Chapter 99

Li Yao was not worried about building the new schoolhouse, as the old village chief was arranging it. But she wanted to pay attention to the new students who would be recruited. There were many empty houses in her home, so Li Yao cleared out three of them to use as temporary classrooms.

Two days later, the Village Head brought her a name list. There were 35 children from the village who had signed up, including 12 girls who had never touched a textbook before.

"Liu Xichun, Wu Pinggui...the children from these families did not come," the Village Head said. "Should I go persuade them again?"

"No need to persuade."

Li Yao meant what she said. She immediately settled the wages for the people from those families who had helped her work. As long as their children did not go to school for a day, she would not hire them for a day.

Seeing her resoluteness, everyone knew she was serious. A few families hurriedly went to the Village Head again to add their children's names to the list.

On the official "first day of school", 40 children of varying sizes neatly gathered at her door.

"Since you have come, you must study diligently," Li Yao said. "Whoever dares to make trouble, don't blame me for spanking you!"

Li Yao's words frightened the children so much that they shrunk their necks back, knowing better than to provoke her.

But the benefit of going to school was not having to work, which was the biggest motivation for these children at the moment. As for the teaching master, Li Yao had already asked County Magistrate Song to help find one, but it would take some time. So for now, Scholar Lv would be the main teacher, with Wang Er and Song Zhe occasionally helping out.

The schoolhouse in He Wan Village was thus established.

Hearing the not-so-orderly reading sounds, Li Yao suddenly felt as if she had returned to modern times.

The county magistrate's wife had witnessed the whole thing from beginning to end. She admired Li Yao to no end and took out several dozen taels from her limited private money to donate to the construction of the He Wan Village schoolhouse.

With the joint efforts of the villagers, the school building was quickly completed.

The spacious and bright classrooms totaled six. There were also three rooms to be used as offices for the teachers. In addition, a row of elegant houses was built to temporarily accommodate the teaching masters.

On the day the school was completed, almost all the villagers gathered at the school entrance. Song County Magistrate also came with his men and highly praised Li Yao and He Wan Village for their actions.

After the lively ribbon-cutting ceremony, Scholar Lv led these dozens of students into the new school. Looking at these brand new houses and desks and chairs, he could not help but shed old tears.

He had spent all his family fortune to study, falling into embarrassment and destitution. How many people knew the bitter hardships?

But now the children of the village could come to school without spending a penny. Li Yao's merit was enough to make her name live on throughout history.

After taking care of the school, the soap workshop and the dam for the reservoir were also completed one after another.

Li Yao moved the soap workshop into the new plant and recruited 50 new workers. She assigned work to each one and then officially appointed the management. She took on the role of general manager herself, earning 5 taels of salary per month.

The oil refining process was managed by Wang Sanfang’s daughter-in-law Shen Shi, with a monthly salary of 1 tael.

The soap making process was managed by Wang Xueshi, with a monthly salary of 3 taels.

This process was the core of soap production. Not only was the manager's salary high, but the few workers were also carefully selected by Wang Xueshi herself. In her own words, she could definitely handle it well.

Li Yao was not too concerned about whether she could handle it or not.

Even if the soap making technique would not leak out later and others could not figure it out through research, she would make everything public eventually.

Monopolization was not a good thing.

Besides, a market without competition would lack vitality and innovation.

When it came to innovation, she believed no one in this world could surpass her.

The molding and packaging process was managed by Du Xiao Hui’s mother, with a monthly salary of 1 tael.

The warehouse was taken care of by Wang Er’s daughter-in-law Zhou, with a monthly salary of 1 tael.

Purchasing was done by Wang Yuanguo, Wang San’s third son, with a monthly salary of 3 taels, plus reimbursement for travel expenses.

The accountant was the accountant from her cosmetics shop, and the cashier was Du Xiao Hui.

All the managers had to learn Arabic numerals and modern accounting methods. They had to fill out daily production reports every day, and each process had to strictly abide by work discipline...

In short, after a series of operations, Li Yao's soap workshop was completely upgraded to a modern management model.

The new employees were also trained. Seeing that the new workshop was about to start operating, Wang Yuanguo, who was in charge of purchasing, hurried back from outside.

"Sister-in-law, I don't know why, but white alkali has been hard to buy recently," Wang Yuanguo said. "The merchants who used to cooperate with us seem to have run out of stock overnight. I've searched the entire Yizhou Prefecture but couldn't buy even 100 catties."

Without alkali, they couldn't produce soap or deliver goods to the two distributors.

Now there were two options before Li Yao:

One was to find a way to make alkali herself.

But although this route was once and for all, it would also take up a lot of time.

The second option was to find out why white alkali was out of stock.

In ancient times, white alkali was basically used to steam buns and dumplings, with few other uses. So there was basically no possibility of anyone using a large amount.

Now that it suddenly went out of stock, in all likelihood someone was hoarding it.

"Let me deal with this." After saying that, Li Yao went out and found Wang Jiafu, the village head.

As soon as Wang Jiafu heard that Li Yao wanted the villagers to help make alkali, he readily agreed.

The dam, plant, and schoolhouse were basically completed. The land reclamation at Li Yao’s home was also almost done. Many villagers were idle and were wondering what to do.

Now helping Li Yao make alkali happened to allow them to earn income again.

Moreover, this work could be done by men, women, young and old.

So Wang Jiafu called out and gathered the idle villagers. After explaining things clearly, everyone immediately went into the mountains with their straw cutters.

They cut grass, chopped firewood, then piled it up in an open space and burned it. The ashes of the grass and wood were then collected and taken back.

The plant ashes were placed on white cloth and continuously poured over with boiling water to obtain alkaline solution.

More than a dozen large pots were erected over fire pits in the open ground and kept burning strongly until all the water had evaporated completely. The white stuff left at the bottom of the pots was white alkali.

Testing showed that the purity was much higher than the mineral alkali bought from outside. And there were also several tens of catties produced every day, barely enough for the soap workshop to start operating.

But Li Yao knew this was absolutely not a long-term solution.

Although naturally occurring alkali was slightly inferior in purity, it had an absolute price advantage. Unless she could make industrial alkali, natural alkali would still be the first choice.

However, industrial alkali production was easier said than done. She didn't even have a glass bottle yet.

"Dazhuang, I'm going out for a few days. Take care of the family. Go find the Village Head if you can't resolve something."

"Yes, Mother."

After instructing her family, she took a carriage with Wang Yuanguo and went to the market in the neighboring county.

Although this was her first time here, she still covered her face with a cloth and changed into very plain clothes.

She went to an alkali shop alone and first bought some salt, then asked, "Boss, do you have white alkali?"

"Sold out."

"Even white alkali is gone?" Li Yao pretended to be dissatisfied. "How do you run this shop?"

"Little lady, you don't know," the old boss said. "Some time ago someone bought up all the white alkali, tens of catties! We can't even get stock from Yizhou Prefecture now."

"Which family bought tens of catties of white alkali? That’s enough to steam a lot of buns!"

"You don't understand this," the boss laughed. "They didn't buy it to steam buns, but to make soap! Do you know what soap is?"

"I know. Isn't it made by Mistress Li from He Wan Village?" Li Yao said. "This Mistress Li really, she bought up all the alkali. What are we supposed to use to make steamed buns?"

"You're wrong again!" The boss shook his head. "It wasn't Mistress Li who bought it this time, but Boss Zhang from Baichuan Market who had someone buy it. I heard from the people who bought it that he seemed to want to make soap too."

Boss Zhang? Zhang Guangsheng?