Jiang Zhi hadn't expected that just moments ago, Song Tingzhang was speaking so well, but suddenly the conversation took a turn and she found herself in the eye of the storm.
Want to take my secret recipe for nothing...
Jiang Zhi could easily have retorted, but this was the county government office, and it would be too impolite and embarrassing.
Fortunately, I am currently learning the Great Shift of Heaven and Earth from Magistrate Zhang. Although I haven't learned other techniques, I know many secret formulas and am not afraid of them being revealed. I still know the trick of exchanging goods for goods.
Jiang Zhi smiled and asked, "May I ask how you are addressed, sir?"
The man chuckled and said, "My surname is also Jiang, and I'm from Jincheng Prefecture!"
Jiang Zhi's smile remained unchanged. She didn't ask any further questions about where Jincheng was, and calmly said, "So this is my home! If you want to know how to make the potion, it's very simple. Just give me a secret recipe and I'll reveal it!"
Everyone should care about the lives of ordinary people! How can I, a mere village woman, monopolize the Zhou king's reward? Don't you agree?
That man was clearly a seasoned veteran. He wasn't annoyed by Jiang Zhi's words and still smiled, saying, "I run a rice shop and don't have any secret recipes to save people from suffering that I can exchange."
Jiang Zhi said seriously, "This is not easy. As the ancients said, what is free is always the most expensive."
I said it didn't matter, but if anything bad happens, are you willing to take responsibility?
Fatty Jiang looked troubled and tapped his forehead with his folding fan: "Who is this ancient person? I've never heard of this before, and what's free... really expensive?"
Jiang Zhi nodded: "Really expensive! There's no such thing as a free lunch, but there's plenty of bird droppings!"
That sounds... kind of threatening, doesn't it?
The fat man looked Jiang Zhi up and down.
Jiang Zhi continued, "Everyone has secrets. If there really is no life-saving secret, you can tell me one or two private things in your family that you are not comfortable telling outsiders."
Pfft!
Ha ha!
The room, which had been quiet and solemn, suddenly burst into laughter.
The fat man's smile remained unchanged: "Village Chief Jiang is joking. Since it's a private matter, how could it possibly be revealed!"
Jiang Zhi smiled brightly: "It was the Jiang family who joked with me first. Since it's a secret recipe, how can we just talk about it casually!"
"The original soup digests the original food"—Jiang Zhi was merely borrowing the original phrase.
This fat Jiang is really thick-skinned; the boomerang pierced him but didn't draw blood. He chuckled and sat back down, saying, "Hahaha, the atmosphere in the hall was so dull just now. I was just trying to make everyone laugh! Please continue!"
However, after this setback, no one in the hall mentioned the donor again, and at least no one openly used moral blackmail to make demands.
Every family has secrets; if we're going to make them public, let's all make them public together.
Jiang Zhi won't be overly attached to these technologies, but she still needs to earn her first pot of gold; she won't give them away for free.
Magistrate Zhang continued with the initial topic, namely that the military needed a large quantity of pharmaceuticals and other supplies.
War is always about logistics; the civilians, who have just recovered, need blood transfusions.
Pingchuan County has four pharmacies, of which the Huo family's is the largest and the Qingquanwan Pharmacy is the newest. To make medicine easily, the first hurdle is the raw materials.
Xujia Village only purchases seven or eight kinds of medicinal herbs. Apart from Huojia Baicaotang, which has a branch in Lihua Town, three other people, including Xu Gensheng, also come to the village.
However, for safety reasons, they have only been collecting from one village and have not gone to other places, so the amount they can collect is still limited.
This is a difficult matter for businesses, but for the government, it's just a matter of a word.
Magistrate Zhang assigned tasks to the village heads of Pingchuan County, instructing them to collect taxes from the villages below them.
One of the requirements is to pay for those kinds of wild herbs, and there's no reason to refuse.
For ordinary people, this means extra work.
Fortunately, these grasses are very common; plants like Euphorbia humifusa and Polygonum hydropiper are usually cut down to feed pigs.
Because the government was competing with the pigs for food, a strange story circulated among the people for a long time: In a certain year and month, the government raised tens of thousands of pigs and cattle but had no fodder...
Once the raw material issue is resolved, the rest is up to the pharmacy.
All four pharmacies accepted orders from the government, and the wages were barely enough to cover the costs.
There were some benefits, though. Making medicine for the government meant being exempt from some taxes, which was practically equivalent to receiving a processing fee.
The pharmacy provided labor and space, but the government had to pay for the raw materials. In addition to herbs, the medicine also needed starch, sugar, and packaging paper and jars.
One move affects the whole situation, so grain stores, rice shops, cloth shops, medicine shops, paper shops, and ceramic shops all have tasks.
When it comes to money, everyone puts aside their pride, bickering and haggling without giving an inch.
On Jiang Zhi's side, a small group also gathered.
Pingchuan County has five towns, which each govern fifty-two villages.
Apart from Jiangzhi, a directly administered village, the other village chiefs were not qualified to come to the county government office. So, the five usually high-ranking village chiefs surrounded Jiangzhi and asked him about agricultural matters.
Old Song then took on the role of broker, incessantly boasting to the other village chiefs about the house repairs and grain sales in Xujia Village: "Village Chief Jiang organized the villagers to repair houses one by one, and now every family in the village has a new house..."
Jiang Zhi modestly debunked his statement: "Not every family has a new house. There's one family that's stupid; they didn't build one and they're still living in a shack."
In addition, three other families of migrant workers had only been in the village for a little over a month and hadn't had time to repair their houses, so they were still staying with other villagers.
Only four households don't have new houses. Compared to other villages with their old and new thatched mud walls and countless impoverished households, Xujia Village is already a miracle. It's too embarrassing to say it out loud.
If it weren't for the village chief's sincere and humble attitude, they would have thought he was deliberately trying to provoke them.
Aside from the houses, the fact that Xujia Village sells green grains is also astonishing.
One of the village chiefs asked, "Selling young corn is like eating tomorrow's grain; it's just for a moment's pleasure. How will you eat after you sell the tender corn?"
Every crop needs to be protected from being stolen when it is about to ripen.
Hungry children would hide in the ground and secretly eat green broad beans, green peas, and tender peanuts. They would also pull up sweet potatoes from the ground to eat, and then bury the sweet potato vines back in the soil.
Young corn is a prime target for theft by hungry people, and every year some farmers who steal it are caught and whipped as a warning in public.
Now, Xujia Village not only doesn't prevent it, but also sells it directly, which makes other towns curious and jealous!
Jiang Zhi said, "Our village grows two crops. The first crop is cultivated and harvested earlier. The second crop... our village's corn hasn't been harvested yet!"
"Ah! Your village hasn't harvested the corn yet? That's too late!"
These village chiefs all have farms at home, and some of them even know how to farm.
Harvest the corn early and cut off the stalks so that the sweet potatoes below can see the sunlight and increase yield. Otherwise, the sweet potatoes that grow close to the ground will only grow vines and not roots in the autumn rain.
Jiang Zhi laughed and said, "We start early with seedlings, then intercrop corn in furrows!"
Before they could even digest one piece of knowledge, another barrage of new knowledge followed, leaving the pavilion chiefs completely bewildered.
Song Tingzhang was somewhat smug. He had already arranged with Jiang Zhi to take him along for early seed breeding next year, as well as cotton planting...
He was in a privileged position, so these village chiefs could only watch helplessly and would have to bow down to him in the future.
However, Jiang Zhi's next words shattered Song Tingzhang's illusions. She extended an invitation to the other village chiefs: "You are all welcome to visit Xujia Village on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month next year!"
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