A fierce wife enters the house: She helps up a house full of spineless people.

The workshop became incredibly lively, with many people not only delivering goods but also asking if they were hiring.

Chen Tianwei simply announced that anyone who wanted to work should come over to register after lunch for screening.

Before Wang Jinzhu's family had even finished their meal, a line had already formed outside. Wang Jinzhu asked Chen Tianwei to set up a table outside and lay out paper and pens.

"Don't push, come one at a time. First, come to the table and state your name, which village you're from, and how many people are in your family."

The crowd was chattering amongst themselves.

"Sister-in-law Jinzhu, how much do you get paid per month?"

"How many people are you hiring? Can my sister-in-law and I come together?"

"I'm really fast; I can make two pairs of shoe soles a day!"

Wang Jinzhu walked out of the workshop, carrying a winnowing basket in her hand.

The winnowing basket contained four kinds of things—red beans, mung beans, black beans, and yellow beans—mixed together, filling the entire basket.

Everyone quieted down.

"Regarding recruitment, I have three requirements," Wang Jinzhu said, placing the winnowing basket on the table. "First, quick and efficient. Second, meticulous. Third, discreet. Literate candidates are preferred, but illiterate ones are acceptable, but all three must meet the first requirement."

She patted the edge of the winnowing basket: "Each of you has a handful of beans. You have the time it takes for an incense stick to burn to divide them into four piles by color. Those who divide quickly and accurately will stay; those who make more than five mistakes will be rejected."

Chen Tian lit an incense stick and placed it on the corner of the table.

The twenty-odd people looked at each other, and some had already rolled up their sleeves.

"Line up, one at a time." Chen Tianwei dipped his brush in ink. "State your names."

The first to step forward was Zhao Xiulan, the eldest daughter-in-law of village chief Chen Defu.

She was in her early thirties, with rough hands and dirt under her fingernails—she had just come back from the fields yesterday. But when she sat down to sort the beans, her ten fingers flew, her eyes fixed on the winnowing basket without blinking, separating the red beans into red ones and the green ones into green ones, neatly and efficiently.

She had already finished distributing the incense before it had even burned halfway.

Chen Tianwei counted them once, and there was no mistake.

"Passed." Wang Jinzhu nodded.

Zhao Xiulan breathed a sigh of relief, stood to the side, and her smile almost reached her ears.

With one person taking the lead, others rushed to follow suit.

Those who were quick finished dividing the beans in seven or eight minutes, while those who were slow ground the beans until the incense burned out and there was still a small pile left. One young woman was so nervous that her hands trembled, and she mixed six red beans into the pile of black beans. She was immediately rejected and stood aside wiping away tears.

Wang Jinzhu didn't soften her stance or say anything harsh; she simply said, "Go back and practice. You'll have another chance next time."

By the time the queue was almost empty, most of the people had dispersed, but one person was still standing in the corner.

The woman was about twenty-five or twenty-six years old, wearing a faded blue cloth shirt, her hair held back neatly with a wooden hairpin, but the collar of her shirt was frayed. She stood at the farthest point, neither pushing nor making a sound, clutching the hem of her shirt in her hand.

"Why aren't you coming up?" Chen Tianwei called out to her.

Someone nearby whispered, "That's Chen Xinghua. Her husband died of illness last year. She's cursed to bring bad luck to her husbands. You should stay away from her."

Chen Xinghua's face flushed red for a moment, then quickly turned pale. She took half a step back, as if she were about to leave.

"Stop." Wang Jinzhu said, "It's your turn. Come here."

Chen Xinghua hesitated for a moment, then walked over with her head down and sat down.

Her fingers were thinner than anyone else's. Not from a life of luxury, but from working hard and eating little, which made her thin.

The winnowing basket was pushed in front of her, and without saying a word, she started working on it.

Wang Jinzhu couldn't take her eyes off it after just one glance.

This woman sorted beans in a different way than others. While others picked them one by one, she grabbed a handful, spread them in her palm, and flicked them with her thumb, placing all four colors in their places simultaneously, alternating between her two hands.

Zhao Xiulan was also stunned. She had thought she was fast, but this person was almost twice as fast as her.

The incense was still mostly burned out when Chen Xinghua sat down, her hands neatly placed on her knees.

Four piles of beans, each bean in its proper place, not one missing.

"What kind of jobs did you do before?" Wang Jinzhu asked.

"The embroidery workshop." Chen Xinghua's voice was soft. "Before I got married, I worked at Li's Embroidery Workshop in town, doing thread sorting and color matching for four years."

With his skill in color matching and sorting, it's no wonder he's developed such a high level of color recognition and sorting ability.

"I'll take it," Wang Jinzhu said.

The woman who had been gossiping earlier changed her expression, then hesitated, as if she wanted to say something but stopped herself.

Wang Jinzhu glanced at her: "I'm hiring for this workshop. I judge by skill, not luck. Those who work efficiently stay, those who gossip get out. Anyone who spreads rumors in my yard again is fired without a penny."

The woman awkwardly shut her mouth.

Chen Xinghua lowered her head, her shoulders trembling slightly.

In the end, eight people remained, including Zhao Xiulan and Chen Xinghua.

Wang Jinzhu asked Chen Tianwei to bring out the contracts. There were eight copies, one for each person, and the contents were exactly the same.

"Those who can read, look for yourselves; those who can't read, I'll read it to you."

The contract was short, with only a few key points: wages were paid per piece, settled daily. The more you did, the more you earned; the less you did, the less you earned. Quality control was assessed monthly, and the group with the highest pass rate received an extra fifty coins.

The last line, written separately in cinnabar, was particularly eye-catching.

"Anyone who steals workshop property or leaks the recipe will be handed over to the authorities for investigation and will be ordered to pay one hundred taels in compensation."

Someone gasped: "One hundred taels?"

"Too much?" Wang Jinzhu leaned against the doorframe, her tone casual. "The skills I taught you are worth a thousand taels. The one hundred taels compensation is a favor I'm offering."

No one spoke again. The eight people took turns signing their names.

Work started the next day.

The eight people were divided into two groups of four. Zhao Xiulan led one group, responsible for cleaning and cutting aloe vera and extracting the resin; Chen Xinghua led the other group, responsible for distilling the petals and filtering the fragrance. Wang Jinzhu and Chen Tianwei did the grinding of pigments and mixing of the paste themselves, without relying on anyone else.

"Each person has a basket in front of them. Put the processed aloe vera in the left basket and the waste in the right basket." Chen Tian was moving raw materials and helping to keep an eye on things.

Zhao Xiulan was the first to act, and the others followed suit.

The first hour was slow, since he was a beginner, so Wang Jinzhu didn't rush him. But by the second hour, his skills improved, and his speed visibly increased.

Especially Zhao Xiulan, who, while eating lunch, kept asking Chen Tianwei, "How much did I make this morning?"

Chen Tianrun flipped through the ledger—he was now in charge of recording items, and although his handwriting was crooked, the numbers were clear.

"Sister-in-law Zhao, weighs eighty-three jin."

Zhao Xiulan paused, her chopsticks still on her hands. "How much was it again, per pound?"

"Aloe vera, cleaned and cut into gel, three pounds for one coin."

Zhao Xiulan quickly calculated in her mind: half a day's work would earn her more than twenty coins. A full day's work would likely earn her fifty coins or more.

Fifty coins.

A typical man carrying heavy loads in town, so tired he could barely straighten his back, would only earn twenty coins a day.

Hey, she's really amazing.

Zhao Xiulan ate all the rice out of her bowl, put it down, and ran to the workshop.

"Hey, Sister-in-law Zhao, it's not time yet!" Chen Tianwei called out from behind.

"I'll go prepare the ingredients for this afternoon!" Zhao Xiulan said without turning her head.

The other women exchanged glances and quickened their pace of eating.

After finishing work in the evening, Chen Tianrun reported the day's accounts to Wang Jinzhu.

Eight people processed a total of 600 jin of aloe vera and 200 jin of flower petals. For novices on their first day, this amount already exceeded Wang Jinzhu's expectations.

Zhao Xiulan ate 140 jin by herself and was paid 47 wen that day.

Although Chen Xinghua's group was distilling and had a different piecework method, she controlled the heat with exceptional precision, producing 20% ​​more fragrant dew than other groups, which earned her 31 coins.

Wang Jinzhu immediately counted out the copper coins and laid them out on the table one by one.

"Count them all; if they're correct, you can take them."

Eight women held heavy copper coins, each with a different expression. Zhao Xiulan grinned from ear to ear, wishing she could run around the village holding the coins.

Chen Xinghua carefully counted the copper coins twice, put them into her inner pocket, and tied a tight knot.

As she reached the courtyard gate, she turned her head back.

"Wang... Sister Jinzhu, could I come half an hour earlier tomorrow? I want to start the distillation furnace first, and add the raw materials once the heat is stable, so the resulting perfume will be cleaner."

Wang Jinzhu didn't turn around; she was still working on her abacus.

"Come on. Get the key from Tianwei."

Chen Xinghua responded, her steps noticeably lighter than when she arrived.

At night, separated by two walls, Chen Xiufen sat in front of her own stove, listening to the sounds of tidying up coming from the direction of the workshop.

She was peeling garlic, slamming the cloves onto the cutting board one by one.

"Hiring so many people, they all act like they've struck gold. Humph, what's so great about it? It's just washing aloe vera and cutting grass, anyone can do that."

"Shut up." Chen Yang rarely retorted.

Chen Xiufen was taken aback.

Chen Yang squatted on the doorstep and said in a muffled voice, "If you keep making trouble, I won't even be able to stay in this house anymore. This house can't take any more disruption."

Chen Xiufen opened her mouth, wanting to curse, but after looking at Chen Yang's expression, she swallowed her words.

She threw the garlic into the pan, flipped it a couple of times with the spatula, and sparks flew up, but she didn't dodge.

The garlic in the pot burned, and the whole house smelled burnt.