Chapter 215 — Industrial Products

With ample manpower and material resources behind it, the alchemy factory on the edge of town was finally formally completed. At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Gao Yang broke with all precedent and agreed to let Rebecca hurl a few great fireballs into the sky from a safe distance to add to the festivities. The magical flames bursting high above were both a celebration and a message to the people of the domain: soon the folk of this land would know that their survival was further assured. No shortage of food, no shortage of clothing, no shortage of firewood for warmth—and now, no shortage of medicine either.

Most people could not grasp the principles behind this new thing called an "alchemy factory," nor understand what connection the metal pipes and vats hauled into the factory had to the arcane craft of alchemy. But the notice posted in the town's central square told them plainly enough: with this new facility, all the healing and curative potions for the domain, and the druidic potions needed for farming, would never run short again. The newly opened alchemy shop on Trade Street would sell cheap potions of every kind, at prices so low that even the poorest could afford them—news that was undoubtedly a source of great excitement for everyone.

Meanwhile, in the workshop of the alchemy factory, Gao Yang was inspecting the first batch of rejuvenation potions to come off the line.

The potions were sealed in artificial crystal vials no bigger than a finger, neatly arranged in compartmented wooden boxes, the spaces around each vial stuffed with soft wood shavings to prevent breakage in transit. And as Gao Song had required, besides being packed in good order, these alchemical potions had been fitted with matching "labels"—a small slip of paper on each crystal vial bearing the potion's name, its effects, the date of production and the date of expiry, stamped with the crest of the Cecil domain.

This standardized label struck many as exceedingly novel, and the "shelf life" notation on it was fresher still. Traditional alchemical potions seldom troubled themselves with such matters as "expiring." Alchemical brews were compounded by hand by superhuman professionals, their output severely limited and forever falling short of demand. Their users were usually nobles great and small, or superhumans bound for the battlefield. The former naturally had their own trusted retainers or magical advisors to manage the potions in their vaults, so the question of expiry never crossed their minds; the latter rarely kept a potion in hand long enough for it to go bad. Thus the traditional alchemist, having brewed a potion, would at most paste a name on the bottle—and as for the expiry date... that he left for the "user" to worry about.

But factory-made products could certainly not be handled that way. From the very start, Gao Yang had to instill in the people of the domain a mindset of standardization.

Everything was still in its infancy, so the contents of these labels were naturally quite crude. Even so, the uniform labeling and the pleasingly tidy packaging of the mass-produced potions left a deep impression on those present. Rebecca stared wide-eyed at the potions laid out in neat rows on the table and could not help scratching at her hair. "So strange... just seeing all these bottles lined up together gives me this inexplicable feeling of happiness..."

"That's called your obsessive-compulsive disorder being satisfied," Amber, standing to one side, explained with the air of one who knew it all, then promptly pointed at Gao Yang. "And I'm not saying you're sick—those are your own ancestor's words."

"This is the first time I've seen precious alchemical potions... piled up in such quantity," Hetty said with considerable feeling. "All of a sudden they seem worthless."

"In fact, compared with ordinary alchemical potions, they really are 'worthless' now, my lady," Pi Yun said, standing by the table with a face full of pride. "The greatest cost of an alchemical potion used to be the caster, but now the reaction vats and their accompanying magical apparatus have taken the caster's place. And the volume of potion this great machine can produce in a single run is nothing a few flasks and test tubes on a little alchemy bench could ever match. In fact, the most valuable part of the potions before you is not the liquid inside at all, but something you would never guess."

"The most valuable part?" Rebecca blinked. "If the potion itself isn't worth much, then what is?"

"The bottle," Pi Yun spread his hands. "These crystal vials cost more to make than the liquid inside them. If a potion sells for thirty copper coins, then at least fifteen of those coins are really paying for the bottle."

Amber was startled. "Bottles are that expensive?!"

"The bottles haven't gotten more expensive—it's just that the production cost of the potions is so low," Rebecca said, already catching on. She looked thoughtfully at Gao Yang. "Ancestor, I recall you mentioned before that a kind of artificial crystal called 'glass' would be cheaper than any artificial crystal we have now..."

Gao Yang gave an awkward little cough. "Ahem—glass... never mind that for now. I haven't found a substitute raw material for it yet."

They say a transmigrator's three great treasures are papermaking, glass, and black powder—but Gao Yang had gotten his hands on none of the three. This world already had papermaking; though there was room for improvement, it was already a mature technology, and it was not his turn to "invent" it all over again. Black powder had been a project that failed in the early days of building the domain. And as for glass...

This world possessed a special technology called "artificial crystal." By Gao Song's judgment, the commonest grade of artificial crystal, "white crystal," was in fact the "glass" realizable in this world. The chief materials of this artificial crystal were quartz sand and colorless crystal rock—and those two things... were both magical materials.

Quartz sand was manageable enough; it counted as the cheapest of magical materials. But colorless crystal rock... though it could hardly be called expensive, it was definitely more precious than sand. Until a substitute was found, crystal rock would remain the single largest cost in the making of artificial crystal.

"It's actually not so bad. The smaller the artificial crystal vessel, the easier it is to make, and the vials used for alchemical potions are the cheapest crystal bottles around—they already count as very cheap," Pi Yun explained. "Our alchemical potions already enjoy an unimaginable advantage in cost. A somewhat pricier bottle... hardly matters."

Hetty nodded. "That makes sense. But I do have one concern: these alchemical potions made in metal vats and magic arrays... will their effects really be as good as potions brewed by hand by druids, alchemists, or mages?"

"On that point you need have no worry at all," Pi Yun said, breaking into a proud smile at the question. "In fact, in my view, the potions produced in the alchemy factory are far more reliable than those made on an alchemy bench. These reaction vats and magic arrays are precisely calibrated; so long as the initial settings are sound, the raw materials are sound, and the reaction vessels themselves suffer no malfunction, then whether they produce one bottle or ten thousand, every single bottle is guaranteed to be identical. Traditional alchemists, by contrast, differ in skill—and even the most skillful among them have their failures. Much of what is called the toxicity and side effects of alchemical potions comes from precisely this. I don't deny that a brilliant alchemist, under suitable conditions, may brew a potion better than anything from the factory—but you can imagine, for every good potion they brew, how many defective ones flow out of their colleagues' workshops? And in that same time, how many up-to-standard potions can our factory produce?"