Han Qian left Old Zhao, Zhao Qi, and Chen Jitang outside. He led Yang Qin, Feng Xuan, and the others back to the official residence, where servants were moving those ceramic urns, steaming pots, and various odd contraptions into the eastern side courtyard.
These ceramic urns and steaming pots were all newly designed and fired by Han Qian, primarily for distilling and purifying alcohol after brewing. However, the results weren’t very good yet, and Han Qian hadn’t had time to figure out exactly what the problem was.
The contemporary era couldn’t yet brew the throat-burning spirits of later times.
Han Qian had previously mainly used quicklime to dehydrate and purify contemporary brewed alcohol, but the purified alcohol contained dissolved lime water, making it bitter and astringent on the palate—definitely not fine wine. It could only be sold externally as ordinary burning knife liquor.
Unfortunately, burning knife liquor with no taste to speak of couldn’t be sold to official and gentry households, while common folk couldn’t afford the high price of alcohol. So it could only be considered better than nothing.
And even when burning knife liquor was used for disinfection, it caused extreme irritation to wounds.
Han Qian had long considered using distillation to purify alcohol. Last year entering autumn, he’d trial-produced new-style alcohol stills, but hadn’t been able to further refine and adjust the new still designs before the Jing-Xiang war subsequently erupted. The matter had been delayed ever since.
Currently, Han Qian had entrusted the daily affairs of Jinyun House and the Left Office to Tian Cheng, Gao Shao, Lin Haizheng, and Zheng Tong to oversee. Whether to avoid Emperor Tianyou’s suspicions or to sort out the situation within Jinling, he needed to cultivate himself for a period of time, which also gave him more time to tinker with these ingenious techniques.
Truly high-purity alcohol, besides being extremely welcome among officials, nobles, and the powerful, also had extremely high value for medical and pharmaceutical uses. The corresponding distillation and purification methods would have even broader applications.
After the ceramic urns and steaming pots were all moved into the eastern side courtyard, Han Qian couldn’t wait to personally lead several young Han family craftsmen to assemble them…
Over the following days, Han Qian rode into the city every morning to report to the Prince’s Mansion, sort through Jinyun House affairs, chat with the Third Prince for a while, then after lunch would ride out of the city to return to Yandang Point to work on distillation matters.
Yang Qin, Feng Xuan, and Xi Chang led the fleet with the three hundred gold ingots remaining in Han Qian’s hands to Runzhou and Guangling, where grain had been bountiful for several consecutive years, to purchase rice and grain.
The Jing-Xiang war had not only devastated the Jing-Xiang region—neighboring Jiang and E regions had over a million shi of grain requisitioned along with large numbers of corvée laborers. Moreover, before autumn and winter, thirty thousand more households would be conscripted from Jiang, E, Tan, and Xiang regions to fill Dengzhou and Junzhou for frontier settlement. Agricultural affairs throughout Great Chu’s western territories were greatly affected.
Currently, news arrived that rainfall in summer had been very heavy in the Yangtze River basin as well as the Yuan River, Xiang River, and even Gan River watersheds. Flood disasters wouldn’t be light—grain shortages would be the general trend.
In any case, transporting grain westward from Runyang and other places wouldn’t be a losing proposition.
However, the Xuzhou fleet currently had only eight large ships with a total capacity of merely fifteen to sixteen thousand shi. Han Qian also hadn’t had Yang Qin and Feng Xuan take all the vessels away. He kept one new fast sailing ship at Yandang Point, with Lin Zongjing leading over thirty armed guards and sailors to transport goods around Jinling and other places.
If Han Qian truly needed to purchase lime, blue bricks, coal briquettes, and other materials from Taowu Gathering, the warehouse there had ships allocated for transport. But Han Qian had to guard against the day when the situation in Jinling took a sharp turn for the worse—he needed a fast sailing ship that could help him quickly escape danger.
No matter how scarce the Xuzhou Shipping Association’s current transport capacity, he had to keep one ship nearby for ready deployment.
Of course, while researching distilled liquor at Yandang Point, he also began trial-producing scorpion cannons that could be mounted on sailship decks.
Installing catapults on warships was an idea any contemporary naval commander would have. After all, everyone wanted to be able to destroy enemy ships or inflict massive casualties on enemy soldiers from three to four hundred paces away, rather than engaging in brutal, bloody boarding combat.
However, traditional catapults were too cumbersome, requiring at least forty to fifty men pulling simultaneously to launch stone projectiles. Even contemporary five-deck tower ships didn’t have deck areas large enough to accommodate a traditional catapult.
The whirlwind cannon’s greatest improvement was replacing human pulling power with a counterweight box weighing several thousand jin. But even small whirlwind cannons stood five to six meters tall with throwing arms nearly ten meters long—still too large for existing contemporary warships.
Even forcing installation on warships would do more harm than good.
The Tower Ship Navy’s warships commonly used slapping poles and grappling hooks for close combat, and crossbow beds for ranged combat.
Crossbow beds could shoot short spear-like bolts that could pierce thick ship walls, but could only attack enemy ships from the side. How could their power compare to hurling hundred-jin or even two to three hundred-jin stone projectiles violently at enemy ships, let alone launching ceramic jars filled with oil to burn enemy ships three to four hundred paces away?
Traditional scorpion cannons had extremely high requirements for tendon cable materials and were difficult to use repeatedly.
Jinling wasn’t like Xichuan when it was under siege—Han Qian could obtain excellent bow materials relatively easily here.
Han Qian thought to combine traditional triple-bow crossbow beds with tendon cable crossbow beds, using bow limbs formed from three giant takwood bows to replace torsion tendon cables as the energy storage mechanism for projectiles.
However, even a crossbow bed crafted from three giant takwood bows would only have about five to six shi of bow force—sufficient for launching giant crossbow bolts, but to hurl even thirty to fifty-jin stone projectiles three hundred paces would require at least eight to ten giant takwood bows as the projectile energy storage mechanism.
This way, the scorpion cannon became cumbersome and expensive again.
After much deliberation, Han Qian decided to use refined steel to manufacture bow limbs.
Even though hundred-refined steel existed in this era, its cost was actually even more exorbitant.
Hundred-refined steel mainly involved heating pig iron blocks and repeatedly forging them to gradually remove impurities and decarburize, finally forging refined steel. But the entire process was incredibly complex.
Initially, Han Qian had taken the term literally, perhaps thinking that heating a pig iron block red-hot and forging it once could be called “one refinement.” But when he truly delved deeply into researching contemporary craftsmanship, he discovered that pig iron blocks needed repeated forging for days or even over ten days after furnace heating before it could be called “one refinement.” One could see how difficult it was to refine a piece of steel to the “hundred-refinement” level in this era.
During the Three Kingdoms period, Wei King Cao Cao ordered officials to craft five precious swords, consuming a full three years.
Though six to seven hundred years had passed from the Three Kingdoms to now, and iron smelting and steel refining techniques had developed beyond the foundation of traditional “hundred-refined steel,” the difficulty of casting refined steel bow limbs capable of energy storage remained far greater than imagined.
An excellent straight-spine steel blade, forged ten times beyond crude steel, was sufficient for use and sold for several thousand coins. However, refined steel bow limbs needed to deform greatly without breaking while having sufficient elasticity to store three to four thousand jin of enormous force—far more demanding than forging an elite steel blade.
When Han Qian discussed related plans with the Han family craftsmen, everyone clicked their tongues, saying that to truly forge qualified bow limbs, even spending two to three years, they might not be able to forge a single qualified refined steel giant bow.
Forget the expenditure—could they afford the time?
What if two to three years passed without success?
Wouldn’t the money and grain be wasted?
“What I plan has never failed. Just go ahead and do it boldly.” Han Qian slapped the table and said, determined to stubbornly forge ahead with making refined steel giant bows.
Over these past two-plus years, Han Qian had squandered money and grain like flowing water—everyone had grown accustomed to it.
Now seeing Han Qian had made up his mind and wouldn’t tolerate objections, the crowd stopped arguing. They requisitioned an earthen house south of the western side courtyard where servants lived, preparing to begin building a smelting furnace.
The military office workshop had ready-made pig iron and iron ore powder for purchase—Yandang Point didn’t need to build a large iron smelting furnace.
Contemporary hand-forging furnaces were much simpler than imagined. Tools like bellows, fire tongs, and forging hammers for steel refining and forging steel pieces could all be transported from Taowu Gathering as ready-made items. Within three days, the forging house was set up and ready to light the furnace.
That morning, Han Qian specifically had the Du Yijun and Du Yiming brothers request leave for him at the Prince’s Mansion. He remained at Yandang Point to observe the first day of furnace firing. But he deliberately slept in, practiced a set of boxing forms, leisurely ate breakfast in the courtyard, and hadn’t yet run to the forging house when the Prince’s Mansion dispatched a guard to relay that the Third Prince wanted to leave the city to inspect the estate at Yongchun Palace.
Han Qian could only set other matters aside first. He took a boat to the estate across the river to await the Third Prince’s arrival from the city.
Though called an estate, it had twelve to thirteen li of depth and would be one of the Prince’s Mansion’s primary sources of private funds going forward.
Before being granted to the Prince’s Mansion, the estate had been Emperor Tianyou’s autumn hunting park. Though not much land was cultivated, there were nearly twenty thousand mu of paddy fields, farmed by over nine hundred households totaling five to six thousand official slaves.
Besides yielding over twenty thousand shi of grain annually, the estate also raised over two thousand head of cattle and horses, and could annually deliver cattle, sheep, chicken, duck, poultry meat and eggs, fish, crabs, firewood, and charcoal in various quantities.
Taking a boat from Yandang Point and traveling south about two li, one turned into an east-west lateral river branch.
The Prince’s Mansion’s estate compound was located at the river branch mouth. A wooden bridge spanned the river lane, connecting to the official road from the south. Carriages and horses could drive directly into the estate.
This estate was Emperor Tianyou’s lodging when he left the city to hunt. Though not built as a proper traveling palace, it was still a hundred times more imposing than the Yandang Point compound across the river.
After Han Qian came ashore, seeing the Third Prince’s guard vanguard had only just arrived, he wandered leisurely into the estate.
Within the hundred-some mu estate, dozens of tower pavilions and halls were built. Everywhere were carved railings and painted walls, everywhere flowers bloomed and trees flourished. Shallow pools before and behind buildings were filled with brocade carp and green lotus.
Besides this, a main hall named Yongchun Palace was built in the estate. When Emperor Tianyou occasionally escaped the heat, he would conduct official business at Yongchun Palace. Everyone was accustomed to calling the estate compound by this name.
Besides the hundred-some mu main architectural complex, there was also a military camp for stationing guards to the east, plus a naval camp for naval warships.
Besides the Personal Affairs Office’s directly subordinate three hundred thirty-some personal attendant guards, the Prince’s Mansion also selected six hundred seventy loyal, brave, and able soldiers from Dragon Sparrow Army military households to form the Inner Household Office guards.
The military camp beside Yongchun Palace would henceforth serve as the Inner Household Office guards’ garrison.
Generally, when the Third Prince left the city, he would deploy Inner Household Office guards for protection. The Prince’s Mansion’s defense and the Third Prince’s daily protection were mainly rotated by the Personal Affairs Office.
Besides Yongchun Palace and the military camp, the estate’s over nine hundred servant households mainly lived concentrated in ten servant settlements.
When the Third Prince didn’t leave the city, Han Qian wouldn’t come to the Yongchun Palace estate for no reason. This was also his first time entering the Yongchun Palace estate compound.
Han Qian climbed an artificial mountain and gazed around. He saw that the northern portion of the Yongchun Palace estate had dense trees and grass, crisscrossing streams and wetlands, merging as one with the Qiupu River to the west and the Yangtze to the north. Without anyone’s introduction, he knew this portion should be the hunting park’s main body. He could still see elk leaping among grass and trees, and flocks of white water birds flying through the wetlands.
South of the Lateral River Harbor, fields crisscrossed with mulberry and hemp fields and paddy fields distributed throughout. The ten servant settlements were also mainly distributed south of the Lateral River Harbor.
For the Yongchun Palace estate to increase income, the over thirty thousand mu north of the Lateral River Harbor would need to be reclaimed.
However, this land might have still been river shoals a hundred years ago. Even now, the terrain remained low and silted. Presently seeing this area with its wetlands, dense grass, and lush forests, if truly reclaiming it to cultivate grain, flood disaster problems would be very serious.