She leaned back lazily in the grand armchair, idly rolling two glass marbles she had redeemed from the System Shop in her hand. The crisp "clack, clack" of their collisions echoed pleasantly through the quiet hall.
This was what you called an aura.
Across from her, Song Yubai set down his teacup. The noble young master from the capital now had a burning gaze, his finger trembling as he pointed toward the dull gray road outside the door.
"Master!" Song Yubai's voice was so urgent it cracked slightly. "As I walked here, I saw that the road outside is as solid as a boulder and completely seamless! Carriages roll over it without leaving a single rut, and the wind and rain beat against it without fading its color."
He took a deep breath, asking with the reverence of a pilgrim, "Dare I ask, what exactly is this material? Could it be some long-lost divine relic from ancient times?"
Xu Qinghuan's mouth twitched, and she nearly burst out laughing.
An ancient divine relic?
Bro, it's literally just a pile of limestone and clay from the back mountain, mixed with some leftover slag from iron smelting and ground into powder.
In the modern world, this stuff was called industrial raw material; in this era, it was pure industrial waste. But in her, Xu Qinghuan's, hands, it was a magical artifact for scamming money out of these country bumpkins.
"This material... is called 'cement'."
Xu Qinghuan stopped rolling the marbles in her hand, her face timely revealing a weathered look that said, "This is a very difficult matter."
She let out a long sigh, looking up at the ceiling beams at a forty-five-degree angle, making it abundantly clear that she was bearing some unspeakable, heavy secret.
"Young Master Song, you might not know this, but this material does not come easily."
Bluffing mode: fully activated.
Lowering her voice, Xu Qinghuan began to spout absolute nonsense with a completely straight face. "This is no ordinary stone powder. It requires ten-thousand-year-old basalt collected from three hundred fathoms deep within the ocean, mixed with active volcanic ash from the bitter, freezing lands of the extreme north."
"And that is not all. It must then pass through forty-nine rigorous screening processes and be calcined by a raging fire, burning day and night without pause, for exactly eighty-one days."
At this point, she deliberately paused, her gaze turning sharp. "Most importantly, during this time, dozens of precious medicinal herbs must be added to harmonize the yin and yang and remove the fire poison. Otherwise, what comes out of the kiln will be nothing but a pile of useless dirt that scatters with the wind."
"Pfft—cough, cough, cough!"
Sitting in the main seat nearby, Xu Youde nearly spat out his mouthful of tea, his eyes bulging wider than cowbells.
The deep ocean? Volcanoes? Adding medicinal herbs to harmonize yin and yang?
Daughter, aren't those just the rotten rocks from our back mountain that nobody wants and even dogs despise? Do you not even draft a script before you brag? If this gets exposed, our whole family will be guilty of the capital crime of deceiving the Emperor!
However, the "exposure" Xu Youde worried about never happened.
Song Yubai was completely entranced. He nodded repeatedly, the expression on his face growing increasingly solemn, even taking on a hint of awe.
"So that is how it is! To think it is so complex! No wonder it possesses such miraculous effects!"
In Song Yubai's mind, what surfaced at this moment was no longer just a road.
It was a city.
A mighty, iron-like fortress spanning the borders of the northern grasslands, a stronghold that the Northern Cang cavalry could smash their heads against without shaking it in the slightest!
The border defenses of the Great Qian Dynasty were in a miserable state! Every year, due to rain erosion and loosening of the rammed earth, repairing the city walls alone cost millions of taels of silver. And it was always a cycle of repairing and collapsing, collapsing and repairing.
If this material were used to build cities... wouldn't they stand for ten thousand years without falling?
What was this? This was the very destiny of the Great Qian Dynasty!
Song Yubai felt his hands trembling, entirely out of sheer excitement. He looked at Xu Qinghuan cautiously, afraid that speaking too loudly might scare away this "otherworldly master."
"Master, although this material is divine, hearing about its production process... I assume the cost must be astronomical, right?"
He rapidly calculated in his head.
The specially supplied golden bricks used to repair the imperial tombs in the capital cost ten taels of silver each, and those were only for paving the ground. The sticky rice mortar used for city building, factoring in the sticky rice, egg whites, and labor, cost about seven or eight taels per picul.
This cement was so miraculous, requiring stones salvaged from the deep sea, ash dug from the extreme north, and the addition of medicinal herbs...
With these costs, wouldn't it be a hundred gold pieces per picul?
But his Song family had money! Although the Great Qian treasury was empty, for such a nation-protecting divine artifact, even if they had to smash their pots and sell their scrap iron, they could always scrape the funds together!
"I won't hide it from you, Young Master."
Xu Qinghuan rolled her eyes playfully, the little abacus in her heart clicking and clacking at lightning speed.
The actual cost of this cement, including labor and coal, was only about one tael of silver per picul.
If she sold it for two taels, that would be a fair price. If she sold it for ten taels, she would be an unscrupulous merchant.
But what was her goal?
It was to squander money! It was to be a heartless, filthy rich capitalist!
Therefore...
Xu Qinghuan gritted her teeth, extended a slender finger, and waved it in front of Song Yubai.
She decided to quote an astronomical price, one outrageous enough to make someone instantly turn hostile and curse her to her face.
"The failure rate for this material is extremely high. Even out of ten kilns, not even one might succeed." Xu Qinghuan wore an expression of deep physical pain, as if she were slicing off her own flesh. "I can't let my family suffer too huge a loss... So, if you want it, Young Master, I must sell it for at least this amount."
She took a deep breath and opened her lion's maw to demand an exorbitant price:
"Fifteen taels of silver!"
"Per picul!"
Clang!
In the main seat, Xu Youde could no longer maintain his grip on his tea lid. It plummeted to the floor, shattering into pieces.
Crazy!
His daughter was absolutely crazy!
You want fifteen taels for that worthless garbage? How is that any different from daylight robbery? This isn't doing business; this is forcing Young Master Song to have our entire family executed and our home confiscated!
Xu Youde's legs trembled violently. He was just about to drop to his knees and beg for mercy, claiming his little daughter had lost her mind and was just spouting childish nonsense.
Right at that moment.
Crash!
The teacup in Song Yubai's hand also hit the floor.
Scalding hot tea splashed all over the ground, but he remained entirely oblivious, as if he had lost his sense of pain.
He stood up abruptly from his chair, his movements so violent that he knocked over the mahogany chair behind him.
Xu Qinghuan jumped in fright, thinking to herself, 'It's over, this pretty boy is about to flip out.' She hurriedly prepared to scream for her second brother to save her.
However, the very next second, she froze.
Two trails of clear tears slid silently down Song Yubai's handsome face.
Song Yubai was trembling all over, his eyes completely red. His voice choked up as if his throat were stuffed with cotton; it was the speechlessness that followed extreme shock.
"Fifteen taels...?"
"It actually... only costs fifteen taels?!"
Xu Qinghuan was dumbfounded. "Huh?"
This reaction wasn't right. If you think it's too expensive, just haggle! Why are you crying?
Yet Song Yubai gave Xu Qinghuan no time to react. He took an ecstatic step forward. His gaze didn't look like he was staring at a corrupt merchant, but rather at a living bodhisattva who was giving away her entire family fortune just to save the country and its people!
"Master! What are you doing!"
Song Yubai looked deeply distressed, his voice sharp with emotion. "Those golden bricks cost ten taels a piece, and they can only be used to pave the floor!"
"And while sticky rice mortar only costs seven or eight taels, it easily crumbles when it meets water. It requires repairs year after year, costing hundreds of taels over a decade! But your cement uses stones mined from the deep sea and won't decay for ten thousand years! How is this expensive at all?"
"This is clearly a divine artifact that solves the problem once and for all! Fifteen taels... I'm afraid that isn't even enough to cover the cost of the medicinal herbs!"
"Your cement is ten times stronger! It requires stone from the deep sea, ash from the extreme north, not to mention those dozens of precious herbs..."
"With these costs... even if you sold it for fifty or a hundred taels, it would still be a fair price! A price that bleeds you dry!"
"Fifteen taels... That probably isn't even enough to cover the shipping fees for the deep-sea basalt, is it?"
The more Song Yubai spoke, the more agitated he became, tears flowing uncontrollably: "You are producing this at a loss out of your own pocket!"
"You are sacrificing your family's wealth to save the nation! You are using the savings of generations of the Xu family to pave a road to heaven for the Great Qian Dynasty!"
"And you call yourself an unscrupulous merchant? This is the backbone of the Great Qian! This is the flesh and blood of the Xu family!"
After saying this, Song Yubai actually bowed deeply to Xu Qinghuan again, right in front of Xu Youde.
This bow was even more devout and profound than the one back at the mountain mine.
As for throwing himself entirely to the ground in full prostration, a scion of a noble family simply could not bring himself to do that.
"Your righteousness, Master! I, Song... am overwhelmed with shame!"
"Though this student is untalented and cannot help you shoulder this massive financial deficit, I absolutely will not let your painstaking efforts go unnoticed!"
Song Yubai raised his head, his eyes as firm as iron, burning with a sense of mission.
"I will write a letter right now and send it to the Ministry of Revenue in the capital via the fastest urgent courier!"
"I want my uncle to see it! I want the reigning Emperor to see it!"
"I want them to see what a great patriot resides in this small Taoyuan County, silently bleeding and weeping for this country without asking for anything in return!"
Xu Qinghuan was completely dumbfounded.
Her hand, holding the glass marble, froze in mid-air. Her mouth was open wide enough to stuff an egg inside, and her brain completely short-circuited.
What the hell?
Producing at a loss?
Sacrificing family wealth for the nation?
And sending an urgent courier to tell the Emperor?
What kind of god-tier reading comprehension is this! This has to be the absolute highest level of talking on completely different wavelengths!
I was trying to scam you out of your money! Bro! I want to be a corrupt profiteer!
"Wait! No... that's not..."
Xu Qinghuan panicked. This time, she was truly panicking.
If the imperial court procured this cement and promoted it as a patriotic low price... wouldn't she be forced into mass production?
If an order for millions of stones dropped on her, even if she hollowed out that entire broken mountain, she would die of exhaustion just counting the money! And the key point was, she did not want to earn this kind of hard-earned money at all!
"Young Master Song! Actually, this price is still negotiable! Even raising it a bit is fine! We can talk about it!" Xu Qinghuan reached out her hand, trying to salvage the spiraling situation.
But Song Yubai wore an "I understand you, say no more" expression. He waved his hand in deeply moved refusal, looking as though he had already seen completely through Xu Qinghuan's noble character.
"Master, say no more! I know you are indifferent to fame and fortune, and you do not want the imperial court to think the Xu family is solely driven by profit."
"But this student absolutely cannot watch you suffer a loss! I will petition His Majesty to erect a monument of honor for the Xu family! To bestow upon you the title of Imperial Merchant! I will let the whole world know of the Xu family's righteous deeds!"
"Rest assured, Master. Even if the whole world misunderstands you, I, Song Yubai, am your true kindred spirit!"
With that said, Song Yubai did not give Xu Qinghuan any chance to explain at all. He turned around and dashed out like a gust of wind, his retreating figure looking resolute and heroic.
"Men! Prepare a horse! Grind the ink! I must write a memorial to the throne immediately! Hurry! Not a single moment can be delayed!"
Inside the main hall of the Xu residence, it was as if a storm had swept through, leaving total chaos in its wake.
Xu Qinghuan and her father, Xu Youde, stared at each other in stunned silence. The air seemed to have frozen solid.
Xu Youde swallowed hard, trembling as he gave a thumbs-up. His eyes were filled with absolute worship for his daughter: "Daughter... is this what they call... next-level vision?"
"So it turns out you were not planning to earn Young Master Song's money, you were planning to earn the Emperor's money! Brilliant! Truly brilliant!"
Looking at her old man's expression of ultimate enlightenment, Xu Qinghuan felt her vision go dark.
Happy? Like hell I am happy!
Great. Just great. If the label of a peerless patriot gets slapped onto her head, she would have to sneak around just to squander her family's fortune in the future!
"What a disaster!!!"
A miserable, bloodcurdling wail echoed above the Xu residence, startling countless birds into the sky.
This, perhaps, was the legendary state of... suffering from success, right?
