Section Fifteen Coal Stoves and Experiments

  In the early morning, Chang'an is quiet and elegant, with the whole city shrouded in a thin blue mist, like a shy girl. The gates of the alleys are opening one by one, and people are walking out of their homes in twos and threes to start a new day.

  The clanging sound of the hammering in the workshop didn't stop all night, and Lao Shuan wiped the sweat from his face with a towel. He poured himself a bowl of cold tea from the teapot and gulped it down, feeling invigorated by the bitter taste of the cold tea. His fatigue instantly disappeared, and he took out a piece of ginger from the teapot and began to chew on it contentedly.

  It wasn't time for dinner yet, and his wife and children were still sleeping. They had been too tired the night before. Lao Shuan glanced at the pile of charcoal in the corner of the wall, each piece the size of a walnut, extremely uniform. This was the best hardwood charcoal, famous for its quality, but it was also very expensive. If business hadn't been so good, he wouldn't have been able to afford such high-quality charcoal.

  In the courtyard were three brand-new stoves, the result of his and his apprentice's work overnight. Someone would come to take them away today, and each stove would earn him 300 copper coins, plus the cost of iron materials, a total of 500 copper coins! He used to have to make dozens of knives just to earn 500 copper coins.

  Now, one night's work was equivalent to his income for an entire month in the past. He wasn't worried about selling them at all. He took out a sheet of high-quality paper from a small box hidden under the iron anvil. It was the kind of paper used by wealthy families to write letters and invitations, thick and durable, with drawings of stoves on it. There were drawings of stoves from different angles, including one that showed the stove broken open.

  There were words written all over the paper, but Lao Shuan couldn't recognize them. However, he could now recite the words by heart without making a single mistake. This was because Mrs. Yun had taught him one character at a time. He had spent his whole life working with iron and had never seen such drawings before. But once he understood the drawings, even a foolish blacksmith like himself could make stoves.

  This was a treasured family heirloom that could only be passed down to his eldest son, and the other children would just receive some money. The thought made his chest feel warm. The Yun family was indeed generous! Years ago, they had helped him out when he was an orphaned widow living next door, but he hadn't expected their kindness to be repaid so quickly and so generously.

  This was a way for the Lao Shuan family to survive for generations to come. Mr. Yun was a disciple of some immortal or other, but what was his name again?

  There were also people like Sun Wang, the owner of the iron shop next door, who had the same idea. He never thought that iron could be rolled out like a pancake, although it wasn't as durable as one made with a hammer. But it was too fast to make iron sheets, just pour the molten iron into the hopper, two people push the handle, and there will be iron sheets coming out between the two iron rollers, fix the edges and it's a good iron sheet. Put it on an iron cone and hit it, roll it into a three-foot iron bucket with one end slightly larger, not much effort is needed. Now the iron stoves sold in Chang'an are all made of this kind of iron sheet, and the chimneys made of this iron sheet are also indispensable. Plus a large iron kettle, the whole family will have hot water at any time, it's comfortable. Yesterday, Old Lady Yun said that the Hou Mansion was going to find matches for several young misses, and her own maid was already ten years old, so she wanted to send her to the mansion as a maid. The Yun family was kind and gentle, all women and children, and it was said that their servants ate three meals a day. If the maid went in, she would be set for life. After a few years, when she grew up, she could ask Old Lady Yun to find her a good husband, and besides, being a maid in the Hou Mansion was much better than being a wild maid in a small household.

  Zhao Guo Fang has never been as vibrant as it is now, everyone is busy with their own affairs. Yun Jia Hou Ye said that as long as our own people know, there's no need to show off everywhere, making a fortune should be done quietly, and don't shoot your mouth off. Although I don't understand what "shooting" means, keeping one's mouth shut is always a good idea. The official of Zhao Guo Fang personally guards the entrance, not allowing anyone unrelated to enter, and warns the residents that if relatives come, they should talk at the entrance, and if they need to stay overnight, they will be arranged to stay in an inn, not allowed to enter the Fang.

  The whole village of 175 households formed the most primitive factory assembly line, blacksmiths forged stoves, riveters made chimneys, and bricklayers bought unwanted carbon powder to make coal balls. Beehive coal was not difficult for Yunyan.

  Mrs. Cheng took Cloud Auntie around to various homes, quickly becoming fast friends with the ladies of the inner courtyard, and incidentally selling a few coal stoves in the process. These smokeless stoves instantly became popular throughout Chang'an, and no one wanted to use charcoal basins anymore - beautiful women didn't want to wake up with charcoal dust in their nostrils every morning. The old master would sit by the stove, heating up a pot of sour wine, roasting a couple of flatbreads, and smugly gazing out at the heavy snowfall, occasionally spinning a yarn about how big snows foretell a bountiful harvest to impress his young grandson. The mistress loved that the water on top of the stove was always hot, no longer worrying about washing clothes or cooking meals with frozen red hands. Anyway, coal cakes weren't expensive either.

  Yun Ye felt somewhat depressed, looking at the coal smoke drifting in the sky above Yunfu, dyeing the sky after the heavy snow into a mess, and his mood was uneasy, wondering if environmental protection experts in later generations would take himself as a negative example.

  The little girls were sitting on the big kang in their brother's room, playing games and messing up the newly laid-out sheepskin mattress. Xiaoyu had a monkey mask on her face and was chasing after Xiaoxi, who was pretending to be a mouse spirit, with a feather duster. Beibei was reluctantly wearing a pig snout and was strongly demanding to trade his gyroscope with Xiaodong. The most well-behaved of the girls, Dajie, was holding a needle and thread and learning how to sew clothes from her sister-in-law. Her brother's clothes were all tight-fitting, not those with big sleeves that were not warm and wasted fabric. Why couldn't they use their brains and save some fabric? The Yun family had already stopped using those things, the Cheng family didn't use them either, and probably neither did the old Niu family or the Taizi's place. Does this prove that ancient people also had a strong ability to accept new things?

  Zhao Guo Fang was just a whim of Yun Ye, a trial project to make some extra money for himself. The neighbors were only earning some labor wages, originally planning to give each person thirty cents per day, which already made Yun Ye feel that his heart could be burned as charcoal. The old neighbor refused, and Yun Ye thought it was too little, so he added ten more cents, but unexpectedly the neighbors thought that the Yun family was doing charity work, their self-esteem couldn't bear it, saying that if the wages exceeded twenty cents, they would rather go beg for food than eat the Yun family's "snatch food".

  Why apologize for paying workers a lot of money? Yun Houye was very angry and walked away with a flick of his sleeve. The people in the alley were victorious, cheering and rejoicing. A single coal furnace production line could support 175 households, employing over 600 people, not counting the blacksmiths, coppersmiths, and other craftsmen who ran their own shops. Simple lives led to simple employment, these citizens who had lived in Chang'an City for generations, as the earliest proletarians, did the hardest work in the city, but didn't get the respect they deserved. They had no land, the new land distribution system of the early Tang dynasty forgot about them, the terrible craftsman household registration system, the terrifying merchant discrimination. Not allowed to work, not allowed to do business, and couldn't farm either. Could only exist in a subordinate form, this was why Sun Wang's family, who didn't lack food or clothing for their daughters, insisted on sending their daughter into Yun's household.

  Li Er's bodyguard, Liu Xian, was a kind-hearted man with an unknown background and mysterious past. He burst into the Yun residence, carrying half a pig's head, eager to discuss why Han people couldn't be drained of blood to death, while Qiang people would die from it, a mysterious topic.

  Yun Yan really didn't want to discuss the matter of bloodletting, he himself was only half-baked, how could he be a teacher for others, especially for this butcher-like doctor? Liu Er claimed to be extremely interested in medicine, and had studied human anatomy on the battlefield, even using a horizontal knife to dissect a person who didn't die until after three days. He was very curious about what the white brain matter inside the skull was used for, how the heart with its many pipes could make people remember so many things, and where a person's thoughts were located. After asking, he used both hands to tear open half of a pig's head, and they each had half as a side dish to go with their wine.

  There's no doubt that these hands have touched brain matter and grasped hearts, now they're grasping a pig's head? Yun Yan suppressed his nausea and changed the subject. I'm not a pervert, discussing human brains while eating pig brain with chopsticks? He explained in detail what psychological horror is all about and gave an example: you tie someone to a pillar so they can't see their hands, make a small cut on their wrist but don't cut deep, tell them you've severed their blood vessels and their blood is flowing out. After an hour, it will all be gone. Next to them, place a wooden bucket with a small hole that lets water drip into a copper basin, telling them this is the sound of their blood dripping into the basin. When the water in the bucket runs out, the person will definitely die. In fact, there's not a single wound on their body. This is psychological horror; they killed themselves.

  Liu Er felt that he could emerge from the mountains now, having inherited some of Gaoren's knowledge. He would return and write it down to pass on to his descendants, so as to spread fragrance for a hundred generations.

  He saw him off and Yun Ye smiled as he returned to the back hall to continue playing with his sister. Only he didn't know that at the time he was about to fall asleep, Liu Er was reporting to Li Er.

  "I report to Your Majesty, what the Marquis of Lantian said is absolutely correct. The three people who committed the crime are indeed all dead, and there is not a single wound on their bodies."