The Most Powerful Young Master of the Northern Song Dynasty

Chapter 37: When You Get Beaten, All You Can Do Is Whine

With Old Liao’s help, Wang Bang lined the interior of the primitive incubator he’d designed himself with treated wood and a layer of cotton. The wood layer prevents the box from heating up too quickly, while the innermost layer of cotton prevents the internal temperature from cooling too rapidly once it has risen. For now, given the limited resources in the Song Dynasty, this was the best way to start—it worked, and that was enough. Wang Bang was a shrewd and efficiency-driven person, not a perfectionist tech geek. Needless to say, the current 1. 0 version of the grassroots incubator has plenty of flaws and room for criticism. As a result, a great many eggs will be wasted in trial-and-error experiments, which Old Liao and Erya are sure to complain about. But that doesn’t matter at all. For Wang Bang, every time a batch of eggs is lost, he can use his expertise to pinpoint the problem, then make minor adjustments to the pace of heating over the fire and tweak the thickness of the wood and the top layer to control the heat capacity of the iron box. Eventually, through versions 1. 1, 1. 8, and so on, he’ll pinpoint the optimal constant temperature for hatching Song Dynasty chickens. This is what’s known as a margin for error—and it’s also the true appeal of hands-on work and strong execution. So, thanks to everyone’s efforts, the grand endeavor of hatching eggs began. Wang Bang stayed up night after night to monitor the heat, while also analyzing issues with the wood and flour layers to gather data for refining Version 1. 1 of the incubator. Now that Emperor Zhao Zhen had declared Wang Bang a child prodigy—and the Empress Dowager endorsed this “imperial edict”—no one dared accuse Wang Bang of acting presumptuously, even though a great many eggs had been wasted. Heaven rewards those who are dedicated. At the end of September, just as news of Di Qing’s great victory at Guirenpu arrived, Wang Bang finally hatched the Song Dynasty’s first batch of artificially incubated chicks, with a hatching rate of 40 percent. While this success rate would have been ridiculed to no end by his peers in later generations, its achievement in the Song Dynasty marked a milestone. The old lady and Wu Qiong’s mother were utterly astounded. Having lived their entire lives accustomed to chickens being a rare sight, they simply could not imagine that Wang Bang was capable of producing dozens of chicks when the temperature had already dropped significantly. And this was just the beginning. Da Bang explained that while a hen’s hatching success depended on luck and her mood, his incubator could run day and night without stopping. The old grandmother was completely dumbfounded. As for Erya’s mother, her eyes turned into the symbol for a copper coin. This was truly impressive. Don’t let the fluffiness of those newly hatched chicks fool you—they’re extremely valuable, and generally, no one sells them. Even if they do, the price is sky-high, with the ratio to the price of eggs at least twenty to one. However, even if Wang Bang’s current hatch rate is only 40 percent—and factoring in labor costs, charcoal expenses, the manufacturing and depreciation costs of the incubators, and so on—even after all these weighted calculations, if the final conversion rate is just 10 percent, the profit would still double based on that 1-to-20 price ratio. And this doubled profit is just the current situation. It’s currently cold, making incubation difficult and causing the highest charcoal consumption. Equipment costs are still high, and the hatching rate is very low. All these aspects offer significant room for improvement. As proficiency improves and order volumes increase, the cost of the incubators will drop significantly, and their service life will extend considerably. Through minor technical adjustments, by refining the incubator design and processes, and by optimizing the feed formula to balance the nutritional content of the eggs, we can also significantly improve the hatching rate. Taking all factors into account, even under the current conditions in the Great Song Dynasty, I’m confident we can boost overall efficiency to around 50 percent within half a year. In other words, if the cost of two eggs results in one chick, that’s a tenfold profit. Let’s make a killing first—Wang Bang should be able to complete his initial capital accumulation before getting beaten up by his demon king of a father… “Work hard and work like a dog.” On the drill ground, early in the morning, the little brat led the pack while shouting the slogan. As soon as Wang Bang shouted this, the hooligans like Ma Jinsi followed along, running and chanting in unison: “Work hard and work diligently like a dog.” “When we get whipped, all we can do is bark ‘woof woof.’ ” “When we get whipped, all we can do is bark ‘woof woof.’ ” These guys kept repeating it grudgingly. They weren’t allowed to run too fast; they had to learn the rhythm and keep pace with me, Da Bang. That’s how the training began. It sounds like something straight out of *Tang Bohu and Qiu Xiang*, but it actually worked—much like the pyramid schemes of later generations. When a slogan is chanted often enough, through repeated indoctrination, people will gradually come to believe that “this is the truth.” Once someone believes it, they become the spark. Since humans are social creatures, when someone takes the lead, others will follow. That’s how the broader environment gradually takes shape. This prevailing atmosphere acts as fertile ground, forcing the remaining skeptics to put on a show of compliance—this is how a trend takes shape. So Xiao Suan’s tactics are now extremely insidious; he’s leading them to adapt to an “internal environment where they have to work like dogs.” Just like with Crazy English, you have to shout it out loud for it to stick in your memory. They’re gradually digging deeper, step by step, reining in their spirits. Through a mix of threats and suppression—expelling a small handful—the rest will be fully brainwashed. “One, two, one—when you get whipped, all you can do is yelp.” Wang Bang continues to lead the charge. Speaking of which, Wang Bang takes his physical training very seriously; he certainly doesn’t want to die young in his thirties. “If you get whipped, you can only bark ‘wang-wang,’ one, two, one.” Ma Jinsi and the others grew increasingly frustrated, but they had no choice but to follow along. Truth be told, these thugs weren’t usually afraid of Sima Shengren; anyone who could skillfully evade the law wasn’t afraid of Bao Zheng’s faction—on the contrary, they could even use Bao Zheng’s faction to protect themselves. A few of them, who made a living by staging accidents, ran rampant in Shuzhou using exactly these tactics. However, Wang Bang was a thug. As the saying goes, “The most dangerous thugs are the educated ones.” So while these henchmen weren’t afraid of Sima Shengren, they were terrified of “Little Calculator Bang”—truly terrified. Wang Bang allowed them to quit; those who didn’t want to work could leave. The problem was that guys like Ma Jinsi didn’t want to leave either. They’d lived a miserable life in the past—treated like rats in the street. They had to get into fights and act like thugs just to scrape together a little money, only to have it stolen by corrupt police chiefs like Huang Jianming. As a result, they ended up suffering terribly, caught between a rock and a hard place. Now, following Wang Bang is actually quite comfortable. When they walk down the street, the cops don’t bother them anymore; they have some prestige, and surprisingly, quite a few ordinary people even praise them—it gives them a sense of honor. Most importantly, of course, is the money. Now they don’t attract hatred or get pointed at behind their backs, yet they make far more money than before. With their basic needs met, they’ve gained a sense of dignity, so they have no desire to go back to being the pariahs they once were. After morning exercises, a “recruitment meeting” was held, lasting two class periods. That little brat Wang Bang took the lead, launching into a speech about a sense of mission and honor. He had these thugs completely spellbound. Next, since labor is the best way to reform people, Wang Bang began directing these guys to work on making more incubators. The incubator design has now been updated to version 1. 3, so it’s time to scale up—we need to keep refining and improving the design while we produce them. “You idiots, you can’t use a hammer there—you have to use finesse. You won’t learn these skills anywhere else; as apprentices, you’d even have to carry your master’s rice bowl.” Wang Bang monitored their work while smacking them on the back of the head. “Young Master, can we really make big money with this stuff?” one of the thugs asked. “Absolutely. Protection money pales in comparison to this. That’s just a shady side business—manufacturing is the real way to go.” Wang Bang chuckled. “Every business starts out this way, including ours. Once we get past the tough times, we’ll go legit as soon as possible. I used some clever talk to fool Old Man Sima, but that’s only temporary. It’s important to know your limits. Small-time shenanigans are no big deal, but once we reach a certain point, my dad will beat the crap out of me even without Old Man Sima stepping in. So time is limited, and the scale of the protection racket is limited too. My dad’s term is almost up, so we need to get this off the ground as soon as possible and complete the initial industrialization of our farming operations.” Everyone was impressed, though they didn’t quite understand the details. Still, to avoid getting fired, they were working flat out. This put Wang Bang at ease—he couldn’t rely solely on Erya’s chicken-raising efforts. He needed them to scale up as quickly as possible. Now that the opportunity had presented itself, the protection money they were receiving each day was increasing; it had reached over twenty guan a day, and they had already accumulated more than nine hundred guan in start-up capital. In the Great Song Dynasty, that was actually a substantial sum. As for the agricultural and livestock project, acquiring land from Sima Guang was quite easy, so it was time to start setting up the farm. Wang Bang had no intention of rolling up his sleeves to raise chickens himself, but he planned to temporarily control the very top of the production chain—hatching “high-quality, weaned chicks”—and sell them in bulk to the Egg Gang, as well as to the common people of Shuzhou for rearing…