As soon as the cement was moved into the front hall, a customer came in to buy smokeless coal and began asking questions.
“Is this the cement being used to build the roads in Suining City? How much is a bag?”
The shop assistant replied, “Twenty wen a bag.”
The assistant who had just been loading coal for the man stopped what he was doing and looked over from behind the counter.
Remembering the man’s identity as recorded in the household register, he casually walked behind the counter, picked up the ledger, and headed toward the rear courtyard.
“Shopkeeper, there’s someone from the Wumeng tribe outside who wants to buy cement.”
The shopkeeper took the open ledger. The man’s identity was written there in clear detail.
A traveling peddler.
“How many bags does he want?”
The assistant shook his head. “I’m not sure. He’s still outside.”
The two of them went behind the curtain and stopped there. The conversation outside could be heard clearly.
“You want all three hundred bags?”
The man laughed and patted his chest. “I make my living transporting goods. I thought I’d buy more and earn a little profit by selling them back home.”
“Since I’m buying so much, can you give me a discount?”
The assistant refused. “This price is already very low. County Princess Linghui barely makes any profit on it so that ordinary people can afford to use cement.”
The man refused to give up. “How can you do business without making money? I heard you sell cement to the government offices for only fourteen wen a bag. I’m not asking for the same price—eighteen wen a bag will do.”
The shopkeeper, standing behind the curtain, narrowed his eyes.
The price for cement sold to government offices in other prefectures and counties was fifteen wen a bag. Only the cement sold to Songzhou City was priced at fourteen wen.
The assistant shook his head firmly. “Government offices buy tens of thousands of bags at a time, and they’re using it to build public roads. Naturally, the price is different.”
The man waved his hand up and down, arguing his case. “If this deal goes through, I’ll definitely buy more next time. Give me a little discount.”
The assistant opened and closed his lips several times, then steadied himself and put on a troubled expression.
“How about this? I’ll ask the shopkeeper, though I can’t promise he’ll agree. After all, our cement isn’t in short supply.”
The shopkeeper and the other assistant standing behind the curtain hurried back into the courtyard.
Once the assistant had come in, the shopkeeper said calmly, “Give him a discount of one wen. He’ll have to arrange transportation himself.”
The assistant nodded. After standing there for a moment, he went back outside.
As soon as he saw the man pay, the shopkeeper rushed back to his room and changed into another outfit. He even stuck on a beard and added a mole to his face.
Before long, the man found several strong laborers to load all the cement onto a cart. They headed out of the city.
After leaving the city, they traveled toward Yinma Town, which lay across a mountain from the Wumeng tribal lands.
The shopkeeper followed them the entire way, passing through forests and crossing gorges. When he saw them enter a residence in the center of a Wumeng settlement, his suspicions were confirmed.
It was the residence of the Wumeng tribe’s successive chieftains.
A homing pigeon delivered the news to Song Jinzhao the following day at noon.
“Let them buy it, just as we did with the smokeless coal.”
Once cement was produced, it was bound to become the best choice for every household building homes and repairing roads. Song Jinzhao had never considered stopping the southwestern tribes from using it.
As long as she had explosives in hand, even if they truly came to blows one day, Song Jinzhao was not worried about losing.
…
In just four days, all three hundred houses in Laocheng Camp had been sold. The speed was astonishing.
Two hundred of them had been bought by the commoners working at the cement and coal factories.
Whenever those people, finally getting a single day off, came out to shop in their identical work clothes, many passersby looked at them enviously.
The outsiders who had found other work in Suining City after missing the factory recruitment were especially envious.
A villager delivering vegetables to a restaurant saw an acquaintance squatting on the ground and asked curiously, “Yu Gui, did you buy a house?”
The man called Yu Gui raised his head. His pupils were dull, devoid of any light.
“My employer refused to sign a three-month labor contract with me. I could only buy one at the full price, so I didn’t.”
The villager froze.
For a house with one hall and one inner room, the eighty-percent price and the full price differed by six hundred wen. Without a labor contract, that was a huge loss.
“Didn’t you plead with him?”
Yu Gui shook his head. “I did, but he refused.”
As he spoke, a bitter smile appeared on his face. “There are several people on this street who want to buy one, just like me. They’re all held back by the labor contract.”
The villager sighed. “The cement and coal factories really are better. Not only do they sign contracts for half a year at a time, they’ll even advance three months’ wages.”
Yu Gui gazed enviously at the assistant serving customers in the braised-meat shop across the street.
“It isn’t just the cement and coal factories. The shops owned by County Princess Linghui all pay higher wages than other places. They even give out gifts during festivals. It’s just too difficult to get in.”
Apart from the cement and coal factories, most of the assistants in Song Jinzhao’s shops had signed lifetime contracts. Some of them were covert guards planted there as well, so the shops rarely recruited from outside.
Even when they did recruit, the wages and benefits were so good that countless applicants competed for each position.
Only one person was chosen from dozens of candidates. The difficulty was practically the same as ascending to the heavens.
The villagers had heard about this too. “You should wait for the cement and coal factories to recruit again and try then. I heard that government offices in all the prefectures have been buying cement recently. It probably won’t be long before they start hiring again.”
Yu Gui pressed his lips together and sighed. “I hope so. Half the houses in Laocheng Camp are still unsold. Maybe I’ll make it in time.”
The villager shook his head in disagreement.
“The remaining bandits have all killed people. Unless they die of old age or exhaustion, they’ll never get out.”
