Ordinary alcohol cost between ten and thirty wen per jin.
Ordinary families rarely drank.
They would only buy a little for the New Year or some special festival.
If an ordinary family had a hopeless drunk in it, someone who could practically live on alcohol, it wouldn’t take many years before the entire family ended up ruined and torn apart.
Qingniu Village had plenty of small merchants and street vendors.
Some landlords and well-off families from the surrounding villages also chose to settle in Qingniu, attracted by the prosperity the town offered compared with the villages.
They were the main consumers of alcohol.
In the largest room at the back of the central courtyard stood an enormous iron furnace, so large that three people would have to join hands to encircle it.
It stood in one corner, with a roaring fire burning beneath it.
A crystal-clear liquor slowly flowed from the outlet of the distiller.
Jinxiu’s mother was solely responsible for feeding firewood into the furnace and replacing the container whenever it was nearly full.
She didn’t have to hurry or exert herself too much.
Compared with the work she used to do at home, this was incredibly easy.
Although the room was somewhat warm, the doors and windows were open, making it perfectly bearable.
The women from the three families took turns working there, each receiving seven wen a day.
“Jinxiu’s mother! Is the batch ready?”
“I’m coming, I’m coming! What’s the rush? If you think I’m working too slowly, come do it yourself!”
Jinxiu’s father entered with an awkward expression and dropped a bundle of firewood onto the floor.
The other two men accompanying him snickered quietly and set down their own loads as well.
The small door connecting the room to the rear courtyard opened, and Jinyi walked in.
“Is the batch ready?”
The men quickly hid their smiles, while Jinxiu’s mother also dropped her combative attitude.
“Miss Jinyi, it’ll be ready shortly. We just need to seal these last few jars.”
Jinyi nodded without urging them.
The men immediately understood the hint and stepped forward to help.
“Do we still have enough firewood and base alcohol?”
Jinwen’s father quickly replied,
“The base alcohol isn’t a problem. Shopkeeper Fang can still supply us for now, and he’s increasing production as well.”
“But firewood is starting to run short. The families have been cutting wood every day, and we’ve nearly used up all the dead trees in the surrounding area.”
Jinyi nodded again.
“I understand. It looks like we’ll have to start buying firewood. We could also buy charcoal, although that would increase our expenses considerably.”
“I’ll discuss it with Sir later. For now, let’s take this shipment into town first.”
There was only one establishment in town dedicated specifically to the alcohol business.
Ordinary liquor was sold in many places, so making money from it was a reliable business, but it couldn’t exactly be considered extraordinarily profitable.
At most, annual profits were around one hundred and eighty liang.
Zhao Baihui then brought his distilled liquor and negotiated an agreement with the tavern owner, Mr.
Zhang.
He told him about the wonders of his liquor, Immortal’s Drunk, and also explained the growth prospects it would have in the future.
After that conversation, the tavern became the property of the Zhao family.
After operating expenses were deducted, Zhao Baihui would take seventy percent of the profits.
Then Zhao Baihui invited several well-off families to taste the liquor for free.
The name of Immortal’s Drunk suddenly became famous throughout Qingniu.
The cheapest ordinary liquor cost ten wen per jin, or two wen per bowl.
Immortal’s Drunk, on the other hand, cost one hundred wen per jin, or twenty wen per bowl. New chapters come out on g.com first.
Its main selling point could be summed up in a single word:
Strong!
So strong that even immortals would fall drunk.
Ever since Immortal’s Drunk appeared, the saying “drink a thousand cups without getting drunk” had become a thing of the past.
Producing one jin of Immortal’s Drunk required three jin of base alcohol as raw material.
Including the cost of firewood and transportation, the total expense came close to fifty wen.
From Zhao Baihui’s perspective, the profit margin wasn’t particularly high.
But for now, what he needed was to establish a reputation.
If he had to earn less at the beginning, so be it.
Once the brand was firmly established, even selling Immortal’s Drunk for one hundred wen per jin would become a thing of the past.
If one day it reached the capital, selling it for less than one liang of silver per jin would be so embarrassing that he wouldn’t even dare tell anyone about it.
The cart was loaded with jars of all sizes.
A small stool had also been placed on it.
Jinyi climbed onto the cart and sat upright.
Then she took out her little notebook and began reviewing what Zhao Baihui had taught her the previous day.
The men from the Sun, Wang, and Li families each guided one of the carts, while the other two walked behind.
And so they set off toward the town.
When they reached Qingniu’s main street, the carts stopped in front of an establishment with a large banner bearing the character 酒, meaning “alcohol.”
A plump, middle-aged man came out of the establishment.
When he saw Jinyi, a smile immediately spread across his face.
“Miss Jinyi, you’ve arrived.”
“Mr. Zhang, you’re too kind.”
Two young shop assistants came out from inside the tavern to help unload the liquor jars.
As they passed Jinyi, they lowered their heads and didn’t even dare look at her.
Only after they had walked a little farther away did they allow themselves to sneak a couple of glances at her.
Sun, Wang, and Li noticed the two young men’s furtive looks and exchanged smiles.
In a couple of years, Miss Jinyi would be fifteen, old enough for people to start discussing marriage.
But with her abilities and the affection Sir Zhao had for her, how could a couple of ordinary shop assistants possibly be worthy of her?
They could probably only admire her from afar.
Meanwhile, Jinyi and Mr.
Zhang entered the tavern and went to a private room, where they took their seats.
One of the shop assistants quickly brought them several small dishes to accompany the alcohol.
Then Shopkeeper Fang brought over the account book and handed it to Jinyi.
Jinyi checked the accounts while taking out her little notebook and making calculations with her pen.
Mr.
Zhang and Shopkeeper Fang looked at that notebook and ink pen with obvious envy.
A pen that small could write characters that tiny and clear!
What a treasure!
Mr.
Zhang’s sons were studying, so he had once asked Jinyi how much such things cost.
Jinyi had simply told him that they were expensive and extremely rare.
Even Sir Zhao had gone to great lengths to obtain a few from a distant place.
They only had enough for their own use and weren’t for sale.
But the risk would be far too great, and it wasn’t worth it.
As long as he remained in the shadows and didn’t rush things, sooner or later he would have everything.
Now that he had the alcohol business, he had even stopped selling rice.
After all, he had driven the price of rice in Qingniu down so much that it had already fallen below twenty wen per jin.
And rice, being a refined food, didn’t have particularly high consumption even when considering the entire town.
“There seems to be a discrepancy here. Shopkeeper Fang, take a look.”
Shopkeeper Fang quickly took the account book and began working the abacus with a clack, clack, clack.
“Miss Jinyi truly has an eagle eye. I did indeed make a mistake in the calculation.”
Shopkeeper Fang immediately admitted his error.
At first, when Jinyi had begun checking the accounts, Shopkeeper Fang had looked down on her quite a bit.
Was a thirteen-year-old girl really going to find mistakes in his accounts when he had spent half his life working as an accountant?
He had even thought that if he falsified the accounts, he could hide the discrepancies well enough that a little girl would never discover them.
Instead, he ended up completely humiliated.
The girl would take out her paper and pen, perform a few calculations, and before long, she would find several errors.
They were small errors, of course.
After all, when a discrepancy was too large, it was much easier to notice.
From that point onward, Shopkeeper Fang’s respect for Jinyi had reached the level of absolute admiration.
If Jinyi hadn’t been a mere thirteen-year-old girl, he probably would have knelt down and begged her to accept him as her disciple.
“Ah, that’s right, Shopkeeper Fang. There’s one more thing.”
“Right now, Immortal’s Drunk can’t keep up with demand. Since production is limited, we have no choice but to raise the price.”
“To how much?”
Jinyi smiled, revealing two small white canine teeth, and raised two fingers, white and delicate as onion roots.
“The retail price will be two hundred wen per jin. For the tavern, the purchase price will be one hundred wen.”
Mr.
Zhang drew in a sharp breath.
She had doubled the price outright!
That was practically daylight robbery!
Current daily production was around one hundred jin.
At two hundred wen per jin, that meant twenty liang of silver a day!
Of course, very little of those twenty liang had anything to do with him.
The tavern still had to pay for the liquor it purchased.
The new shipment alone cost ten liang.
The profits from ordinary alcohol were enough to cover all his other expenses, and he received thirty percent of the profits.
That meant three liang of silver.
On top of that, he had his own distillery, which supplied three hundred jin of base alcohol per day at eight wen per jin.
That came to more than two liang of silver a day.
But those two-plus liang included production costs, so the actual profit was only around half a liang.
Calculated over an entire year, supplying base alcohol would bring him more than one hundred liang, while his share of the tavern’s profits would exceed one thousand liang.
Compared with the barely one hundred and eighty liang he had earned annually before, this naturally meant multiplying his income tenfold!
But human beings were never satisfied.
Mr.
Zhang put on a servile smile.
“Miss Jinyi, now that the price of Immortal’s Drunk has gone up… how about we also discuss the purchase price of the base alcohol…?”
The professional smile on Jinxiu’s face slowly disappeared.