Chapter 42: Settling Family Affairs Before A Long Journey
Compared to the main family chopping wood in the north, Wu Fei here at Yongji Pass was luxuriously considering which pot to use today for drinking soup and eating meat.
In the early days of transmigration, he had fantasized about gathering a large number of artisans to upgrade productivity, and now it was finally feasible.
Times had changed; through one war, he had successfully bound himself with many forces in the Southern Border, becoming a community of shared interests. After Gu Shou Pass fell in Da Yao, they mobilized hundreds of thousands of troops but still couldn’t reclaim the land or repel the enemy, harassed by noises from inside and outside the Imperial Court, leaving them distraught. The Son of Heaven’s reputation was beginning to decline in the Border Region.
The result of Da Yao’s declining reputation was that many officials in Lingnan, previously for their own prospects, had helped cover up this Southern Border conflict for him, simplifying it into a minor issue, and in the future, they could also help cover up his private recruitment of artisans to craft armaments.
Now, no hothead would jump out to point fingers at Wu Fei for transgression.
…Regional Governor…
Wu Fei’s Group was now rapidly digesting everything. In the slave camp, various mountain monsters and foreign races were locked in shackles. As meals were delivered, the sound of dry rice eating “chomp chomp” came from the cages.
Because this food for the slaves was much better than the raw meat and tree bark they ate while fleeing.
Although there were various inhumane whippings in the slave camp, the food and lodging concerning the slaves’ health still had rules to ensure, so things like unwashed bowls carrying pig slop for days wouldn’t appear before the slaves.
One of the slave camp hygiene rules: rice bowls must be cleaned, meals must be uniform—meaning, bran and taro must be steamed separately, and wild vegetables also served separately.
It wasn’t that Wu Fei still had any mercy, but when designing the resource allocation process, every link had to be clearly inspectable.
Spoiled ingredients often had maggots and various rotten leaves, so cooking everything in one pot was a way to cover up such “passing off inferior goods as good.”
Xuan Chong was quite obsessed with canteen hygiene; if slaves felt disgusted and didn’t eat, or vomited and had diarrhea after eating, it would cause unnecessary grain waste. All slaves had to be healthy before the buyer implanted the “Spirit Taming Talisman.”
After the victory at Yongji Pass, the slave marketplace would open immediately, and slave traders from Lingnan were already queuing outside. After opening, the cages seen contained sturdy products, with no feces on the ground. Slaves with urgent needs had three chances to raise their hands to go relieve themselves.
Slaves who dared to defecate openly during market opening weren’t unheard of before, but they all got the whip! —The advantage of humanoid slaves was that they could do relatively complex work, like tending livestock and cleaning stables. If others still had to clean up their shit and piss, they might as well be the large livestock in the cattle sheds—at least they had more strength.
Yongji Pass now had a huge shortage of coolies for its workshops, not to mention the labor needed for the ongoing land reclamation.
……
Such massive demand had formed a unique “slave trade” values in the entire Southern Border. This values didn’t exist in the past.
Because an item only becomes a “valuable item” when there is demand; when there is no demand, people are unaware. For example, “masks” during contagion periods in his previous life became valuable items.
Now, after the Wu Family Army’s great victory months ago, other racial tribes in the Southern Border were also coming one after another, delivering short-statured slaves and demanding food and tools in exchange. The checkpoint garrison originally wanted to confiscate them directly and not give them those things, but Wu Fei accepted them all at market price.
As for why not deduct! Wu Fei: “If I deduct, wouldn’t that just create business opportunities for other Da Yao merchants? They’d acquire them and profit as middlemen.”
These merchants acquiring was different from his acquiring! Merchants purely did business, while these Southern Border tribes handing over all these northern black tide participants was submitting a pledge of allegiance!
Hmm, these Southern Border tribes might not even realize they were submitting a pledge of allegiance.
They traded at the foot of the city wall—one hand goods, one hand money. While a clawed people tribe leader excitedly counted money strings carefully with his claws, the handed-over slaves cursed in their language. But no one paid attention; later, the clawed people leader seemed to hear some ugly words and gestured obscenely at those hung-up slaves from across the stone wall.
Wu Fei couldn’t help shaking his head: Barbarians fear authority but not virtue, valuing small gains over great righteousness. A year ago when merchant caravans did business, those tribes would shamelessly default on payments whenever they had the chance.
So these clawed people roughly thought the slaves they sold would completely leave their sight forever, right? —But in fact, Wu Fei gave the slaves a certain survival rate, and among foreign race slaves, some would have the chance to become lackeys and pledge loyalty. In other words, these Southern tribes that sold slaves would one day encounter the enemies they created.
Of course, it couldn’t entirely blame these local barbarians, because the black tide barbarians who kept “borrowing grain” northward months ago hadn’t considered this day either! Neither side had ever given the other trust.
On the contrary, the Wu Family, as opponents, could give them trust. That was the sorrow of the barbarians.
Just like that, the Wu Family hardly spent another soldier or pawn; within the designated force domain area, all black tide defeated soldiers were sent over as slaves.
……
In the underground rivers of the Mountains, slaves panned for sand; in the factories, they worked as porters. Four chimneys appeared in Yongji Pass, continuously emitting smoke. Workshops were forging arrowheads and firearms.
Many merchants lived directly within Yongji Pass’s defense system. Near the river, merchant inns and artisan clusters formed. These clusters could reach twenty to thirty thousand in population during traveling merchant peaks, with a resident population of ten thousand. And since they were all merchants within the checkpoint’s radiation range, the Imperial Court’s local officials had no jurisdiction.
In the Feudal Era, a region’s population density represented the level of “technology” capability.
Simple example: crafting a set of pulleys to process huge timber wasn’t something a village individual carpenter could do, but required collaboration of dozens or hundreds of artisans.
In Da Yao, wealthy prefectures and commanderies could maintain such artisan teams because they needed to build temples, pleasure palaces, or had seaports docking large ships.
Now everything was in place in the Southern Border; large numbers of artisans gathered to innovate some production equipment and craft machinery powered by windmills for material processing and forging. Wu Fei also had the chance to pursue some of his hobbies.
On a quiet hillside to the left of Yongji Pass, in Xuan Chong’s personal laboratory. This laboratory now resembled a near-modern one, divided into “Yang Zone” and “Yin Zone.”
Yang Zone: Rotating mechanical gears here, boilers with steam pistons moving.
Yin Zone: In test tubes and cups, drop by drop integrating into glycerin liquid under low temperature.
This laboratory, by current standards, was built quite luxuriously. Expensive silk replaced wires, jadeite served as energy storage batteries, thousand-year sinker wood as information storage disks and excellent mechanical materials; every item here was worth dozens of taels of silver outside. Without completing the “colonial mode” accumulation, it would be impossible with just Wu Fei’s monthly allowance from the family.
Compared to those noble disciples in Da Yao Capital City who squandered on fine wine, luxury carriages, Fine Horses, and famous courtesans, Wu Fei’s current “extravagance” was no less.
Cultivating the Dao required wealth; now Wu Fei walked the “heterodox path” seeking only supernatural power not longevity, naturally needing resources to pile up.
Just as Xuan Chong excitedly prepared to give this world a little “metal storm” shock, the System timely popped up to popularize related historical knowledge, making Xuan Chong focus on studying the erroneous idea of “fancy gadgets.”
When the System explained this term, it made Xuan Chong feel different from the 21st-century history he knew.
In 21st-century textbooks, “fancy gadgets” wasn’t a pejorative, but the scholar-officials who often used “fancy gadgets” to denounce foreign tech were nailed to the pillar of shame for being complacent.
But in the System’s historical narrative, the meaning changed; those “pointing out certain tech domains seeming flashy as fancy gadgets” became whistleblowers in technological development.
After reading on the System, Xuan Chong discovered the reason for such drastic change in the term’s historical derivative meaning.
According to the new theory from the System, the exclusive firearm he previously used against the “Sunny Day Doll,” the Artificer Technique armor, and copper-pattern enchanted bullets were all fancy gadgets! Because they were products of “clever craftsman” thinking, hard to apply widely, not the righteous path. Only mass-producible items widely applicable in key production, education, military processes counted as the righteous path.
On System materials, to Wu Fei’s some counter-questions, the historical view after 25th century answered thus:
“The same firearm—actually the Qing Dynasty valued firearms highly; in mid-Qing, the imperial family collected a series of Western firearms through West European merchants, first-rate in accuracy, power, and range. They performed excellently in imperial family hunts. So in the then plain Eastern thought, this was fancy gadgets, because the Qing never considered firearm mass production, and Eastern intellectuals never thought excellent firearms could completely replace cold weapons for widespread battlefield use. Thus, the visionless Han scholar-officials’ evaluation of firearms as fancy gadgets was logical.
Similarly, late 20th century, Western robot new energy were also fancy gadgets,
Though the West simultaneously created various new tech concepts, these concepts never considered large-scale application, only becoming luxuries for noble occasions like golf courses. Never resolved to push comprehensive application.
Only after industrializing charging stations, ultra-high voltage grids intelligently interfacing water, hydro, wind, solar power, did robots and new energy gain realistic basis for widespread production application.”
Xuan Chong understood: The same named technology, some turn it into “fancy gadgets,” others into “benefiting country and people.”
But he couldn’t help asking: “What exactly happened in history to cause such a 180-degree turn in textbook historical definitions?”
The System quickly flashed dense tiny ant-like text, then vanished.
Xuan Chong: “I didn’t see clearly.”
System: “Don’t look; you can’t pass review now.”
Xuan Chong: “Hm?”
Narrator: Later history was just too much; after all, the 21st century was an era where rulers let so-called discourse elites hype concepts endlessly. Many technologies didn’t consider the majority, skipping basics to chase peaks was “strange,” pandering to minority novelty was “clever”.
However, this involving 21st century later information, 90% was unreviewable content for Xuan Chong.
…System prompt: Any tech upgrade devours massive resources; think carefully…
Now with massive labor and funds, but tech upgrade chance only once.
Wu Fei did think carefully, abandoning his initial rifled musket route—cold drill boring gun barrels; with his current integrable production conditions, it’d take seven or eight months, wasting five hundred jin of steel for one gun barrel. —With that time, he could craft over fifty standardized “Crane Guns,” and still couldn’t solve bullet copper-pattern enchantment mass production.
After careful inspection, Wu Fei confirmed that the finest armor-piercing arrowhead his side could currently craft weighed one tael heavy-footed, piercing into bricks like chopsticks into peach pastry when hand-thrust, and the key drag-reducing material on the arrow shaft “ice silk,” he could mass-produce here! After leveling a mountain slope fully planting mulberry leaves, recruit a hundred female workers to raise them well.
This threads, needing only hair-thickness fineness, could suspend a hundred jin, and when taut like a knife edge could slice flesh.
Silk wound densely enough, theoretically pulling a four-stone bow crossbow full, could shoot to two hundred twenty-five steps away, and upon landing still have strong armor-piercing power.
Firearms should fill another gap.
…Wu Fei: No rush, upgrade to mature process first.…
Shu Tian Calendar year 27, month 12.
On the shooting range, Wu Fei watched the new crossbowmen shoot. These crossbows installed black iron pulleys for easier foot-cocking.
With flywheel turning, bowstring fully charged.
Firing whistle sounded, crossbowmen salvoed; sharp arrowheads traced an unusual ultra-long arc, landing two hundred steps away.
Wu Fei walked to the range, pulled out the penetrated arrowhead, confirming his current killing intent would find such arrowheads quite difficult to withstand.
While Wu Fei pondered, a Palace Attendant named He Ran appropriately reported good news: “Young General, we discovered a large copper mine.”
Wu Fei glanced at him, marked the copper mine on the map, then mildly gave a reward.
But this He Ran asked: “General, we should seize this.”
Wu Fei: “Mm, we should seize it, but not now.”
Nearby San Gu then said: “Now it’s time to exit closed-door cultivation southward again; Young Master, why not check it out during this southward advance.”
Nearby other officers agreed; they had long wanted to kill further south to seize the “big market” in Wu Fei’s words.
Wu Fei looked at these people; as the one who handcrafted this violence machine, he knew their thirst for merit.
Wu Fei took a deep breath: “This year’s advance scale won’t expand; same as last year.”
Just as everyone wanted to persuade, Wu Fei raised his hand.
After explaining this Southern Border exit closed-door cultivation operation planning to the generals below, Wu Fei took out a letter, one from Wu Hanluan to him.
Wu Fei: “My older brother and uncle are suffering in the north now, waiting for us to subsidize family expenses. Grain in the granaries should be transported north as much as possible to supply the army! Also need lots of manpower to handle changes along the way.” (If not preparing enough manpower, at transport nodes in various regions, grain and supplies would be skimmed by locals during transport.)
Everyone immediately discussed animatedly; though very unwilling, concerning Northern safety, they couldn’t be utterly heartless.
So someone asked: “General, what’s going on in the north?”
Wu Fei: “Nothing! Just people away from home cheapen. You must believe the Marshal; with him in charge there, no big problems.”
Wu Fei knocked the table and called: “Jia Mude, talk about your Southern Border intel integration.”
At this time, Jia Mude (slave follows master’s surname), face flushing red then pale, glanced at everyone; they didn’t know him, but for Wu Fei’s sake didn’t dare question. Jia Mude began narrating his understanding of the Southern Border situation, but not fully.
Jia Mude only spoke of northern Ling River situation, avoiding the south.
Wu Fei understood this, didn’t press.
