Taihe Tower followed the classic layout of a “shop in front, workshop in back.” The front served as the main establishment selling wine, while the back housed the distillery workshop, with the cooling floors, wine cellars, and stoves all situated in the backyard.
Between the main establishment and the backyard were two gates, east and west. The east gate was larger, with the key kept firmly in Master Wang’s possession, never opened under ordinary circumstances.
The west gate was much smaller, wide enough only for a single handcart to pass through. The workers entered and exited through this gate for their daily tasks, hauling wine and transporting goods.
Whenever guests were received, they were usually led in through the west gate as well.
Yet strangely enough, two massive portraits of deities were pasted onto the west gate.
One was of Shen Tu and the other of Yu Lei, both rendered on yellow paper with red ink, capturing the stern expressions of the divine generals with vivid clarity.
This gate did not even face the outside, so why paste portraits of the door gods here?
Nan Zhi found it odd, but after glancing at them twice, she looked away.
Passing through a carved wooden door and turning through two covered corridors, she arrived at the core of the Wang Family Distillery—the place where the winemaking truly happened.
Work was currently in full swing. Flames in the kitchen stoves leaped three zhang high, tongues of crimson fire licking the bottoms of the massive cauldrons.
Workers chanted in unison as they worked barefoot, vigorously turning and stirring the freshly steamed grains.
On the wall hung a portrait of the Kitchen God, below which sat two red candles, a bowl of clear water, and two bowls of offering fruit.
The portrait had long been mottled by soot, its surface paint peeling away to reveal faint glimpses of the yellow clay layer beneath.
Along the wall, more than a dozen half-person-high vats were lined up in a single row. Workers crawled inside to scrub them clean, not missing a single corner.
On the open ground to the right, hundreds of freshly washed, glossy black wine vats sat with their mouths wide open, lazily sunning themselves.
Yet most striking of all was a dark, massive wine vat taller than a person, sitting squarely in the very center of the courtyard.
Inside the kitchen, hot steam surged upward along the walls accompanied by the shouts of the workers—standing too close felt as though it would scorch a layer of skin right off.
“Discharging the mash—discharging the mash—!”
“Discharging the mash!”
“Make way! Mash coming out!”
Bare-chested workers bellowed at the top of their lungs, shoveling with all their might. Handfuls of steaming grains flew out from the cauldrons, landing accurately in the open area to form small mounds.
At this point, designated workers—barefoot and bare-chested—would use specially made wooden plows to gradually spread out the scalding distillers’ grains.
The distillery was a bustling hive of activity, chaotic yet orderly, with the sweet aroma of grain intermingled with sharp bursts of sourness.
The swirling steam blurred everything, revealing only glimpses of the men's skin, flushed red to the point of purple.
—The kitchen was dizzyingly hot. Most of the workers were bare-chested, and some were even completely stripped down, with only a strip of linen tied around their waists that the author put there to pass censorship.
Seeing Nan Zhi take an interest in the winemaking, Young Master Wang felt rather self-satisfied and pointed at the workers in the kitchen:
“Lord Nan might not know, but among all the tasks in winemaking, discharging the mash is the most exhausting. Even a sturdy, well-fed young lad who does it on his first day will definitely be too exhausted to get out of bed the next.
Every single worker in my Wang Family Distillery is exceptionally robust, with the strength of an ox!”
Since the men were practically naked, Ma Chunxiang turned slightly away, pretending not to notice, and spoke in low tones to the distillery manager behind her.
“What is this vat placed here for?”
Nan Zhi nodded, her gaze suddenly shifting to the conspicuous large vat.
The vat was immense and somewhat squat and round, positioned directly facing the small west gate so that anyone entering would surely spot it at first glance.
The vat's walls were thick and heavy, engraved with eight flamboyant characters:
“Immortals descend to the mortal realm; the Emperor dismounts.”
—These were precisely the words others used to describe “Immortal Brew.” One look made it obvious that the Wang family had gone out of their way to commission its custom crafting.
It was fortunate that the Song Dynasty had no literary inquisitions; otherwise, based on those eight words alone, not a single breathing soul in the entire Wang family would have escaped execution.
“Speaking of this vat, there is quite a story behind it. Back then, my father was merely a worker in a distillery when, by a stroke of fortune, he encountered an immortal.
That immortal guided my father, instructing him to keep an empty wine vat where the wine was brewed and scoop water from it on the first and fifteenth of every month. Wine brewed this way would carry an extraordinary fragrance, and upon tasting it, there would be only one word to describe it: exquisite.”
Seeing Nan Zhi take the initiative to converse, Young Master Wang assumed the previous unpleasantness had been smoothed over, and explained with a smile:
“Later, my father indeed followed those instructions. He hired an artisan to fire this large vat and told the winemakers to draw water from it to brew wine whenever they saw water inside.
The immortal’s words proved truly effective. On the first and fifteenth of every month, about a palm’s depth of clear water would seep out inside the vat.
At those times, the wine made using this water became the peerless ‘Immortal Brew.’
Therefore, this vat is the mother of all vats, and everyone in our household refers to it as the ‘mother vat.’ We guard it closely, not even allowing ordinary people to touch it!”
“Oh, a ‘mother vat,’ is it?”
Nan Zhi nodded meaningfully and suddenly remarked:
“Didn't you say women aren't allowed in the distillery? This vat is female too, so why not call it a ‘father vat’ or ‘male vat’?”
Young Master Wang: “...”
Distillery Manager: “...”
Ma Chunxiang: “...”
Are you ever going to drop this?
With all this sarcasm, this matter really hasn't passed yet?!
...
...
After much ado, Nan Zhi finally got to drink the Wang family's tea.
When Song people drank tea, it was never as simple as merely boiling a kettle of water, tossing a few tea leaves into a cup, and steeping them.
First, the compressed tea cake had to be ground into powder and placed into a tea bowl. Freshly boiled water was poured into the teacup, followed by fine whisking with a tea whisk to create a thick tea paste before adding a second pour of boiling water.
Families of means would even add peanuts, walnuts, sesame seeds, dried fruits, and the like into the cup, brewing it into a paste and savoring it for half the day.
This was why many referred to it as “eating tea”—that was the literal meaning.
—The Nan family did not have the leisure or elegance for whisking tea; what they drank was barley tea boiled in a large cauldron by Chen Jingui, which relieved summer heat and was both cheap and delicious.
Thus, Nan Zhi stared at Ma Chunxiang whisking tea for quite a while before lowering her head to take a sip from her cup, pretending to admire the surrounding furnishings.
My, this white porcelain vase is quite lovely.
Mhm, the carving on this imperial consort couch is exquisite.
The craftsmanship of this Grandmaster chair seems rather fine too.
She was waiting for Young Master Wang to speak first.
Sure enough, before she had even finished her cup of tea, Young Master Wang spoke:
“Lord Nan, I wonder if you noticed anything amiss earlier?”
With that, he gritted his teeth, as if making some momentous decision, and let out a heavy sigh:
“If it truly comes down to it and entering the wine cellar is an absolute necessity, it is not impossible. It's just that this news must never reach my father’s ears...”
A cough interrupted his words. Immediately following, Master Wang, supported by servants, walked in unsteadily and pointed right at Young Master Wang's nose, scolding:
“You debt-collecting bane, have you drunk too much horse piss, or did donkey hair clog your ears? Cough, cough... Not letting me know... cough, cough, cough...
What ghosts, what gods?! This is clearly someone who is jealous of our business and using dirty tricks to ruin our family!
I told you not to disturb Lord Nan, yet you refused to listen! Do you truly intend to anger me to death before you'll be satisfied?! Cough, cough, cough!”
Upon seeing Master Wang, Nan Zhi was startled at first, followed by disbelief.
Was the person before her truly Master Wang?
How had he changed so drastically?!
The old man’s hair and beard were completely snow-white, his cheeks so sunken that the skin seemed plastered directly to the bone, with dark purplish bags under his eyes and a layer of black ash lingering over his forehead that seemed impossible to wipe away.
—Nan Zhi instantly understood what it meant to have a “blackened forehead.”
The weather was not cold yet, but Master Wang was bundled in layer upon layer of clothing. His speech was feeble and breathless; even when reprimanding his own son, his voice was limp and lacked strength.
Compared to the plump, genial old man Nan Zhi had met once before, he was practically an entirely different person.
So the question was: within such a short span of time, what could a person possibly have encountered to undergo such a drastic transformation?
Furthermore, what did his words just now mean?
Nan Zhi stared at Master Wang, her brow furrowing slightly.
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