CHAPTER 165: CHAPTER 111: EAST FACTORY DIRECTOR AND RESOURCES

After sending off "Ship Number One," Harano returned to his office, dug out the "project progress report" submitted by "Wanjin Magistrate" Endo Chiyoda for a quick look, pondered for a moment, then scribbled a note and stamped it, sending a little Maid to deliver it to her, asking her to put "Saltpeter Workshop" into the construction queue, so that in case the exploration succeeded at once, they wouldn’t be stuck with a pile of guano and nowhere to deal with it.

The saltpeter task could only be put on hold here for now; without waiting for "Ship Number One" to return, there was no way to proceed. He flipped through some other reports to confirm that everything in Wanjin was operating normally for the moment.

Yeah, Endo Chiyoda is really capable, no wonder she left behind so many legendary tales as the "SSR Virtuous Wife"—she’s performing even better than he expected. Lately, the work in Wanjin has been running smoothly, most trivial matters are filtered by her and never even bother him, saving him a ton of time.

Of course, this is also thanks to the fact that he had already mapped out every detail and drawn up all the rules and regulations ahead of time, and also because there are only a little over three hundred people in Wanjin right now. Strictly speaking, it’s not really a difficult task, but she still deserves a "well done"—her identity as a Warrior’s Daughter helps a lot. Whether it’s the Yoriki Warrior, Civil Servant Warrior, or the veteran Lang Faction, most of them would show her some respect and not act rude in her presence. Plus, her EQ is high, always greeting people with a smile—she’s got the makings of a great chief steward.

Since she’s doing so well, Harano had no desire to micromanage, nor any urge to randomly bark out petty orders like "move woodpile Number Three in the workshop zone five centimeters to the left." He just let her keep doing her thing, and instead sent a newly hired, still a bit clueless little Maid to fetch Ah Man.

Ah Man soon came trotting in, and before she could even sit, Harano asked, "How’s the assignment I gave you going?"

After tracking down the captain of the guano-digging ship, Ah Man didn’t rest either—she was tasked with founding the "Wanjin East Depot." She’s the very first East Factory Director under Harano, and she even has a natural advantage—she doesn’t even have, no need to suffer that particular cut (you know the one).

"Wanjin Factory Director" Ah Man is now a regional big shot, full of airs. She picked up Harano’s teacup, took two sips, then said, "There are six people now. According to your instructions, every... department? Is that the right word? Anyway, every department now has at least one member. I’ll add more as I see fit in the future."

As she spoke, she pulled from her sleeve a piece of paper so scrunched it looked ready to be toilet paper and handed it to him, "Here’s the list."

These people are Ah Man’s own trainees, part of internal surveillance. Wanjin only has three hundred people right now; of course things are harmonious and everyone is loyal and diligent—otherwise, Harano could show up in five minutes to kick their butts himself. Right now, refusing to be loyal isn’t really an option. But once the numbers grow, things won’t be so simple. There’s no organization in the world without some kind of rot, so there must be internal oversight and a way to correct mistakes quickly.

At present, about half of Ah Man’s "Factory Director" job is just this: preparing to let Harano, even as he reads reports, still keep a handle on the entire territory. Plus, this isn’t some kind of police-state style politics—her title of "Factory Director" is half a joke. She only has investigative authority, can find problems, but doesn’t have the power to arrest or torture anybody.

As for a department to handle actual internal corrections, anti-corruption, or counter-espionage, that doesn’t exist yet. After all, the operation has only just started, business is booming, and no one’s screwed up in any major way. If something serious does pop up, he can handle it himself, so there’s no rush for this department.

Long story short, everything’s just getting started, and the organizational structure is being filled out bit by bit.

Harano glanced at the list and noticed it was written in "Life-saving Style" code. He didn’t bother trying to decipher it now, but turned to Ah Man and asked, "What about external agents?"

"There are six or seven people for that, too, but they’re all dumb dung balls, pretty much useless for now." Ah Man produced another piece of bum paper and handed it over. "Aside from two that I squeezed into your shop in Nagano Castle, the rest can only pose as traveling merchants around. For now, there’s no way to sneak into the Oda Family or Lin Family just yet."

Harano took the list, didn’t scrutinize it, and filed it away along with the prior one, commenting, "No hurry, we’ve still got time. But don’t slack off either; keep recruiting as hard as you can. By this time next year, at minimum, we need to be able to prevent a surprise attack—whatever happens, we must have time to react."

"Sigh, I’ll do my best. Too many idiots, and smart ones are hard to find—even more so ones that can be controlled." Ah Man sighed. Lately she’s been picking and training people and finds them dumber than Ah Qing, scratching her head every day. She’s preemptively setting expectations low so Harano won’t lay the blame on her later.

"Just do your best!"

Harano dismissed her with one more sentence—after all, intelligence work is a slow game, and sometimes depends on luck. Pushing harder won’t get better results.

He switched gears and asked concernedly, "How are things outside these days? Anything unusual going on?"

"Nope, if there was I’d have told you already!" Ah Man shook her head, then gave a general summary, "Oda Nobunaga is still pushing the powerful clans to build roads and working on that what’s-it-called Rakuichi system of his. Nothing else. The powerful clans just lost a battle and had people killed all over the place—so they’ve been very well-behaved lately. The Imagawa family and Matsudaira family are quiet, too—front lines are calm, not even minor skirmishes. So nothing at all is happening."

Harano nodded lightly. Peace and quiet—that’s good. He’d rather everyone keep chill for the rest of the year. Still, he was quite interested in Oda Nobunaga’s regime—he’s the biggest boss in Owari, and a bit of a wild card, genuinely a little neurotic. So he followed up: "How’s the Rakuichi system working out?"

Ah Man thought for a moment, not entirely sure, and said, "Seems all right? The Castle Town below Nagano Castle does feel livelier than before, a good number of people have moved in for real, and there are more traveling merchants than before. So I guess his Rakuichi thing actually works—he’s not... just messing around."

Already seeing results in just over two months?

Looks like those Japanese monks in the past pressed down independent artisans and small merchants way too hard. Given even a sliver of hope for freedom, these people will eagerly take it—even tolerate "that Oda big fool’s" infamy and all the uncertainty of the future.

The outlook is pretty good. The richer Oda Nobunaga gets, the stronger he becomes, and the stronger, the richer—a positive cycle is clearly forming.

For Harano, though, this isn’t necessarily great news. Oda Nobunaga’s strength is ballooning fast, which puts pressure on him; at the same time, he can’t help but feel a little envious. He’d also like a big city—just issue a decree and a crowd of laborers would flood in, ready for some Rakuichi-era free market action. But the other guy has a legacy handed down from ancestors, while Harano has none—he can only sigh from afar.

He envied the third-generation rich kid’s wonderful life for a moment. Since there was nothing else pressing, he was about to send Ah Man off, but she was in no rush to leave and asked him carefully, "When are you planning to recruit more Lang Faction? We’re not so short of money now—I feel like it’s just about time, right?"

After almost dying at Takeshige Manor, Ah Man’s a bit traumatized, and now that Harano has rebuilt his base and good days seem just around the corner, she’s very concerned about security—a disaster would ruin her newfound happiness—so she’s quick to remind him. But Harano had already planned ahead and shook his head right away: "I’m not recruiting Lang Faction anymore."

"Not recruiting Lang Faction?" Ah Man was taken aback. "What if something happens again?"

"Just not the Lang Faction—the army is still on." Harano had no reason to hide his plans from her—she’d bled for this, after all—so he laid it all out: "In a while, I’m planning to select people directly from the workshop to form a military. These folks have already worked in the factories for a while, so they’ll have some basic obedience and discipline. When the time comes, I’ll train them personally to make the kind of army I want."

Ah Man was stunned, even more shocked, and quickly said, "You can fight a war without Lang Faction? Is this actually going to work? Don’t do anything crazy—one mistake and we’ll all lose our heads!"

"I don’t know either—but I want to give it a shot." Harano didn’t pretend to know it all or claim his idea was guaranteed to work. The "general + housemen + hereditary soldiers" model is tried and true, but Great Ming has already shown it’s not all that effective—private armies can crop up easily. Right now, with so few people, he can handle everything personally and this kind of organization isn’t a problem—might even be more effective in the short term. But when the numbers get bigger and he can’t oversee everything himself, and there are more officers under him, he just feels like he’s bound to get stabbed in the back. So even if it’s a bit risky, he’d rather not set off down the wrong road from the get-go.

Still, for now it’s just a rough idea, not a foolproof plan; he didn’t want to hide anything from Ah Man but still wasn’t able to spell it out clearly, so for now he could only say he’d try.

Ah Man scratched her face, her little bean eyebrows twitching, thinking his idea sounded unreliable. Wars have been fought like that for hundreds of years—how could anyone just up and change it? But since there aren’t any external threats for now, letting Harano experiment seemed fine enough for the time being.

She planned to wait until Harano failed before chiming in with her sage advice, dropping a "as long as you know what you’re doing" before patting her butt and striding off—back to her job as "East Factory Director," ready to go back to kicking her future intel staff in the backside and cussing at them for being a bunch of dumbasses.

With her gone, Harano wasn’t in a rush to dwell on army matters anyway. Those once carefree farmers hadn’t been retrained by rigid workshop routines yet, still lacked discipline, and there weren’t enough of them anyway. No need to hurry about soldier selection—he’d wait a while. For now, he cared more about his resource reserves.

He pulled out a sheet of paper and drew a diagram, pondering over his resources like he was playing a strategy game.

Population: Only just over three hundred—severely lacking in workforce. But there isn’t much to be done for now—the islanders can’t be tricked into coming in so easily, and he can’t go out raiding for people at the moment, so he can only keep quietly buying wherever he can;

Money: The workshop is running smoothly and raw material supply is steady. The soy sauce and dye workshops are bringing in over 1,200 kan per month, and being right next to Atsuta Port with a high-quality advantage means he never has to worry about sales—the market isn’t even fully satisfied yet, so he can expand production further. Finances are fine for the short term;

Food: Food’s not in short supply either—just three-hundred-some mouths to feed, a little buying here and there covers everyone;

Wood: Wood and all its derivatives, like charcoal, aren’t a problem. Japan at this stage still has lots of land and few people—natural resources are extremely rich, the hills are full of mature trees, and as long as you don’t go chopping in someone else’s territory, you can cut as much as you want. Compared to being stuck in Takeshige Manor, it’s a different story entirely;

Sulfur: Japanese sulfur is dirt cheap, buying it is even better than mining it yourself—so this isn’t a problem either;

Saltpeter: Already on the way to being dug up;

Leather: Also not an issue; there are loads of wild animals right now—herds of deer are common—so leather resources are abundant. Once the saltpeter is ready, a leather nitration workshop can be set up as well;

...

After listing things out, Harano finally drew a big circle around "steel." With the saltpeter problem tentatively solved, steel was now becoming the biggest shortage. Money spent monthly on iron tools was already close to 40% of income, and he knew he’d need even more iron armor and iron cannons in the future—these are real iron-guzzlers. Relying solely on buying would be impossible—even if he had lots of cash to burn, the economic pressure would be too much.

Besides, the munitions business is insanely profitable, and carries unmatched influence—it boosts your bargaining power massively, so he absolutely had to get involved, and that meant securing a stable supply of raw materials.

But in this cursed era, in this cursed place, just how the hell was he supposed to get enough iron?