After the matter Emperor Wei had been concerned about, Wei Yu had just completed a round of correspondence with Guo Yajun.
The bandit problem in Ji Prefecture was basically resolved. With the Oxhead Army there, suppressing the bandits was just a matter of time. The Second Prince and the Eighth Prince could completely take over — there was nothing Wei Yu needed to do.
As for Guo Xiu, both Wei Yu and the Second Prince had separately collected a substantial amount of evidence against him. Once the bandit issue was dealt with, Guo Xiu alone — or even together with the Prefect who colluded with him — would not be enough to resist.
Wei Yu believed his Second Brother could handle it.
As for himself, he really didn’t have much time left — he had to start making money.
When it came to making money, the first place Wei Yu chose was naturally his own territory, which was Ziyang County, secretly controlled by Guo Yajun.
Back when he left, he had given Guo Yajun a proposal. That proposal wasn’t written in vain — road construction was one part of it, and he had also left her a method for purifying rock salt.
Of the three grades of salt in the world, rock salt was the lowest — poisonous salt, not only the most common but also coarse and bitter.
After receiving the rock salt purification method, Guo Yajun, following a brief period of shock, did choose to follow Wei Yu’s instructions properly.
The first thing she did was gather all the materials needed for refining rock salt. Then she selected a secluded manor and chose people who had signed indenture contracts and were honest and obedient to handle the salt refining…
This work was actually not difficult at all.
Salt dissolves in water — create a saturated solution, repeatedly filter impurities, use different boiling points to separate impurities that couldn’t be filtered out, and use solubility differences to crystallize the salt, removing the toxic substances in the process. For large-scale production, edible alkali (like wood ash) could be used to filter out insoluble matter… all basic middle-school chemistry.
In short, it was just a bit of repetitive purification and filtering — as long as one was careful, it was much simpler than blacksmithing or firing kilns!
Setting aside how deeply Guo Yajun admired Wei Yu the first time she saw that snow-white salt, and how her rose-colored filter thickened even more, what mattered was that Wei Yu’s desire to recruit talent became stronger with time.
After all, if no one followed him to learn math, physics, and chemistry, then whenever something like this came up again, wouldn’t he have to do it himself?!
So when would those two kids of Liu Er’ya finally be able to stand on their own?!
Actually, Wei Yu had long thought about purifying rock salt.
After all, people eating too much poisonous salt truly harmed their health. He just hadn’t had a chance to act on it.
As for why he hadn’t brought it up in court earlier — it was simply because he didn’t want to stand out too much.
Reforming military equipment was already attention-grabbing enough. If he then proposed purifying salt, who knew what the court would think?
Especially his brothers — Wei Yu really didn’t want to be constantly tested and guarded against just for a throne. It was too exhausting.
Wei Yu could take the initiative to do things for the people, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be swept along by others’ expectations.
Oh, of course — this didn’t apply to his dad.
That old guy was cheating with his divine insight. Who could’ve imagined he could spy on people’s thoughts?
As for the salt purification matter, Wei Yu intended to attribute the credit to Guo Yajun later.
He didn’t care about fame or reputation. After all, he already had labels like glass, white sugar, steel, and ship paper attached to him. Though these hadn’t exploded publicly, plenty of people probably already knew secretly.
If he got tagged with white salt too…
Tsk. Carrying too many titles wasn’t a good thing.
Anyone obsessed with a bit of fame likely wasn’t very smart.
The County Magistrate of Ziyang, Hu Yong, was currently confined in the yamen residence. He would be dealt with along with Guo Xiu once the latter fell.
What happened to Hu Yong could be kept from outsiders, but Wei Yu definitely wouldn’t keep it from his father.
Regardless of what his father might think, or what the officials might say once it was revealed — if Guo Yajun had the merit of purifying rock salt, it could offset her past crimes.
After all, she was the first political talent he’d discovered — Wei Yu didn’t want her to be cut short too soon.
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Refined white salt, then packed into specially-made glass bottles, and sold under the government’s name as “new-style white salt” — one bottle for 300 coins.
This was Wei Yu’s first step in making money in Jiaozhou.
The glass bottles were made to his specifications. As long as the kiln didn’t make mistakes, each one would be about 1,500 milliliters in volume. A slight deviation didn’t matter — after all, volume didn’t determine the quantity inside.
Wei Yu only planned to fill each bottle with two jin of white salt.
Poisonous salt sold for 30 coins per jin, green salt for 81 coins per jin. His two jin of white salt cost 300 coins — but he included the glass bottle for free!
And it was white salt.
They were selling salt whiter than the white salt among the “five-color salts” that cost over 1,000 coins per jin!
Just for the fine, snow-white salt and the valuable glass bottle gift — was 300 coins for two jin expensive?
Not at all!
It was practically a huge promotional giveaway!!
Salt was a necessity. Wei Yu’s refined white salt — even if sold at a high price like the thousand-coin five-color salts — would still have noble families scrambling to buy it.
But Wei Yu didn’t want that.
This method had been developed because he didn’t want common people eating poisonous salt anymore. If he priced it like the five-color salts, what was the point?
It was only because salt was too expensive that the people kept eating poisonous salt.
It’s called “poisonous salt” — did people not know it was unpalatable and harmful?
They were just poor.
150 coins per jin was only because the current supply of refined salt was too small, and because the cost of the glass bottle was included.
Once there was more white salt, Wei Yu would naturally lower the price — it had to be cheaper than green salt at least.
He wanted all the people of Great Wei to be free from poisonous salt.