Chương 93: 92. The Dao of Human Resources

The wagons expose a problem that cannot be solved with another contract. We have grain, timber, iron, herbs, salt, cloth, and more work than the sect has possessed in years. What we do not have are enough people to unload, record, store, process, protect, and eventually deliver everything Shen Qiao has acquired. The existing workers are already stretched thin. The Finance Hall requires copied contracts, inventories, payment records, contribution entries, and delivery schedules.

Wei Zheng's workshop receives more materials than one mortal craftsman can sort alone. The disciples can help, but every hour they spend carrying grain or copying receipts is an hour taken from cultivation. Before we recruit more disciples, we need enough ordinary people to support the ones already here. I leave for Greenstone the following morning in plain clothes. My cultivation is drawn inward until my qi resembles that of an unremarkable mortal.

It doesn't make me invisible the way Ling'er's concealment does, but it removes the pressure that normally causes people to lower their voices and reconsider every word before speaking to me. A simple coat replaces my sect robes. I carry no sword openly and enter the city among farmers bringing winter produce through the eastern gate. The labor market gathers near an old courtyard behind the grain warehouses.

Men and women wait along the walls while foremen, shopkeepers, caravan managers, and household stewards move between them. Some advertise experience. Others offer strength, literacy, or familiarity with particular trades. Many simply claim they can work. I do not announce that the Coiling Dragon Sect is hiring. That would bring more applicants than useful information. People behave differently when they believe a cultivator is judging them. Desperation becomes obedience. Greed becomes flattery.

I remain near the edge of the courtyard and watch. The sect needs miners, builders, warehouse workers, servants, kitchen assistants, clerks, and enough general laborers that the disciples are no longer summoned whenever something heavy needs to be moved. Skill matters, but not first. I watch how applicants treat the old man selling steamed buns near the entrance. Whether they return borrowed tools. Whether they shove weaker people aside when a foreman announces three available positions.

Whether frustration turns inward, outward, or toward whoever seems least capable of responding. Desperation does not make someone untrustworthy. Many people here are desperate. What matters is what they permit desperation to make them do. A former caravan porter gives up his place near the front so an injured companion can speak to a recruiter first. A warehouse worker lies about knowing how to read, then blames the clerk who exposes him.

A widow with two children refuses a position when she learns the employer expects her to sleep inside the workshop and remain available at all hours. I use the Gaze. Most profiles confirm what observation already suggests. Ordinary bodies. Ordinary talents. People who might become reliable workers with fair pay and clear expectations. A few carry traits no spirit-root test would ever reveal. Near midday, shouting rises from the opposite end of the courtyard.

A broad-shouldered man stumbles through the entrance of a carpentry yard. He is nearly a head taller than everyone around him; bald, thick arms, and a chest wide enough to stretch the front of his patched work coat. A smaller worker follows, waving a cracked wooden frame above his head.

"Three days!" the worker shouts.

"Three days, and you have broken two stools, a cart handle, and now this! You incompetent buffoon! Do you have rocks for brains?" The large man lowers his head.

"I was careful."

"You were careful?" The worker kicks the back of his leg.

"You leaned against it!" The kick accomplishes nothing. The larger man barely moves, but his shoulders draw inward as though the blow carried more force than it did.

"You're useless," the worker continues.

"Too stupid for measurements and too clumsy for anything delicate. Go carry rocks somewhere else." The carpenter watching from the doorway does not intervene. He only points toward the street. The large man bows several times and begins walking away. People move aside before him. At first glance, he appears to be a laborer in his late twenties. His face is broad, his jaw heavy, and his arms resemble those of a body refiner who has spent years tempering himself. The Gaze corrects that impression.

Laborer - Mortal Name: Bao Ming Age: 16 Spirit Root: None Constitution: Stone-Ox Frame (D-grade) - Bones, connective tissue, and musculature possess approximately four times the strength and density of an ordinary mortal. Physical development occurs rapidly and requires unusually high food intake. Cultivation: Mortal Verdict: He possesses limited reasoning ability and struggles with measurements, complex instructions, and unfamiliar sequences.

He understands direct tasks well, remembers kindness, and has never deliberately used his strength to injure another person.

'Sixteen? Maybe sixteen years away from retirement.' I look again at the figure disappearing toward the street. I follow him. He stops beside an alley wall and inspects the few copper coins in his hand. After counting them twice, he purchases one steamed bun from a nearby stall and breaks it into three pieces before eating. I stand in front of him as he sits down to eat.

"You need work?" I ask. Bao Ming looks up. Even seated, he is almost at eye level with me.

"Yes." His answer carries no suspicion. Only hope restrained by recent experience.

"What kind of work can you do?"

"I can lift things. I can, uh, dig. Carry stone. Pull carts." He thinks carefully.

"I can clean, but sometimes I break the broom."

"I have work on a mountain," I say.

"There is hauling, mining, construction, and warehouse labor. The tasks will be explained clearly. You will be paid, housed, and fed." His eyes widen at the final word.

"Fed every day?"

"Yes."

"How much?"

"As much as the kitchen considers reasonable." That may become a future argument between him and Old Chen. But if we can feed Ling'er, we can feed him. Bao Ming holds out his hand. I accept it, and h is fingers close around mine with the unconscious force of a vise. Pressure travels through my wrist and I circulate qi instinctively, though my Foundation Establishment body hardly requires the protection.

"Thank you! Thank you! I'll take it!" He pumps my arm with enough force to pull an ordinary mortal's shoulder from its socket. Unaware of this, he releases me and bows low enough that his head nearly reaches my chest.

"I will work hard." I take him to Shen Qiao before recruiting anyone else. He is working dutifully in the Finance Hall when I arrive. The Finance Hall head looks from Bao Ming to me, then back to Bao Ming.

"He is sixteen," I say before he can ask. Shen Qiao closes his mouth.

"He needs direct instructions and work that does not require measurements or delicate tools. Start him with unloading, stone hauling, and supervised warehouse work." Bao Ming nods eagerly at each task.

"He will also require more food than an ordinary laborer." Shen Qiao opens a ledger and drafts up an employment contract. By the afternoon, Bao Ming is already completing his first few tasks. I continue recruiting. The process takes most of the week and extends beyond Greenstone. Villages along the mountain roads contain people overlooked by city employers, especially those whose talents do not fit ordinary trades.

In one mining settlement, I find a middle-aged laborer who possesses faint sensitivity to shifts in earth and stone like Chen Jiang. A woman in a farming village identifies every herb growing along an abandoned field, including several whose leaves have not yet emerged from beneath the snow. She has no constitution, but her memory for plant shape, scent, season, and soil conditions is exceptional. I offer her work in the herb garden and access to the library's medicinal texts.

A laborer dismissed after an injury possesses unusual endurance and recovers from strain and minor injuries faster than most mortals.. A former shop assistant remembers prices, quantities, and customer debts after hearing them once. His employer accused him of stealing when the accounts revealed discrepancies, though the Gaze confirms that the discrepancies belonged to the employer's son. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

A quiet young man who has spent years copying letters for villagers possesses no memorable talent except steady hands, patience, and handwriting clear enough that Shen Qiao stares at his first sample for several breaths before assigning him to contract copies. Not everyone carries a hidden gift. Most of the people I hire are ordinary. A cook's assistant who left a household after the steward began withholding wages. Two miners with reliable experience. Three builders accustomed to mountain winters.

Several warehouse workers who understand inventory well enough to notice when sacks disappear. Laundresses, cleaners, stable hands, and laborers willing to learn work they have not performed before. By the end of the week, twenty new workers have accepted positions. They arrive in small groups rather than one procession. Shen Qiao records their wages and assignments. Old Chen examines the kitchen recruits as though expecting them to steal ingredients immediately.

Bao Ming carries two timber beams toward the construction yard, one balanced beneath each arm. Wei Chen watches him pass and nearly walks into a wall. Three of the new workers become Shen Qiao's first official assistants in the Finance Hall. The former shop assistant handles inventories and customer accounts. The young copyist produces clean duplicates of contracts and delivery records.

The third is a woman who previously kept accounts for a grain shop and possesses no unusual constitution, but understands enough arithmetic to check totals accurately. The expansion creates pressure almost immediately. Twenty workers require more than twenty wages. They require food, bedding, clothes suited to the mountain, tools, heating, supervision, medical supplies, and places to sleep. Every worker added to solve one shortage produces several smaller needs elsewhere.

Fortunately, we now possess grain, timber, cloth, iron, and enough labor to begin addressing them. Construction spreads across the sect. The training yard is widened first. Several dead trees are removed from its edge, the ground is leveled, and new drainage channels are cut before the next snowfall can turn the entire area into frozen mud. Beside it, the foundations of a covered training hall begin taking shape.

It will not be impressive by the standards of a wealthy sect, but it will allow the disciples to train through heavy rain and winter storms without crowding into the existing buildings. The worker quarters are repaired and extended into the neighboring structure that has stood mostly empty since the sect's decline. The Finance Hall abandons its dusty side room and moves into one of the larger halls near the central courtyard.

Shen Qiao claims the front chamber for records and negotiations, then converts two smaller rooms into storage for contracts and account books. The library gains new shelves. Wei Zheng's workshop receives ventilation openings, tool racks, additional workbenches, and three new craftsmen to help with ordinary commissions. He responds to this support by storming into the Finance Hall and placing a bundle of requests on Shen Qiao's desk.

"You accepted all of these?"

"They are profitable."

"There are forty-seven requests!" Wei Zheng curses Shen Qiao, the merchants, their ancestors, and the concept of deadlines before returning to his workshop. He completes every commission. The laborers working beneath him handle measurements, shaping, polishing, and the repetitive portions of each order. Wei Zheng corrects their work, refines the difficult components, and replaces several of their worn tools with ones that fit their hands so precisely that their productivity improves within days.

The result is that more tools are completed, which allows more workers to complete more construction, which gives Shen Qiao enough capacity to accept more work. Renovation becomes a permanent feature of the sect. There is always hammering somewhere. What should have taken several weeks is compressed into days through an irritating combination of Shen Qiao's scheduling, Wei Zheng's tools, and cultivators capable of moving materials no ordinary construction crew could handle easily.

The disciples benefit first; t hey no longer lose an afternoon because a grain delivery arrives unexpectedly. They are not called away from training to carry timber, clean storage rooms, or help Old Chen prepare enough food for the entire sect. The labor has not disappeared. It has been transferred to people specifically employed to perform it. Within days, the difference becomes visible. Mei Lin spends longer refining the transitions in the Flowing Ripple Counter Art.

Jun has enough uninterrupted time to review his notes from Greenstone and train before his next assignment. Wei Chen uses the additional time to train more, then attempts to volunteer for construction anyway because he believes hauling stone will strengthen his body. The workers are initially unsettled by the arrangement. Their wages arrive when promised. Meals contain enough food that no one needs to hide bread for later.

Injuries are cleaned and treated rather than ignored until the worker either recovers or stops appearing. Cultivators occasionally carry things. The first time Bao Ming sees Ling'er beside a collapsed stack of stone blocks, he hurries forward to help her. She looks at the blocks, looks at him, and lifts the entire stack with one hand. Bao Ming stares. Ling'er carries them toward the training hall while speaking to one of the builders about where they should be placed.

Bao Ming follows several steps behind, carrying two smaller stones against his chest. By the end of the day, he has asked three different people whether Ling'er is the strongest person alive. Wei Chen tells him yes. I consider the conditions we provide to be basic decency. Shen Qiao disagrees with some of my standards, though not for the reasons I expect.

"Fourteen hour workday is sufficient," he says when we review the new work schedules.

"I highly advise against making it twelve hours."

"Isn't this too harsh for mortals?"

"Most laborers in Greenstone work longer."

"That also doesn't make it better." Shen Qiao explains that the construction crews are being paid above their previous wages, provided meals and housing, and receive one rest day every ten days. He speaks as though presenting an unusually generous arrangement. The sect is still operating within a world where sunrise-to-sunset labor is normal, and shortening the hours too far would require hiring more workers before we have space to house them. I reluctantly agree.

A week later, I pass two laborers repairing the path near the storehouses.

"Fourteen hours," one tells the other.

"And they count the meal break." The second man shakes his head in admiration.

"My cousin works sixteen in Greenstone, and he has to pay for his own rice."

"They treated Qian's hand when the chisel slipped."

"I heard they used medicine." They notice me and return quickly to work. Apparently, Coiling Dragon has become known for its kindness because we feed workers, pay them when promised, treat injuries, and only require them to spend most of their waking lives working. Workers begin arriving at the sect gates without anyone inviting them. Some have heard about the food. Others know someone already employed here.

Several come from Greenstone after relatives send word that the wages are real and the mountain is safer than the workshops they left behind. I no longer need to conceal my cultivation and wait beside the labor market. That does not mean we accept everyone. Some applicants exaggerate their experience. One man intends to work long enough to learn where the sect stores its tools, then leave with as many as he can carry.

Another expects cultivators to protect him from creditors after he borrowed silver under three different names. The Gaze removes most uncertainty, but I still speak to each person and compare what it tells me with how they behave. Those who appear reliable are assigned where additional hands are needed. Others are turned away with enough travel food to reach the next village. Family connections provide several of the better recruits.

The plant-worker brings her younger sister, who knows little about herbs but has spent years cooking for a household of nine. One of the builders recommends two cousins with experience cutting mountain stone. The former grain-shop clerk sends for her husband after the Finance Hall requires someone to inspect incoming deliveries. The workforce grows without another formal recruitment effort. Shen Qiao notices the effect before I do. He presents the figures during an evening meeting in the expanded Finance Hall.

The room now contains four desks, shelves along two walls, and enough space for visitors to sit without brushing against stacks of account books. He slides a page toward me. The difference is not enormous over a single week, but the direction is clear. Workers who are properly fed make fewer mistakes late in the day. People paid on time have less reason to steal grain or tools. Treating injuries costs less than replacing experienced workers after minor wounds become permanent.

More importantly, each satisfied worker attracts relatives and acquaintances with better references than strangers gathered from the labor market.

"Our conditions are becoming part of the sect's reputation," Shen Qiao says. Within several days, the Finance Hall produces written wage ranges, work schedules, injury procedures, housing rules, and standards for supervisors. What began as my unwillingness to let workers be mistreated becomes a formal system because Shen Qiao recognizes that predictability itself has commercial value. He does not stop there.

As our own network stabilizes, he begins approaching businesses that normally operate within Stone River's sphere: a kitchen that purchases grain through one of their approved merchants receives an offer combining preserved meat with guaranteed salt deliveries. A caravan that uses Stone River escorts is offered better loading arrangements. Two laborers leave a warehouse owned by one of Stone River's partners after hearing what our workers receive.

I notice the pattern when one of Jun's reports mentions that Stone River's administrator has begun asking why Coiling Dragon representatives are speaking to merchants already under agreement.

"You are targeting their customers," I tell Shen Qiao.

"I am offering alternatives."

"The distinction may not comfort them. It could be perceived as a sign of retaliation." Shen Qiao closes the ledger before him.

"They attempted to make our suppliers more expensive, frighten our customers, and damage the reputation of our products. If we only protect what we already possess, they can choose where to apply pressure until something fails." There is no fear in his expression now. Only calculation. I consider Stone River's advantages. More disciples. More cultivators. More established agreements. Decades spent assuming the businesses around them would remain where they had always been.

'Truly, only someone this audacious is fit to lead the Finance Hall.'

"Continue," I say.

"Do not violate an existing contract, and do not promise anything we cannot provide. Beyond that, they are not entitled to every merchant who has dealt with them before." Shen Qiao nods. We do not spread rumors about Stone River. We do not threaten merchants who reject us. We offer better terms where we can, different terms where direct competition would favor them, and work conditions that make employment under Stone River's partners increasingly unattractive. For several days, Stone River does nothing openly.

Then an order arrives from an inn beyond Greenstone. The owner requests six pressure cookers, preserved meat, and enough salt to supply the kitchen through the last half of winter. The route passes through territory where Stone River escorts and associated merchants have operated for years. Shen Qiao accepts. The delivery is loaded before sunrise. Six reinforced cookers are secured beneath canvas beside sealed jars of meat and salt.

The agreement, receipt, and operating instructions are stored separately in an oiled document case. Two mortal drivers take their positions at the front of the wagon. Jun checks the road map one final time. Mei Lin adjusts the sword at her waist. Wei Chen circles the wagon, inspecting the wheels and looking far too pleased that the first delivery likely to attract trouble includes him. I stand near the gate as the final straps are tightened. No one has attacked our merchants yet.

Stone River may allow the delivery to pass. They may decide that open interference would cost more than another lost contract. I am no longer willing to rely on that possibility.

"Stay with the wagon," I tell them.

"Do not pursue anyone who retreats, and do not turn an argument into a battle merely because they insult the sect." I stare at one of them specifically. Wei Chen appears personally wounded by the second instruction. Jun nods.

"And if they attempt to seize the goods?"

"Stop them." Mei Lin looks toward the descending mountain road. The gates open. The wagon begins its journey toward Greenstone under the escort of three Coiling Dragon disciples, carrying enough kitchen equipment and preserved food to be unremarkable anywhere else. Stone River will decide whether it remains a delivery.