It's now third on the recommended list, but it's too close to the ones behind, certain flower is in danger. Alright, I'm finally fired up! If the ranking goes up one more spot, I'll add another update!

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  The most enjoyable story among the Qing Sheng Bai Xing is about Chen Sanlang turning stone into gold and helping debtors who are on the verge of bankruptcy to become rich.

  Cai Chuanfu, revered as the "King of Chefs", has personally acknowledged that Chen Jialang was his mentor. When he was at a dead end, Chen taught him the art of stir-frying and how to run a restaurant. Without Chen's help, Cai might have ended up taking his own life by jumping into the river, and there would be no Lafu Lou today.

  Li Jian, who produced Huang Jiao wine, also personally admitted that he was about to hang himself. It wasn't until Cai Chuanfu appeared with a jar of orange wine that the popular Huang Jiao wine in Shu was born. At first, he thought this wine was Master Cai's craftsmanship, but later found out it was actually taught by Chen Sanlang!

  Not only the owner of Zhang's tangerine garden, but also all the tangerine farmers in Qingtian County, should thank Huang Jiaojiao even more, they should thank Chen Sanlang - from then on, they no longer worried about sales routes, and the wine market would open up to buy their tangerines at twice the original price.

  Tou's sauce business also has a story to tell. He went from being on the verge of bankruptcy as a stinky sauce seller, to becoming a honored guest at various wine houses, and his products gradually sold well in all states, all because Cai Chuanfu helped him improve his production techniques.

  Because of the salt monopoly, salt was expensive, and in ordinary Song Dynasty households, various bean pastes and sweet noodle sauces were used for seasoning. Initially, they were used as dips, but with the advancement of sauce-making techniques, a method of cooking dishes gradually developed, known as sauce methods. Sauce methods were also the main cooking method in folk cuisine for a long time.

  Northerners eat sweet sauce made from wheat flour, while southerners and Shu people eat bean paste sauce. The Tou family's sauce is the latter, but compared to the famous Pixian bean paste sauce, the Tou family's product is simply inferior... After struggling for many years, it finally closed down.

  However, Cai Chuanfu slightly improved the production process of Doubanjiang, mainly by extending the fermentation time, making the fermented Doubanjiang into a sauce. Then, the sauce was pressed and extracted on a grinding disc to obtain a bright black liquid. Cai Chuanfu called it - soy sauce.

  Although bean paste and soy sauce are just one step away, the emergence of soy sauce was in Southern Song. This is not to say that people before Northern Song were so stupid that they didn't know how to squeeze the juice out of bean paste, but rather due to cooking techniques - braising, steaming, boiling, and pickling, all of which can be done with fermented bean paste.

  Only stir-frying, using bean paste sauce is prone to sticking to the pot. Even if it doesn't stick to the pot, when served, it's a big sticky mess, and it's not bad if it doesn't make you want to vomit. How can it stimulate appetite? Therefore, in the Southern Song Dynasty where stir-frying was prevalent, soy sauce came into being.

  While Qingyuan County, in this era, has become a veritable stir-fry city. Chefs naturally need a more visually appealing and easier-to-master seasoning to replace fermented bean paste in stir-fries to achieve a saucy flavor.

  The emergence of soy sauce perfectly solved this problem and was naturally welcomed by various restaurants. Moreover, as Chen Ke had predicted, the stir-frying technique was simple and easy to learn, and it was impossible to keep it secret for long. As a result, within a year or two, the method of stir-frying had spread throughout Qingtian County and became the main cooking method for residents.

  It's probably only those master chefs in Bianjing who have enough skill and cunning to blow a small craft into a divine technique, hiding it tightly.

  However, the popularization of stir-frying methods greatly benefited the sales of soy sauce. Qingtian County also gave birth to a new term called "da jiang you" (to make soy sauce).

  By this year, the stir-frying method had spread to neighboring counties, and although it was just a simple stir-fry method, it still required the participation of soy sauce. As a result, Tu's soy sauce also became a best-selling product. Mr. Tu saw the prospects of this business and immediately opened ten fermentation pools. Although it was not yet prosperous, he could already see a future where he would be making a fortune.

  As for the remaining two, a coal merchant surnamed Qian and a bamboo garden owner surnamed He, they heard that even the soy sauce was Chen Sanlang's masterpiece. They couldn't sit still, so they brought thick gifts to the Chen family to ask for help... The two also didn't know where they heard it from, but only if Chen Sanlang had shares would he be willing to lend a hand wholeheartedly.

  The Chen family was already well-off and didn't need the money, so Chen Ke didn't have to bother with them. However, he needed the two of them to help him get rid of a knot in his heart, so he agreed without hesitation.

  After becoming a shareholder of the two families, he not only helped them contact sales channels, but also used his influence to persuade all the merchants he could reach to purchase bamboo charcoal from the Qian family, and even went so far as to help them improve their carbonization techniques.

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  Chen Ke arrived in this world and descended upon a charcoal kiln, so he was naturally familiar with the method of burning bamboo charcoal during this era. He went to the Qian family's charcoal kiln for an on-site inspection and saw that the workers filled the fire door with fuel, then put the dried fresh bamboo into the kiln for roasting for seven days before firing it at a low temperature for another seven days. After firing, it was naturally cooled for another seven days before being taken out of the kiln, and from loading to unloading, it took more than 20 days.

  But in his previous life, the mountainous area where he lived as a child also had many bamboo forests, and naturally there were charcoal kilns for burning charcoal. He had watched workers burn charcoal before, and in his impression, it seemed that they only needed ten days to burn one kiln of charcoal, absolutely not needing more than twenty days. The difference in production efficiency between inside and outside was enough to cost lives.

  Chen Ke recalled that the workers of later generations seemed to first dry the bamboo material for several days, then add fire and burn it quickly, and soon after, the kiln would be extinguished and isolated from the air. After two or three days, when the kiln was opened, black bamboo charcoal could be obtained.

  It seems simpler than traditional kiln burning, but everything is easy to know and difficult to do. The Qian family charcoal yard burned according to Chen Ke's method, but always suffocated the fire and couldn't burn out the charcoal, wasting bamboo materials in vain. After repeated failures, Mr. Qian looked at Chen Ke with a changed gaze, if it weren't for relying on him for sales, he would have let this kid go wherever he wanted to cool off.

  Finally, Xiaoliang pointed out the way. The Chen family was a charcoal-burning family, and although Xiaoliang focused on reading books, he was very familiar with the art of burning charcoal. After listening to Chen Ke's description, he thought for a moment and said calmly: "The charcoal kiln is designed for low-temperature firing, if you want to extinguish the fire in such a short time, you must raise the furnace temperature." Chen Sanlang suddenly enlightened.

  Increase the furnace temperature, easy to handle! He asked Pan Mugong to make a super-large bellows and opened an air outlet for the charcoal kiln. Then he found two strong workers to take turns sending air into the kiln. This time, the entire kiln was filled with hot waves, red and fiery, very spectacular, and directly burned a furnace of bamboo materials into ashes.

  But this is just a fire phase problem. When burning the second furnace, the air supply was reduced, and indeed, the wood charcoal gradually took shape in the fierce flames.

  "Seal the kiln!" With his order, the workers sealed the kiln mouth with mud.

  Three days after leaving the kiln is purely physical labor.

  Seeing the charcoal made from burning wood shining in the sunlight, both Chen Ke and Qian Tan Shang let out a sigh of relief.

  The charcoal merchant picked up a piece of bamboo charcoal and observed it carefully for half a day, nodding repeatedly: "It's different from the old method of burning charcoal."

  "What's different now?"

  "The color is brighter and the shape is more complete." The charcoal merchant said, "It looks much better now." After a pause, he added, "And it seems like there's more charcoal coming out too."

  As expected, after weighing, it was found that one thousand kilograms of bamboo materials produced three hundred kilograms of charcoal, which is a full one hundred kilograms more than the old method.

  But all these are just nonsense, charcoal is meant for burning, and it doesn't burn well, everything is a waste.

  Two people nervously loaded a basin of charcoal and returned to the house, where they lit it. They saw pure flames dancing in the charcoal basin, without a wisp of smoke, but both simultaneously twitched their noses. The charcoal merchant's face was filled with wild joy as he exclaimed, "Do you smell it?"

  "Hmm." Chen Ke nodded and unexpectedly said: "This charcoal can actually emit a refreshing fragrance when burned!"

  "This is great!" The charcoal seller grasped Chen Ke's hand tightly and said: "Third Brother, you are a living Bodhisattva!"

  Chen Ke withdrew his hand and smiled: "Quickly give it a name."

  "Of course it was you who started it." Now in Qian Tan Shang's eyes, Chen Ke was no longer human, but the Bodhisattva of Salvation from Suffering and Difficulty.

  "That's good. Since it smells so fragrant and refreshing, just like a lotus flower." Chen Ke thought for a moment and said: "Let's call it Lotus Charcoal then."

  That winter, every restaurant in Qingyu County used lotus charcoal in their braziers to warm guests. This bamboo charcoal, which fills the room with a refreshing fragrance and makes people feel like they are in a lotus pond, immediately sparked the strong interest of diners, who asked where it was produced.

  In just three days, the lotus charcoal produced by Qianjia Charcoal Factory was sold out. By the second year, it replaced Shiwang Village's bamboo charcoal and became the top product of Qingyuan County, occupying most of the high-end bamboo charcoal market due to its large output. This year, officials and nobles in Chengdu City completely abandoned Shiwang Village's bamboo charcoal and switched to using this fragrant and pleasant lotus charcoal; otherwise, they would be too embarrassed to invite guests home.

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  Everyone loves Chen Sanlang because he can always open the door to wealth for people. Moreover, there is only one rumor that he will help with investment, which was soon proved to be false.

  Pan Mujiang from the front street proved that Chen Ke did not invest, but still helped himself use several years of effort to become a first-class wood merchant in Yizhou Road from a small carpenter in a county. Pan Mujiang patted his chest and said, "Our county has produced such a good person as Chen Sanlang, it's really the blessing of eight lifetimes."

  The boss of the dock, Bi, also had the same feeling. After Qing Shen County became prosperous, he was very worried about the sharp increase in the dock's throughput. He heard Chen Ke's name and went to seek help with a try-it-out attitude. As a result, according to his method, when loading and unloading goods, pulleys and levers replaced manpower, and also increased rest time for stevedores... using an hourglass to count time, every time they moved something, they rested for a while, as a result, the throughput was doubled, greatly relieving the pressure on the dock.

  Even the pigs in this county learned a secret method from him, which made them have no desires or demands, only knowing how to eat with their heads down, and each one was born fat and big-eared, several hundred pounds heavier than before.

  The key is that the meat of this pig, when cooked, is extremely fragrant and does not have the strange smell that ordinary pork has after cooking. In fact, it even surpasses mutton in this regard. Therefore, the pork from Qingtian County has also become famous...

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  Here is the translation:

  To explain, Chen Ke's method of burning charcoal was actually a drying method, which only existed in Southern Song Dynasty. The reason why people in the Song Dynasty didn't like pork was that the pigs they raised had a strong odor in their meat. However, after the Song Dynasty, the pork people ate did not have this smell. The difference lies in that one knife... Not only male pigs but also female pigs had to be castrated.

  The achievements of Chen Ke for the past three years have been recounted, and the next chapter will start to advance the plot. Seeking Three Rivers votes and recommendation votes, if we rise one more place on the recommended list, I'll add an update.