The immortal of the Tang Dynasty, but the game starts at Xuanwu Gate?

Early July, the height of summer.

Wen Hui's family has moved to a place not far from Chen Huai'an's house and is living a quiet life.

In addition, a major event recently occurred in the court: the corruption of Pei Ji, the Duke of Wei, was exposed, which aroused the anger of the officials. They submitted several joint memorials, hoping that Li Shimin would execute the Duke of Wei.

However, Li Shimin was still hesitant.

Of course, he wasn't really hesitating; he was just putting on a show of attitude as Chen Huai'an suggested.

Wouldn't dragging it out for a while prove that he withstood the pressure from the court officials and didn't want to kill Pei Ji?

Moreover, he also needed to busy himself with taking stock of the various sums of money Pei Ji had embezzled, and secretly investigating the evidence against the corrupt officials on the list provided by He Ming.

Chen Huai'an didn't pay much attention to this. Every day, he did what he always did: telling Li Chengqian and the others stories in the morning and keeping an eye on the situation at Meiren Pass in the afternoon.

That morning, before Chen Huai'an even left the house, the three young brothers, Cheng Chumo, came to his door excitedly.

"Sir, you said you'd tally up the previous month's earnings at the beginning of each month. Now it's July, shouldn't we check how much we earned in June?"

Chen Huai'an nodded hesitantly, then reached out and touched Cheng Chumo's bruised eye socket: "Chumo, what happened to you? Did you get beaten up again?"

Cheng Chumo winced in pain when his wound was touched, but he didn't care and waved his hand dismissively, "Oh, sir, don't worry about it."

"My husband, Lao Cheng, heard that it's time for us to split the money, and he's trying to take my money again. I worked so hard to earn it, and he wants to take it for free. How can I agree to that?"

So I taught him a lesson.

"But I didn't expect this old bastard to be so uncivilized. He took advantage of my carelessness after I finished teaching him a lesson and punched me."

"It's alright."

Chen Huai'an: "..."

If the first emperor had used your words to build the city walls, he wouldn't have been brought down by Meng Jiangnu's tears.

That's fucking hard.

"Sir, let's leave him be and go quickly," Li Zhen urged.

These past few days, the three of them have been counting how much money they've earned on their fingers, having been waiting for this day for a long time.

"Alright, let's go." Chen Huai'an chuckled and led the three excited little ones to the brewing workshop.

Shen He was already waiting in front of the workshop warehouse, and had prepared all the account books.

The group entered the warehouse. Cheng Chumo and the other two stared at the mountain of copper coins, their eyes gleaming and their mouths watering.

Although they had seen far more shocking scenes, and the money in front of them was nothing compared to what lay beneath the ancient forest courtyard, none of that money belonged to them, while they each owned a portion of this money.

No matter how good someone else's money is, it's never as good as your own.

"Sir, according to the accounting method you provided, I have calculated that after deducting expenses such as purchasing cloudy wine and wine jars, and paying workers' wages for the ten days of official business last month, the total profit was 14,026 guan and 73 wen."

"Ten thousand?" Tang Heshang swallowed hard, counting on his fingers. "We get ten percent of the profits. Last month we earned over fourteen thousand strings of cash, so what I get is..."

"More than 1,400 strings of cash?!" the three little ones exclaimed in unison, their faces lighting up with excitement, practically snot bubbles of joy.

More than a thousand strings of cash! When did they ever have so much money?

How many crickets could we buy? How many candied hawthorns could we eat? And when we grow up, how much wine could we drink with them?

But Chen Huai'an frowned: "Too little."

Before Shen He could speak, Li Zhen exclaimed in astonishment, "Sir, is this still not enough?"

"Last month we only sold for ten days and made a profit of more than 10,000 guan. If we sold normally for a month, we would probably make 30,000 or even 40,000 guan. In a year, we would make at least 300,000 guan, if not 500,000 guan."

"Where is it missing?"

Cheng Chumo nodded in agreement: "That's right, that's right. My old Cheng's entire salary, labor tax, official land, and so on, add up to just over two hundred strings of cash a month."

"Ten thousand strings of cash in ten days is still not enough?"

"That's because you don't understand how profitable monopolies really are!" Chen Huai'an said irritably.

"Although we don't have a complete monopoly on the liquor business in the entire Tang Dynasty yet, we definitely have a monopoly on Chang'an and the surrounding areas."

"The emergence of Beauty Pass is a complete game-changer for other alcoholic beverages; they're making way too little profit."

The three teenagers were speechless. They didn't understand what "dimensional reduction attack" meant, but they knew that Chen Huai'an was very dissatisfied with the gains.

Shen He explained from the side, "Sir, we don't have to worry about selling our wine at all, it's just that... our production is really too small."

At this point, Shen He said with some helplessness, "Many merchants come to buy wine, but we simply can't produce enough. Even though we keep increasing production, it's still not enough."

"Moreover... as we purchased large quantities of cloudy wine, the merchants who sold it raised their prices on the spot, increasing the price from the initial fifteen coins to twenty-five coins..."

"Our Meiren Pass is made by refining a large amount of cloudy wine, which directly leads to a significant increase in our costs."

"For various reasons, we were able to make a profit of over 10,000 guan last month, which is already quite good."

Before Chen Huai'an could even speak, Li Zhen couldn't sit still any longer, rubbing his hands together and asking, "Who? That audacious bastard dares to raise prices with me?"

"They said it would be fifteen coins, but it's gone up to twenty-five coins?!"

"They really don't take us, the Three Heroes of Chang'an, seriously at all! Sister Shen, tell me, who is it? I'm going to find them!"

Cheng Chumo and Tang Heshang were equally indignant.

They get a share of the extra copper coin spent on buying the cloudy wine.

This means that the price increase is being paid for with their own money.

How could they possibly tolerate this?

Chen Huai'an's lips twitched slightly. After thinking for a moment, he said to the three of them, "Here's what we'll do. Let's use 50% of this 10,000-plus strings of cash to expand our brewing scale. Only by increasing production can we earn more money in the future."

"We not only want Chang'an and the surrounding markets, we want to sell Meirenguan to the whole of the Tang Dynasty, and even beyond."

"So, let's divide the remaining 50% today. Is that alright with you?"

Everyone shook their heads, offering no questioning of Chen Huai'an's decision.

"In that case, let's leave it at that for now." After saying that, Chen Huai'an turned to Li Zhen and asked the question he had been wanting to ask earlier: "What the hell are the Three Heroes of Chang'an?"

Mentioning this, Tang Heshang proudly raised his head: "Sir, you don't know this, do you? In this business, how can you not have a resounding reputation?"

"So we gave ourselves a resounding name: The Three Heroes of Chang'an. What do you think, sir? Not bad, right?"

Chen Huai'an: "..."

"...Alright, Third Sister, whatever makes you happy."

Tang Heshang became anxious: "Sir, how come you keep misunderstanding? We are the Three Heroes, not the Third Sister. Also, I want to emphasize again, my name is Heshang, not Monk."

"I understand, Third Sister. I'll be careful around the monk from now on."

Tang Heshang: "..."

"..."

P.S.: Sorry for the late update today, something came up.

I was wrong!