Industrial zones were never clean and tidy, especially in the Great Tang, where this was the most primitive form of industrial area. Waste ore from screening piled up at the foot of the mountains. The term “arid plateau” was only relative to the fertile plains—the land here could actually be cultivated. However, faced with the substantial profits from industry, people all chose to ignore this, including the wisest of emperors and prime ministers.
On the open-air slag heap, over a dozen pitch-black children carried baskets, picking through the coal slag. This scene was also very familiar to Yun Ye—he had done this work himself. Coal slag burned very well with less coal smoke and strong heat, but it had one drawback: it was very easy to get coal gas poisoning. He didn’t know whether these children were aware of this characteristic of coal slag.
The people of Guanzhong would absolutely never burn firewood if they could burn grass, and would absolutely never cut down trees if they could burn coal. Unless it was absolutely necessary for building houses—requiring trees for rafters and purlins—they would never touch a single tree. Yet despite such frugality, after thousands of years of population growth, many mountaintops in Guanzhong had inevitably become barren. The Yellow River, that evil dragon, was finally beginning to reveal its ferocious face.
Now Guanzhong was beginning to burn coal, and the population was gradually migrating toward the border towns. He wondered whether such measures could temporarily slow the soil erosion on the Loess Plateau.
The ancient winds, day after day, transported loess from distant places, forming thick layers of yellow earth. Yun Ye didn’t want the rivers to carry it away again. This wasn’t sentimentality—rather, Yun Ye was drunk. Those enthusiastic men of Guanzhong, upon encountering the noble marquis, always erupted with outrageous passion. There was no strong liquor, only the thick wine brewed by the people of Guanzhong themselves. Drinking one or two bowls of this stuff quenched thirst, three or four bowls bloated the belly, and five or six bowls inevitably required a trip to the toilet. He didn’t dare enter the artisan households’ latrines, so he had no choice but to stand on the desolate, weed-covered arid plateau to relieve himself thoroughly. Once the water was expelled, the alcohol remained in the body. No matter how low the alcohol content, drinking too much would still cause intoxication.
The world spun around him. Yun Ye forcefully restrained himself from falling face-first into his own urine. He toppled backward, falling on his back. In that instant, he discovered that the sky over the arid plateau was still as clear as sapphire…
Getting drunk on thick wine didn’t cause a headache the next morning—that counted as a good sign.
“Marquis, you promised to help them build a school here.” Liu Jinbao, while attending to Yun Ye’s face washing, reported to him some of the things he had said while drunk yesterday.
“That’s fine. Building a school costs little effort—just construct a few buildings and hire two teachers. Not much trouble.”
“You also said it would be best if the factory paid for it, calling it a Children’s Primary School. That way, the factory would not only have to support everyone but also help raise their children. Such a profitable arrangement absolutely must be done.”
Yun Ye thumped his head. Last night he must have really been drunk—how had he even said such things about undermining the state? Somewhat excessive, somewhat excessive indeed.
“You also said that the entire imperial court was full of stupid pigs, occupying positions without merit, utterly useless, wastefully squandering state funds—truly great pests to humanity, parasites of the nation, who should all yield their positions to talented people like Your Lordship.”
“Those words aren’t wrong. Even in the court, I’d dare say the same. Those people have already been cursed by the common folk as worse than pigs and dogs. One more person—me—won’t be a problem. Didn’t someone stand right on Vermillion Bird Avenue and curse them out? His Majesty even had officials record what he said, and in the end, because he cursed so well, he was rewarded with quite a bit of silver.”
“Finally, you said that the craftsmen absolutely mustn’t eat the grain they grow in the factory’s vacant land themselves, because it’s dirty here and the grain isn’t clean—even washing with water won’t remove it. Eating too much will make people sick. It’s best to sell this grain to Chang’an City, exchanging it for clean, edible food. You also said that city people have tough constitutions—one or two liang of poison generally won’t kill them.”
Yun Ye, who was drinking porridge, nearly spat it out. He set down his porridge bowl and asked Liu Jinbao in astonishment: “Did your marquis really say that? This doesn’t seem like something I would say.”
Liu Jinbao twisted his fingers somewhat embarrassedly without answering. It seemed he too felt ashamed of the marquis’s loss of composure yesterday. After finishing his porridge, Yun Ye immediately gave Liu Jinbao two kicks. I, the master, am not even embarrassed—why is a servant like you feeling ashamed? Truly absurd.
Three consecutive days were spent entirely at the steel mill. From ore selection to smelting, he observed everything. After consulting with the Academy’s masters, Old Zhou took up the pen and began writing an assessment report. Old Zhou didn’t know how to write it, so Yun Ye told him the format. It was nothing more than current output, projected output, and what the output would be when equipment operated at peak capacity—in plain terms, an irresponsible boasting report.
It was extremely simple! Just take the steel mill’s highest single-day steel production and multiply it by 365. For instance, if a person could run one hundred meters in ten seconds, what Yun Ye needed to do was say this person could run ten thousand meters in one thousand seconds. Well-founded with reasonable mathematical calculations—no flaws could be found.
To find flaws in Yun Ye’s report required being smarter than Yun Ye, but such people were virtually invisible in the Great Tang right now. Therefore, Yun Ye could happily enjoy the pleasures brought by high intelligence.
This report was for Zhangsun Wuji to see. Yun Ye could guarantee that upon seeing this report, Zhangsun Wuji would definitely lose his appetite and sleep restlessly. The Zhangsun family’s smelting operations were far inferior compared to the court’s workshops.
Now everyone understood the effect of scale. The greater the quantity of products, the lower the cost, and thus the more competitive they became. As long as the Great Tang was flooded with the court’s iron implements, the Zhangsun family’s iron implements could only rust in warehouses. First, the court’s credibility couldn’t be matched by the Zhangsun family. After so many years of maintenance, Li Er’s credibility had become like Mount Tai’s stone guardian—if he said something was a good product, it would definitely be a good product.
Second, as long as Yun Ye hung up his sign selling iron implements one day earlier than the Zhangsun family, he dared claim to be an established brand, while everyone else’s were newcomers, completely unworthy of trust.
Old Zhou had fully recognized the gap between himself and the marquis. No wonder that although everyone smelted steel the same way, his own family had been smelting for three hundred years yet still couldn’t match three years of Marquis Yun’s work. No wonder the marquis was a Third Rank noble while he was a Seventh Rank professor. First of all, there was a huge difference in mindset—when someone was bold enough to risk their life bragging shamelessly, what grounds did you have to be dissatisfied?
The weapons workshop was also on the arid plateau. Li Er had originally planned to encircle this area with walls, but considering that the factory district on the plateau would continue expanding, he abandoned this plan and simply had garrison soldiers seal it off tightly.
The production of horizontal sabers had become completely assembly-line. From the initial forging of blade blanks all the way to quenching and returning to the furnace, everything strictly followed corresponding procedures—one hundred thirty-six processes, not one could be omitted.
The forging of horizontal sabers was extremely intricate. First, two pieces of hard steel were forged using the folding method. During forging, temperature was controlled between 750-800 degrees. The number of folds was around fifteen, creating 32,768 layers. Then these two pieces of hard steel with 32,768 layers were sandwiched together with a piece of soft steel, heated to around 1,300 degrees, and hammered to make the three pieces of steel become one piece. This was then extended to the basic shape of the blade. Because the steel blade had been heated to 1,300 degrees, the surface had already decarburized and hardness had decreased. At this point, it still required carburization treatment to strengthen surface hardness.
Yun Ye stood behind the craftsman performing the quenching and personally watched how he operated. The hardness requirement for horizontal sabers was hard encasing soft—a technique Yun Ye had never seen before and had heard was long lost.
He watched with his own eyes as the craftsman poured various animals’ urine from different gourds, using it to mix with clay, then covering the blade from thick to thin layers, using different clay for different parts. The blade edge had almost no visible clay. It was placed in pale blue flames to forge until the blade body turned completely red, then hung vertically on a rack. There was the ventilation opening. Yun Ye watched as the blade body changed from bright red to dark red, finally becoming pitch black. Although the smell at the scene was unpleasant, Yun Ye persisted in watching the entire process, because this too was a learning process. Learning must be taken seriously—this was a consistent requirement from both Li Gang and the Old Man of Mount Tai.
The master craftsman who made weapons walked over holding a horizontal saber. This was a plain and unadorned weapon. The entire blade looked like a flat redwood staff. Only by pressing the spring mechanism would a flash of cold light shoot out from within the redwood staff. No matter how craftsmen decorated this blade, it still couldn’t change its nature as the supreme cold weapon.
He slowly drew this blade, looking at its darkened body. Lightly flicking it with his finger, a dragon’s cry immediately rang out. The cold light reflected on the blade body seemed to flow, flashing from the hilt to the tip in one go before disappearing.
Yun Ye liked examining blades this way. Although that flash of cold light was actually just sunlight penetrating through gaps in the ceiling, and its flowing was merely because Yun Ye had moved the horizontal saber, he always felt this was the only way to demonstrate that this was a weapon rich with spiritual essence.
In the imperial palace, he had seen the Fish-Hiding Sword and the so-called Zhanlu—both were crudely shaped and unbearably ugly. Most detestable was that they were all bronze weapons. Carelessly dropping one on the ground had chipped it, causing him to be punished by Zhangsun with standing for a full hour. When Li Er found out, he had held his Zhanlu sword like holding a corpse, grief-stricken for a long time. When passing by the standing Yun Ye, he had even viciously kicked him in the rear—painfully so!
Later on, those two swords displayed in Li Er’s martial hall disappeared. Not only did those two vanish, but several other reportedly famous precious swords collected by Li Er also disappeared. Only the horse lance, meteor hammer, flail, and one-zhang-two-chi-long mo-dao remained—things Yun Ye would absolutely never touch.
If Yun Ye wanted to offer suggestions to the Great Tang’s weapons manufacturing industry, that would purely be like reciting texts before Confucius or showing off saber skills before Guan Yu. As far as Yun Ye knew, the Great Tang’s cold weapons manufacturing industry was beyond comparison even in later eras. Therefore, coming to the weapons workshop, Yun Ye could only suggest that everyone try assembly-line working methods. As for anything else, he didn’t believe he was qualified to instruct these masters who could craft cold weapons to their zenith.
If there was nothing to suggest, then he would do his utmost to help them resolve their worries—such as children’s schooling issues, matters of selling grain to the capital, whether a small market could be opened here, and if possible, asking the court to help them build proper houses, since thatched-roof houses were too cold in winter on the arid plateau.