Chapter Ninety-Five: A New Home, So Wonderful

Zhao Hengyi cared so deeply about forging tungsten steel not merely because he wanted a pair of excellent blades or a few sets of armor fit to be passed down for generations.

The material had extraordinary properties. Given the conditions he had now, tungsten steel’s hardness alone was enough to make simple machine tools, hard drill bits, and other such production equipment.

With production tools in hand, Zhao Hengyi could begin a rudimentary industrial transformation in Elm Bay. If he ever succeeded in reaching that goal, the leap in productivity would be far beyond anything this age could imagine, enough for Elm Bay to grow, in time, into a prehistoric monster capable of crushing every industry in its path.

Of course, the road to that final goal was still a long one, and it would surely be lined with thorns and fraught with danger.

If he had been born into a powerful feudal dynasty, with honest administration and a people living in peace and plenty, perhaps Zhao Hengyi would have relied on his far greater insight to make a modest fortune and become a comfortable gentleman living in ease.

But this was the Great Yan Kingdom, a realm on the brink of collapse, rotten to the core.

Zhao Hengyi would never, and dared not, place his hopes on a dynasty that could topple at any moment.

To put it plainly, everything he was doing was nothing more than self-preservation. And if it was self-preservation, then there was no room for fine moral talk; whatever means he had, he would use them all.

If he could successfully smelt stable tungsten steel, Zhao Hengyi could also begin work on firearms.

The making of guns could be terribly complicated, but it could also be terribly simple.

In the early stages of firearms’ development, most of their progress had revolved around gunpowder and ammunition.

Zhao Hengyi, who already had the ability to make smokeless powder, had in a sense acquired the decisive prerequisite for forging firearms.

In his memory, within the history of his former world, someone had once used stout bamboo tubes and black powder to create the most primitive gun.

By every measure, Zhao Hengyi had far more advantages than those early pioneers who had made weapons from bamboo.

And the reason he had gone to so much trouble to buy Wu Ren, a blacksmith from the Imperial Works Bureau, was precisely for simple machine tools and firearms.

A blacksmith trained in the Imperial Works Bureau was a completely different breed from a rough self-taught fellow like Zhang Daniu. Wu Ren could read; he could understand the blueprints Zhao Hengyi drew, and when it came to measurements, he grasped them at a glance.

"Master, who drew this? Truly, truly a man of genius!"

Wu Ren held Zhao Hengyi’s structural drawings in the highest esteem.

The clean, straightforward lines, the dimensions marked with exact clarity, even the cutaway views and sectional drawings: once he understood what the drawings represented, Wu Ren felt as though the decades he had spent as a blacksmith had been wasted, and that the craft handed down through generations of the Wu family was worth nothing at all.

"Who else could have drawn them? Naturally, my master did!" Zhang Daniu said with a face full of pride. "Do you think I call him master just to curry favor with the boss? My master has real skill. You’d better perform well, Old Wu. If Master one day takes pity on you and accepts you as a disciple, then this blacksmithing trade will belong to your Wu family’s line from your generation onward!"

Wu Ren was so flustered he did not know what to do. He wanted very much to kneel and beg for apprenticeship at once, but having just arrived, he could not yet make sense of the customs here, and feared offending the boss. In the end, he could only grin sheepishly.

Zhao Hengyi listened with his face darkening.

That pest Zhang Daniu was hopeless.

"As long as you can understand these drawings, that’s enough. We’ll take the rest slowly. In any case, discuss everything with Daniu, and use whatever methods you have without hesitation. Our place in Elm Bay may not have much else, but we do pay generously."

As a feudal exploiter holding people’s indentures in his hands, Zhao Hengyi was clearly an unqualified one. This was true not only for Wu Ren, but even for the women and children weaving on Broken Cliff Mountain: Zhao Hengyi made everything clear to them. Work meant wages, and once they had saved enough silver, they could redeem their indentures and leave or stay as they pleased.

Of course, for an ordinary female laborer, saving enough to buy back her indenture would take quite some time.

And after a long period of observation and experience, these women would inevitably realize that working for Master Zhao meant fuller meals, warmer clothes, and no fear of being bought and sold at another’s whim. It was infinitely better than drifting outside, never knowing whether one would eat tomorrow. Even if they redeemed their indentures, very few would likely choose to leave for real.

Yet the chance to regain freedom and shed the status of slave or servant remained an irresistible temptation.

Human desire had no end. One had to live with some hope. For now, those women merely wanted a place to live and enough to eat and wear.

But once they grew used to the life before them, higher needs would inevitably arise. There was no such thing as enough or not enough; that was simply human nature.

At dawn, cheers rose from the smithy.

It was done.

Using the most primitive methods under the most backward conditions, Zhao Hengyi had finally produced crude tungsten steel.

Crude though it was, and even if it would be considered a defective product by modern standards, that tiny piece of tungsten steel represented hope in the Great Yan Kingdom.

Now that he had the technique for smelting tungsten steel, the countless ideas in Zhao Hengyi’s mind had gained the firmest and most powerful support.

After a night of tireless labor, everyone dispersed, driven home by Zhao Hengyi to rest.

Wu Ren was exhausted, yet his heart felt steady.

His new master was kind and broad-minded; he had already noticed that on the road to Elm Bay.

But that his new master actually understood the blacksmith’s trade, had so many astonishing ideas, and even casually passed on the art of drafting to him was something Wu Ren had never imagined.

What was more, the boss did not reject so-called heretical notions; if anything, his ideas were even more outrageous than Wu Ren’s own.

The reason Wu Ren had been framed by the people of the Imperial Works Bureau and dragged down together with his apprentices and family was precisely because he liked to ponder new things and always felt that the old skills left by the ancestors still had room for improvement.

But once he began to think, he could not help secretly trying things out. Small changes might earn praise from his superiors, yet invisibly they also harmed other people’s interests.

In the end, because he had used materials from the Imperial Works Bureau to forge things everyone deemed useless novelties, Wu Ren was accused of deliberately wasting official supplies. Several unsolved cases of missing expensive materials were also all dumped onto him, and he was sold off through the slave market.

Thankfully he had met his master. Surely such a thing would never happen again.

After arriving in Elm Bay, Wu Ren and his apprentices had been called to the smithy after only a meal. They only knew that his wife and daughter had been properly settled, but not where.

After asking around, Wu Ren found the house allocated by the master’s family.

It was a brick house, built of bricks.

His delighted wife and daughter rushed out of the new home, speaking in disbelief of their excitement to Wu Ren. From now on, she and her family would no longer have to fear rain leaking through the roof, wind tearing it away, or dying of cold in their own house in winter.

It was wonderful.