"
Just then, a strange noise came from the corner.
The socially anxious genius, Jenny Huang, was crouching next to a malfunctioning machine.
The surrounding noise was deafening; an ordinary person would get ringing in their ears after just a short while.
But this little girl didn't care at all. Her face even wore a look of immense satisfaction.
She had two wads of cotton stuffed in her ears, a wrench in her hand, and was muttering to herself.
"Is this... a utopia?"
"No need to deal with annoying social interactions, no need to figure out those convoluted schemes."
"There are only divine machines, only the pure beauty of mechanics."
Jenny Huang's eyes were frighteningly bright. She suddenly shouted, but her voice was drowned out by the noise.
"I want to work! I want to live here! No one can drag me out!"
If this were in modern times, it would absolutely be the ultimate corporate workaholic's declaration.
"Granted!"
Xu Qinghuan waved her hand grandly. "Li Sheng! Set up a bed for Miss Jenny in the workshop! And give her two extra chicken legs!"
Meanwhile.
The First Prince, Xiao Jingxing, was lying on top of the wall with Wei Zhong.
The roaring sound of machines coming from inside the wall carried far into the night.
"Your Highness, listen..."
Wei Zhong lowered his voice, his face solemn. "This sound is very loud and continuous. Could they be forging some kind of weapon?"
Xiao Jingxing did not speak.
He closed his eyes and listened carefully to the noisy clamor.
In his imagination, that wasn't the noise of the spinning jenny.
It was the war drum of the Great Qian Dynasty's prosperous destiny!
It was the tragic and majestic movement of Xu Qinghuan exhausting her heart's blood, working day and night to fill the empty state treasury!
Xiao Jingxing choked up, his fingers gripping the wall bricks tightly.
"Her absolute devotion to Great Qian!"
"She is carrying the heavy burden for me, for my imperial father, and for the common people of this world!"
......
When it was almost dawn, the main gates opened.
The first to walk out was Liu Chuncao, the daughter-in-law of the Zhao family.
She held a bowl containing her piece-rate wages, her hands trembling.
Inside were fifty copper coins!
In the past, that was the amount of money her whole family could only save up over an entire month.
But now, she had earned it in just one night!
"Oh, Heavens..."
Looking at the copper coins in her hands, she turned back to look at the workshop.
Liu Chuncao suddenly placed the bowl on the ground and fell heavily to her knees, facing the red silhouette on the second floor.
Thump!
Thump!
Thump!
"A living Bodhisattva! County Princess Xu is a living Bodhisattva!"
Liu Chuncao cried with a heart-wrenching voice.
"From now on, if anyone dares to say a bad word about the County Princess, I will fight them with my life!"
The workers coming out behind her saw this scene and also knelt on the ground one after another.
"Thank you, County Princess, for feeding us!"
"We are willing to die for the County Princess!"
On the second-floor corridor, Xu Qinghuan looked at the dense crowd of people below and listened to their immense gratitude.
She sighed.
"Hey, no way... Are all the NPCs in this book masochists?!"
