Chapter 38: Infrastructure (2)

Muchen kept himself busy as the days went by. His electrical experiments continued in fits and starts, although his more ambitious doodles wouldn't be translated into reality until the water wheel was built. He gradually accumulated a decent stockpile of distilled booze. And, of course, he diligently practiced his cultivation.

Over the course of two months, Muchen opened another two meridians. That brought him to eleven open meridians total, just one away from the peak of the meridian opening realm. He was heartened by the progress, although it did add some urgency to his electrical work.

His smooth progress was helped by his compatibility with his dao. Even though he wasn't engaging in market transactions, the heavens smiled on his efforts to build the foundation of a commercial empire. He could feel every day that his connection to Li Village was just a bit deeper. He could also still feel a tenuous connection to the capital, despite the distance.

The other daily activity that he wasn't able to escape was his martial training with Xinyi. While he couldn't escape, though, Muchen was able to rope Yize into learning alongside him. The exhausting effort became more bearable when somebody else was suffering worse than Muchen was.

Gradually the days grew longer and the weather more temperate. Muchen fell into the rhythm of his daily routine to the point that the first stirrings of spring caught him by surprise. He couldn't help but smile the first time he went outside and saw wildflowers growing alongside the path down the mountain.

He gave it a few more days before he gathered Yize and Chuhua to join him on a harvest. It was probably the first time anybody in Li Village had made a serious effort to gather wildflowers on a large scale. The mountain didn't let Muchen down. It was the work of half a morning before he and Yize returned with the baskets on their back stuffed full of flower petals.

Muchen released Yize to spend the rest of the day off hunting. Chuhua stuck around to watch him process their bounty.

The tool involved was familiar: another pot still, identical to the one Muchen used to distill rice wine. He probably only needed to have one built, but he was worried that even a thorough cleaning would leave behind traces of cross contamination. If he was going to make flower infused booze, he wanted it to be a deliberate choice and not the result of reusing his equipment.

Chuhua watched with interest as he filled the pot three quarters full with water before adding flower petals. He mixed the flowers in thoroughly, continuing to add them to the pot until it was full. Then he put the lid back on the still and kindled the fire.

"Isn't this what you do with the wine?" Chuhua asked. She didn't care for the taste of the concentrated booze, but she'd seen him making it often enough to understand what was going on.

"More or less," Muchen said, "but the target is different."

He poked at the fire until it was a bit stronger than what he'd use to distill wine. After all, his goal today was a rolling boil.

"We want to extract the oil that gives flowers their scent," Muchen said. "The water and steam will draw it out of the petals."

There wasn't as much chemistry involved with the extraction of essential oils, compared to alcohol distillation. Muchen didn't need to worry about poisoning people, nor that different chemicals would boil off at different times. He just needed to make sure to bank the fire once most of the water had been boiled so he didn't burn the flower petals.

The long neck of the still drained into a second pot. The receptacle could hold about the same amount of liquid as the still, but was built to be taller and narrower. It also had a spigot near the bottom.

Muchen and Chuhua watched in silence as first a few droplets, then a trickle, then a steady stream began pouring from one pot to the other. Muchen could smell the faint fragrance of wildflowers. Looking carefully, he could see an oily film forming on top of the receptacle.

He beckoned Chuhua over. "The floating oil is what we're after."

She nodded. "Do we skim it off the top?"

Muchen shook his head. "Nothing so difficult."

He waited until the pot was about halfway full before he moved both the still off to the side of the fire. A bit of liquid continued to drip out of the still to the pot on the ground, but it passed soon enough. Muchen lifted the pot containing the essential oils onto a stand that he'd prepared for just this occasion. He positioned a final oversized pot to catch the water coming out of the spigot.

"The oil floats," Muchen said, "so all that we have to do is drain the water out from under it."

He opened the spigot, letting the water flow out. Once it got down to the halfway point he screwed the spigot half closed, slowing the flow. If the water came out too fast then the turbulence would let some of the oil mixed in. Of course, with the equipment he had on hand this whole thing was far from an exact science, but that was no reason to be sloppy.

Muchen kept a careful eye on the water draining out of the pot. When he saw the consistency change, he slowed down the flow. The droplets coming out grew thicker as he slowed it down even further. Finally, he held his hand under the outlet and caught a smidge of liquid on his palm before closing off the spigot.

Muchen studied his catch. There was still a bit of water mixed in, but he could see that he was holding fairly pure essential oil. He shook off his hand, dropping the liquid back in the pot, then wiped his hand on the ground to clean it off. He didn't expect any real problems to arise from letting the stuff linger on his skin, not as a cultivator who was nearly at the peak of the meridian opening stage, but it was still better safe than sorry.

He prepared a much smaller ceramic container and drained the rest of the pot's contents into it, sealing it off when he was done. It was an awful lot of work to get a final product that would hardly be more than a few mouthfuls if drunk, but Muchen was happy. After all, the raw materials were free, and the final product would be much more than just this small bottle.

"The oil is used to make perfume," he said, wiggling the bottle in his hand for emphasis, then gesturing down at the pot on the ground. "The scented water can be sold directly."

One positive side effect of his imprecision was that the water had been infused with the scent of flowers. It wasn't nearly strong enough to be used as perfume, but sometimes people wanted a pleasant scent that was more subtle.

Packaging his goods for sale was going to be a challenge. Unfortunately, he wouldn't be able to source glassware. Or rather, clear glass bottles would cost more by themselves than the scented water he'd be putting into it. He had a line on a woodworker in the village who could make small wooden boxes that should suffice for the transport of scented oils. For the water, he would probably have to use some kind of ceramic.

Muchen opened the top of the still and began pulling clumps of petals out of the water. Chuhua helped. In theory they could put the petals through a press to try and wring out the last bit of useful scent, but for now Muchen figured his process was already complicated enough. He topped up the pot with fresh water and let Chuhua start mixing in the next batch of flower petals.

"Have you started cultivating?" he asked. He knew Xinyi had been working with Chuhua, but he hadn't been keeping close track of her progress.

Chuhua looked up from the flower basket with a smile. "Yes! Teacher says I'm ready to connect with the dao."

That was quick progress. Chuhua was at the age—a bit over twelve years—when connecting to the dao became possible, but as far as Muchen knew she hadn't done any training at all before he and Xinyi had come on the scene. Most of the sect talents who connected to the dao at her age were building on a foundation that had been laid years in advance.

Of course, Yize had already proven quite talented, and Chuhua was his sister. Maybe it wasn't a surprise that she was progressing quickly.

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"Her stretches are hard, though," Chuhua said.

Muchen could sympathize. Xinyi wouldn't put a small child through the same grueling martial training that she had subjected Muchen to, but nobody who accepted her tutelage was going to get a chance to slack off.

"They say the best time to plant a tree is ten years ago," Muchen said. "The second best time is now."

Chuhua frowned. "I'm not a tree."

Muchen laughed. "You're working hard now, but later you can sit back and enjoy the benefits."

He felt a bit guilty about the little white lie. It was true enough that she could expect to benefit later from the work she was putting in now. It was just that Xinyi would never let her rest on her laurels. Well, it would all be to her own benefit in the long run.

"Have you given any thought to your dao?" Muchen asked.

Chuhua didn't answer right away. She grabbed a double handful of flowers and tossed them into the pot, then reached in with both arms to mix the flowers into the water. It was only after the flowers had been thoroughly waterlogged that she looked up at him.

"It's hard to pick," she said.

"It doesn't need to be a weapon," Muchen said.

"I know," Chuhua replied. "Still, I don't know."

"Think about what you like to do," Muchen said. "What would you do every day if you could do anything?"

He shooed her away from the pot and replaced the lid before carrying the whole thing back over to the fire pit. It only took a moment of effort to bring the fire back to full strength. He positioned the receptacle under the still's outlet and sat back to watch.

"You like money more than anything?" Chuhua asked.

Muchen chuckled. He could understand why his behavior came across that way. At least Chuhua sounded more curious than accusatory.

"I like money," he admitted, "but my dao is about more than that."

He picked up a branch and poked at the fire. He didn't accomplish anything, but it did let him look busy while he organized his thoughts. Xinyi had never pressed him for much detail about his chosen path, and Muchen himself preferred to focus on practical actions rather than navel-gazing. He liked to think he was capable of at least a little bit of introspection when the situation called for it, though.

"I like being productive. I like doing things that are useful," Muchen said. "I want to get the proper reward for my actions, because I want to do things that are worth rewarding."

Chuhua propped her chin up on her hand. "It's not just about silver?"

"The quickest way to pile up silver is to rob people," Muchen said. "I want my silver to come from people who want to give it to me."

He wasn't above throwing a few sharp elbows when it came to business negotiations, but Muchen drew the line when it came to outright extortion. Back when he'd had the Hidden Fragrance Pavilion on the ropes, he'd negotiated a high price, but the end result had been well within the upper limit of what spirit rice cost in normal market transactions. Muchen was confident that Hidden Fragrance Pavilion had ended up profiting from the deal even if they'd had it forced upon them in the beginning.

Even that was an extraordinary situation. Muchen could admit, at least to himself, that he enjoyed the excitement of the occasional high stakes negotiation, but that was no foundation for long term business success. In order to continue walking forward on his chosen path, all that he had to do was make a product and find people who were willing to pay for it.

"If somebody is willing to give me their silver," Muchen said, "it means they want my product more than they want the silver. We're both better off for coming to a deal."

Of course, just because something had the outward form of a market transaction didn't necessarily mean that everything was proceeding strictly in accord with an economics textbook. There were all sorts of ways to coerce someone into a deal without holding them at sword point, not to mention the rich possibilities available in the field of consumer fraud.

Muchen didn't have any intention of dabbling in that side of the marketplace. First of all, it went against his principles. Second, it went against his instinct of self-preservation to run a black-hearted business in a world where customer complaints could be delivered by flying sword.

"Maybe," Chuhua said. "I don't think I want to sell things, though."

"Everybody has their own dao," Muchen said. "Don't pick something just because it's something your brother or I would pick."

He gestured to the receptacle that was beginning to fill up with the next batch of water and essential oils.

"If you can master this," Muchen said, "you'll be a great help to me, regardless of your dao."

Muchen held out hope that Chuhua's chosen path of cultivation would make her a more efficient employee, but he wasn't going to pressure a little girl into adopting a dao she didn't like just to bump up his profit margin by a few percentage points.

Besides, most of the advantages as far as production went would come from the physical benefits of cultivation, which would accumulate faster if she chose a more compatible dao.

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