This era was no place for extreme individualists.

In a society fundamentally rooted in agriculture, concepts like privacy and personal time were virtually nonexistent. Even in a bustling port city, the prevailing ethos was a suffocating “Aren’t we all family here?” as people banded together for survival. It was a paradise for extroverts, those social butterflies who hungered for constant human connection.

But Jin Cheon-hee’s master? He was a quintessential outsider born into the wrong century. To make matters worse, his profession was that of a physician, a job where stress was as natural as breathing. Jin Cheon-hee strongly suspected that the White Qilin Medical Pavilion was perched high in the mountains not merely for the hot springs, but as a deliberate architectural scream: Unless you are dying or employed here, stay away.

Sama Hye, on the other hand, was the definitive ‘Insider’ (a know-it-all and adapted to her surroundings).

“Benefactor, new laborers have arrived!”

Her skin seemed to glow with more vitality each day. Although the workload was heavy, she appeared to be the type who drew energy from the friction of human interaction.

Jin Cheon-hee, however, was struggling.

If he had to label himself, his innate nature leaned heavily toward the solitary. Years of corporate life in his previous existence had forcibly remodeled him into a functional socialite, but the energy efficiency was terrible. No matter how simple the task, once the clock struck seven in the evening, a strange exhaustion would wash over him, leaving him unwilling to lift a finger. Conversely, even arduous labor felt manageable if he could do it alone.

For someone like him, staying out until late at night for company dinners had been torture. It felt like the sensation a marathon runner experiences in extreme conditions—something rising from the depths of the soul. A sensation akin to nirvana, born when a human has squeezed out every last drop of ATP. That was usually when he would overcompensate, slip up, and cause an accident.

When he finally returned home, he would wring out nonexistent energy to undress with trembling hands, collapse onto the bed, and stare blankly into the void. It wasn’t depression. It was just being fatally exhausted, a battery drained beyond zero.

In his past life, faced with an all-nighter for a thesis or a conference, he would crunch on an energy bar, hug his succulent plant for comfort, and receive a mental quest notification: Recharge energy by 30% within 1 hour.

To complete such a quest, he would play his favorite music, brew coffee, pet the head of a plush alpaca doll, or polish robot figures that children these days wouldn’t even recognize. He had to desperately recharge just to survive. Living like that until forty naturally produced a human being like Jin Cheon-hee.

And then, there was Sama Hye.

“Benefactor, regarding the new artisans, I think I can recommend about two of them. I looked into it, and they seem reliable.”

Feeding off the neighborhood reputation, Sama Hye was absorbing ambient energy even now. Cheon-hee envied her. Moreover, her human intelligence network in Hangzhou was remarkably accurate, often more detailed than the information from the Beggars’ Sect or the Hao Sect.

It was astonishing. He finally understood why his master had placed the pavilion deep in the mountains.

“Especially Seok-gyeong. He needs money because his son broke the leg of a neighbor’s cow.”

“A cow’s leg?”

“Yes. He was dating Chun-wol but they broke up. He was crying while drinking and fell over just as the cow was walking by.”

The entire neighborhood shares this information?

“And his daughter was recently spotted drawing water with a local man. About seven or eight times. That sounds like a romance blooming, so a wedding might be in the cards. He’ll need even more money, so he’ll work hard.”

She even knew the specific numbers.

Spending his days stuck in the White Qilin Medical Pavilion, occasionally wandering like a barefoot doctor to treat patients, Jin Cheon-hee had never felt such a stiflingly genuine sense of community. In Korea, perhaps only rural villages retained this atmosphere now.

While Sama Hye recharged, Jin Cheon-hee felt his battery draining rapidly. With a trembling hand, he wrote down the name Seok-gyeong. After listening to her Hangzhou HUMINT report, he retreated into the workshop.

Inside the sweltering heat of the kiln room, Sama Hyeon was grinning from ear to ear.

“Oho, Hyung! The workshop is running smoothly.”

“That’s a relief.”

“The people of Hangzhou are enthusiastic about making big money, and jobs have increased. Isn’t this exactly what they mean by ‘good for the sister, good for the brother-in-law’?”

Sama Hyeon radiated contentment. Was this guy an introvert or an extrovert? From what Cheon-hee had observed, he played well alone and played well with others. Come to think of it, Cheon-hee had rarely seen him exhausted.

“Come here and check the ledger for me, Hyung.”

Sama Hyeon called Jin Cheon-hee into the workshop office. Inside, various abacuses were slotted into racks and order forms were piled up like mountains.

“Cutting to the chase, in just two months of operation, I think we’ve brought in over one hundred thousand taels of gold.”

Jin Cheon-hee’s eyes widened. It was far more than he had expected. Sama Hyeon looked fresher than usual; the man seemed to gain vitality simply from the act of accumulating wealth. That was a good trait for a business partner.

“That’s more than I thought.”

“For the ultra-luxury full-body mirrors, we can charge more than two hundred times the cost price.”

“Ah.”

Only then did he remember. The “ultra-luxury” items were full-body mirrors crafted by the best artisans with the finest decorations. Each one was practically a work of art; the mirrors presented to the Emperor and Wangya Ju fell into this category.

The psychology of the rich was fascinating. The mere fact that these were mirrors crafted by artisans who supplied the Emperor stimulated an immense desire to consume.

“We’re screening customers, but the backlog is at least a year long. We don’t even accept reservations without a deposit.”

Sama Hyeon repeated the word deposit a few times before sighing happily. “It’s such a beautiful word. Hyung. People throw lump sums of money at us before they even receive the product. There are so many rich people in the Central Plains.”

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

What was the point of saying it? The wealth accumulated by the scholar-officials and the great clans of the Gangho over dozens of generations wasn’t going anywhere. Emperors changed, nations fell, wars swept through. Even if the Demonic Cult rose up, the wealthy always remained in their places.

“Is an ultra-luxury item three thousand taels of gold?”

“Yep. Just ten orders make thirty thousand taels. If we take dozens, it easily surpasses a hundred thousand.”

In addition to this, there were two more product lines: luxury and standard. The problem was that the production volume of standard goods was actually lower than the luxury ones.

This is a secret, though.

Thus, standard goods were being distributed exclusively to customers who purchased multiple luxury or ultra-luxury items. Sama Hyeon was pulling a luxury watch sales tactic naturally. Jin Cheon-hee hadn’t even taught him that, yet his business acumen was spinning at extraordinary speeds.

“The difference between ultra-luxury and luxury lies in the materials and the difficulty of the craftsmanship, right?”

“Yeah. The mirror quality is the same. But ultra-luxury includes jade, amethyst, ivory, gold, and the like.”

“Hand mirrors, face mirrors. We aren’t taking reservations for those.”

“Right. We sell them as soon as they’re made, but we prioritize allocating them to our VIP clients who buy ultra-luxury items.”

Hyeon-ah… You would be a wildly successful businessman if you came to Earth.

Sama Hyeon continued. “So, I was hoping you could take a look at this, Hyung.”

“Hmm?”

What Sama Hyeon produced was a thin booklet. Unlike ordinary books, every page contained illustrations depicting various mirrors. It was a woodblock-printed catalog. Red, yellow, blue—it used a sophisticated method of layering prints with different inked blocks.

“Wow… This is luxurious.”

“Isn’t it? I’m thinking of sending this out twice a year, for summer and winter.”

“Introducing new products?”

“Something like that. Honestly, if they buy a mirror now and use it for ten or twenty years, I won’t make any money, right? Hyung?”

“…Th… That’s true?”

Jin Cheon-hee suddenly recalled the vacuum cleaner back on Earth that had been with him for twenty years. A senior colleague had once visited, cursed at it saying it probably housed a goblin by now, and begged him to replace it.

“So, we keep introducing new forms of mirrors through illustrations. For example, if we created a bright atmosphere with orchids last year, this year we release mirrors with a heavy, dignified atmosphere using pine trees.”

“Then the orchid ones will… uh… feel out of fashion.”

“Exactly. So they’ll want the pine tree ones. Of course, in the current situation, they’ll be reserving items to receive next year, but… that’s the plan for now.”

“…Uh… I see.”

No matter how he looked at it, this guy picked the wrong world to be born in.

Staring at Sama Hyeon’s sample booklet for a while, Cheon-hee found it quite enticing.

“Is there anything to add here?”

“Hmm…”

Ideally, keeping this booklet in their hands for a long time would be good for sales.

“Crossword puz… z… No, a crossword game would be good.”

Saying that, Cheon-hee roughly sketched and explained how a crossword puzzle worked.

“It would be better to use easy Hanja. Within the Thousand Character Classic if possible.”

“It’s like a riddle. They’ll feel proud when they finish it.”

“Right. And a maze game would be good too.”

He drew a rough outline of a maze.

“Black and white is enough for both, so it won’t cost much.”

“If we do this, they’ll hold onto it for a long time, won’t they?”

“Exactly. And the answers… it would be good to put them in the next issue.”

Revealing the answers half a year later? Wow. In modern times, people would refresh the page in three seconds and forget about it, but this wasn’t the digital generation, nor was there an abundance of entertainment. This was an era where people would replay Blue Jade and Red Jade over a hundred times without getting bored, constantly searching for new challenges.

“We’ll need a technician.”

“Yeah. And it would be better to write the explanatory text in the booklet as simply as possible.”

“Don’t the scholar-officials prefer difficult texts?”

“True, but we’re sending this to Gangho warriors too, right? Instead, maybe include a few fancy-sounding poetic verses to make it look sophisticated.”

The goal wasn’t to impart knowledge like the Analects or the Book of Documents. It just had to be fun. Humans naturally desire things that look flashy and entertaining.

Sama Hyeon wrote down every suggestion his hyung made without missing a beat. “We’re going to make some serious money.”

“Thanks to you, I’ve earned quite a bit too. A fair amount of profit is coming in from the Gongsun Merchant Guild as well.”

“It worked out well since the Gongsun Guild sells to the outer regions too.”

In the end, Sama Hyeon had insisted that completely free service wasn’t viable and decided to leave a margin of profit for everyone. Given the situation, he told them to send it slowly later if times were tough, but the amounts had become so large that the sentiment was now meaningless.

It was a good thing.

Sama Hyeon spoke up, his tone shifting. “By the way, the number of spies has increased.”

“Trying to steal information?”

“At first, I thought it was just that, but it looked like they were checking the workers’ schedules.”

At those words, Jin Cheon-hee’s expression chilled.

“…Is an attack coming?”

Sama Hyeon smirked.

“What comes, must come.”

Crunch.

His younger brother cracked his knuckles. Whenever thoughts of bloodshed crossed his mind, he would always smile mischievously like that.