š„©Chapter 42: Meat, Milk, and Efficiency
š October 21st, 97 BCE ā Early Autumn š
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The village had grown faster than anyone had planned. Coin flowed in, new faces settled into half-built houses, and with prosperity came a quieter, nastier problem: waste. Not trash so much as inefficiency ā everyone doing the same jobs in a dozen different, half-baked ways. Families butchered out back, cured hams in pits, tried to churn butter between chores; the salt alone disappeared like water through a sieve. Once the population crept past four hundred, the seams began to show.
Junjie called a meeting. Not for the farmers, but for the planners ā the ones who turned chaos into schedules. "Enough," he said, pointing at the queue of complaints. We centralize the food processing. Butcher, dairy, preserves ā proper workshops, skilled people. Let the herders raise animals. Let the workshops do the rest."
Nobody argued. It was obvious.
š„©The Butcher's Hall
They built the butcher first: a long, airy hall by the cold river mouth, shaded, drained, tiled to slope toward a grated center that kept the worst of it out of sight. The place stank of work and competence. Four of the newcomers from the intake valley had real experience in slaughterhouses ā one had run a meat operation in the western territories ā and Nano confirmed their memories checked out. Within a week, they were hired, geared, and carving with a precision that made backyard butchers look positively medieval.
Animals came in on a schedule, tagged, and weighed. Nothing went to waste: prime cuts were salted or smoked, lesser meat dried; bones became broth and marrow; skins went to tanners; offal rendered into soap, candles, fertilizer. No more blood in the alleys, no more half-cured hams attracting wolves. The saltworks hummed; the potters churned out molds, churns, and brining vessels; the tanners found steady, cleaner hides. Food was suddenly an industry, not just a chore.
š§Ā The Dairy Works
Next came the creamery, a cool, stone-lined workshop tucked against a spring-fed stream. Nano joked about the "calcium economy," but the name stuck. Instead of a dozen households failing to make butter at the same time, the village now had two full-time crews: one for cheese, one for butter and cream. Milk arrived in labeled buckets and left as wheels, bricks, and jars ā salted, aged, and stored properly in the expanded cold caves. The Gilded Valley shop in the city could barely keep up. Anything stamped "Hidden Valley Creamery" fetched top coin; the name became a quiet legend among merchants.
šĀ The Ripple Effect
The changes rippled out. Kitchens freed from daily dairy and meat chores began to focus on flavor. Talented cooks started offering prepared meals to busy workshops; an old widow opened a street stall selling spicy skewers made from butcher offcuts and found customers in everyone from potters to guards. Hunters, whose hides had once spoiled in backyard sheds, now sold them clean to tanners who had new standards and steady work. Potters kept busy turning out cheese molds and brining jars. The saltworks, long an afterthought, swelled with purposeāpreservation-grade salt was suddenly vital.
Suddenly, food wasn't just fuelāit was culture.
Junjie and Nano were careful. Centralization had its risks; monopolies form fast when something profitable is concentrated. They set quotas and schedulesāno one family could overwhelm the butcher or dairy works. Every transaction was logged, weighted, and converted into coin. Each animal processed cost a small fee that helped pay crews and maintain equipment. Prices were fixed enough to prevent undercutting but fair enough that people still felt they had a stake. The system matched the village's tight, no-paperwork economy: shared profits, clear rules, zero freeloaders.
It was clean. Efficient. Profitable. And best of all? It scaled.