CHAPTER 124: CHAPTER 75: CAN’T WRONG YOURSELF!

"Sir Hizi!"

Harano had just gotten up in the morning and walked out of his room, stretching lazily, when he saw two little maids, about seven or eight years old, kneeling in the corridor bowing and greeting him. They were respectful, but you could tell they were a bit scared too—pretty much the same as how Yayoi was when she first met him. These two little maids were picked from the eighty-nine "unlucky townsfolk" he got suckered into buying. There are five in total; for now, they’re under the management of Housekeeper Yayoi. They have barely spoken with him, so they’re not familiar at all. Probably, since he woke up late today and Yayoi had other stuff to do, she left them here to wait.

But speaking of those eighty-nine "unlucky townsfolk," he could practically cry a river!

It’s been a few days since he ran back from Nagano Castle, not a single moment to rest. In order to resettle those eighty-nine "unlucky townsfolk," he’d run himself ragged, even had to write a super long letter to Oda Nobunaga to borrow a patch of wasteland so these people could at least build shacks and have a temporary place to sleep. Luckily, he’d fought two battles with Oda Nobunaga and was on good enough terms, or else he’d have no clue where to even put these eighty-nine new people.

Then there’s all the other stuff, like treating illnesses, deworming parasites, having them bathe in batches to kill lice, buying them spare clothes, calming their panic and nerves, putting together basic personal files, assigning work according to their capability and strength—so many little chores, he was running around dealing with them for days and nearly turned into a statue from sheer exhaustion.

Honestly, he totally asked for this. Clearly, just hiring labor would have been easier and way more convenient, but he went out and bought a bunch of "old, weak, sick, and disabled." Ah Man’s been making fun of him for this nonstop, but he still has no regrets...

At least, he regrets it less than he doesn’t.

After all, he still wanted to be a decent human being, and to do that, he had to stand for something. He’d seen these innocent folks about to be sold off to dig mines or shipped out to become prostitutes, so within his power, he had to try to lend a hand and do what’s right—even if, in Ah Man’s eyes, it was the dumbest move imaginable. If it’s the right thing, you still gotta do it.

Except...

If you want to stick to your principles, you gotta pay the price. His expenses suddenly shot through the roof. He went from feeding seven mouths at home to feeding nearly a hundred. If it weren’t for the fact that he had some extra cash in hand and the soy sauce workshop was making bank, he’d already be bankrupt by now.

Because of this, Ah Man’s been mocking him again these past two days, saying he’s just got money burning a hole in his pocket—making a big deal out of "one handful of beans per person," but insisting everyone actually eats their fill. Pure waste, dumb as rocks. She’d even stand right in front of Harano and, in that fake "quiet" voice of hers (that he could totally hear), order A-Qing to keep a close eye on their donkey so it wouldn’t kick him in the head again, or else he’d just get even dumber and dumber.

Harano just put up with it. After all, he was only just getting used to this era and still had a serious shortage of "common sense." Sometimes he inevitably got confused and had to rely on that wild thing Ah Man for now. He’d just have to wait until he could really handle life in this damn era, then he’d properly cure her of all those bad habits!

All in all, time travel is seriously tough—just maintaining the basic bottom line for being a human is already hard enough. To top it off, he has to take all this crap; this just isn’t something a normal human should have to deal with!

......

Harano had just woken up and, with his brain still foggy, actually started plotting how he was going to deal with that little troublemaker Ah Man in the future instead of bothering to say, "No need for this" to the two little maids. He was just done with it—these eighty-nine "unlucky townsfolk" had now all become his household servants. The moment they saw him, it was grand bowing and scraping. If he kept refusing all this, he’d have to spend his whole day doing nothing but saying "No need for this" over and over again.

So he just acted like he didn’t see them, stumbled half-asleep to the washroom. The two little maids, terrified that he might run away, stuck to him like glue, anxiously helping him pour water and hand him cotton towels and whatever. The new housekeeper, Yayoi, soon arrived too, personally serving him breakfast.

After washing his face, Harano was feeling a bit more awake. As he ate, he casually asked, "Where’s Ah Man?"

Yayoi, sleeves rolled, carefully arranged his dishes and answered softly, "Sister Ah Man went out early with some people. She said she was going to buy some big jars and pick up a few carts of soybean cakes while she was at it."

Oh, right. He vaguely remembered mentioning it to her yesterday—she already left that early?

Yesterday, Harano was busy tinkering in his makeshift lab until late at night. Waking up in a daze, he’d totally forgotten to assign any tasks to her, so he felt a bit guilty about it. Sure, Ah Man was an endless troublemaker, always running her mouth and getting on his nerves, but she actually did good work; giving her something to handle was always reassuring. Maybe he was being a little too petty—and didn’t really have to "properly sort her out" someday after all.

So, he mentally marked another point in Ah Man’s favor, considered letting her off the hook in the future, maybe scold her a couple of times less, and finished his food. He was about to put down his bowl and leave but saw the two little maids still shrunk in the corner. After a moment of hesitation, he turned to Yayoi and said, "The house is getting renovated soon, so there’s really no need to have them wiping things all day. If you have some spare time, you can also teach them to read... Oh, and pay attention to the meals at the workshop—don’t listen to Ah Man’s nonsense, always make sure there’s enough food, and don’t skimp on the salt. If there’s heavy work, it’s fine to eat brown rice. We don’t have to save nickels and dimes here."

This was definitely a lesson learned: don’t skimp on the food.

Yin Kaka gave Kong 15,000 coins as meal subsidy and treated him to feasts every day, and as a result, Kong’s units blitzed the enemy, jumping off the moving cart like dumplings, each one faster than the last, beating the Gwangju locals so hard the bystanders wailed;

When Yin Kaka cut the soldiers’ meal budget to 3,000, serving only pickled radish and kimchi, six men teaming up just to get through a regular window on the first floor, every single one of them looked like they were hit with Slow, needing 178 seconds and only halfway through with one leg. Heck, even an eighty-year-old grandpa would’ve climbed it quicker than them.

This is a textbook lesson: you can cut anything but the food budget. Even if the people under you are just workers, not soldiers, you absolutely can’t listen to Ah Man and go with this "one handful of beans per person a day, as long as they don’t starve" nonsense.

Yayoi was already something of a big shot now, in charge of the kitchen and overseeing the ten or so women cooking. This was all within her duties, so she nodded right away and seriously said, "Yes, Sir Saburo, I understand."

Harano thought for a moment and, realizing there was nothing else going on at home, got up and headed to check out the soy sauce workshop.

The workshop’s scale was expanding, and it was no longer suitable to keep it in his own yard. Luckily, he’d already written to Oda Nobunaga to borrow a plot of wasteland and moved the workshop over there. Now they were building perimeter walls.

The moment he stepped outside, A-Qing silently trailed after him, but he didn’t care and headed straight for the workshop. After making a lap around, nothing urgent came up, so he told the Momoi brothers to carry on with the good work, keep brewing the soy sauce, and to find Ah Man if they were missing anything. Then he went back home and disappeared into his laboratory.

His "life improvement plan" had been ready for a while, but after Oda Nobuhide died and Owari fell into chaos, he’d never had the chance to roll it out. Now that Owari was temporarily back to peace and personal safety was no longer an issue, he of course needed to hurry up and improve living conditions—after all, he hadn’t even been able to brush his teeth lately, and that was just too miserable.

He holed up all day inside. By the time it was dark outside, Yayoi would come to call him to dinner. He always said, "Just a minute." And so it went for three days—the soy sauce workshop was already back to full productivity before he finally finished his first upgrade: He used the soymilk precipitation method to purify coarse salt into refined salt.

What a relief! He finally didn’t have to keep eating yellowish rice, sparkling with weird rainbow colors, obviously full of heavy metals—he didn’t need to turn into a little old man before his time. He’d always thought Bald Saburo was already in his fifties, but turned out the guy was just severely prematurely aged—barely over forty in reality.

Yayoi’s father, Jiulang, was the same. Harano always guessed he was in his forties, but in fact, he was only thirty-three.

So, Harano seriously suspected that Middle-Ages Japan’s coarse salt was a big problem, heavy metals off the charts, practically on par with poison; that’s why he prioritized refining the coarse salt, let his own people eat it first, so nobody’d die from salt before even getting killed by anyone else.

Of course, this purification method would be handy one day if he moved to the seaside and could develop salt flats himself—pure white refined salt would be a high-end product and probably sell for good money.

After solving salt, he tried deodorizing soybean oil—but failed. There was no way to pull off deodorization tech for soybean oil in the sixteenth century, missing way too much equipment and chemicals. There was just no way to get rid of that bean stench. So he moved on to peanuts, only to discover no one had even heard of them yet—apparently, peanuts hadn’t been introduced to Japan. No other choice, he forced himself to pick from whatever oils were available in the marketplace.

First he tried perilla oil; the flavor was off, not to his taste. Sesame oil didn’t work either—made dishes taste weird and burned in the pot. Other rare options like apricot kernel oil, cocklebur oil, and fish oil were all busts. Desperate, he wracked his brain and managed to blend together perilla oil, rape seed oil, and sesame oil to create a mixed oil that—finally!—somewhat resembled modern peanut oil. It was barely passable.

With salt and oil sorted, vinegar was already available, soy sauce he was producing himself, so all that was left was heat. He still couldn’t find chili peppers, but at least he had Sichuan peppercorn as a medicinal herb, and Japanese cornel for a kind of peppery kick—just enough to get by.

Iron woks and spatulas were even easier—he had the money, so all he needed was to sketch up the design and have the blacksmith forge them for him. Nothing to worry about there.

With food basically settled, next up was toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, toilets, showers—and since summer was on its way, he had to finish the central air-con design and get it built...

Basically, for over half a month, he’d done nothing except mess around inventing all these modern daily-use items. Seriously, ancient times were such a pain in the ass! He had no idea how other time-travelers could ever bear it, living so happily—he just could not stand eating nothing but roasted or boiled stuff, couldn’t handle squatting in dry toilets, or having Yayoi barge in while he was bathing to add more hot water...

The list of things he couldn’t put up with was endless, so he was determined to transform this place into somewhere he could actually live. No matter how much effort and time it took, it was worth it.

That’s what people should do anyway—adapt to the environment, change the environment, and use their own two hands to pursue a better life!

Especially since he’d ended up so pathetically as a transmigrator in Middle-Ages Japan—there’s no way he was going to make life any harder for himself!