People everywhere were celebrating New Year’s. Some celebrated well, some celebrated in hardship, some spent it in despair, but many more faced the future with hope. Many people made wishes to their ancestors that night, hoping next year would be easier, that there would be no more warfare, that the grain harvest would be abundant.

If none of that was possible, they hoped for protection to safely reach Yuzhou. They’d heard Yuzhou’s governor was a woman with a soft heart who was extremely kind to the common people. Life there would be a bit easier.

Most importantly, she was also skilled in warfare. Even the Xiongnu were no match for her, so with her there, Yuzhou shouldn’t become a battlefield again, right?

Zhao Hanzhang was half-drunk. Seeing many people in the hall had been drunk under the table, she stood up and waved her hand, “The night is deep. Everyone should return home to keep vigil with your families. I’ll head back first too.”

The bleary-eyed magistrate tried to get up to see her off, but Zhao Hanzhang waved him away.

Fu Tinghan, who hadn’t drunk much, also stood up and came forward, unobtrusively supporting her arm as they walked outside.

The magistrate saw her walk steadily and couldn’t help but struggle to his feet with his servant’s help, saying admiringly, “The Magistrate is truly worthy of being the Magistrate—such capacity for drink!”

Fu Tinghan escorted her to her room door. Seeing Ting He come to help, he waved her back temporarily and pulled out a leather arm guard from his sleeve. He took her left hand and fastened it on, saying, “This is for you—I made it myself with my own hands.”

Zhao Hanzhang felt the arm guard was somewhat heavy and quite hard. She touched it, her eyes narrowing slightly. “A mechanism?”

Fu Tinghan nodded. “It’s a sleeve arrow. I modified it into an arm guard so you can wear it normally without anyone noticing. If you’re in danger and an enemy gets close, this can temporarily save you.”

Fu Tinghan paused before continuing, “I soaked the thin arrows in the sleeve arrow with poison. Because they’re so thin, even hitting a vital point wouldn’t kill someone immediately, so I could only approach it from this angle. Use it for now, and when you run out of arrows, I’ll replace them for you.”

Zhao Hanzhang touched the arm guard, her expression somewhat dazed. “This would be more suitable for you to wear.”

After all, his martial prowess was inferior to hers.

Fu Tinghan smiled and shook his head. “There aren’t many people in this world who want to kill me, but there are many who want to kill you. You face far more danger than I do. Besides, I know how to make these—if I want one, I can make it myself.”

He carefully fastened the arm guard for her, his eyes lowered. “This is my Spring Festival gift to you. Hanzhang, Happy New Year!”

Zhao Hanzhang’s expression grew even more dazed, as if she’d returned to the past rather than being in the Great Jin.

People here only called today “New Year’s”—they would never say “Happy New Year.”

She murmured, “I didn’t prepare a gift for you…”

Fu Tinghan smiled broadly and said softly, “It doesn’t matter. From now on, I’ll be the one giving you gifts. I’ll give you a New Year’s gift every year, alright?”

Zhao Hanzhang smiled gently and nodded. “Alright!”

Only then did Fu Tinghan hand her over to Ting He. “Make her a bowl of hangover soup before she sleeps, or she’ll have a headache tomorrow.”

Ting He respectfully agreed, “Yes.”

But after drinking the hangover soup, Zhao Hanzhang perked up. After washing up, she sat cross-legged on the bed playing with her newly acquired sleeve arrow.

His mechanism work was very clever. The whole thing was made from tanned wolf hide with the mechanism in the middle of the hide. When she needed to use it, she had to first release the safety, then aim and fire.

This applied the principle of guns—a double safety feature without the danger of misfiring.

Zhao Hanzhang raised her left hand, aimed at the screen not far away, and lightly pulled with her right hand. A sleeve arrow shot out urgently, whooshing through the air and piercing into the screen with a clang.

Ting He, who was pouring water, was startled. “Miss, this sleeve arrow is so powerful—it can even pierce through the screen. If there were a person in front, wouldn’t it penetrate them too?”

“It can’t,” Zhao Hanzhang said. “This screen is too thin. However, not piercing through a person is actually better—this thing needs to remain inside the body to be lethal.”

Not to mention that foreign objects in the body were difficult to remove and would hurt with any movement, it was also because this sleeve arrow was soaked in poison—the toxin needed time to take effect.

However, if Fu Tinghan could make such a formidable mechanism, didn’t that mean he could also make firearms?

Zhao Hanzhang lowered her eyes in thought.

She’d always felt that with this era’s technology, it probably couldn’t be done, but if he were to make them…

Soon, she pushed this thought aside. No—in this era, with this level of productivity, if hot weapons were widely applied, it would be like opening Pandora’s box.

Using gunpowder to mine ore was one thing. Speaking of which, the precursor to gunpowder seemed to already exist in this time period, though only a few people knew about it, and they hadn’t yet realized it could be used in daily life and on the battlefield.

Gunpowder wasn’t truly widely used until the Tang Dynasty, but that was a prosperous era—they had a buffer.

Now, however, was the midst of chaos. Once this thing appeared, unless she could guarantee it would always remain in her hands, if it leaked out, people of this era could use it to complete a genocide, or even human extinction.

Without this thing, the Hu people of this era had already nearly exterminated the Han people. What more if they had it?

So the question was: did she have confidence that once made, the formula wouldn’t leak?

Therefore, she didn’t particularly want to use it on the battlefield at this time. However, it could first be used in daily life. People would need a long time to figure out its uses, let alone without knowing the formula.

Zhao Hanzhang lowered her eyes. To use this on the battlefield, she would have to increase this era’s productivity and have the ability to completely suppress warfare.

Lost in thought, the bell began to ring. The melodious bell sounds came from the distance, striking people’s hearts one by one.

Ting He also looked outside and faintly heard the sound of wooden clappers. She brightened up. “Miss, it’s midnight—it’s the new year.”

Zhao Hanzhang got up and walked to the window, opening it to look outside at the quiet starry night. Time seemed to pause for a moment. After a while, she heard crackling sounds, growing from distant to near, then even louder firecracker sounds.

Zhao Erlang ran into the courtyard holding a torch, seeing the windows of both left and right rooms open with his sister and brother-in-law both standing at their windows looking at the sky. He called out loudly, “Sister! Brother-in-law! Why are you standing at the windows? Come out and set off firecrackers—it’s New Year’s!”

Hearing this, Zhao Hanzhang leaned out to look to the side, meeting Fu Tinghan’s gaze looking over. She couldn’t help but smile broadly. “Happy New Year.”

Fu Tinghan also smiled slightly. “Happy New Year. May everything go smoothly.”

Zhao Erlang was still thinking about his half-burned firecrackers. Seeing the two of them dawdling, he shoved his torch into Lu Hu’s hands and rushed in to drag them both out. “Sister, Brother-in-law, Qiu Wu also prepared firecrackers for you. Mine are already burning—hurry and burn yours. If you miss the auspicious time, it won’t be good.”