When Xu Qinghuan stepped out of the carriage, her feet landed on a thick layer of loose dust.
The wind funneled through the mountain pass of Niushou Mountain, whipping up the grayish-white powder, and the grit that hit her face was slightly choking. She didn't dodge it; in fact, she had to take pride in it.
This was the "waste material" she had spent a fortune to buy.
The roadbed stretching out before her for dozens of yards was dusty and gray, like a dead snake lying across the wasteland. The crude iron bars, purchased at great cost, were strewn haphazardly within the roadbed by the displaced workers, utterly without order. Some even jutted out, looking like they'd snag a foot.
The scene was a picture.
It was practically a disaster site.
Xu Qinghuan felt quite pleased; these hundred thousand taels of silver were as good as vanished without a trace.
A few kiln craftsmen squatted by the roadside, staring gloomily at a pile of mixed slurry. Their leader was an old man called Old Man Li. He held an iron shovel, his face deeply lined and caked with dust.
Xu Qinghuan walked over. Zhao Si followed behind her, ledger in hand, matching her pace step for step.
"Young Mistress."
Seeing the red cloak, Old Man Li was so startled he nearly dropped his shovel, trembling as he made to kneel.
"This dust powder... it's too... too difficult to work with," Old Man Li pointed at the slurry, his voice bitter. "Mixed with water, it turns to muck, and you still have to add sand and stones. This stuff can't be used for building walls or firing bricks. Laid on a road, it's just a puddle of slop."
Xu Qinghuan glanced at that puddle of muck.
Ugly. Truly ugly. Perfect.
"I want it to be slop," Xu Qinghuan said, kicking a loose stone by the roadside. It rolled into the slurry and was instantly swallowed. "The sloppier, the better. If it ended up as smooth and level as an official road, why would I waste this money?"
Old Man Li opened his mouth but didn't dare reply.
He'd been a kiln craftsman all his life and had never seen a patron who threw money into the ground like this. That dust powder was a mixture of volcanic ash and lime, waste material that used to be dumped into rivers to wash away. Yet this young mistress insisted on buying it at a high price and even demanded iron bars be mixed into it.
Wasn't this just pure waste?
Xu Qinghuan's gaze swept around and landed on a nearby, fully dried gray lump.
It was a discarded mold, probably used by the craftsmen for testing, tossed into the grass by the roadside. The slurry inside had solidified into a hard, grayish-white block, its surface pitted and hideously ugly.
"What's that?" Xu Qinghuan pointed.
Old Man Li followed her finger, his face instantly paling.
That was waste material he'd forgotten to dispose of during his midday break. Once this dust powder was mixed with water, if not used within half an hour, it would harden, ruining the mold. And this was the young mistress's expensive "precious" material, which he had let spoil.
"Young Mistress, please forgive me!"
Old Man Li thudded to his knees, kowtowing so hard his head knocked against the ground. "It was this old man's negligence! I'll smash it and remix it right away!"
As he spoke, he scrambled up, grabbed his shovel, swung it back with all his might, and brought it down hard on that rock-solid gray lump.
He put his full strength into the blow. He wanted to prove he wasn't slacking, and he wanted to get rid of that offending "waste" as fast as possible.
Clang!
A sharp, metallic ring.
The sound wasn't of a shovel hitting earth, but more like hitting pig iron. Sparks even flew.
Old Man Li felt a shock run through his hands, the shovel vibrating right out of his grip. It clattered to the ground.
The shovel's edge was curled. The grayish-white hard lump didn't even have a scratch, stubbornly lying there as if mocking his effort.
Old Man Li was dumbstruck. Zhao Si was dumbstruck. The displaced workers nearby all stopped their tasks, staring dumbly at the stone that had broken an iron shovel.
Xu Qinghuan's eyes lit up.
She strode over, crouched down, and poked the stone with her finger.
Cold. Hard. Rough.
This texture... why did it feel so familiar? Wasn't this exactly how the unfinished building she lived in during her previous life felt?
Was this... cement?
That thing that changed architectural history, yet she had despised it for being so ugly?
A wave of wild joy surged in Xu Qinghuan's heart.
This stuff was good. Once it set, it was hard as stone. If this were laid on a road, trying to remove it later would be impossible.
And what did 'impossible to remove' mean? It meant this stretch of barren hills would be permanently locked down by this ugly mass of stone. Even if someone wanted to develop this land in the future, just the cost of clearing this roadbed would be astronomical.
This was true squandering. This was a masterstroke of ruination.
Xu Qinghuan stood up, brushing the dust from her hands. She looked at Old Man Li, who was still trembling, her eyes full of appreciation.
But in Old Man Li's eyes, this appreciation was the calm before the storm.
It's over. Ruining the young mistress's precious material into this unyielding, shovel-breaking monstrosity... this was a beheading offense.
"This..." Old Man Li's teeth chattered as he desperately tried to find an excuse.
His gaze swept over the jumble of iron bars in the roadbed, and a flash of inspiration struck. The will to survive made him concoct an utterly absurd reason.
"Young Mistress... this... this thing, though hard... it... it can prevent theft!"
Old Man Li pointed at the stone, stammering his wild fabrication. "You see, iron bars buried in soil are easy for troublemakers to dig up and sell for scrap. But once this slurry dries, it locks the bars in place. Yes, once it dries, it locks the bars in place! Even with an iron hammer, you couldn't pry them out!"
Zhao Si, listening nearby, widened his eyes further and further.
Prevent theft? Locking iron bars into the road? Wasn't this an upgraded version of what the young mistress had said before about "increasing weight so people can't move it"?
This was literally welding the money to the ground!
"Young Mistress!" Zhao Si stepped forward, his voice cracking with excitement. "Old Man Li is right! This is a miraculous technique! We spent so much on those iron bars; what a pity if they were stolen. Using this method to solidify them, the bars become one with the mountain. No one can take them!"
Xu Qinghuan watched the two of them playing off each other.
She almost laughed out loud.
Who was worried about the bars being stolen? She wished someone would steal them, so she could buy more, spend more money.
But... welding the money to the ground. That phrasing was too tempting.
Each iron bar, each cartload of dust powder, mixed together, transformed into a mass of industrial waste that could never be recovered, never be converted to cash, never even be cleared away. This was the absolute pinnacle of the art of squandering.
"Prevent theft?"
Xu Qinghuan raised an eyebrow, putting on the face of a greedy miser. "Interesting. Anything belonging to the Xu family, even a single nail, should rot in the ground before it benefits anyone else."
She pointed at the hard stone. "Who else knows this formula?"
Old Man Li was taken aback. Formula? It was just a blind cat finding a dead mouse, a random mix of volcanic ash and lime.
"No... no one else," Old Man Li shook his head. "Just a few of us kiln craftsmen here know."
"I'll buy it."
Xu Qinghuan pulled a silver note from her sleeve and tossed it lightly onto the dust before Old Man Li.
One hundred taels.
For a kiln craftsman, it was a fortune, enough to support him for the rest of his days.
"This hundred taels is your reward, and also the buyout fee." Xu Qinghuan's voice was cold, carrying an imperious tone that brooked no argument. "From today, this method of turning ash into stone is the exclusive secret of the Xu family. Apart from building my road, you are not to tell anyone, nor use it for anyone else."
"If I find out any shop out there uses this material..." she paused, her gaze sweeping over all the craftsmen present, "I'll bury whoever it is in this road, to use as a piling."
This vicious threat was highly effective for the craftsmen. They weren't afraid of being scolded; they were afraid of the employer not paying. Now, not only had they gotten paid, but they'd also received hush money. It was like manna from heaven.
"Yes, yes, yes! Don't worry, young mistress!" Old Man Li grabbed the silver note, his hand trembling. "This method will rot in my gut before I utter half a word about it!"
And so, the epoch-making invention of "cement" was turned into a garbage technology only fit for building a terrible road.
Xu Qinghuan was very satisfied. A monopoly. Even a monopoly on garbage was still a monopoly.
"Zhao Si." In high spirits, Xu Qinghuan even found the ugly roadbed somewhat more pleasing to the eye. "Pass down the order. From now on, all road sections are to be done using this method."
She pointed at the iron bars. "Add those iron bars like there's no tomorrow. Don't spare any expense. I want this road so hard even lightning couldn't crack it."
"And those pilings," she pointed towards the area prepared for the bridge. "Stop using wood. Pour this stuff for me. Make them thick, make them ugly. I want people to know at a glance this is the monster road built by that prodigal daughter of the Xu family."
"Aye, ma'am!" Zhao Si's reply boomed.
The sun began to set.
Torches were lit on the construction site. Thousands of displaced people, along with dozens of craftsmen, began a frantic construction effort that would be enough to enter the history books.
Xu Qinghuan stood on a hillside not far away.
She watched as the craftsmen poured bucket after bucket of the mixed mortar into the wooden molds. Several wrist-thick steel bars stood there, like some kind of menacing skeleton.
The mortar poured down, submerging the steel bars, filling every gap.
The first reinforced concrete column was born in this absurd atmosphere.
No ribbon-cutting, no cheers. Only Xu Qinghuan's look of disdain and Zhao Si's pained hiss at the cost.
The thing stood there, dusty grey, its surface rough and uneven, truly breathtakingly ugly.
But in Xu Qinghuan's eyes, it was a tomb for money.
Every bucket of mortar poured meant several taels of silver gone. Every iron bar buried meant dozens of copper coins vanished. This rate of spending money like water gave her an unprecedented sense of peace of mind.
Night had fallen completely.
Several lamps were lit in the accounts office at the back of the county magistrate's compound. The abacus beads on the desk clicked and clacked.
Xu Qinghuan sat in an armchair, holding a freshly delivered expense report.
"Today's labor costs: five hundred and twenty taels."
"Meat procurement: two hundred and thirty taels."
"Purchase of ash powder, iron bars, river sand: totaling eight thousand four hundred taels."
"Miscellaneous expenses: one hundred and fifty taels."
Total: nine thousand three hundred taels.
One day. Just this one day had spent what used to be half a year's tax revenue for Taoyuan County. And this didn't even include the more expensive materials to be added later.
Xu Qinghuan closed the account book and let out a long sigh.
Comforting. This feeling of watching money turn into waste was far more satisfying than earning it.
The countdown on the system panel still hadn't moved, but she figured it wasn't a problem. Being this wasteful, this ruinous, burying strategic materials like this in the ground...
If the imperial court found out, they would surely convict her of "destroying state funds and hoarding refined iron." Then, forget exile, she might even get her family property confiscated directly.
Confiscation was good. Confiscation meant she could return to the modern era.
Xu Qinghuan tossed the account book onto the desk and took a sip of the tea by her hand. The tea was cold, but her heart was warm.
She stood up and pushed open the window.
Outside was the pitch-black night. Only in the direction of the west side of the city could she vaguely see a patch of red firelight. That was her construction site. Her masterpiece.
What she didn't know was that in that direction, beneath the ugly roadbed that wound upward, the fate of the Great Qian Dynasty was beginning to shift.
The road she considered a garbage-strewn path was harder than the capital city's walls. The pillar she despised for its ugliness could withstand tens of thousands of pounds of pressure.
And on the Ox Head Mountain peak, which she had casually circled in red. On some future day, that place would become the most impregnable fortress in all of Great Qian, an insurmountable natural chasm for the northern cavalry when they marched south.
As for now.
Xu Qinghuan merely yawned, feeling that this day of prodigality had been truly fulfilling and wonderful.
"Time for bed." She closed the window, shutting out the chill wind. "More spending tomorrow."
