No one had expected that a casual chat at the dinner table would quietly disperse the sword-drawn, crossbow-strung tension that had hung over Silver Mountain.
That day, Jia Cong left silently with his men. Afterward, the Imperial Guards who had been circling outside their mine shafts departed as well. Until Pan Yun left, Jia Cong never again mentioned confiscating their mines. Kuang Ping even took the initiative to approach them about expanding their cooperation.
The ore they mined would be sent to the Ministry of Works' Silver Refining Workshop for smelting, with the shares remaining as before.
After a brief discussion, the mine bosses agreed.
They currently lacked the means to own a Silver Refining Workshop with such high efficiency. If they used crude traditional methods, they would not only consume a great deal of firewood, but the silver yield would also be low, wasting the ore instead.
At present, only the Ministry of Works and Wang Cong's Silver Refining Workshop on the entire Silver Mountain possessed such capability.
They had privately asked the Daoists at the temple. To build a Silver Refining Workshop like theirs would likely cost over a thousand taels.
They did not know how long they could mine Silver Mountain, so naturally they were unwilling to spend so much.
Moreover, those Daoists had said that Silver Refining Workshops not only required inspections every quarter, but also constant research and improvement...
That was the purpose of the Daoists and the Ministry of Works being here.
Therefore, it was not a matter of spending one sum of money, but of constantly spending money.
Forget it. It was better to cooperate with the Ministry of Works and Wang Cong's Silver Refining Workshop.
Fortunately, they had two options. Though Wang Cong's workshop was now smaller in scale than the Ministry