Bringing Light to the Capital

It seemed that over a month, the entire capital was changed. People could study and work in rooms and offices at night with table lights. People could flip a switch and illuminate the entire rooms at night or as needed. Those going out or hunting could bring torchlights to light their way.

Those wanted to decorate and make festive their gardens or houses used string lights or light ornaments. Dressing tables suddenly showed every pore and pimple. Miners and plumbers were able to do their jobs better. Shops had neon signs at the front and if they had money, lining up the inside of their shops and illuminating their wares as well.

Previously Luna Marche made 500 000 taels a month. Harvest Moon alone made 300 000 taels a month. It seemed all-year crops were in high demand. Solitaire made 8 000 000 taels from just the capital in one month, not counting pre-orders, or bulk orders from companies or the military. After the first half a year, I planned to have Solitaire travel around Yuan An to illuminate everything. I had so much money for the first time, more than I knew what to do with.

I worked on building more work buildings for the company. Now rather than office buildings, the main source of revenue (and where the overwhelming demand was) was from agriculture and electronics. More heartland workspaces were needed to accommodate the growing number of blue-collar workers employed. I could also no longer hire only females since making electronics was a very laborious activity and most women didn't have the background needed to learn it.

Just finding enough females for the first batch of lightbulbs was a near impossible feat. I also planned to expand the electronics range eventually once I figured out how to get a proper electric charge. Maybe home aquariums, long-distance explosives, tasers and other things.

Since Solitaire and Harvest Moon were subsidiary companies, I decided it would be fine to hire men (though they also needed to pass a rigorous character check) though they would work in far away male-only buildings. Many dormitories were also completed since I was at the border. I really put in all my capital and savings into this lightbulb investment. I think I had a total of probably 20 dormitories now and I opened 10 more for men only.

There were lots of youths who fell into bad circumstances and lived on the street or who came from poor families that couldn't afford to send them to school or to learn engineering, a valuable trade. Moreover, Solitaire was at the forefront of Yuan An's new electronics revolution and could treat them well. I told Fei Yan to specifically look for these people.

Due to the sudden boom in business and employees, I promoted many employees to fill up the middle ranks of the company. However, to the best of my knowledge I tried to stick to a proper company structure, titles, compensation policy and healthy culture. These stupid ancient companies that just focused on politics and connections and not proper welfare of the workers and a modern, robust structure was what made corruption rampant.

Since I had managed to commission some buildings while I was at the border, there were some work buildings that were about to open in the next 1-2 months. Temporarily, I arranged for basic training to be done at the dormitories (it was easy to find employees and convince them to come to the capital telling them they would get free meals, housing, and high wages) before the buildings opened. My reliable 4 managers were promoted to C-suite management positions. I also got Yu Hui to travel (with bodyguards) to the next few large cities to buy over some land and commission more buildings to be built since I was planning to expand all over Yuan An.

Solitaire currently could barely keep up with demand. The imperial palace had personally commissioned us to outfit the entire, huge palace consisting of hundreds of palaces and pavilions, halls, and event venues. The palace was the face of the empire.

When visitors from foreign countries arrived, they had to be amazed by the splendor, good taste and technology of the Huaxia people. Dealing with the palace was also an arduous task, consisting of stepping around toes and maintaining proper decorum. Especially since my C-suite consisted of ex prostitutes and servants, who the palace eunuchs didn't traditionally like to deal with. I had to step in a lot of the time or be physically present in the meetings to intimidate the palace staff.

According to our calculations, we certainly couldn't even begin on the orders from the noble households until we were done with the palace due to the sudden shock order. The new work buildings and completed training would come in time and we could hopefully start on the more important households in 1-2 months when everything was ready.

When the light bulb first came out, I immediately patented everything. Patented electronics, electricity, the light bulb, Solitaire, Harvest Moon, my year-round fruits, my tropical fruits, the new technology I wanted for my greenhouse and more.

Then, toting the agreement I made Lu Qing Yu signed, the palace immediately commissioned Solitaire as its official contractor for electric fittings. The palace would give us an astronomical sum for outfitting the whole palace with lights, especially since each palace was huge, and everything had to be custom-made. Even if they could use the ready-made lights, the palace had to be unlike any other household. Everything had to be customised.

Meanwhile, while Solitaire didn't personally make the explosives (the military deemed it "confidential" for national interest plus it was simple enough to make on its own with just occasional inputs from me), I was allowed a military patent and had to be paid a certain sum (still very high, considering our weapons budget and how explosives earned the last war near 0 casualties) per unit Solitaire Cocktail and Solitaire Landmine they made.

The military also was a very big customer in terms of lights. They wanted every base to be outfitted and the soldiers with torchlights, and there were a lot of bases and probably millions of soldiers, even the navy. Torchlights had to be altered to be military grade and lights had to be custom made.

They would provide the layout of the light structures they wanted but we were not allowed (reasonably) to go to the bases to install the lights due to confidentiality. Instead, the military sent dozens and dozens of engineers and soldiers to Solitaire to learn how to install the lights so that they could go back and do it themselves.

I estimated that at minimum, the cost of outfitting all the hundreds of palaces with lights should be at least 250 million taels, and the cost of all the extra venues in the palace should be at least 8 million taels. Meanwhile, Solitaire would earn the presumed market price of the explosives deducting the material and labour cost and a military discount, earning at least 100 million every year. Whereas for outfitting the military with lights, base outfitting would be at least 500 million taels and equipment (including safety helmets) would be about 300 million taels.

Dealing with the military was always very tricky and shrouded in secrecy. All the Solitaire employees knew we were doing business with the military, but they had no idea what. Even making the lights and torchlights had to be done segment by segment so no 1 individual would know the whole process and I was somewhat doubtful they had any idea what they were making. For them, what they knew was I went to war in the North West, came back with an honorary military rank and award, invented something else again and pegged it to the Solitaire name.

Yes, I got military honours. I believed my ceremony was to be held in a week. Despite being very busy, due to delegation of (most work), I only really had to be present for networking sessions with important suppliers, the palace people or military people or with people (big companies or noble houses) who wanted to sign a contract with Luna Marche.

It was mostly people sucking up to me, and me getting to eat lots of good food (I even had to let Qiu Ci and Qiu Le be my personal assistants and pay them proper wages and benefits when they accompanied me out for work, since they were reliable and trustworthy and were there when I founded Luna Marche)