Gu Hao did not celebrate the numbers.
He restrained them.
Demand for Steady Ration Grain had crossed a threshold where it no longer asked politely.
Orders stacked.
Requests overlapped.
Buyers waited instead of bargaining.
That was dangerous.
Gu Hao knew this pattern well.
On Earth, it was the moment companies mistook demand for readiness.
He would not.
He summoned Gu Qing and the production heads.
No elders.
No ceremony.
Just people who understood flow.
"We are not expanding markets," Gu Hao said calmly.
Gu Qing frowned. "Even with current demand?"
"Especially because of it," Gu Hao replied.
He gestured toward the ledgers.
"What we sell now must be identical to what we sell a year from now."
Silence followed.
Production Rebuilt, Not Enlarged
Gu Hao restructured the process from the ground up.
Not creatively.
Methodically.
Cultivator grain separated entirely from mortal grain pipelines
Dedicated milling, drying, and compression teams
Fixed batch sizes
Mandatory discard thresholds for inconsistency
No substitutions allowed, even during shortages
Efficiency dipped at first.
Then stabilized.
Then surpassed previous output without increasing risk.
That was the point.
Two weeks later, Gu Qing reported again.
Weekly Revenue
Mortal & Work Grain
Output doubled due to earlier land and labor reforms
Weekly income: ~45–50 low-grade spirit stones
Steady Ration Grain
Production refined, waste reduced
Weekly income: ~180–200 low-grade spirit stones
The room stayed quiet.
The cultivator grain now earned over four times the mortal grain.
And Gu Hao still refused to promote it.
Gu Jian leaned back.
"We're holding something the world wants," he said.
"Yes," Gu Hao replied. "And we're not telling the world yet."
Gu Qing hesitated. "Then how do people find us?"
"They already have," Gu Hao said calmly. "That's the problem."
The Missing Piece
Gu Hao picked up a piece of chalk and wrote on the slate:
Product
Place
Price
Then he stopped.
"Promotion," Gu Hao said, tapping the empty space,
"is power. And power without discipline is exposure."
He turned.
"When we speak," he continued, "we will control how we are heard."
No one argued.
They all understood what uncontrolled reputation did to small clans.
That evening, Gu Hao walked the production yards.
He watched cultivators oversee milling. Mortals track inventory. Guards rotate shifts smoothly.
Everything worked.
Which meant the next problem had already arrived.
Gu Hao stopped near the edge of the yard.
"How many people here could replace Gu Qing?" he asked quietly.
The answer was immediate.
None.
"And how many could replace you?" Gu Jian asked.
Gu Hao smiled faintly.
"Fewer than we need."
That night, Gu Hao wrote slowly.
Systems scale faster than people.
And people are the first bottleneck no one plans for.
He closed the book.
The Gu Clan had product.
It had structure.
It had restraint.
But it did not yet have enough talent to carry what was coming.
And that question would not stay unanswered for long.
Gu Hao did not announce a policy.
He asked a question.
"How many cultivators did we reject in the last five years?"
The elder responsible for recruitment hesitated.
"…All of them?" he said carefully. "We didn't have capacity."
Gu Hao nodded. "And how many mortals did we never even look at?"
No one answered.
They didn't need to.
Talent, Gu Hao knew, was not rare.
Opportunity was.
In this world, clans measured worth early and discarded quickly. Aptitude stones. Bone tests. One glance, one verdict.
Fail once, fail forever.
On Earth, Gu Hao had seen the same logic applied with exams, resumes, and schools. It wasted generations.
Here, it wasted lives.
He did not go to the elders' hall.
He went outside the walls.
Beyond the Gu Clan's influence lay places no map bothered naming.
Temporary shelters.
Abandoned courtyards.
Groups of children who survived by attaching themselves to caravans, kitchens, or nothing at all.
Too old to be adopted.
Too weak to be recruited.
Too unmeasured to matter.
Gu Hao stood at a distance and watched.
No qi sense.
No tests.
Just observation.
One boy organized others to divide leftover food evenly.
One girl kept meticulous track of favors owed and returned.
Another child, thin and quiet, listened more than he spoke, remembering everything.
None of them cultivated.
All of them were useful.
Gu Hao returned at dusk.
He did not speak immediately.
Instead, he gathered Gu Qing, Gu Jian, and Lin Wei.
"We have a problem," he said calmly.
Gu Qing nodded. "Talent scarcity."
Gu Hao shook his head.
"Talent blindness."
He laid out the reality.
"Our systems are growing," Gu Hao said. "Production, trade, logistics, cultivation."
He paused.
"They are still carried by the same few people."
Silence.
"And when those people break," he continued, "everything collapses."
Gu Jian frowned. "You want to train more cultivators?"
"No," Gu Hao replied. "I want to train people."
That changed the room.
The Orphan Question
Gu Hao did not call them recruits.
He called them wards.
No contracts.
No oaths.
No promises of cultivation.
Only an offer.
Food
Shelter
Education
Time
In return:
Work when able
Learn when taught
Leave if you wish
Gu Yuan was uneasy. "And if they betray us?"
Gu Hao nodded. "Some will."
"And if they stay?"
Gu Hao's voice was quiet.
"They'll know who didn't discard them."
The first group arrived a week later.
Fourteen children.
Dirty. Guarded. Skeptical.
They did not bow.
Gu Hao did not expect them to.
They were not placed in training yards.
They were placed in classrooms.
Basic counting.
Writing.
Records.
Fieldwork principles.
Market logic.
No cultivation manuals.
Not yet.
Gu Hao watched quietly as Lin Wei taught them how to record grain movement.
One child corrected him.
Lin Wei froze.
Then laughed.
That night, Gu Hao wrote carefully.
Not triumphantly.
Most clans search for talent at the top of the mountain.
We will search at the bottom, where the climb already began.
He closed the book.
The Gu Clan had taken in people no one wanted.
Not warriors.
Not prodigies.
Not yet.
But Gu Hao had built enough systems to know one thing for certain:
Loyalty grows fastest where dignity arrives first.