The building that Minister Tang had constructed for my pill factory was the worst example of brutalist architecture that I had ever seen. There were zero adornments, and the walls were solid, raw stone. The windows had no glass, and the floors were bare rock.

Around it, the island expansion was still underway, so most of the ground was either rough stone or puddles of mud. No permanent roads had been built, but there was a shoddy wooden path that would at least allow for limited wagon traffic to and from the factory.

This was little more than a shell, but it was a shell that we could expand upon and develop as we better understood what was needed.

When I arrived, Minister Tang and a representative from the Hu Clan were already waiting for me in front of the building’s entrance, and they guided me inside so that we could better discuss how to move forward with the construction.

As we entered, I was struck dumb by the ambient qi density within the building. I hadn’t noticed a thing before we walked in the door, but the moment we stepped inside, a heavy pressure caused by the extremely qi-dense environment settled onto my shoulders.

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?”

“Yes, it’s very impressive. 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 energy in here, and there’ll be no way you can miss the drain on the surrounding environment. 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 definitely won’t want to use this neighborhood for cultivation in the future.”

I looked at Minister Tang. “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. Needing to move to the edge of the island might upset some people, but having better 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 Clan’s representative.

“Let’s get to work.”

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 excited by the opportunity 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. These were the two sets of formations that I hadn’t created prototypes for.

I was impressed by the Hu Clan’s ingenuity, and I was looking forward to seeing the completed system in action.

Once it was done, workers would only need to place large quantities of herbs in a bin on the ground floor. Then, the lift formations would carry this bin to the appropriate floor. From there, the production line had a formation that would pick up a single herb and take it through the various stages of the alchemy process, transforming it into a small pill. This pill would then be dropped into a chute that carried it to a large jade box. Once the jade box was full, a lid would be placed on it, and the box would be sealed. Finally, 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 they all had efficacies in the mid-sixties. This was better than my original prototype, but there was still a lot of room for improvement. I didn’t see any reason that extremely high efficacies shouldn’t be possible, but it would require significant enhancements to our purifying formations.

Unfortunately, creating pills with 100% efficacy 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 such a thing, we needed more experience with these simpler formations.

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

The Hu Clan’s representative and I returned to the City Lord’s Complex where we had arranged for a meeting with Minister Lu, my Minister of Revenue. If we were going to be providing these pills to the populace, 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.

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 jaw dropped in astonishment. “A single production line can produce over 100,000 pills a year? This… is going to make things difficult.”

“Yes. I want to make the pills available to everybody. 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?”

“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.

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

“What else?”

“That should be all,” I said, but the Hu Clan’s representative quickly spoke up to correct me.

“Lord Su, you also have to consider maintenance. Formations cannot simply be used constantly for years without end. These production lines will require regular maintenance to keep them functional.”

“How much?” asked Minister Lu.

“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 that you need to budget for replacing all the production lines once every year. This should be more than sufficient to make sure that things stay operational. The costs 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 this were a one-time expense, our clan might be able to reduce the price 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. But again, this is just an estimate. I have 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 was an acceptable cost to get my factory up and running, but I would need to look for ways to reduce it in the future.

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

I shook my head. “I don’t want to make money off of these pills. The goal is to benefit the people of our city, not to generate gold.”

“Lord,” said the minister, “there’s something that 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 North Lake City.”

I blinked. She was right. My goal had been to design something capable of supplying pills to the entirety of the Brilliant Sun 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 it.

“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 indeed 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 of them. Most would be sold to other cities in the kingdom, and anything that remained 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, then export everything else for 50 silver. If the regular market price is close to one gold, those numbers should still be viable.”

The minister shook her head. “That’s not a good idea. We can’t have too big of a difference between the cost here and the cost in 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. We won’t make any profit from what we sell inside the kingdom, but what we earn from exports should more than make up for it.”

“How should we sell them outside the kingdom? 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 that we could use, but it’s your choice. You may also want to consider going through the Eight Flower King, but that has pros and cons. However, if you wish to curry his favor, then it would 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 decisions taken care of, I let Minister Lu take control of arranging everything since, 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.