“My dear, I know of a place deep in the mountains where flowers may still be blooming right now…”
Lin Qingyue leaned against the old pillow on the earthen kang, her voice carrying a hint of certainty.
Lu Yuan’s heart jumped. He quickly sat down beside her and held her slightly cold hand.
“The mountain is sealed by snow, and even the wild grass has frozen to death. Where could there possibly be flowers?”
“When I was twelve, I carried a basket on my back and went to the back mountain to gather dead branches from the cliff known as Broken Head Cliff.”
“The terrain there was dangerous, and no one from the village dared to go. I accidentally got lost, but at the bottom of the cliff, in a sheltered spot protected from the wind, I found a large grove of wild wintersweet!”
A faint light sparkled in Lin Qingyue’s eyes.
“The wintersweet was blooming beautifully, and you could smell its fragrance from far away. Judging by the season, it should be at the peak of its blooming period right now.”
Lu Yuan gently tucked a stray lock of hair behind his wife’s ear. His expression became even gentler and more determined.
“Good. Your husband knows now. You’ve made the greatest contribution.”
Outside, the three Lin brothers had been listening with their ears perked up and could no longer hold themselves back.
“Broken Head Cliff? I know that place!”
Third Brother Lin Sanniu slapped his thigh and jumped up excitedly.
“There really is a grove down there, but it’s usually hidden behind wild vines, so no one pays attention to it. Brother-in-law, wait here. I’ll go right now!”
Lin Daniou, the eldest and more cautious of the brothers, grabbed his impatient younger brother.
“You reckless boy, what do you know? Those cliffs are steep, and if you step on hidden ice and fall, you’ll die! Take a thick hemp rope. Big Brother will go with you!”
The two brothers immediately returned to the house, grabbed their firewood axes, wrapped thick hemp ropes around their waists, and carried their worn bamboo baskets on their backs.
“Big Brother, Third Brother, the road will be slippery in the dark. Be extremely careful!” Lu Yuan called after them at the doorway.
“Don’t worry, brother-in-law!”
Lin Daniou grinned and led Sanniu straight into the snowy darkness without looking back.
The other men in the family weren’t idle either.
Since they intended to make a high-end product for wealthy households, the packaging absolutely couldn’t be careless.
Lu Yuan found a piece of charcoal and quickly sketched a delicate rectangular wooden box on a broken wooden board in the courtyard.
“Father, your carpentry skills are excellent. Do you think you can make this?”
His father-in-law, Lin Dashan, leaned closer. His cloudy eyes immediately lit up.
“A sliding lid? That’s a clever design! As long as we have hard wood, your father can carve one out even with his eyes closed!”
“Good!” Lu Yuan pointed at an extremely concealed groove on the wooden board.
“Father, when making the box, carve a tiny plum blossom in reverse inside the hidden mortise-and-tenon groove.”
Lin Dashan was stunned.
“Carve it in reverse? And inside a hidden groove where nobody can see it? Isn’t that a waste of effort?”
A mysterious smile appeared on Lu Yuan’s lips.
“Father, that’s called an anti-counterfeiting mark. Once our products become popular, those jealous merchants in town will definitely try to imitate them.”
“With this reversed plum blossom hidden inside the groove, ordinary people won’t notice it. But if something unexpected happens, it can still be useful.”
Although Lin Dashan didn’t understand the term “anti-counterfeiting mark,” after living for most of his life, how could he not understand the importance of guarding against dishonest people?
He rubbed his hands excitedly.
“Son-in-law, that scholar’s brain of yours really is clever! I’ll go chop the wood right now!”
Lin Dashan went to the woodpile and selected several pieces of the hardest, finest-grained old elm wood. Under the oil lamp, he began shaving and polishing them with complete concentration.
The Lin family’s little courtyard was bustling with activity deep into the night.
About two hours later, footsteps finally sounded outside the courtyard gate, uneven and heavy.
“We’re back! We found them!”
Lin Sanniu’s lips were purple from the cold, and his eyebrows were covered in white frost, but his eyes were shining brightly.
As soon as he and Lin Daniou entered the house, they placed their baskets on the ground.
When they lifted the cloth covering them, an exceptionally fresh, cool, and elegant fragrance instantly filled the entire shabby earthen house.
“So fragrant…” Second Sister-in-law Li couldn’t help taking a deep breath, and she immediately felt invigorated.
“Excellent! Big Brother, Third Brother, go warm yourselves by the kang. I’ll handle the rest!”
Lu Yuan immediately directed Erniu to start a fire in the kitchen.
He thoroughly cleaned two large iron pots. In the lower pot, he placed a large bowl upside down and surrounded it with washed wintersweet petals before pouring in water.
Then he placed the second iron pot upside down on top like a lid and sealed every gap tightly with wet mud.
Finally, he continuously piled snow and ice from the courtyard on the bottom of the upper inverted pot.
“Brother-in-law, what are you doing? Are you making flower soup?” Lin Erniu asked curiously as he fed firewood into the stove.
Lu Yuan kept his eyes on the heat and explained in terms the ancient people could understand.
“This is called extracting flower dew.”
“The fire underneath turns the fragrance of the flowers into hot vapor. When that vapor meets the ice and snow in the upper iron pot, it turns back into water droplets and drips into the large bowl in the middle.”
This was the oldest and most effective method of steam distillation.
Although primitive, it was more than sufficient for extracting floral hydrosol.
After a full two hours of boiling, Lu Yuan broke open the mud seal and lifted the upper iron pot.
Inside the large bowl was nearly half a bowl of crystal-clear liquid with such an intense fragrance that it seemed almost tangible.
“Amazing! This is practically an immortal’s technique!”
The Lin family crowded around the stove. As they breathed in the intoxicating floral fragrance, their admiration for Lu Yuan reached an indescribable level.
“Second Brother, bring over all those pieces of ‘pig pancreas’ we couldn’t sell today,” Lu Yuan ordered.
Lin Erniu froze, looking troubled.
“Brother-in-law, that stuff smells awful. Won’t adding it ruin this heavenly flower dew?”
“We have to make do with what we’ve got. We don’t have money to buy fresh lard, so we’ll reprocess it!”
Under Lu Yuan’s direction, the yellowish crude soap was cut into small pieces and placed back into the cleaned iron pot.
A little water was added, and it was slowly heated over low heat until the hard pieces melted back into a thick, sticky paste.
At that moment, Lu Yuan poured the precious half-bowl of wintersweet hydrosol, along with a small handful of crushed fresh yellow wintersweet petals, all at once.
Sizzle!
As he continued stirring, a miracle happened.
The slightly acidic components remaining in the floral hydrosol further neutralized the excess alkali in the soap.
The nauseating smell of pork fat was completely overwhelmed and swallowed by the dominant, elegant fragrance of wintersweet.
Lu Yuan quickly and carefully poured the finished mixture into several rectangular wooden molds that Lin Dashan had just made.
“That’s it. Leave them somewhere cool and let them solidify overnight.”
By the time everything was finished, the sky had already begun to brighten.
The entire family had stayed awake all night. Although they were exhausted to the point that their bones felt like they might fall apart, everyone’s eyes still shone with hope.
The next morning.
The entire family gathered around the broken table in the main room, holding their breath.
Lu Yuan took a deep breath and gently pried open one of the wooden molds.
“Hiss…”
Everyone simultaneously drew in a sharp breath.
Lying quietly on the table was a square bar of soap, semi-transparent like white jade.
The muddy yellow color from the previous day was gone. Now it was smooth, delicate, and lustrous.
Tiny golden fragments of wintersweet petals were scattered throughout the translucent soap, making it look as exquisite as amber.
But most remarkable of all was its fragrance.
There wasn’t the slightest trace of the pork-fat smell. Only the pure, elegant fragrance of wintersweet remained—the most alluring scent of the bitter winter season.
Lin Dashan carefully brought over several sliding wooden boxes with hidden anti-counterfeiting marks that he had spent the entire night painstakingly crafting.
He placed the jade-like soap inside the simple yet elegant old elmwood boxes.
Its quality instantly went from a cheap roadside trinket to a high-end luxury product.
“My goodness…”
Second Sister-in-law Li stared at it in amazement, clasping her hands and murmuring a prayer.
“If this still sells for five copper coins, even I would want to buy one!”
Looking at the perfect finished products, Lu Yuan nodded in satisfaction.
“The color is like jade, and the fragrance remains concentrated without dispersing.”
After pondering for a moment, Lu Yuan looked around at everyone.
“Let’s call it—Fragrant Jade.”
“Fragrant Jade… What a beautiful name.”
Inside the main room, Lin Qingyue, who had been listening to the commotion outside, softly repeated the name from behind the curtain.
Her admiration for her husband had already become like a mighty river.
Was there anything in this world that her husband couldn’t do?
“Second Brother, get everything ready.”
Lu Yuan turned around and removed the worn cotton-padded coat covered in soot and mud.
He changed into the clean, neatly patched blue long robe that his mother-in-law, Wang Shi, had washed for him.
Although the robe was still faded from years of washing, once it was worn by Lu Yuan, the scholar’s natural dignity, pride, and composure immediately returned.
At this moment, he was no longer the disheveled man who had been boiling pork fat beside the stove.
He was once again the learned scholar of the Great Jing Dynasty, a man whose scholarly refinement radiated from within.
Lin Erniu carried a finely made bamboo basket containing five boxes of “Fragrant Jade.” His back was straight, and the dejection from yesterday was completely gone.
“Brother-in-law, are we going to the same street as yesterday?”
“Yes.”
Lu Yuan adjusted his sleeves, and a sharp glint of business ambition flashed through his deep eyes.
“But this time, we’re not going to those blind grocery-store owners.”
“We’re going straight to the rouge and cosmetics shop in town—Jinxiu Fragrance House!”