Chapter 39

It's now third on the recommendation list, but the gap with the ones behind is too tight, and the danger for a certain flower is imminent. Well, I've finally been stirred to action! If the ranking rises one more place, I'll add an extra chapter!

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The story that the people of Qingshen County talk about with the most relish is undoubtedly the tale of Chen Sanlang turning stones into gold and helping debtors on the brink of bankruptcy to turn their fortunes around.

Cai Chuanfu, who is revered as the King of Chefs, has personally acknowledged that Chen Sanlang is his master. When he was at his wit's end, Chen Sanlang taught him the art of cooking and how to run a restaurant. Without Chen Sanlang, he might have long since drowned himself, and there would be no today's supreme Laifulu Restaurant.

Li Jian, the producer of Huangjiao Wine, has also admitted that he was about to hang himself when Cai Chuanfu appeared with a jar of orange wine, which led to the popular Huangjiao Wine in Shu. Initially, he thought the wine was Cai's skill, but later learned that it was actually taught by Chen Sanlang!

Not only the Zhang family, who owns the orange grove, but all the orange farmers in Qingshen County, must thank Huangjiao Wine and Chen Sanlang—since then, they no longer worry about sales, as the wineries buy their ponkan oranges at twice the original price.

The sauce merchant Tu also has something to say. He went from a nearly bankrupt stinky sauce seller to a welcome guest in all the restaurants, with his products gradually being sold far and wide, all because Cai Chuanfu improved his production process.

Due to the monopoly on salt, salt prices were high, and in the Song Dynasty, ordinary families used various bean pastes and sweet bean sauces for seasoning. Initially, they were used as dipping sauces, but as the sauce-making process advanced, a method of cooking dishes with sauce, known as "sauce method," gradually developed. This method was the main cooking technique in the folk for a long time.

In the north, people used sweet bean sauce made primarily from wheat flour, while in the south and in Shu, they used broad bean sauce. Tu's sauce was the latter, but compared to the famous Pixian broad bean sauce, Tu's product was far inferior... After struggling for many years, it was finally about to go bankrupt.

However, Cai Chuanfu made him slightly improve the broad bean sauce production process, mainly by extending the fermentation time, turning the broad beans into a paste. Then, he pressed the paste on a millstone to extract a bright black liquid. Cai Chuanfu called it—soy sauce.

Although the difference between bean sauce and soy sauce is just one step, soy sauce did not appear until the Southern Song Dynasty. This is not because people before the Northern Song Dynasty were too stupid to extract juice from bean sauce, but because of the cooking techniques—bean sauce could handle stewing, steaming, boiling, and pickling.

Only stir-frying, which easily burned the pot with bean sauce, and even if it didn't burn, the sticky mess would be unappetizing. Therefore, soy sauce emerged with the popularity of stir-frying in the Southern Song Dynasty.

Qingshen County, in modern times, became a city of stir-frying. Chefs naturally needed a more aesthetically pleasing and easier-to-use seasoning to replace bean sauce in stir-frying.

The appearance of soy sauce perfectly solved this problem and was naturally welcomed by all the restaurants. As Chen Ke had predicted, the technique of stir-frying was simple and easy to learn, and could not be kept secret for long. Indeed, within one or two years, the method of stir-frying had spread throughout Qingshen County and became the main cooking method for residents.

It is estimated that only the chefs in Bianjing had the skills and cunning to turn a small technique into a divine art and keep it strictly secret.

However, the spread of stir-frying greatly benefited the sales of soy sauce. A new term, "buying soy sauce," also emerged in Qingshen County.

By this year, the method of stir-frying had spread to neighboring counties, although it was just a simple stir-fry, it still required soy sauce. Thus, Tu's soy sauce became a best-selling product, and the boss of Tu's opened ten new fermentation pools. Although he wasn't yet rich, he was already tasting the sweetness of making money.

There were still two others, the charcoal merchant Qian and the bamboo grove owner He, who learned that even soy sauce was Chen Sanlang's creation. They couldn't sit still and brought thick gifts to the Chen family to ask for debt-to-equity conversion... They somehow found out that only if Chen Sanlang had shares, he would genuinely help them.

Technically, since the debts were paid, Chen Ke didn't need to deal with them anymore. But he needed their help to relieve his inner distress, so he agreed without hesitation.

After becoming shareholders of the two companies, he not only helped them find sales channels and made all the merchants he could influence buy Qian's bamboo charcoal, but also went to great lengths to improve the charcoal-making method.

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When Chen Ke arrived in this world, he was born in a charcoal field, so he was not unfamiliar with the bamboo charcoal-making methods of this era. He visited Qian's charcoal field and saw workers filling the fire door with fuel, then placing dried fresh bamboo into the kiln for seven days of baking, followed by seven days of slow burning, and another seven days of natural cooling before unloading. The entire process from loading to unloading took more than twenty days.

But in his previous life, the mountainous area where he lived in his childhood also had many bamboo forests and charcoal kilns. He remembered that workers only took ten days to burn a kiln of charcoal, absolutely not more than twenty days. This difference in production efficiency was enough to drive a person crazy.

Chen Ke carefully recalled that in his previous life, workers seemed to first bake the bamboo for a few days, then add more fire and quickly seal the kiln to cut off the air. After two or three days, they would open the kiln to get the black bamboo charcoal.

Thinking about it, this method seemed simpler than the traditional kiln-burning method, but everything is easier said than done. Qian's charcoal field followed Chen Ke's method, but the fire always failed to produce charcoal, wasting the bamboo. After several failures, Qian looked at Chen Ke with a different eye. If it weren't for the sales channels he provided, he might have told this kid to go cool off somewhere.

In the end, it was Chen Xiliang who pointed out the solution. The Chen family was a charcoal-making family, and although Little Xiliang focused on reading, he was very familiar with the charcoal-making process. After listening to Chen Ke's description, he thought for a moment and said, "The kiln is designed for slow burning. If you want to extinguish the fire so quickly, you need to increase the furnace temperature." Chen Sanlang was enlightened.

Increasing the furnace temperature was easy! He ordered a super-sized bellows from Pan the carpenter and added air inlets to the kiln. Then he found two strong workers to take turns pumping air into the kiln. The heat inside the kiln was intense, and the red glow was spectacular, turning the bamboo into ash.

But this was just a matter of temperature. In the second kiln, he reduced the air supply, and indeed saw the charcoal forming in the intense fire.

"Seal the kiln!" He ordered, and the workers sealed the kiln with mud.

Three days later, unloading the kiln was pure physical labor.

Seeing the charcoal shining in the sunlight, Chen Ke and Qian both breathed a sigh of relief.

Qian picked up a piece of bamboo charcoal and examined it for a long time, nodding repeatedly. "It's different from the old method."

"How is it different?"

"The color is brighter, and the shape is more complete." Qian said, "It looks much better." He paused and added, "And it seems to produce more charcoal."

Indeed, after weighing, they found that one thousand pounds of bamboo produced three hundred pounds of charcoal, one hundred pounds more than the old method.

But this was all trivial. Charcoal is for burning, and if the burning effect was poor, everything would be in vain.

The two nervously loaded a pot of charcoal and lit it in the house. They saw pure flames dancing in the charcoal pot, with no smoke at all. Both sniffed the air, and Qian looked ecstatic. "Do you smell it?"

"Um." Chen Ke nodded, surprised. "This charcoal emits a fragrant aroma when burned!"

"We're rich!" Qian tightly grabbed Chen Ke's hand. "Sanlang, you are a living bodhisattva!"

Chen Ke pulled his hand away and smiled. "Let's give it a name."

"Of course, you name it." Now, in Qian's eyes, Chen Ke was not just a person but a savior.

"Alright, since it emits a fragrant aroma and makes people feel refreshed, like a lotus." Chen Ke thought for a moment. "Let's call it Lotus Charcoal."

That winter, in Qingshen County, all the restaurants used Lotus Charcoal in their firepots to keep guests warm. This bamboo charcoal, which filled the room with a fragrant aroma, immediately caught the interest of diners, who asked where it was produced.

In just three days, the Lotus Charcoal produced by Qian's charcoal field was sold out. By the next year, it had replaced the bamboo charcoal from Shiwang Village and became the top product in Qingshen County, dominating the high-end bamboo charcoal market due to its high yield. By this year, the officials and nobles in Chengdu had completely abandoned the bamboo charcoal from Shiwang Village and switched to the fragrant Lotus Charcoal, otherwise, they wouldn't feel comfortable inviting guests to their homes.

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Everyone loves Chen Sanlang because he always opens the door to wealth for people. And the rumor that he only helps if he has shares was quickly proven to be false.

For example, Pan the carpenter on the front street proved that Chen Ke helped him become one of the top wood merchants in Yizhou Road within a few years, even though he didn't have shares.

Another example is Boss Bi, the contractor at the wharf, who was very troubled by the dramatic increase in wharf throughput. Hearing Chen Ke's name, he sought help with a try-it-out attitude. Following Chen Ke's method, he replaced manual labor with pulleys and levers during loading and unloading, and gave the workers rest periods... He used an hourglass to time it, with one hour of work followed by one hour of rest, and the throughput doubled, greatly alleviating the pressure on the wharf.

It is said that he seemed to know everything from birth, and even the pig farmers in the county learned a secret method from him, which made the pigs lose all desire and just eat, growing fat and large, hundreds of pounds heavier than before.

The key is that the meat from these pigs was fragrant and lacked the strange smell of ordinary pork, even surpassing mutton. Thus, the pork from Qingshen County became famous...

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To explain, the method Chen Ke used to make charcoal is actually the dry distillation method, which only appeared in the Southern Song Dynasty. The reason why people in the Song Dynasty disliked pork is that the meat of the pigs they raised had a strong odor, while the pork they ate after the Song Dynasty did not, the difference being the castration of the pigs.

Well, the achievements of Chen Ke over the past three years have been recounted. The next chapter will start the plot. I'm asking for votes and recommendations. If the ranking rises one more place, I'll add an extra chapter.

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