Chapter 393
The villagers who took chemical fertilizer on deferred payment wept tears of gratitude.
Before this, villagers had heard from outsiders that the new prefect was a good one—but they'd never seen it firsthand. The factory wasn't built in their village, they'd never met the prefect, and the fertilizer wasn't free—they still paid for it with their own money. Aside from that cement road, most people just said, "Heaven has eyes—we finally got a good one who won't crush us commoners," and left it at that.
The people in the neighboring counties didn't hold Fang Zichen in the same reverence and affection as those in Pingxiang Village or Anhe Village.
But now? Their hearts were deeply moved. They couldn't find the words to express it—just a warm fullness in their chests.
Fang Zichen's reputation grew once more, taking deeper root in the people's hearts.
Each little thing, on its own, seemed so small. But when people are at their lowest, when they need help the most, these small acts of kindness—almost trivial, really—hit the hardest.
And so, later, when Fang Zichen led tens of thousands of men on a distant campaign beyond the frontier and was on the verge of starvation, it was these very villagers—remembering this kindness—who scraped together their own grain, braved the dangers, and though they'd never left their villages before, hauled their own carts across thousands of miles, enduring every hardship, to deliver food to him personally at the border.
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The fertilizer seller then remembered what Fang Zichen had told him: "The prefect is a good man. He's conscripted quite a few soldiers this year."
Everyone already knew that.
The fertilizer seller went on: "The prefect is in urgent need of grain. When the summer harvest comes in the sixth month, if any of you are willing to sell, could you sell it to the government?"
"Well..."
Seeing them hesitate a little—they were all from the village, so how could he not know what they were thinking? They were probably worried that the prefect might use his goodwill to pressure them into selling their grain cheap to the yamen.
The fertilizer seller immediately said: "We're not asking for nothing. It's still four copper coins."
Well then, what was there to worry about?
Selling to him was no different from selling to anyone else! In the past, they'd always hauled their grain to the Huang Family Shop in town. They knew the owners well, and selling to familiar faces gave them peace of mind—no fear of not getting paid. Plus, the Huang family was the biggest buyer in town and could take their entire stock. So every year, after the harvest and once the grain was sun-dried, everyone would instinctively carry their grain to the Huang Family Shop.
But since the prefect needed it now, naturally they'd sell to him first.
He was a good prefect!
And they couldn't let those soldiers, who were defending their homeland, go hungry.
The villagers were poor! The better-off families might have three or four taels of silver; the poorer ones probably couldn't even scrape together a few dozen copper coins. Zhao Ger had already figured this out.
Borrow first, use the fertilizer, and after the harvest they'd sell the grain and have money.
The people of Nanshan Village looked out for one another. Those with ox-carts hauled their goods farther afield to sell. Those with only wooden carts had to pull them by hand, which was harder work, so they sold closer to home. Still, they managed to sell. After all, it was the busy farming season — otherwise no one would have been willing to spend that much money.
After the entire third month was done, the dozen or so families who'd joined forces to sell fertilizer got together to count their earnings and were overjoyed.
After deducting all costs, they'd actually made thirty-one taels and ninety-eight copper coins. The pile on the table was so full it stunned everyone.
"This... we must have counted wrong!"
"Yeah! Let's count again."
Still thirty-one taels and ninety-eight copper coins.
When had they ever handled so much silver?
Back when they'd bought the oxen, they'd had to borrow from every relative possible—the fulang's side, then the wife's side, going door to door to aunts, uncles, and cousins. And still it wasn't enough. They'd thought of going back to beg for more, but the moment they entered the village, an auntie spotted them and shouted, "Dayu is back! Go home, go home!"—so scared of being hit up for a loan that she ran home and shut the door, pretending no one was there.
They'd gotten plenty of cold stares back then. Plenty of people said this reselling business would never work.
Villagers ought to just stick to farming—that was the solid, honest way to live.
People talked so much that even the Nanshan villagers started to feel uneasy at first, afraid this wouldn't work out. How were they going to pay back such a mountain of debt? They tossed and turned at night, unable to sleep. But later, once the fertilizer started selling well, they hadn't even had time to sit down and tally the books, yet they all knew—for every sack sold, they earned a few copper coins, sometimes even ten or twenty.
Then they breathed a sigh of relief. They'd thought making four or five taels in a month would be the absolute limit. Never in their dreams did they expect to earn this much. In just one month, they'd nearly earned back what they'd spent on oxen and carts.
They could hardly believe it. Staring at the piles of copper coins on the table, their eyes burned with tears of joy.
Even those with little land, who couldn't get rich just from fertilizer, were now swept up in the momentum.
With a way out, they could get rich too.
Life now had hope. Before, when they went to town, starving and hollow, they wouldn't even buy a steamed bun or a flatbread—they'd just take a sniff of the aroma and head back. Even with copper coins in their pockets, they didn't dare spend. Now they were willing. Not to mention that this year's crops would bring money—even their children had earned a fair bit by helping build roads. Households weren't so pinched anymore, so naturally they could afford to buy.
"Two flatbreads, please."
"A pound of meat—this piece here, the fatty one."
"Shopkeeper, give me two feet of cloth."
When the villagers got a little richer, the town merchants had business to do. Before, aside from grain shops and cloth shops, other businesses could hardly make money off the villagers. Why? Because the villagers had no silver and pinched every penny.
Now that everyone was earning money, the merchants could finally sell their goods too. Silver began to circulate, the townsfolk made a living as well, and prosperity could be seen everywhere.
When the villagers prospered, the entire Hezhou could prosper.
Fang Zichen was happy too.
They were making small change; Fang Zichen was making the big money. Nearly two thousand taels had come in—of course he was delighted.
They said Hezhou was poor, but even a mosquito's leg has meat. Households pooling together a few hundred copper coins each, across several counties and dozens of villages—by the time they applied the second round of fertilizer in the fifth month, another two thousand taels would come in. After deducting costs—the raw materials, the workers' wages—since the factory opened, only a few hundred taels had been spent. At this rate, he was about to strike it rich.
There was no stopping it.
Earlier, the fertilizer had been made with different materials, so the cost was high. At two hundred copper coins a sack, there was barely any profit. Barely a month into operations, silver was flowing out like water. At month-end, when Fang Zichen went to hand out wages, he watched a whole chest of copper coins empty out in no time. It was like carving pieces out of his own flesh.
Seeing the workers' wives and fulangs beaming with joy, grinning from ear to ear as they tucked their silver into their purses, Fang Zichen barely held himself back from rushing over and snatching the money right out of their hands.
In one month, wages alone came to over thirty taels, and the raw materials for the fertilizer cost nearly two hundred taels.
If he didn't figure something out, this factory might end up losing money, leaving him with nothing but his underpants.
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