Volume Three: The Tempest of the Xuanwu Gate Chapter Seventy-Five: Li Mingyu’s Grand Scheme for Wealth

Ever since returning to the Prince of Qin’s residence from the restaurant, Ming Yu had felt the sting of an empty purse. Money might not be omnipotent, but a lack of it was utterly crippling. If he wanted to live comfortably in the days to come, making some money was absolutely necessary.

As a transmigrator, Ming Yu brimmed with confidence—after all, he possessed over a thousand years more knowledge than the ancients. He’d also read countless transmigration novels, where every protagonist was a commercial genius, their wits bordering on the supernatural, turning everything they touched into gold. They’d plagiarize a few lines of poetry and be hailed as literary giants, or invent something trivial and make a fortune, amassing unimaginable wealth with the flip of a hand. Ming Yu refused to believe that if those characters could succeed after transmigrating, he couldn’t do the same.

Hands folded behind his head and one leg crossed over the other, Ming Yu racked his brains for ideas.

Truth be told, since arriving here, he’d already tried his hand at a number of inventions and plagiarisms, but the results had been less than satisfactory. His first attempt was a cavalry saber, which earned nothing but scorn from his master. Then he invented charcoal pencils, but the paper was too fragile to be of much use. The only thing that had garnered any positive feedback was the reclining chair he’d made, which was enthusiastically received by everyone in the village.

What could he produce right now that would bring high returns with low investment? Ming Yu set his sights on the wealthy aristocratic families—each one sitting on generations of accumulated treasure, with gold and silver mountains and copper coins rusting in their storerooms. If he didn’t fleece them, then who?

When it came to making money, the first thing that came to Ming Yu’s mind was glass—also known as colored glaze. The cost was almost negligible; just melt quartz sand and you’re done. The Qinling Mountains were littered with enormous quartz rocks, an inexhaustible supply. The profits, however, could be astronomical—a single glass item could fetch hundreds of strings of cash.

Thinking of glass brought to mind a famous joke from later generations. In the Mediterranean, there once was a powerful and wealthy kingdom ruled by Solomon. King Solomon spent seven years building a magnificent temple, beneath which he dug secret tunnels and chambers to hide his life’s fortune—the legendary Treasure of Solomon. When his kingdom fell, the tale spread far and wide: the temple was destroyed, but the treasure was never found. For over a millennium, adventurers and explorers alike sought the treasure, overcoming countless hardships, and at long last, more than a thousand years later, the secret vault was discovered.

But what awaited inside left the world in utter disappointment: the legendary treasure, coveted for a thousand years and said to be a mountain of wealth, turned out to be nothing but a pile of ancient shards of glass. It became the greatest joke in history.

In Solomon’s time, his treasure absolutely lived up to its name—glass was a rare and priceless gem. Yet with technological progress, a thousand years later, glass became worthless.

When he first arrived, Ming Yu had accompanied his second uncle for a drink. Li Shimin possessed a glass cup bought from Western merchants at a hefty price, treating it as a precious treasure. Ming Yu accidentally chipped a corner off the cup, and Li Shimin’s face turned green. He was thoroughly scolded by Empress Zhangsun and was heartbroken over the loss.

Ming Yu had sneered at the time, thinking how provincial these future emperor and empresses seemed. That crude, bubbly glass cup wasn’t worth a glance in his previous life—even the free ones that came with a can of cola were a hundred times better. He wouldn’t have wanted it, considering it a waste of space.

But how did one actually make glass? He seemed to recall that you melted sand into a liquid, then let it cool—but was it really that simple? The Tang Dynasty’s simple charcoal fires—could they really melt quartz? Ming Yu wasn’t sure. The quartz sand was everywhere in the mountains, but without manpower or capital, how could he extract it? Making glass would require considerable resources and labor, so he had to abandon the idea for now.

Maybe he could swindle the wealthy Tang ladies with perfume? But it wasn’t as simple as mixing a pile of flower petals together; it required complex formulas, and Ming Yu was utterly clueless about that—his chemistry knowledge was patchy at best. Another idea to be scrapped.

The luxury goods approach was a dead end, so what about something for the common people? The most pressing concerns of ordinary folk were food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. As the saying goes, “Food is the god of the people.”

The wine he’d drunk yesterday was decent, but lacked flavor—it was weak and bland. The Tang Dynasty didn’t yet have distillation methods; perhaps he could try brewing a batch of high-proof spirits. But that would require a distillery and a crew of loyal, skilled workers. Acquiring a distillery would cost a fortune, and right now, money was exactly what he lacked. Another plan abandoned.

What about opening a restaurant? While Ming Yu had hardly been a master chef in his previous life—his skills amounted to little more than homestyle cooking—stir-fried dishes, unheard of in the Tang Dynasty, would be enough to make a name in Chang’an. But a restaurant also required substantial capital, so that idea had to be set aside as well.

If not a restaurant, then perhaps a teahouse? The Tang Dynasty’s tea-drinking customs made Ming Yu’s stomach churn. Unlike later generations, they ground the tea leaves into powder and boiled them with salt, scallions, ginger, dates, orange peel, mint, and so on—some even adding beef or mutton fat and spices. Empress Zhangsun’s tea was especially praised by Li Shimin, her secret recipe being mutton fat and pepper. Every time Ming Yu watched Li Shimin drink this concoction with relish, he thought it would be more accurate to call it “spicy stew” than tea. The strange taste was hard to swallow—just thinking about it was nauseating.

China’s tea culture stretches back millennia, first recorded in the “Shennong Herbal Classic,” which states that Shennong tasted a hundred herbs, suffering from their poisons, and “was cured by tea.” Tea began as a medicine and became a popular beverage during the Han, flourishing in the Sui and Tang. The method of pan-frying tea leaves didn’t appear until the Ming Dynasty; before that, the processing methods used by the ancients robbed tea of its natural, pure flavor. The Ming improved upon the earlier steaming method, perfecting pan-frying, which evaporated excess moisture and preserved the tea’s quality, while also removing earthy odors for a more intense, fragrant aroma.

Of course, Ming Yu knew none of this. He quickly calculated: wasn’t it necessary to pan-fry tea leaves in later generations? How exactly? Use an iron wok? Should oil be added? Probably not; after all, modern tea leaves aren’t greasy. This seemed worth a try. Would this novel method of drinking tea be accepted by people over a thousand years ago? No matter—he could take it step by step and cultivate the market slowly.

He’d start with his second uncle Li Shimin and Empress Zhangsun. If both the emperor and empress drank it, who among the aristocrats and ministers would dare say otherwise? If the nobles liked it, eventually the common people would follow suit. By then, tea would sweep across the whole Tang Dynasty, and becoming a tea tycoon didn’t sound bad. He would need to have someone go to the source to buy fresh tea leaves, since the market seemed to only sell powdered tea—what a waste of good leaves.

He made a note to ask Old Wang, the head steward, to investigate. The most famous teas, like Wuyi’s Da Hong Pao, West Lake’s Dragon Well, and Huangshan’s Maofeng—he wasn’t sure if any of those had been discovered yet.

Yes, tea had potential, but it would take time to build a customer base. What else? Soap? The “transmigrator’s must-have invention”—shouldn’t be too hard: pig fat, alkali, and milk would do the trick. Demand would be high, but profit margins probably low. Right now, he was just starting out, broke and penniless, not yet ready to save the world. He’d jot it down for later, when he was rich.

The more he thought, the more discouraged he became. Some things seemed simple but were hard to execute.

In his previous life, Ming Yu had been a soldier—an expert in his field, skilled in hand-to-hand combat, wilderness survival, firearms, special tactics, and training troops. He could make gunpowder, Molotov cocktails, or design booby traps without much trouble. He could probably even build a nineteenth-century sailing ship, like the Black Pearl, thanks to his “Pirates of the Caribbean” obsession and years spent making a wooden model. But when it came to daily life and civilian needs, he drew a total blank.

He wasn’t like those transmigration novel protagonists who were all geniuses, with encyclopedic knowledge of chemical materials, their brains equipped with Baidu Encyclopedia and Search, remembering every trivial process and formula. Lacking talent, money, and energy, and relying only on shallow knowledge and guesswork, he’d probably have a white beard before he succeeded at anything.

Even if he could do something, he had no capital. Ask Empress Zhangsun for funds? After two lives combined, totaling over forty years, Ming Yu simply couldn’t bring himself to ask.

While he was still burying his head in plans for making a fortune, his thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the sound of sobbing and sniffling.