Chapter 41 – Tong's Ultimate Quest For Beer!
June 30th.
Every paddy rice fields were covered in green. Rice crops were wiggled by the winds. Within a few months, the harvest season would arrive.
Today, Tong sent a letter to the Yuan family. He had just mass produced another batch of 10,000 soap bars, so he asked his VIP customer if they wanted to buy more.
Tong expected a replied letter within a couple weeks. The communication of this era was slow but Tong got used to it.
Wen Chou was busy instructing Tong and Zhang Liang's troops. Tong selected a group of elites and formed a 200 men-team of light cavalry with Bo Cai as its captain.
Bo Cai was a talented general in the history, but he died immaturely. During the early period of the Yellow Turban Uprising, Bo Cai leaded his troops and defeated Zhu Jun and Huangfu Song Army.
Bo Cai was defeated later after Cao Cao and Sun Jian's reinforcement came to aid Huangfu Song and pincered Bo Cai Army. He was killed in the battle.
Tong wanted to see if this talented person could shine if he polished this person. He lacked talented generals right now.
Though Tong wanted to poach or search for more talents, but most of the top generals and ministers in the Three Kingdoms Era were either still a baby or already served the imperial forces.
As for Zhou Cang, He was still young and inexperienced at the moment, so Tong had him assisted Zhang Bao and Zhang Liang running the camp. He would shine later once he tasted the bloody battlefields.
There was also an infamous warlord among Tong's troops. His name was Zhang Yan. He didn't have any relationship with the Zhang family, he just had the same surname. But this person would be known as the Black Mountain Bandit King after the Yellow Turbans was destroyed.
Tong couldn't trust the person despite his great leadership skills. Tong was afraid that once he expanded his influence within Tong's army, he would poach his good soldiers that Tong spent so much time training.
Tong would not assign any important role to him for now, unless he was really short on hands.
The 2,000 soldiers of Zhang family improved day by day. Today, Tong decided to unload the imperial armor sets from the Yuan family in his inventory, and replaced the chest armors they were wearing.
After they all put on the full set of armors, the army looked exactly like the imperial troops from the capital. The soldiers were elated to be able to wear the proper armors and formed up in formation. They felt proud to be in the army.
Tong and Wen Chou taught them how to maintain the armor condition and cleaning processes. He didn't want them to get rusty before the war broke out.
At the same time, Tong had the two hundred light cavalry that was newly formed patrolling through the nearby villages to reassure their safety. Public order was important pre-war. He didn't want any riot to pop up out of nowhere.
…
July 14th.
The letter from Yuan family arrived. After Tong read the letter, he sulked.
The Yuan family wasn't ready to buy another batch of soap yet because the previous batch was still in stock. They couldn't resell all of it in short amount of time.
The Yuan family postponed that once they wanted to buy more, they would visit Tong themselves.
This meant that Tong's 10,000 bars of soap would sit in his warehouse for the time being, and he couldn't produce more because there was no more space in the warehouse.
A painful lesson for a greedy businessman for overstocking.
Tong felt down for the rest of the day. He wanted to drink any alcohol, whisky, brandy or wine like he used to in his previous life, but he was too young for that.
Then he had an inspiration.
The people in this age only knew a few types of wine and homemade alcohol. What if he created a brewery here? What if he created a new drink that this world hadn't tasted before, what about BEER!?
Tong drooled. How long had it been since he tasted the delicious cold beer.
Tong went into his room to meditate, trying to recall the recipe of the homemade beer.
Tong managed to recall a bit of his old memories about the recipe. But to his dismay, where could he find barley, hobs and yeast in this ancient China.
Tong went to consult with his father if he knew about the barley crops.
Zhang Jiao gave Tong a strange gaze, wondering what his son was up to this time. Then he told Tong that the village they were in grew wheat and the southern land grew rice. Some places also had potatoes or millet. He didn't know if they were what Tong was looking for.
Tong facepalmed himself. Without hops, there would be no beer. He didn't like the beer that was made without hops.
He could at least made yeast with potatoes, and sugar could also be bought in this era. But hops was a kind of herbs. It had to be raised or grew to be harvested.
But Tong didn't give up. If he couldn't make beers, then he would homebrew his whiskey!
Then Tong became despair once again. Whiskey had to be distilled and had more sophisticate processing to brew. He could not just create a 21st century distillery of out thin air. Then Tong noticed his status menu and the shop system.
Tong facepalmed himself again, which made Zhang Jiao wondering if his son had gone bonkers.
Tong had the PTW Shop cheat! Tong blamed himself for being stupid.
Tong searched for a keyword 'distillery' and 'beer' in the shop, and results appeared. The shop even freaking sold a complete automatic distillery factory with a whooping price of 10,000,000 lifespans.
Tong panted. His eyes became bloodshot. He had another goal in this life other than bickering with other reincarnators and overlords in this world. He wanted his beers and whiskey!
His noble cause would not be stopped with a meager price of a ten million lifespans!
…
…
…
But it didn't hurt to check for a cheaper distillery.
…
…
…
And he actually found it! A small magic homemade cooking stall that could brew beers for a 10,000 lifespans.
10/10 Plot Armor, will hax again, such logic, much wow.
For the first time in his life, Tong was impressed by the illogical system and its shop.
He hurried back to his warehouse, cleared some spaces and bought the homemade cooking stall with his last shopping pass. Then a cooking stall with a tall cooking pot and a ladle appeared.
Tong frowned. He checked the name of this item again. It said "White Desert Offline, Haxxor Cooking Utensil".
There was also a manual beside the cooking stall. It simply said;
"Put the ingredients into the pot as the following recipes in this manual, and stir the ladle in the pot for 10 seconds. Then the food or beverage you are trying to cook will magically appear out of thin air!"
Tong screamed in his heart.
'WTF is this logic? Will I get side dishes that can be exchanged into contribution EXP too?'
Then Tong searched for the beer recipe. It was just like that game, 5 potatoes, 6 glasses of water, 1 spoon of sugar and 2 spoons of yeasts.
…
Ten minutes later, Tong managed to gather all the ingredients. The yeasts was a tricky one because Tong had to make it using the cooking stall by throwing a potato into it. Then the yeasts indeed popped out of thin air.
Ten seconds after putting in all ingredient in the pot, a glass of beer appeared! Without hesitation, Tong grabbed it and drank it on the spot.
It was a cold beer! How did it become cold? Tong didn't care and wouldn't care.
Tong cried a manly tear. For over 450,000 years in hell, he missed this taste. He knew that he was in a boy body and he shouldn't drink it, but he couldn't help it.
After he had emptied the glass of beer, the glass disappeared. What a convenient way to dispose a garbage. What a nature friendly system.
Tong was satisfied and felt as if he was drunk even though he drank only one glass. His passive skill didn't activate this time because Tong knew that he might get drunk. Yet he voluntarily drank all of it.
That night, Tong barged into Hua Shi's room for the first time in his life and asked her to spend a night in her room.
Instead of being happy, Hua Shi retreated as if she saw a ghost. Then she smelled alcohol from Tong's mouth. She walked up to Tong and kissed him to taste it.
After licking his mouth, Hua Shi confirmed that Tong had drunk a beer.
A BEER!
A FREAKING BEER IN THIS ERA!!!
Hua Shi then inquired Tong where he got the beer, which he answered her without hiding anything.
She dashed into the warehouse and remained there for a few minutes. Then she came back with a smiling face. She also reeked of alcohol too.
Unlike the usual where Hua Shi would molest Tong once they were alone together, they chatted and laughed all night. They were drunk and gratified for the beer and the magic cooking stall.
Both of them fell asleep and woke up the next day without be able to recall what happened on that night.