[X] [Subordinate] Gets the honey while they do basic prep work before taking over
[X] [QA] Optimize quality
Yon considered his options before he shook his head and said, "No, what you want is to show off an asset. This whole thing is going to be expensive, but if you just want Dreaming Orchid Elixir for yourself it would be easier to just buy some from the sect's stock. If you're a good asset for delegating this to me, then I'm a good asset for using my own resources effectively."
The Young Lady Va blinked twice and had her face settle into serene neutrality, which actually meant that she was totally nonplussed and had no idea how to react to that. Eventually she just said, "Then get going."
Getting up from behind his desk, Yon gestured for Va to leave as he opened the door back open while saying, "We'll start immediately, but I need your seal on the requisition forms before the day is out and the supplies for the expedition as soon as possible."
"The forms will be ready within the hour, the perfume shortly after," Va replied imperiously, to which Yon offered a respectful bow, his subordinates mirroring them.
Once the Young Lady had departed, Yon started snapping out orders.
"Ji, Ong, get as much fresh and dried Dreaming Orchid as the Medical Pavilion has available and start grinding; I want everything to go into neutral-bone porcelain crucibles. Hodan, get at least half a dan of 180 proof liquor; make sure its a moonlight batch from the Swan Overlook Distillery. Yue, rent out the reflux dessicator and start packing the primary chamber with Sarcophagus Sphagnum," Yon snapped out in rapid succession, his underlings moving quickly and efficiently to fulfil his instructions.
While they were doing that, Yon was going to grab a number of other ingredients personally. While anyone who knew the Dreaming Orchid Elixir recipe and decided to read the requisition paperwork would be able to figure out what he was doing, there were dozens of things his underlings might be doing with their work. One of the strong points of the elixir was that all but two stages could be done with outer disciple level materials, tools, and techniques - and Yon could "cheat" both those steps with Iron Kettle Belly.
The popularity of the Dreaming Orchid Elixir waxed and waned with time. When there were few working on mass producing it, it eventually became attractive enough that someone took it up as their ticket into the inner or even core disciples. When there were many who worked on the elixir, making more rare and specialized concoctions became considerably more attractive for up-and-coming alchemists, radically reducing the number of people who bothered to learn how to make the elixir when it was most profitable for them personally. The sect as a whole tended to thrive more when the elixir was more available, but the people at the top benefited the most from having more specialists than generalists.
It was a lull period for elixir production, and Yon was among the first of the new generation with a strategy for mass production, he just needed the resources to get started.
By the next morning as Yon was preparing to head out the mountain the sect was built on and into, the wisdom of the Young Lady Va was becoming apparent. The sect's highest tier supplies and equipment were being bought out at a frantic pace as core disciples fought to get projects together to demonstrate their value to the elders. This in turn caused a cascading effect as the next tier down was tapped to work on enhancing materials and tools to serve as replacements or final touches for the highest tier. A few like Lady Va had skipped several steps in the chain to seize large masses of lower tier materials. Some of that was for projects like Dreaming Orchid Elixir, but a great deal of it was to deny resources to those higher up the chain.
With the first batches of Dreaming Orchid mash undergoing chromatic salt catalyzed putrefaction in crucibles submerged in boiling alcohol baths and the Umbral Crescents in the dessicator, Yon's subordinates just had to make sure nothing exploded for the next two days while he ran out to get the honey. There was just one final obstacle in the form of Inner Disciple Amep trying to poach the reflux dessicator Yon was using.
Under normal circumstances an inner disciple could muscle Yon out, and Amep had personally done it before, but there was an excellent reason why Lady Va had done everything officially even though she clearly wanted as few people to know what was going on as possible. The sect was going to get a large cut from an "official" commission, which meant that it was forbidden to interfere without prior authorization. Amep needed an elder in the Medical Pavilion to sign off on a reassignment of sect resources, which was absolutely not happening with the whole sect now in a frenzy. Yon could absolutely tell Amep to go call the Storm Lord a pansy if he wanted.
Whether or not that was a good idea was a separate consideration, since while Yon theoretically would be in the right, that wouldn't necessarily prevent violence in the moment, or political fallout later. Yon was actually fairly certain that with Young Lady Va putting her seal on this he had enough political cover that the sect would fall back on following the rules since it served them better in the long run.
Of course, there were other ways to deal with the situation.
How does Yon deal with this sort of interference?
[ ] Violence
[ ] Sabotage
[ ] Bribery
[ ] Cooperation
