Divorced woman with child travels through time

Chen Wenfang's ideal scenario is for families to work together at Chen's restaurant, emphasizing teamwork. She believes that only a good team can succeed, so she arranges for each person to lead a small team.

Chunlan and Yanxia manage the rough work outside, each overseeing about twenty people. This involves the basic processing of ingredients and deep-frying various beans, including golden beans, orchid beans, spicy peanuts, multi-flavored peanuts, and boiled peanuts. They aren't worried about leaks; Chen Wenfang's food recipes are available for sale, currently ten taels of silver per recipe. Those genuinely interested can buy directly from Chen's shop; they'll provide professional training until you master it—no need to steal. As for the more refined processing of those foods, learning requires talent or experience through repeated attempts. Again, don't worry; after trying it, you'll find that Chen's shop truly earns its money through hard work, so it's better to just wholesale from Chen's shop and resell.

Of course, those who are willing to work hard can do it themselves and earn more. People in surrounding counties and prefectures are already selling the same snacks and pastries as Chen Ji, so Chen Wenfang isn't worried. Chen Ji's main selling point is its delicious taste, large quantities, and affordable prices; it's a hard-earned income. The reputation speaks for itself; just look at the long lines of trucks of merchants coming to pick up their goods every day. Especially as the weather gets cooler, it's the perfect time for dried goods to sell.

The wages for these workers doing rough processing work are not low. If they work full-time, they can earn more than one or two taels of silver a month. The wages for people like Chunlan have risen to two taels and eight taels. Basically, Chen's has never been short of people.

Sister-in-law Nie led a dozen or so people to be in charge of processing rice-based foods, including fried rice, dried rice, boiling syrup, popcorn candy, and sachima.

Aunt Li led about ten people to make dried meat, dried small fish, and dried sweet potatoes. Aunt Liu was in charge of the whole village. Each group conducted self-inspection and self-correction. Every day before starting work, everyone had to change into work clothes and hats and wear masks. These were all provided free of charge by Chen Ji. Each person received four sets, which were made by the aunties of Wangjiazhuang. If they were too busy, they would bring their relatives. People from several neighboring villages also came every day to get cloth and take on jobs.

Wang Erniu's house has now been transformed into a large Chenji Manor. The sign hanging at the entrance reads "Chenji Food Processing Workshop." Due to the increase in orders, and with Brother Nie working diligently, the processing kitchen has expanded to eight, with a total of twenty-four pots, all equipped with ovens. The warehouse has been expanded to fifteen rooms, with six already completed, and each has a basement for convenient food storage. There are also five stores, where merchants and peddlers can pick up their goods at their designated stores. Five large courtyards have been added, with a total of ten stone mills to meet the needs of grinding rice, flour, and drying. Uncle Liu Hai had just bought four horses but hadn't yet bought a carriage, and now he needed to buy donkeys. So, he had to bring the horses over to make do, which worried Li Huanqiu and the others. Fortunately, they quickly bought five more donkeys, freeing up the horses, and everyone happily went to ride horses.

The demand for sugar has also increased. Chen's is now basically the largest sugar supplier. Every three or four days, a supplier delivers one or two hundred catties of sugar. This stuff doesn't spoil easily, but you can't order too much at once because it needs to be used every day and needs to be cleaned and filtered. Chen Wenfang also wanted to ask Wang the carpenter to make a machine that could filter sugar, but no matter how much she talked to him, he didn't understand. So she could only use the old method of filtering and washing the sugar by hand with clean water before boiling it.

Brother Nie is extremely busy every day, so Chen Wenfang assigned Li Huanqiu to work under him to help him. His construction team has now grown to about a hundred people, and the wall is almost finished. The wall has been built around the side of Dayaoshan Mountain, with a back gate every fifty meters, allowing people to go up the mountain to cut firewood without any obstruction, and also keeping wild animals out of the village. Now the main focus is on building houses and warehouses, and the goal is to have everyone move into their new houses before the end of the year. It can be said that everything is being realized step by step in an orderly manner.

The sweet potatoes and other vegetables in front of Chen's shop have all been harvested. Except for the sugarcane which has turned purple with frost, there are only some chili stalks left that haven't been pulled up yet, because some autumn chilies have still grown on them. They are small but very tender. Chen Wenfang and Uncle Liu Hai especially love to eat them. They are spicy and fragrant. It seems that chilies stir-fried with meat after being touched by frost taste even better.

Not counting the green peppers sold this year, Chen Wenfang has stockpiled more than 1,000 jin of dried chili peppers. He plans to sell chili seedlings next year and plant chili peppers all over the fields of Da Song.

In Yingtian Prefecture, at the Longqin Prince's Mansion, Zhao Qi, the second son of Longqin Prince Zhao Dezhong (to clarify for the reader, he is also the younger brother of the male supporting character Zhao Lue), was receiving guests in a secret room.

"Greetings, General Zhaowu!" Li Qingshan, who had kept his back straight for over thirty years, bowed deeply.

"No need to be polite, sit down. You're really useless!" Zhao Qi spread his legs wide and sat on the ornately carved rosewood chair without any regard for his image. He was dressed in a gold-based Shu embroidery robe with silver patterns, exuding extravagance.

Li Qingshan sat down halfway without saying a word, and Zhao Qi said sarcastically, "You're just not ruthless enough. You dare to disobey even a lowly Chen Ji. What is Ouyang Junyan? You don't even dare to deal with him?"

Li Qingshan rolled his eyes inwardly. Why didn't you do it yourself? Why push me in front to take the fall? He finally spoke up, "We've found out the market that was taken over by the tea. It was Jiang Mingyue's brother, Jiang Mingxin. It seems that Jiang Mingyue got the recipe from Chen Wenfang, made it into batches of tea, and then, without saying a word, had all the shops sell it at the same time before the Mid-Autumn Festival, seizing the market. Now, basically all the original tea is unwanted."

"So it was her! No wonder. Jiang Mingxin took advantage of the shortage of Chen Niangzi's tea to raise the price of roasted tea, make a name for himself in the tea roasting business, and then stock up to seize the opportunity. I was wondering why a Chen family dared to be so arrogant; it turns out they have powerful backers." Zhao Qi took a sip of tea, his eyes gleaming slightly as he suppressed his anger and sneered.

Seeing his impending rage, Li Qingshan hesitated before saying, "I received a message by carrier pigeon this afternoon, saying...saying..."

"Speak plainly!" Zhao Qi gently put down his teacup, a smile on his face. The teacup contained roasted tea.

"They said that Chen's shop sold tea recipes the day after Mid-Autumn Festival, for thirty taels of silver per recipe," Li Qingshan quickly explained, as if afraid of burning his mouth.

"You?..." With a "crash," Zhao Qi flew into a rage, flicked his sleeve, and the rosewood tea table, the begonia-red teacups and teapot shattered like a magnificent sunset.

"Are they mocking me? Slapping me in the face? Thirty taels of silver per piece? Why didn't she give it to you when you went to buy it? They did it on purpose, hahaha! Fine, fine..." Zhao Qi acted like a madman.

Li Qingshan fell silent again. He had known Zhao Qi since childhood and knew that Zhao Qi was going crazy. It was best not to pay attention to him to avoid adding fuel to the fire. He should just wait and see.

Sure enough, after a moment of madness, Zhao Qi shook the tea stains off his sleeves, put his hands behind his back, and casually asked, "Why did it take you so long to get the news?" Seeing this, the maidservant immediately seized the opportunity and discreetly came over to remove the tea set. Another maidservant brought over freshly brewed tea and the exact same Begonia Red tea as the first.

Li Qingshan clicked his tongue slightly. This set of Begonia Red fabric was priced at a thousand taels outside, and even then, it was always out of stock. What a wasteful thing! While clicking his tongue, he didn't forget to reply, "The journey was long, and the carrier pigeons we used on the way were all wiped out in Jiangcheng. We were delayed in receiving the news later, so it was late. Besides, the formula has already been sold; whether we find out sooner or later won't change anything." Li Qingshan was quite dejected.