94: Chapter 94 Territorial Governance, Second Trial of Purification

Early next morning, Lu Changyuan left the Lords Mansion and headed towards the West Slope Tents.

Lu Hu followed half a step behind him. Neither of them spoke. The sound of sawing wood from the Pier carried across half the island, mixing with the sea breeze in intermittent bursts. The West Slope Tents were on a gentle slope on the western side of the island. It was originally a barren beach. After the additional population arrived, they temporarily set up six long rows of tents. The wood was pieced together from dismantled old ships, and the roofs were covered with dried seaweed and coarse burlap. From the outside, it didn't look like a place for people to live; it looked like a temporary warehouse for stacking goods.

When Lu Changyuan arrived, breakfast was being served in the tent area.

Two middle-aged men stood behind a large iron pot. One used a long-handled wooden ladle to scoop porridge, and the other placed a piece of salted fish on top. The queue stretched from the pot to the end of the tent area, mostly elderly, women, and half-grown children—the able-bodied men had been taken to the Pier to unload cargo before dawn. The porridge was thin; when the ladle scooped it up, you could see the bottom of the pot. The salted fish pieces were the size of a thumb, one piece per person.

"Two meals a day," Lu Hu said in a low voice beside him. "Thick porridge with salted fish in the morning, thin porridge without fish in the evening. Su Qingli calculated that this amount won't starve people, but they won't be full."

Lu Changyuan didn't respond. He walked into the tent area.

Inside the tents were shared sleeping platforms. Wooden boards were placed on stones, covered with a layer of dry seaweed, and seven or eight people slept on one platform. There were no windows, and light leaked in from the gaps between the roof and the walls. The ground was packed dirt, and in the corner stood a few wooden buckets—those were for use at night. The air was filled with a strange smell of dampness, sweat, and the sweet, fishy stench of rotting seaweed.

An old woman sat at the entrance of the tent mending a fishing net. Her eyesight wasn't very good, and she felt around a hole with her fingers for a long time before passing the shuttle through. Lu Changyuan stood and watched her for a while.

"Old lady, how many days have you been here?"

The old woman looked up, squinting at him for a long time before recognizing who he was—she hadn't met the Lord, but she had seen the armor worn by the guards at the entrance of the Lords Mansion, which was the same style as the armor Lu Hu wore.

"Nine Heavens," she said. "Five days shaking on the boat, nine days since landing."

"Is the ration enough to eat?"

The shuttle in the old woman's hand paused for a moment. She didn't speak, just looked down at the half bowl of porridge left in her bowl. The porridge had already cooled, and a thin film had formed on the surface.

Lu Changyuan didn't ask again.

He continued walking forward.

When he reached the third row of tents, he noticed something. Beside the large iron pot at the entrance of the tent area, there was a small compartment partitioned off with coarse wooden boards. The door was closed, and the light of an oil lamp shone through the crack. Outside the compartment, two men were moving a bag of Spirit Rice onto a flatbed cart. The cart wasn't being pushed deep into the tent area—it was heading towards the Outer Port Pier.

"Uncle Hu."

"Present."

"Go check inside there."

Lu Hu walked over and pushed open the door of the compartment.

Inside were thirty-some bags of Spirit Rice. A crumpled booklet hung on the wall, with accounts recorded in charcoal. Lu Hu pulled the booklet down and flipped through it; his expression changed.

"Young Lord," he handed the booklet to Lu Changyuan, "it's the registration book for the rations of the additional population. The book says eight bags of Spirit Rice are distributed every day—but the porridge coming out of the pot uses at most six bags."

Lu Changyuan took the booklet. He flipped through it page by page.

Every page had the same number: eight bags. But in the blank space next to each page, someone had written another number in smaller characters—six. The difference between these two numbers had a horizontal line drawn underneath it, and next to the line, a word was written crookedly in charcoal.

Sell.

"Where are those two managers?"

Lu Hu had already dragged the people over. Two middle-aged men, one fat and one thin. The fat one still had porridge soup on his face, and the thin one wore a copper thumb ring—not something a poor person could afford.

Lu Changyuan didn't ask them why they were skimming.

"Two-tenths skimmed from everyone every day." He threw the booklet onto the ground. "Resold to the Outer Port boatmen to exchange for private money."

The fat one fell to his knees with a thud, his mouth starting to cry out for injustice.

Lu Changyuan didn't listen to his cries.

"Uncle Hu. Execute them."

Lu Hu's blade left its sheath. The flash of the blade was very short—from unsheathing to sheathing, it took less than a breath. Two heads fell onto the muddy ground at the entrance of the tent area.

The tent area fell silent instantly. The people in the queue forgot to keep moving, and the hands holding the bowls froze in mid-air. The wooden ladle in the hand of the worker scooping porridge dropped into the pot, splashing porridge everywhere.

Lu Changyuan walked forward, stepping over the bloody mud. He didn't raise his voice.

"The taxes for the additional population are halved for the first year."

"Anyone caught skimming rations, one found, one executed."

"Anyone caught misappropriating military supplies, one found, one executed."

He looked down at the two headless corpses on the ground, then looked up, scanning the people in the tent area who were holding their bowls.

"When you got off the boat, I already said it—once you arrive at Blue Moon Island, you are people of Blue Moon Island. Blue Moon Island does not support idlers, but Blue Moon Island also does not allow anyone to be skimmed."

He turned around and said to Lu Hu: "Hang the heads at the entrance of the tent area. Hang them for three days."

Then he left.

The people in the tent area watched his back, no one making a sound. The old woman mending the fishing net put down the shuttle in her hand and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

Walking from the West Slope Tents to the Outer Port, Lu Changyuan stopped to take a look when he passed the Outer Port long tents. The conditions of the Outer Port long tents were better than those of the West Slope Tents—being close to the Pier, the veteran soldiers and boatmen lived here. Although the tents were also temporarily set up, wooden boards were laid on the ground, and the burlap on the roof was new. The manager here was a one-armed veteran named He, who had originally retired from the Zhenhai Army. When he saw Lu Changyuan walking over, he stood straight.

"Lord."

"Are your rations here enough?"

"Enough." Old He paused. "Two meals of thick porridge per person per day, one and a half pieces of fish—I may have lost an arm, but I can still count."

Lu Changyuan glanced at him.

"Is anyone in the tents complaining?"

"Yes. Complaining that the porridge is thin, that the fish is small, that the bedding is too hard." Old He said, "But no one is going hungry."

"That will do."

Lu Changyuan walked around the Outer Port long tents and found no more instances of skimming. By the time he walked back, the sun had already risen to the top of his head.

The underground purification liquid Trial Workshop was in a semi-underground stone room behind the Lords Mansion. The stone room was not large. In the middle was a half-person-high clay array pot, with simple temperature-control Array Patterns carved on the pot body—this was pieced together by Su Qingli using the leftover materials on hand. Beside the pot was a long wooden table, on which dozens of sealed small jade bottles were placed in two rows. The first row was the remaining samples from the first batch, and the second row was the new batch.

Chen Mo was sitting at the table, holding a jade bottle in his hand and looking at it against the night-luminescent stone. The liquid in the bottle was light cyan, more obviously cyan than the first batch, and the speed at which it clung to the wall when shaken was slower than the first batch—indicating that the purity of the liquid was higher.

"Lord." Chen Mo put down the bottle and stood up.

"Don't get up. Sit and talk." Lu Changyuan sat down opposite him, picked up a bottle from the second batch, and opened the stopper to smell it. The clear, bitter taste was lighter than the first batch, but that feeling that made one's nasal cavity feel cool was stronger.

"Which parts of the recipe were changed?"

Chen Mo pushed over a piece of rough paper filled with writing. "Old sand reduced by half a percent. The Impurities contained in the old sand itself are hard to control; after reducing it by half a percent, the finished product is much clearer. Added three parts more of thunder-struck wood shavings—the shavings are the main character, if the amount is not enough, the purification effect is discounted. Selected the second molt for the fine outer skin—the first molt is too tender, not enough active ingredients; the second molt is just right, the third molt is too old."

"Liquid output?"

"One hundred and twenty bottles." Chen Mo pointed to the second row on the table, "All sealed. The quality is much more stable than the first batch—out of those eighty-seven bottles from the first batch, only about sixty percent were truly presentable. This batch of one hundred and twenty bottles, over ninety percent can meet this standard."

Lu Changyuan put the bottle back on the table.

"Can it be sold externally?"

Chen Mo didn't answer immediately. He placed the two jade bottles on the table—one from the first batch, one from the second batch—side by side.

"It can be inspected. But I cannot guarantee that every batch will be the same." He pointed to the array pot at the corner of the table, "Now there is one pot, three people. I watch the heat—if the heat is off by half a breath, the output will be off by one-tenth. One apprentice records the wood shavings—when three taels should be added, if they add four taels, the whole pot will be turbid. Another apprentice seals the spiritual line—if sealed too early, the medicinal effect is not enough; if sealed too late, the medicinal properties dissipate."

"To increase the amount, we must either add pots or find a way to make the array pot run continuously. Adding pots means adding people—at least three more who can handle the work. Continuous running requires ensuring a constant supply of raw materials—the thunder-struck wood shavings are a by-product of the devil-cleansing thunder bamboo, and the thunder bamboo itself has only just come alive not long ago. The current amount is enough for small batches, but not for large-scale production."

"In other words," Lu Changyuan said, "currently, one pot can produce at most a little over a hundred bottles a month."

"About that."

Lu Changyuan stood up and walked to the array pot. The base liquid for the third batch was boiling in the pot, the light gray liquid rolling slowly under the faint light of the temperature-control Array Patterns, emitting extremely fine bubbles. The air was filled with a complex smell mixed with bitterness, coolness, and the burnt smell of wood.

"Old Chen. Give an estimate—just one pot, one hundred and twenty bottles a month, how many can be produced in a year?"

"One thousand four or five hundred bottles."

"How much can one bottle sell for?"

Chen Mo stroked his chin. "Jubao Pavilion offered a price last time—"

"Don't mention Jubao Pavilion." Lu Changyuan interrupted him, "How much do you think it is worth?"

Chen Mo was silent for a few breaths.

"Low-grade purification liquid, not high-grade evil-warding spiritual liquid. What it can do is low-grade purification—mild Devilish Qi contamination of wounds can be washed away, the evil-warding effect of talisman paper is increased by two to three percent after soaking, and the effect is doubled when mixed with purification powder. I have verified these uses in practical tests."

He picked up another piece of paper, densely packed with data from each test.

"If priced according to utility—one bottle is worth at least forty to fifty Low-Grade Spirit Stones. Any lower, and it's cheapened."

Lu Changyuan nodded.

He walked to the table and picked up the military badge of the Zhenhai Military Warehouse Deputy Commissioner. The military badge was made of copper, with the Zhenhai Army emblem and the official title of Deputy Commissioner of Transport engraved on the surface. He weighed the military badge in his hand.

"Jubao Pavilion offered less than half that amount last time. And they wanted to sign a three-year exclusive sale agreement, with the recipe reported."

"Then we—"

"We won't go through Jubao Pavilion." Lu Changyuan placed the military badge on the table, making a soft sound. "The path for the purification liquid is through the military."

Chen Mo was stunned for a moment. "The military?"

"Commander Tie Zhan. He is in charge of logistics for the Zhenhai fortress. This batch of purification liquid is useful for the anti-devil material line—at least more useful than Jubao Pavilion selling it to Loose Cultivators." Lu Changyuan picked up the military badge, "I will send him a message. Ask him to send someone to inspect the goods."

"Will he come?"

"He will." Lu Changyuan put the military badge back on the table, "He owes me a favor—the war merit from Xuangui Island bought more than just the additional population. And he is looking at the goods, not me."

Chen Mo thought for a moment and nodded.

"Then I will go and double-check the packaging of the second batch. There can be no deviation in the capacity of each bottle—the military's inspection is stricter than Jubao Pavilion's."

"Go ahead."

Chen Mo got up and walked to the table. After two steps, he turned back.

"Lord. This batch of goods is the first thing Blue Moon Island can sell externally."

Lu Changyuan glanced at him.

"I know."

In the stone room, only the low humming of the temperature-control Array Patterns under the array pot remained.

Lu Changyuan sat alone for a while, then took out a palm-length jade talisman—this was the communication talisman allocated internally to the Deputy Commissioner of Transport of the Zhenhai Army, covering the Zhenhai fortress and surrounding defense areas. He sank his Divine Sense into it and left a brief message: purification liquid ready for shipping, please have Commander Tie arrange for someone to inspect it.

Then he threw the communication talisman into the air.

The talisman flashed, turning into a thin pale golden thread, flying out along the stone wall, and disappearing into the clouds in the direction of the Outer Port in the blink of an eye.

Lu Changyuan stood up and tucked the military badge into his chest.

The sea breeze outside blew into the doorway of the stone room, blowing the recipe paper next to those bottles of purification liquid to turn over. The last line of text on the paper was what Chen Mo had just written:

"Third batch proposed trial: Increase the ratio of wood shavings by another part, to see the upper limit."