The tree desires stillness, but the wind will not cease.

Besides the Bureau of Military Geography’s scouts, in the afternoon some suspicious martial world figures also gathered toward Longhua Port.

Han Qian wasn’t worried about these matters. No matter how badly things went, they could endure through tonight. But the key issue was that the Chancellery still hadn’t affixed its seal to the Personnel Ministry’s memorial today. What situation would arise tomorrow was completely beyond Han Qian’s ability to predict or control.

Today was the day after the Third Prince’s wedding. Yang Yuanpu needed to escort his new bride into the palace for an audience with the Emperor. Tomorrow according to plan, the Third Prince would escort his bride to the Imperial Ancestral Temple for ancestor worship, and Guo Rong should accompany him for both. However, if during these two days they still couldn’t send anyone to infiltrate the garrison prefecture to investigate the situation, the day after tomorrow Zhao Mingting would very likely request that Guo Rong, as the Dragon Sparrow Army’s Supervising Commissioner, directly lead people into Taowu Settlement.

At that time, no matter how arrogant Han Qian and the others were, they couldn’t openly obstruct Guo Rong from bringing people into the garrison prefecture.

However, at this moment Han Qian had also developed the composure to do his utmost and leave the rest to fate. After making some contingency preparations to delay as much as possible, he wouldn’t sit restlessly.

Li Zhigao left all his men at the garrison prefecture. Returning to the city at night wasn’t safe for him. If he didn’t want to go to Longhua Port to meet with Chai Jian, he could only stay overnight at the garrison prefecture.

The ever-diligent Shen Yang naturally had also sensed the tense atmosphere of alarm on all sides. Today he deliberately remained in the city and didn’t come to Taowu Settlement.

After nightfall, to avoid prying eyes and facilitate Yao Xishui’s participation, Li Zhigao summoned the garrison prefecture’s Works Staff Officer Zhou Yuan to the estate to discuss fortress construction matters.

Zhou Yuan had significant grievances against Han Qian.

As Works Staff Officer, the construction of fortifications, roads, ditches, and buildings should all be matters he assisted Chief Clerk Shen Yang in overseeing. Especially the forging of arms and military equipment was under his direct jurisdiction. But after sorting out the initial chaos, when Zhou Yuan wanted to formally requisition skilled craftsmen after the New Year to establish a craftsman household battalion, he discovered that the several dozen most skilled artisans had long been hired by Han Qian to the estate’s workshop compound.

Moreover, in matters of building embankments, digging ditches to create fields, and isolating disease sources, Shen Yang also placed more emphasis on consulting Han Qian’s opinions, leaving Zhou Yuan this construction official somewhat misnamed and sidelined.

Zhou Yuan was full of complaints but couldn’t tear off the pretense with Han Qian. He only secretly instigated Zhang Qian and Guo Liang to also recruit personnel near the lime kiln, preventing the Qiuhu Mountain villa from monopolizing the lime supply to the garrison prefecture.

When Han Qian wanted to take over all fortress construction matters, Zhou Yuan naturally strongly opposed it. The final result of their discussion was that the estate’s workshop compound would provide the city bricks needed for constructing defensive walls and outpost compounds. As Works Staff Officer bearing responsibility for the garrison prefecture’s construction, Zhou Yuan had to take over the actual building work no matter what—otherwise he would truly become mere decoration in the Dragon Sparrow Army.

Actually, Han Qian mainly wanted to undertake the brick-firing operation.

Jinling had a history of burning coal dating back over a thousand years—coal was also the cheap fuel that an industrial system a thousand years later would need in large quantities to achieve leapfrog development. There were even records of mining coal for fuel in Baohua Mountain.

However, near Jinling City, quality coal seams directly exposed at the surface were extremely rare. Even if they existed, they had long been exhausted during the historical river of several hundred or even over a thousand years. And those shallow coal seams—even coal beds that could be mined by digging wells only a few dozen meters—were also massive and difficult projects by contemporary standards.

In a mountain hollow about seven or eight li deep in the back mountains of the Qiuhu Mountain villa, there were traces of ancient coal mining from several hundred years ago. However, the easily accessible surface coal had long been mined out. Combined with centuries of rock weathering and mountain landslides causing accumulation, according to preliminary surveys, the workshop compound would need to sink vertical shafts seven or eight zhang deep before reaching coal seams buried deep underground.

However, for a workshop compound producing one hundred twenty thousand dan of lime annually and consuming six million jin of charcoal each year, mining shallow coal seams, though seemingly difficult, was something that absolutely had to be done.

Traditional brick-firing required four thousand jin of charcoal to fire one thousand bricks—the consumption of charcoal was even more terrifying. This was also the key reason why the vast majority of buildings in this era couldn’t afford to use green bricks and small tiles. Han Qian taking over brick-firing was precisely to further amortize the cost of mining shallow coal and achieve greater economies of scale.

Those who don’t manage a household don’t know the cost of firewood, rice, oil, and salt.

When Han Qian initially helped his father write the “Memorial on Epidemic Waters,” he thought he’d considered things quite thoroughly. But during actual implementation, he still discovered numerous problems. One of them was that to isolate disease sources, he proposed strictly prohibiting plague-stricken refugees from drinking raw water—initially he’d thought too simply about this.

Never mind schistosome eggs—streams, ditches, and rivers bred vast quantities of microorganisms, parasites, and even bacteria. Boiling water before drinking was probably the most effective contemporary method for preventing infectious diseases and miasmas. But the problem was—never mind desperately hungry, sallow-faced destitute families—even for ordinary common people in this era, insisting on drinking boiled water meant burning over a thousand additional jin of firewood annually, an extremely heavy burden.

Taowu Settlement lacked land and fields. Wheat straw and other fuel simply wasn’t enough. Fortunately, labor was relatively abundant, so they could organize people to go into the mountains for firewood. In just half a year, Han Qian had watched with his own eyes as mountain peaks relatively close to the garrison prefecture became bald over large areas.

Han Qian had integrated the memories of Zhai Xinping from his dreamscape, but discovered not all memories were correct. Many times there were errors due to individual cognitive limitations. For instance, in Zhai Xinping’s memories, he felt that contemporary mountains and wilderness should be lushly forested, but in reality the forest coverage area around Jinling City was extremely low.

Han Qian later analyzed this himself—it was actually because for six or seven hundred years, Jinling had always been the military, political, cultural, and even economic center of Jiangnan East Circuit and Jiangnan West Circuit. The city population had never fallen below one hundred thousand. Long-term firewood cutting and building construction had probably long ago completely stripped bare the nearby hills.

After Han Daoxun acquired the Qiuhu Mountain villa, he strictly prohibited tenant farmers from entering the mountains to cut firewood or hunt. This wasn’t because he didn’t pity the tenant farmers, but because he truly couldn’t bear to see the rare few lushly forested peaks stripped completely bare.

Of course, the three or four thousand mu of forest in the back mountains of the villa estate had also been mostly felled this past half year. If Han Qian didn’t organize people to mine coal, the costs of firing bricks and lime would only get higher and higher.

Mining coal mainly involved excessively high initial investment costs.

With loose soil and shallow groundwater tables, plus summer and autumn rainstorms periodically washing the earth, digging vertical shafts nearly twenty meters deep required using sturdy timber to shore up the shaft walls throughout. And when entering the coal seam to excavate, wherever they dug they needed timber frames for support.

However, timber from pine, elm, locust, cypress, and other trees, pressed tightly against damp soft mud walls, was extremely prone to rot.

Carbonization treatment could prevent decay to some extent, but carbonized timber’s supporting strength would be severely weakened. Using cooked tung oil to soak the wood was costly.

In short, handling this pile of problems properly would definitely not be cheap. But Han Qian believed that once they achieved scale, coal would be far cheaper than charcoal.

In fact, if the historical trajectory didn’t change, coal replacing charcoal over the next one or two hundred years was an unstoppable trend. Even in the current era, places like Xu and Chu with relatively abundant surface coal seam resources were already using coal on a large scale for iron smelting.

However, the iron produced in these places was brittle and difficult to forge into quality implements—people of the world still didn’t know the reason why.

After discussing matters, Li Zhigao would stay overnight with Zhou Yuan at the military prefecture office below.

To avoid prying eyes, Yao Xishui couldn’t directly stay overnight at the military prefecture office. She could only disguise herself as a man and accompany Han Qian to see Li Zhigao and Zhou Yuan out of the estate.

At night the moon was bright and stars sparse. Near and distant mountain ranges layered rather clearly before their eyes.

Of course, no matter how bright the stars and moon on a clear night, visibility was limited. Even using a monocular telescope they could only see vague human figures three or four hundred zhang away. For situations farther out, they needed to use other methods to transmit information before they could know.

Li Zhigao was raised in the military and diligent in his studies. These years following his father’s generation campaigning north and south, he was one of the core generals of Li Yu’s faction. His knowledge was also extremely broad. Han Qian discussing people and customs far and wide with him was quite congenial.

After seeing Li Zhigao and Zhou Yuan to the front of the military prefecture office residence, just as Han Qian was about to return to the estate with Yao Xishui, two fast horses galloped over. They were scouts Chai Jian had sent back from Longhua Port, who knelt to report:

“Guo Rong left the city late at night and is rushing toward Taowu Settlement together with Zhao Mingting.”

“They moved so quickly!” Han Qian had thought Guo Rong would need to accompany the Third Prince escorting his bride into the palace today and tomorrow, and at the earliest would only arrive at Taowu Settlement with Zhao Mingting tomorrow morning. He hadn’t expected that as soon as palace matters concluded, Zhao Mingting, disregarding the darkness, would directly pull Guo Rong out of the city to rush toward Taowu Settlement.

Zhao Mingting’s speed was truly fast enough. He must have already noticed that his father’s appointment to Xuzhou was extremely critical and urgently wanted to investigate the true situation on their side.

“Let’s go greet them together!” Li Zhigao said with a grave expression.

Although Guo Rong was Anning Palace’s man, he was also the Supervising Commissioner appointed by Emperor Tianyou. His status in the Dragon Sparrow Army was second only to the Third Prince Yang Yuanpu, slightly higher than Chief Clerk Shen Yang.

And at this time, even if the Third Prince Yang Yuanpu were present, there would be no reason to obstruct the Supervising Commissioner from entering the garrison.

Yao Xishui and Zhao Ting’er returned to the estate first. Just as Han Qian was about to rush with Li Zhigao and Zhou Yuan to the west gate to intercept Guo Rong and Zhao Mingting, he saw Guo Liang and Zhang Qian walking over slightly tipsy.

“Colonel Li, Staff Officer Zhou, where are you going?”

Guo Liang didn’t even know Li Zhigao had come to the garrison prefecture today. Seeing him together with Han Qian and Zhou Yuan, he was rather surprised.

“I’m told that Supervising Commissioner Guo Rong, accompanying Bureau of Military Geography Director Zhao Mingting, is rushing this way. Zhou Yuan, Han Qian, and I are going to greet them,” Li Zhigao said in a somber voice. “Colonel Guo, Director Zhang, if there’s nothing urgent, you can return to your residences early to rest.”

“Ah…” Hearing that Guo Rong and the Bureau of Military Geography’s Zhao Mingting were rushing to the garrison prefecture in the middle of the night, Guo Liang was first startled. He thought that as Supervising Commissioner, apart from observing from afar during the initial recruitment of plague-stricken refugees, Guo Rong seemingly hadn’t shown his face at the garrison prefecture—why was he rushing here in the middle of the night today?

He then thought again—Guo Rong coming to the garrison as Supervising Commissioner, perhaps one could say Zhang Qian’s rank and position were too low to need to participate in the greeting, but as one of the Dragon Sparrow Army’s five Colonels and five garrison commandants, shouldn’t he be going to greet them together with Li Zhigao? How could Li Zhigao so unhesitatingly tell him to avoid them?

Zhang Qian tugged at Guo Liang’s sleeve.

Guo Liang was also an intelligent person. Reminded by Zhang Qian, he quickly understood that the Third Prince’s side must have some dirty business with Anning Palace. Li Zhigao feared he and Zhang Qian might reveal some flaw, or perhaps Guo Rong and Zhao Mingting were coming to hold them accountable for something—that was why Li Zhigao simply wanted them to avoid the situation.

Of course, as a Colonel, being told by Li Zhigao to avoid them with just a word made Guo Liang lose some face. His expression clouded for a moment before he departed with Zhang Qian.