The first sight of my new factory left me standing with my mouth agape. I’d been told that it was ready to begin installing the formations, and I had assumed that meant the building was complete. Instead, what I saw could only be called a building if I was being generous. In reality, it was little more than a shell.


    The island expansion was still underway, and only the area that was needed for the factory had been entirely completed. No permanent roads had been built, but there was at least a shoddy wooden path that could allow limited wagon traffic to and from the factory.


    The building itself looked like the worst example of brutalist architecture I’d ever seen. There were zero adornments, and the walls were solid, raw stone. The windows had no glass, and the floors were bare rock. It was in rough condition, but it was a starting point. While there was still a lot to do to make the building usable, it would at least allow me to begin working.


    I met Minister Tang and a representative from the Hu clan to discuss how to move forward with the construction. When I entered the factory, I was struck dumb by the density of qi inside. I hadn’t noticed anything before walking in the door, but as soon as I entered, the incredibly qi-dense environment created by the formation under the building felt nearly overpowering. When the Hu clan representative saw my expression, he chuckled.


    “This is your first time experiencing a Rank 4 Qi Gathering Formation, isn’t it?” he asked.


    “Yes, it’s very impressive,” I replied. “I didn’t even notice it from the outside.”


    The representatives gave a light snort. “That’s because the formation is full, so it can’t draw in any more qi. Once your production lines are up and running, they’ll start using up the qi here, and there’ll be no way you can miss it when the formation really gets going. It’s designed to pull in qi from above, so it should only have a limited impact on the area directly surrounding us, but you probably won’t want to use this neighborhood for cultivation in the future.


    I looked to Minister Tang to get his impression. “Is this going to affect the plans for this area?”


    “No, Lord,” he responded quickly. “The existing buildings are all warehouses, so they’re not going to be affected by this formation, and we can use the new land for mortal workshops which do not need qi. This might upset some people if they have to move to the edge of the island, but having close access to distribution warehouses should mollify them.”


    I looked back at the clan representative. “Grandmaster, are we ready to begin working on the formations for the factory?”


    “Yes, Lord. We have prototypes ready to be installed, and they should work to your satisfaction. However, our experts are still working on refining them further to make them more energy-efficient. The less energy they need, the less impact this factory will have on the surrounding environment. That would make it easier to find locations to build more factories in the future, especially in areas with less natural qi density than the island.”


    I nodded. I trusted the minister to know what he was doing and to approach me if he encountered any problems. Putting these potential issues to the side, I looked to the Hu representative.


    “Let’s get to work.”


    <hr>


    I spent the following week watching as the Formation Masters and Grandmasters began installing everything necessary for the factory’s first production line. I used this as a chance to study what they were doing and how they were doing it.


    I was very excited to study the formations for the lifts that would carry ingredients to the proper floor and the tracks that would transport them during the alchemy process since these were the two sets of formations that I hadn’t created prototypes for. I was impressed by their ingenuity and was looking forward to the completion of the entire system so that workers only had to place large quantities of herbs in a single bin on the ground floor for the alchemy process to begin.


    The production line had a formation that picked up one herb and took it through the various stages of the alchemy process. At the end, what started as a simple herb had transformed into a small pill. It was then dropped into a chute that carried it to a large jade box. The plan was for all of the production lines to send their pills to the same packing station, and once the jade box was full, a lid would be placed on it, and the box would be sealed. After that, a lift would carry the box down to the ground floor where it could be loaded onto a wagon and shipped out.


    I watched as our first production line produced its first official pill. From dumping ingredients into a bin on the ground floor, to lifting them to the second floor, all the way to where the pill slid down the chute at the end, everything worked perfectly.


    I waited for a few pills to be produced before examining them. All of the pills the line produced were Perfect and had efficacies in the mid-sixties. This was better than my original prototype, but there was still room for improvement. I didn’t see any reason that extremely high efficacies shouldn’t be possible, but it would require significant enhancements to the purifying formations.


    Unfortunately, creating 100% effective pills through automated formations might not be possible. That would require delicate manipulation of the herbs to allow qi to attack toxins without damaging the medicinal energy. Before we could even attempt to build formations capable of that, we needed more expertise with these simpler purifying formations.


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    After I collected a few of the pills and stored them in a small jade bottle, I sighed.  I needed to have a meeting that I wasn’t looking forward to.


    <hr>


    The Hu clan representative and I returned to the City Lord’s Complex where we had arranged a meeting with Minister Lu, my Minister of Revenue. If we were going to be providing these pills to the populous, the minister would need to be intimately involved.


    “Lord Su,” she said, giving me a bow.


    “Minister Lu, please take a seat.”


    The three of us sat around the conference table as I outlined the situation to the minister.


    We had a single active production line that would be capable of making one pill every five minutes once the factory was fully operational. We planned to have five production lines on the second floor, and all of them would be making Nutrition Pills. Other floors would produce different pills, which would add complexity to the situation, so for this meeting, I wanted to focus only on the Nutrition Pills.


    The minister took out a piece of paper and started doing some quick calculations. When she was done, her face showed her astonishment.


    “A single production line can produce over 100,000 pills a year,” she said. “This is going to make things difficult.”


    “I want to make the pills available to everybody,” I told her. “My goal is that anyone in North Lake City who needs these pills will get these pills.”


    She nodded in acceptance of the mission. “How much do they cost to produce?” she asked.


    “The ingredients for each pill cost five copper.”


    She jotted this down and was poised to write more, but I didn’t continue.


    “What other costs are involved?” she prompted me.


    “The logistics network for transporting both the pills and the ingredients will cost some amount of money, but I don’t have any idea how much,” I told her. “You might want to talk to Minister Bei since he’s in charge of personnel. He should have a better idea of what it will involve.”


    “What else?” she asked.


    “That should be all,” I said, but the Hu representative quickly spoke up.


    “Lord Su, you also have to consider maintenance. Formations generally are not intended to be used constantly for years without end. If these production lines are constantly working, they will need regular maintenance.”


    “How much?” Minister Lu asked.


    “It’s hard to say.” A conflicted look appeared on his face. “We don’t have much experience doing something like this. Right now, I would say you need to budget for replacing all production lines once every year. That should be more than sufficient to make sure things stay operational. The cost involved will be significant, and such expenses will hopefully be unnecessary, but it is better to prepare up front.”


    “How much?” the minister asked again.


    “If it were a one-time expense, our clan might be able to reduce the price for you as a sign of goodwill, but we cannot absorb such a discount indefinitely. I will need to talk with our elders before I can guarantee anything, but expect each production line to cost around 20,000 gold a year. Again, this is just an estimate. I have very little information to work off of.”


    If the factory was going to have dozens of production lines, this would equate to hundreds of thousands of gold spent on maintenance every year. This high maintenance cost was only temporary, though. I could look into finding ways to reduce it in the future. For the moment, I just wanted the factory up and running.


    Minister Lu did some more math on her piece of paper. Finally, she worked out a number. “The pills need to be sold for at least 20 silver each,” she said. “That should cover the cost of everything. However, we might also want to raise the price further to increase the revenue they generate. This will be very helpful if maintenance costs end up higher than anticipated.”


    “I don’t want to make money off of these pills,” I said. “The goal is only to benefit the people of the city, not to generate revenue.”


    “Lord,” said the minister, “there’s something you might not have considered. If your factory has five production lines for Nutrition Pills, you will be making over 500,000 pills a year. The population of the entire kingdom is only a couple of million. 500,000 is more than double the population of Lake City.”


    I hadn’t considered that issue. My goal was to design something that could supply an empire, but for a modest city lord, this factory was an extreme form of overkill. This wouldn’t stop me from making an empire-scale factory, but I did need to consider what justification I could use for building such a thing.


    “What are you suggesting?” I asked the minister.


    “Lord, this factory of yours is going to produce far more pills than we need. Not only is the size of our population limited, but the city also contains some of the richest farmland in the entire kingdom. While we do have impoverished citizens, and some people are malnourished, they represent only a small fraction of our population. The areas of the kingdom that truly need these pills are in the south.”


    I began to understand her intentions. North Lake City didn’t need many of these pills, so most of them would be sold to outsiders. We would use a small fraction, a large amount would be sold to other cities in the kingdom, and anything remaining would be exported to other kingdoms and empires.


    I looked at the minister. “Should we consider providing these pills to our people free of charge? If we won’t be using many within the city, it wouldn’t be much of a loss. We could give the pills away for free to our citizens, sell them to other cities in the kingdom for 20 silver, and then export everything else for 50 silver. If the regular market price is close to one gold, those numbers should work out.”


    The minister quickly put an end to any such plans. “That’s not a good idea. We can’t have too big of a difference between the cost here and other cities in the kingdom. That could cause instability. I recommend a price difference of only five silver. Sell them here for fifteen, and sell them to the rest of the kingdom for twenty. Then, we can export the rest for 50 silver. Doing it this way will bring us no profits within the kingdom, but what we make from exports should be more than enough to pay for everything.”


    “How should we sell them outside the kingdom?” I asked. “Do we go through the Blue Wind Pavilion?”


    “Since you are a known member of the Pavilion, that would be acceptable. There are other channels we could use, but it’s your choice. You should also consider going through the king, but that has pros and cons. If you wish to curry his favor, it could be a good idea.”


    I thought about her suggestion. Did I want to work with the king, or did I want to work with the Pavilion? Between the two, there wasn’t much of a choice. I might be able to make more profit with the king, but the Pavilion had played it straight with me. I would rather go through them than entangle myself deeper in the local politics.


    With the major decision taken care of, I let Minister Lu take control of arranging everything. As the Minister of Revenue, this project fell within her domain. However, I made sure she would include Minister Bei, my Minister of Personnel, where appropriate.


    I impressed upon her the importance of getting things done quickly. In only one more week, the pills from my factory would start hitting the streets.