Chapter 42: Sending Money

Chapter 42: Delivering Money

If one cannot reunite with family during the Mid-Autumn Festival, a sense of melancholy and separation is inevitable. But spending it with a loved one brings boundless joy.

Especially for two vigorous and robust young people like Zhao An and Hu Sheng, they couldn't resist attempting some challenging maneuvers. At the time, it felt natural, but the next day, recalling it still brought a blush to their cheeks.

Beyond the blushing, Zhao An found that just putting his feet on the ground made them tremble, forcing him to have breakfast in bed.

After Hu Sheng returned to the mountain stronghold, Uncle Hai feigned searching for something, visiting Zhao An’s room two or three times, hesitating to speak before finally advising, "Young people should still exercise some restraint."

Zhao An could only nod meekly, thinking that during the winter farming off-season, he must find someone to construct a larger house—preferably soundproofed. On one hand, it would be more convenient for him, and on the other, it would avoid disturbing the elderly who already slept lightly.

Fortunately, Zhao An’s physical condition far exceeded that of ordinary people. By noon, he could walk normally again. Starting the day after the Mid-Autumn Festival, the recruited workers were set to begin road repairs from the county town. Zhao An decided to visit the construction site daily to ensure the supervising yamen officers didn’t embezzle too much, making sure most of the grain he provided ended up in the workers’ mouths.

That afternoon, when Zhao An arrived in the county town, the construction team hadn't yet started work. Instead, they were lining up outside the town to register their names, villages, and other details.

To reassure these people, Zhao An had a large pot of porridge cooked using the corn and brown rice he had just brought, serving it to them. He instructed them to gather at the town entrance by 7 a.m. the next morning, where they would be given breakfast before starting work.

"If anyone arrives late, they won’t get anything to eat," the assisting clerk shouted loudly. The responses were somewhat uneven: "Alright~" "Understood~"

As the sun set in the west, everyone hurried back home. Most people suffered from night blindness in those days. After returning home that day, they would come back the next morning carrying torches and bundles, planning to stay in makeshift shelters instead of going home again.

The assisting clerk also packed up the registry, along with his writing tools, into a bamboo basket. Seeing Zhao An about to leave in his mule cart, he quickly ran up to the cart and said with a smile, "Are you heading back, Young Master Zhao?"

Zhao An nodded to him. "Clerk Zhang, you should head back early too. We’ll need your help with the work ahead."

"Not tired at all," Clerk Zhang waved his hand before getting to the main reason he had sought out Zhao An. "I was wondering if Young Master Zhao has any extra showers and drainage pipes at home. My family would like to install a set as well."

Clerk Zhang’s family had served as clerks in Changxi County for generations, starting from his great-grandfather’s time. Their connections in the county might even be broader than County Magistrate Feng’s. However, they were decent people who never took advantage of their seniority to deceive superiors or subordinates for personal gain—at most, they only took their fair share from the county office’s allocations.

Over several generations, they had accumulated family assets of several thousand taels of silver. While not extremely wealthy, they were comfortably well-off, with no worries about food or clothing, and even had a few servants.

It was precisely such middle-class families that had a greater demand for showers and drainage systems. They didn’t have as many servants as the extremely wealthy to handle chores but could afford dozens of taels to improve their living conditions.

Faced with such an opportunity, Zhao An naturally wouldn’t refuse. Looking at the basket in Clerk Zhang’s hand, he said, "Leave me your address. Tomorrow, I’ll send someone to deliver the materials and help with the installation."

"Excellent, excellent," Clerk Zhang agreed and wrote down his address for Zhao An.

Over the next month, life in Changxi County gradually stabilized. Zhao An allowed those who had been repairing the roads for some time to choose to return home and send a replacement—though they could also choose to stay.

Busy with the handover, he stayed in the county town that night. When he returned home the next day, he found Hu Sheng had placed a large box in his room. Opening it, he discovered it was filled to the brim with silver.

The sugarcane grown in Nanyue Country was very sweet, and the sugar produced was highly popular in Dawn Country. Although sugar was no longer as prohibitively expensive as in previous dynasties, where only the top nobility could afford it, it still wasn’t something ordinary people could consume daily—at most, it was used to entertain guests during weddings or childbirth celebrations.

Thus, the sugar brought back by Hu Sheng’s trade team this time sold for a high price, earning him nearly two thousand taels of silver in one go.

Zhao An had also earned several thousand taels recently, but he was too free with his spending and couldn’t hold onto money. He had never seen so much silver at once before.

He looked up at Hu Sheng and said, "Are you really giving all this money to me? Don’t you need capital to continue your business?"

Hu Sheng smiled. In truth, it didn’t require much capital. Spending just two or three hundred taels to buy some outdated silk styles and trading them in Nanyue Country could yield tens of thousands of pounds of sugarcane, though it required some labor to process into sugar blocks.

The profit sounded exorbitant, so why wasn’t anyone else doing this business? The reason was simple: others lacked the military strength. Perhaps, given Dawn Country’s national power, the state could open trade.

But Dawn Country’s attitude toward tributary states like Nanyue and Tibet, which posed no threat, was very perfunctory. They didn’t even compare to the Xiongnu, with whom Dawn Country was constantly at war—at least the court wanted to trade for warhorses from the Xiongnu. As for small places like Nanyue, the Dawn Country court simply looked down on them.

As a result, the roads from Jiaozhou to Nanyue Country were all wilderness and jungle. To purchase local specialties like grain and sugarcane from Nanyue, one had to detour by sea. Traveling by land, not to mention bandits and mountain strongholds with ill intentions, even tigers, leopards, and wolves could make a hundred-strong trade team disappear without a trace in the rugged mountains.

Only Hu Sheng could think of doing business using military tactics, moving in formations of a thousand or more people, violently clearing all obstacles along the way.

Moreover, their purpose in going to Nanyue wasn’t just to trade sugar for profit but also to exchange for sufficient grain. The climate there was very suitable for growing crops, with three harvests per year.

But perhaps heaven’s gifts were too abundant, as the people there were rather lazy and unwilling to tend the fields diligently. When Li Dake led his team there to trade for grain, he had to seek out the border army commander of Nanyue Country, exchanging silk for their military provisions.

This could be considered corruption, but it was another country’s affair. Li Dake didn’t accuse the border commander of wrongdoing; instead, he lavishly praised the other’s wisdom and struck another deal. Next time, he would bring brighter silks for the commander’s wife to make new clothes and a full set of white porcelain tableware.

In exchange for these silks and porcelain, the Nanyue general was willing to provide a hundred thousand pounds of sugar blocks. He could have his soldiers start boiling the sugar immediately, ready for Li Dake to collect on their next visit.

Hearing from Hu Sheng that Nanyue Country greatly valued Dawn Country’s silk and porcelain, Zhao An looked at the box of money, his eyes gleaming, and said, "Then would they like glassware as well?"

Hu Sheng said, "They’d definitely like it. If you can produce glass, selling it to the nobility in the capital would fetch even higher prices."

Hu Sheng said this with certainty because he had long noticed something unusual about Zhao An.

Zhao An had earned some money making ceramic drainage pipes and showers, but those items didn’t involve significant technical skill. Zhao An heard from Feng Shaoping that large kilns in the prefecture city had already started producing imitations. This forced him to find another path, creating something special to ensure the kiln he worked hard to build wouldn’t sit idle.

Today, hearing Hu Sheng mention that porcelain was still highly valued as a luxury item abroad, he suddenly thought of producing glass. Silica should be relatively easy to produce.

[Author's Note]

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