This pile of black stones wasn't just money; it was a death warrant.
Xu Qinghuan sat in the master's chair in the study, the lump of hematite in her hand warmed smooth from her constant handling. Privately mining iron ore was a crime punishable by the extermination of nine clans in the Great Qian Dynasty. If they directly hauled these raw ores out to sell, once discovered, the several hundred members of the Xu family would line up neatly at the execution grounds.
What the system wanted was embezzlement, not rebellion.
To turn this into legal silver, it needed to go through a process. Melt the stones into liquid, cast the liquid into objects. Once they became inconspicuous items mixed into the black market, not even the gods could trace which mountain this iron was dug from.
"Li Sheng." Xu Qinghuan tossed the ore back onto the desk.
Li Sheng had just run down from the mountain, his legs still trembling.
"Post a notice." Xu Qinghuan tapped her fingers on the desktop twice. "Find all the blacksmiths within a hundred li radius for me. Tell them the Xu family is hiring. Wages are five times the standard rate. For truly exceptional skill, I'll pay ten times. I'll even take apprentices."
Li Sheng was stunned. The blacksmiths in the county alone numbered nearly a hundred. Counting the surrounding areas, this expense would be a bottomless pit.
"Eldest Miss, are we... starting an armory?" Li Sheng lowered his voice, glancing toward the door. "If the court finds out..."
"Shut up." Xu Qinghuan glared at him. "Who said anything about making weapons? I want farming tools."
"Farming tools?"
"Hoes, sickles, plowshares." Xu Qinghuan listed them off. "Nothing else is to be made. Not even a single kitchen cleaver. Anyone who dares forge one, I'll chop off their hands."
Li Sheng's brain couldn't make the turn. Paying master craftsmen ten times the wage, just to make hoes?
Xu Qinghuan was annoyed by his foolish look.
Weapons were conspicuous; farming tools were not. These were troubled times of war and chaos. Grain was life, and farming tools were the means to earn a living. The surrounding farmers lacked them. These items circulated fast on the black market, anonymous, taken upon payment. Tens of thousands of hoes scattered out would bring back a flow of hundreds of thousands of taels of silver. As long as this money didn't enter the official accounts, it would be her performance in completing the embezzlement task.
Most importantly, doing it this way wasted money.
High salaries to support blacksmiths were for monopoly. She wanted to corral all the capable metalworkers in the area onto Niushou Mountain, putting other forges out of business. This was cutthroat competition, the basic quality of a wastrel heir.
"And buy charcoal." Xu Qinghuan continued instructing. "Don't buy that smoky, sooty firewood charcoal; it's cheap. Buy smokeless coal, the kind that burns odorless with the fiercest heat. Buy as much as you can get."
Li Sheng swallowed hard. Using refined coal meant for heating tea to smelt iron? A single hammer strike would cost more than the iron itself.
"Not going yet?" Xu Qinghuan picked up a teacup, threatening to throw it.
Li Sheng scurried away like a rat.
The door curtain lifted, and Xu Youde walked in.
The old man's steps were steady, his face wearing that profound look of seeing through everything. He had been listening outside the door, especially to that line "only make farming tools," which had stirred his blood.
"Dear girl." Xu Youde sat opposite Xu Qinghuan, rotating two walnuts in his hand. "This move of 'concealing troops among farmers'—which ancient text did you learn it from?"
The tea in Xu Qinghuan's hand nearly spilled.
"What troops?"
"Don't pretend." Xu Youde pointed outside. "A thick hoe head, fitted with a long handle, becomes a heavy infantry's armor-piercing spike. A sharpened sickle is the head of a hook sickle spear. Melted plowshares can be cast into shields. You're engaging in military-agricultural colonies."
Xu Youde grew more excited as he spoke, the walnuts clicking loudly.
"In peacetime, let the refugees use these things to farm, masking our true intent. Once we rise up, these tens of thousands of farming tools become tens of thousands of weapons. Brilliant, truly brilliant."
Xu Qinghuan opened her mouth.
Looking at her dear father's face, etched with "I understand your ambition," she decided to shut up. It was impossible to explain. In the eyes of a corrupt official, there were no losing deals, only long-term investments they hadn't yet grasped.
"If Father says so, then it must be so." Xu Qinghuan gave up. "Just remember to help me get the travel permits for this batch of goods."
"Don't worry." Xu Youde thumped his chest. "I'll go right now and give that surnamed Li assistant prefect some 'trouble' to keep him from watching the west of the city."
Three days later. The back mountain of Niushou Mountain.
Dozens of primitive blast furnaces stood densely on the wasteland like mushrooms after rain.
Xu Qinghuan stood on the newly erected platform, looking down at the sea of dark heads below. Li Sheng worked efficiently; where high rewards are offered, brave men are found. Every blacksmith from the surrounding ten li and eight villages had come, whether lame or blind, as long as they could swing a hammer.
Add to that the several thousand refugees, and this wasn't a worksite; it was a gold-devouring beast.
Xu Qinghuan was pleased.
The funds on the system panel were dropping at a delightfully rapid pace. Buying coal, paying wages, building furnaces—each item was a massive hemorrhage.
"These sheds won't do." Xu Qinghuan pointed at the work sheds made of thatch. "The wind blows right through. What if my blacksmiths catch cold? They're my money trees."
Li Sheng, clutching the account book with a pained heart, turned green upon hearing this. "Eldest Miss, summer is almost here..."
"So what if it's summer? Is there no wind in summer?" Xu Qinghuan argued unreasonably. "Buy oiled felt. The heavy-duty kind. Replace all the roofs. Also, tell the canteen to stop always stewing cabbage soup. There must be meat with every meal. I'm not short of this bit of money. I want them to eat better than landlords."
The brush in Li Sheng's hand clattered to the ground.
Oiled felt roofs for refugees and blacksmiths? And meat with every meal? This wasn't coming to work; this was coming to be masters.
But the order had to be carried out.
Half an hour later, the news spread throughout the entire camp.
In a corner, a boy so thin he was almost skeletal, carrying an emaciated old woman on his back, stood before the hiring notice. He was illiterate, but he recognized the character for "meat."
Someone nearby was reading: "A hundred copper coins daily, meals provided, with meat."
The boy was called Gousheng. He had worked as a long-term laborer for a landlord for a year, only to come home with two bags of moldy grain in the end. His mother was sick, no money for medicine, just waiting to die.
This hundred copper coins, in his eyes, wasn't money; it was life.
He placed his old mother in the shade of a tree and turned to squeeze into the crowd of applicants. His hands, covered in chilblains, were shaking. Not from cold, but from fear that this was just a dream.
Xu Qinghuan didn't know a boy named Gousheng was trembling down below.
She was staring worriedly at the first flow of molten iron.
The wave of heat, red turning white, washed over her, tightening the skin on her face. The smokeless coal's fire was too fierce, and the ore's grade was frighteningly high. The flowing molten iron was so pure it hardly needed skimming.
Several old blacksmiths gathered around the molds, their beards trembling with excitement.
"Fine iron!" The lead blacksmith, Wang, struck a cooling plowshare with his hammer. The sound was clear and long, its resonance lingering. "This is refined steel! Eldest Miss, if this were forged into blades..."
"Shut up." Xu Qinghuan cut him off. "They are hoes."
She walked over and picked up the newly forged hoe. Heavy, substantial. The blade edge gleamed with a cold, faint blue light. This thing wouldn't dull even if you hoed rocks, let alone soil.
A flaw.
This was a serious case of over-engineering.
She wanted to manufacture a batch of cheap goods to sell on the black market for money. If these hoes, durable enough to last three generations, were sold, the farmers who bought one would never need to buy a second in their lifetime. That would be killing her own future sales.
"Too hard," Xu Qinghuan said disdainfully, throwing the hoe back to the ground with a dull thud. "Next time, use less coal and mix in more sand. What I want is the kind... the kind..."
She wanted to say the kind of garbage that breaks after two days of use, but seeing the circle of admiring eyes around her, she held her tongue.
"The kind of what?" Master Wang the blacksmith asked, hands clasped, eagerly awaiting instruction.
"Forget it," Xu Qinghuan waved her hand irritably. "Just like this. How much for this batch each?"
Li Sheng scurried over, clacking his abacus beads. "Factoring in labor, coal, food... the cost per hoe is about one tael and three mace of silver."
Over one tael of silver per hoe. This cost control was a disaster.
Market-rate hoes were only a few hundred copper coins.
"Sell them for two hundred coins," Xu Qinghuan stated flatly.
Li Sheng's abacus beads nearly flew off. "How much?!"
"Two hundred coins," Xu Qinghuan declared righteously. "I'm going to bankrupt every ironworks in the surrounding counties. Whether it's the Zhangs' shop or the Lis' shop, once my hoes hit the market, they'll have to shut their doors."
This was called dumping.
This was using the Xu family fortune to subsidize the market. For every hoe sold, the Xu family would lose one tael of silver. If tens of thousands of these were sold, the loss would amount to tens of thousands of taels.
Li Sheng looked at the young mistress. He understood.
This was an act of charity.
The young mistress was using her family's money to benefit farmers everywhere. Such divine tools of this quality, sold for a pittance—what breadth of vision, what compassion!
"Understood!" Li Sheng's shout was choked with emotion, moved to tears.
Xu Qinghuan felt a headache coming on looking at him. What was wrong with this man? Losing money and still so happy?
Night fell.
Niushou Mountain became a city that never slept. Dozens of blast furnaces spewed tongues of flame, dyeing half the sky crimson. The clanging of hammers on iron merged into a continuous, roaring sea.
Wagon trains formed long snakes along the mountain paths. Cartloads of farm tools, still warm, were transported down the mountain, sent directly to pre-arranged black market channels.
Xu Qinghuan stood at the windy summit, her bright red cloak whipping wildly around her.
She was doing the math.
The cash flow was still too slow. At this rate, it would take over half a month to meet that embezzlement quota of five hundred thousand taels. The system's countdown timer rang in her mind like a death knell.
A faint rustling sound came from behind.
Xu Qinghuan turned.
The youth called Gousheng was kneeling a few paces away. He clutched the string of copper coins he had just received so tightly the cord bit into his flesh, but he felt no pain.
One hundred coins.
He had really been given one hundred coins.
He had also eaten two fist-sized meat buns, so rich with grease he wanted to cry. His mother had taken the medicine bought from the apothecary and was now sleeping soundly.
Gousheng didn't dare get too close. In his eyes, the girl in red standing amidst the flames was not human; she was a celestial being. The kind of bodhisattva painted in temples, receiving incense offerings.
He kowtowed heavily once. He didn't dare make a sound, afraid of disturbing the deity.
Xu Qinghuan didn't notice this ant. Her gaze passed over the flames, landing on Xu Youde not far away.
The old man was holding that "failed product" hoe, examining it in the moonlight.
Xu Youde flicked the hoe's blade with two fingers.
Zheng—
The sound was like a dragon's cry.
"A fine blade," Xu Youde murmured, squinting, his expression like one caressing a lover's hand. "The edge concealed within bluntness, great skill appearing artless. This is no hoe; it's the blank for a horse-chopping saber. Once war breaks out, this hoe fitted to a long pole becomes a reaper of cavalry."
He turned to look at his daughter, who was frowning over losing money.
His eyes were full of awe.
This daughter of his was already preparing for the coming upheaval. She was making her move, using this seemingly foolish, loss-making business to scatter weapons among the people and gather their loyalty to the Xu family.
"Faster!" Xu Qinghuan shouted at Li Sheng. "Add ten more furnaces! We're spending this money too slowly!"
Her shout was anxious, greedy.
But in the ears of the refugees toiling and sweating, it was the most beautiful sound in the world. The young mistress thought it was too slow because she wanted more people to have food to eat.
"Roar!"
Thousands of men roared in unison, swinging their hammers in wider arcs.
The flames shot toward the sky.
Xu Qinghuan watched the soaring production figures and the system's mission progress bar, which remained stubbornly incomplete, feeling she might have gotten something wrong somewhere. But exactly where, she couldn't say.
She only knew that the night on Niushou Mountain was hotter than the day.
