Chapter 170: Watertight

The unlucky wretch clutched his thigh and let out an earth-shattering howl of agony. Su Da, who was on night duty, rushed out. Su Da was quite experienced—he went straight for a bowl of strong liquor and poured it over the man's thigh. The howling grew several times louder, startling even the nearby residents awake. They later said that hearing the noise, they thought wolves had entered the city.

But thanks to that bowl of liquor, the man's thigh was not ruined, though he would walk with a limp for the rest of his life.

The man's injury thoroughly terrified everyone in the distillery. Some had originally thought that no matter how overbearing Zhao Jin was, he wouldn't dare do anything in broad daylight within the city. But seeing their comrade's bloody, screaming state, they finally remembered that all of Zhao Jin's notorious deeds had been committed in broad daylight.

After being stabbed, he needed to recover. Once his leg healed, he still had to work. His wages were withheld, and his meals were reduced to the same level as the carters delivering sorghum outside. On top of that, he had to repay the costs of his medical treatment and medicine at usurious interest rates.

These methods could truly torment a person until they wished for death. This was Liu Yong's idea. Liu Yong had privately advised Zhao Jin, saying, "Big Brother, you give them such good treatment, but they may not feel grateful for your kindness. Seeing the distillery's enormous profits, that kindness counts for nothing. You must use ruthless measures to keep them all in line."

Zhao Jin followed good advice readily. He also recalled the petty schemes Lu Xiangjiu and Su Da had harbored initially, so he simply handed all these matters over to Liu Yong to handle. Doing things this way also kept the household guards on their toes. Daily training and guard duty were monotonous in the extreme; having them intercept and seize people was also a good training method.

But what no one expected was that the clerk whose thigh had been stabbed did not settle down to work. Instead, seizing the opportunity of his monthly meeting with relatives, he wailed and made a huge scene, claiming the people in the distillery wanted to kill him and demanding his family go to the authorities to rescue him.

The working clerks were all young and male, so their families were extremely anxious. Seeing this, they panicked at once. Zhao Jin's household guards directly brandished their weapons. "Our master set the rules: no approaching, and no going outside."

This clerk was truly quick-witted, actually knowing to use this chance to escape. Zhao Jin remarked on it with a few sighs to his friends, then ordered the man to be given a lashing.

However, the situation took an unexpected turn. The clerk's family actually went to the yamen to file a complaint and cry out for justice, accusing Zhao Jin of unlawfully detaining law-abiding citizens, plotting murder for their property.

Zhao Jin could not cover the sky with one hand inside the prefect's yamen, but his information was exceedingly well-informed. The moment the complaint was filed, Clerk Ye urgently sent someone with the news.

Then Liu Yong's side also found out the inside story. After being intimidated by Zhao Jin's household guards and escorts, the clerk's family had originally not wanted to keep entangling themselves. Unexpectedly, a merchant from Feng County secretly sought them out and gave them silver to file the complaint.

The purpose of the complaint was not to bring down Zhao Jin, but to get that clerk out. Anyone with a bit of sense could figure out the trick: as long as that clerk knew even a little of the secret brewing method for Han Well Famous Liquor, everything would be worth it.

This merchant had a bit of petty cleverness, but he didn't know that the moment the clerk's family left the distillery's vicinity, they were already being followed by Liu Yong's men, and his little schemes were also being watched.

The subsequent handling was very simple. When the merchant returned to his lodgings, he found someone waiting for him in his room. The man didn't look like any decent sort. Before the merchant could call out and question him, he was met with a flurry of blows. All the valuables on his person were taken cleanly, and the man even said he would accuse the merchant of seducing a respectable woman.

The merchant was baffled by this beating and still thought of reporting it to the authorities for help. But when he heard the name and address of the "respectable woman," he slunk away, not daring to stay any longer. He borrowed a few taels of silver from an acquaintance and returned to Feng County. As it turned out, the "respectable woman" was a local widow with whom the merchant had a fleeting affair. It was just that this sort of thing couldn't be explained clearly, and no matter how you calculated it, the merchant was in the wrong.

The merchant left, and the clerk was brought into the yamen. When he entered, he thought he was the plaintiff; once he reached the court, he discovered he was the accused. Terrified out of his wits, the clerk confessed under interrogation, saying he had wanted to collude with an outsider to steal the secret formula of Fragrance Distillery. According to the law, this was a crime of theft.

Zhao Zhentang was standing right at the side. The official presiding over the case did not ask what the secret formula was, and directly sentenced him to fifty strokes of the heavy board.

Fifty strokes of the heavy board should, by rule, only be a punishment. But Zhao Jin's one hundred and fifty taels of silver and two jars of fine wine had already been delivered into the yamen. The bailiffs wielding the boards used their full strength, and after thirty-some strokes, the man was already dead.

They had hoped to gain a small advantage, but never imagined their son would die here. This family's plans fell through completely; they didn't even dare to collect and bury the body, but hurriedly left the city and returned to their hometown. After all, he wasn't their only son.

In the end, it was Zhao Jin's side that handled his funeral affairs. Before the burial, several men carried the body on a tour around the distillery, which also served to intimidate those harboring ill intentions.

At the sight of this corpse, all the petty schemes in the distillery vanished like smoke. They finally realized that even in broad daylight, even with the law as their master, the distillery's owner, Zhao Jin, was still overwhelmingly powerful. These profits were indeed tempting, but not worth trading their lives for.

With a net profit of over a thousand taels a month, and still growing, this was an enterprise Zhao Jin would not allow anyone to ruin. Whoever tried to make a move would face the harshest retaliation.

Besides the internal people, outsiders were also eyeing the distillery. From the very beginning, Zhao Jin had instructed the household guards to inspect and guard rigorously, and he himself thought it was already tight enough. But Zhao Zhentang made a special trip to take a look around and mentioned only two things: one was under the carts, the other was on top of the carts.

"Under the carts" meant that someone could hide beneath the large wagons. "On top of the carts" meant that with cartload after cartload of sorghum being hauled in, someone hiding inside really wouldn't be discovered.

Having received this advice, Zhao Jin ordered the household guards to pay attention. Checking under the carts was simply a matter of bending down to look. As for the piles of sorghum on the carts, they would just thrust a long spear through them first.

After paying attention to this point, they didn't actually catch anyone trying to sneak in this way. It was just that a few times, when they thrust a long spear into the sorghum pile at the front, someone would crawl out from the sorghum pile at the back, smiling apologetically and explaining that he had been sleeping inside.

As for those who tried to sneak into the distillery at night, there were quite a few. But after the household guards stabbed a few to death and directly mixed them into the distiller's grains to be hauled outside the city and dumped, things quieted down after that.

On the twenty-first day of the tenth month, Xuzhou saw its first snowfall after the start of winter, and it was a heavy fall of goose-feather snow, blanketing everything inside and outside the city in white.

On his way to the distillery, Zhao Jin saw beggars frozen stiff by the roadside. The distilling area inside the distillery was quite warm, though. A dozen or so clerks had stripped off their shirts and were busy working. Lu Xiangjiu, watching the snow outside, remarked, "It's good that the snow is heavy. Let those who should freeze to death freeze, and the rest will be able to survive."

These words shocked Zhao Jin at the time. When he mentioned it to his parents at dinner, Zhao Zhentang very much agreed with the sentiment. "Famine is raging in Shandong, and things have reached the point of cannibalism. If the cold kills more people, then when the officials and local gentry provide relief, a few more of the survivors can live."

Though the words were cruel, they held truth. He Cuihua, however, recalled with lingering fear, "Whenever famine breaks out in Shandong, Xuzhou and Pizhou always face trouble. Once the refugees come, the markets descend into chaos, and we don't even dare to leave the house."

If that was the case, the snow wasn't a bad thing. The heavy snow fell for three days. On the twenty-fourth day of the tenth month, Wang Zhaojing arrived a bit late in the morning and did not set out together with Zhao Jin. When they met at the freight yard, his expression was somewhat solemn. He said that an elder in the capital had passed away, and his father had to rush over, likely unable to return home for the New Year.

Though he said "elder," there was no look of grief on Wang Zhaojing's face, only a touch of reflection. Zhao Jin was curious, but he knew it was not good to pry into another family's affairs, so he had to suppress his concern.

On that very same day, Sun Dalei's father, Sun Jia, came to pay a visit. This was the first time Zhao Jin had met Sun Dalei's father. The Sun family had actually already settled in Yutou Town. The reason Sun Dalei stayed here was partly his own insistence, and partly a way to keep a path of retreat open.

Sun Jia was thinner than Sun Dalei, but compared to ordinary people, he was still of a stout and large build. Like Sun Dalei, he had a very simple and honest look, but shrewdness of a businessman shone through in his eyes.

Zhao Jin's attitude toward Sun Jia was that of a junior to an elder, while Sun Jia treated Zhao Jin more like a business partner, exceedingly polite.

They began with a few pleasantries, nothing more than thanking Zhao Jin for looking after Sun Dalei and not letting him pick up bad habits. Then, he directly brought up the topic of Han Well Famous Liquor.

Firstly, Sun Jia wanted to purchase stock from Zhao Jin. Secondly, he wanted exclusive purchasing rights in Yutou Town. He also mentioned that the initial purchase amount was a bit small, and starting next month, it would be one hundred jars per month.

Upon hearing this number, Zhao Jin immediately smiled. Cloud Mountain Temple currently bought around three hundred jars of liquor a month, but when Monk Ruhui first came to negotiate, it was also only for one hundred jars a month. Although the Sun family were wealthy merchants, they were not as extravagantly rich as Cloud Mountain Temple.

One hundred jars was two thousand catties, worth over one hundred taels of silver. The sum was indeed not large, but for a freight business that needed cash flow at every moment, it could not be considered small. Moreover, Zhao Jin knew that the freight business the Sun family ran did not sell liquor. For them to dare to hold one hundred jars of liquor in stock each month, they must have secured a stable, ongoing large client.

Seeing Zhao Jin smile, both father and son Sun felt a bit uneasy and could only smile back ingratiatingly. Wang Zhaojing took his book and went next door. Chen Sheng found the scene very tiresome and simply went to supervise the household guards' training. Only Chen Hong and Liu Yong remained, listening carefully to the conversation.

Sun Jia was indeed anxious to get the liquor, and his actual demand exceeded even these one hundred jars. As a seasoned businessman, Sun Jia naturally understood the pros and cons of turnover and holding stock. A freight business might look large and established, but sometimes, if a single tael of silver couldn't be produced in time, it would face bankruptcy and closure.

This time, however, Sun Jia did not have so many worries, because he had already sold nearly two hundred jars of liquor...

In Yutou Town, quite a few grain transport soldiers were inquiring about Han Well Famous Liquor, and several merchant houses had also sent people around to ask. Everyone knew the backgrounds of these merchant houses; behind them were either Canal Patrol Inspectors or Battalion Commanders of the grain transport forces, all wielding considerable power.