Jing Suke had been riding high lately.
As the person in charge of the Crown Jing cigarette industry, Jing Suke did not need to scramble for money like the other clansmen. With the slightest touch, he could skim a handsome profit from the daily torrent of gold.
He owned a separate residence in the Inner City and kept eight mistresses in the Outer City. After all, his wife was a woman from the Zhou family and notoriously fierce, so even taking a concubine had to be done in secret.
Iron and cigarettes had always been the Jing family's two major industries, but the rise of its cigarette business was quite legendary. Before that, the Jing family had merely been coal-mine owners who contracted mines and dug for iron and coal. In those days, cigarettes were luxury goods affordable only to the upper and middle classes.
One day, after the Jing family head finished a cigarette, he noticed a worker secretly pick up the butt and take two puffs. He immediately realized that the cigarette industry had to be a huge market.
The Jing family then began using its funds to buy estates and grow tobacco. They completely ignored the upper-class market, specializing in the cheapest tobacco varieties that grew the fastest, coarsest, and in the greatest quantities, then turning them into cigarettes and selling them cheaply to workers.
Cheap cigarettes became popular among Profound Candle's lower classes. These stress-relieving luxuries were especially welcomed by workers with bland palates and few material pleasures. (Listening to stories was only a spiritual pleasure.)
At first, the Jing family head merely wanted to harvest his own workers' wages through cigarette sales. Unexpectedly, the Crown Jing cigarette industry quickly grew and nearly monopolized the lower-class cigarette market in Profound Candle, acquiring a huge amount of