Chapter Seventy-Three Glass

  It's already the hottest days, Zhao Zhe and Jian Xi have been cooped up in the Taoist temple for several days. The alchemy room is a mess, with dregs all over the floor, and several broken crucibles are still lying at the door, which can still be seen flashing with sparks inside.

  "Did you write down the formula just now?" Zhao Yan asked while stirring in the crucible.

  "Second Master, I've got it all down. That scoundrel Qingyun, once we catch him, we'll beat him half to death! What a lousy formula, most of it must be fake!" Xixi said excitedly, these past few days the two of them had created more explosions than Qingyun had in an entire year. His hair and eyebrows were all singed from the flames, his clothes were almost reduced to rags, his arms exposed flesh, his face was scorched by the intense heat, with patches of black and white like a giant panda.

  Zhao didn't hear Xi's complaint, he added a bit more white powder to the crucible again, and the murky mixture in the pot slowly became clear. He was studying the notes left behind by Qingyun, which included a formula for making glass. He had tried it several times before but failed, now he was trying again based on his own memory.

  The Taoists called the glass they refined "Liu Li", which is actually glass. They thought it was a kind of jade, a precious material for configuring elixirs. After grinding it into powder and adding it to the elixir, people who ate it could live as long as jade, up to 100 years old. Zhao didn't believe in this at all. People would eat it and then excrete it in its original form. If the glass fragments didn't puncture their intestines, that was already lucky. And they thought they could live forever? What a joke!

  Glass is now a very ordinary thing, but it was a rare treasure in the past. Zhao Ye knew that the raw materials for glass were also very common, just sand, lime and soda ash, which were easy to find. The difficulty for him was the formula, he didn't know the ratio of each material, so he could only try according to Qingyun's formula, hoping to figure out the technique first. After several experiments, he realized that the ancient people weren't stupid either, in order to prevent others from stealing their skills, Qingyun had tampered with the formula, and only he himself could decipher the code. Unfortunately for them, they had to try bit by bit, but fortunately, Zhao Ye knew what materials were used, otherwise, even if someone else tried, they wouldn't be able to find the door.

  "Add more fire!" Zhao Zhan instructed Xian Xi while observing, Xian Xi added a few more shovels of coal into the furnace, 'puffing' and 'hissing' as he worked the bellows, the flames sprang up, and the crucible turned bright red, reaching over a thousand degrees.

  "Second Master, be careful, don't get the pot exploded again!" Xi Xin said with a frightened and trembling voice, this kind of situation had happened many times before.

  "Don't worry, as long as we succeed, you can sleep on a pile of gold!" The raw materials in the crucible slowly melted and boiled under Zhao's stirring, with bubbles constantly rising to the surface. Zhao continuously skimmed off the impurities that floated up, feeling that success was within sight, his heart filled with joy and excitement.

  "Second Master, what are you doing? Can it be as valuable as you said?" Jian Xi wiped the sweat from his face and asked.

  "This is what they call glass, but ours is even better than the ones made by Qingyun and Persian people. How much do you think we can sell it for?"

  "What?! This is glass!" Jian Xi was shocked, he didn't expect that he had actually helped the prince create glass. He knew how much this thing was worth, there were only a few pieces of glass cups in the palace, and the emperor usually couldn't bear to use them, they were worth tens of thousands!

  "Didn't expect that, did you?" Zhao Ke smiled and said. The Song Dynasty was the richest era in history, with wealthy people as numerous as cattle hair. With too much money and nowhere to spend it, they liked to buy strange things for collection and display. This is no different from modern times. Luliu just happens to meet their needs, giving them a place to put their money, Zhao Ke seems to have already turned a pile of sand into glittering gold coins, rolling in and flowing into his own pocket.

  The fire was almost ready, and Zhao Yan used a spoon to scoop out a small amount and pour it onto the stone slab. The bright red liquid slowly cooled down and gradually turned into a transparent crystal. "It's done, don't burn it anymore, keep this temperature!" He waited for the crystal to cool down completely, picked it up in his hand, and held it against the sunlight. It was crystal clear, although still with a faint green tint, but almost indistinguishable from low-quality glass of later generations.

  "We did it!" Zhao Ke shouted loudly, pouncing on Xian Xi, who was caught off guard and fell to the ground. Xian Xi was stunned for a moment before quickly regaining his composure, thinking that another major invention of the king had been born, which also included his own credit.

  Glass was made, but to turn it into money still required a lot of work. Zhao Zhe had only seen glassblowing as a teenager, when reform and opening up had just begun, and small workshops were sprouting up everywhere like bamboo shoots after rain. Next door to their house, someone had set up a small glass factory, producing soda bottles and window glass. The quality was not good compared to the big factories, but they won out on price. Their equipment was simple: a furnace, two pairs of iron scissors, and a few blowpipes were all they needed to get started. They still used traditional manual blowing techniques.

  The workshops were all open-air, and he watched as the masters used blowpipes to pick up a piece of bright red glass water, under the coordination of their hands and mouths, turning left and right, like magic, transforming it into crystal clear bottles. It was still very attractive to children, and at that time, he and his little friends often went to watch in wonder, but they had never actually operated one themselves, nor would anyone have let them touch it.

  The next day, Zhao took a few tools that the blacksmith had made overnight and walked into the 'laboratory', only to find that the crucible was already stuck together with the solidified glass liquid. There was no way out, so he changed to another crucible and started again. After refining the glass water, Zhao imitated his master's appearance in his memory, took a blowpipe, picked up a piece of glass liquid, cut it open with iron scissors, took a deep breath, puffed out his cheeks, and blew out the most valuable breath of his life. The glass liquid was inflated, but Zhao was exhausted. When he caught his breath, the 'small balloon' hanging on the blowpipe cooled down quickly and could no longer be blown.

  "Failure is the mother of success!" Zhao Shu comforted himself, and then changed another one, but still failed. The two people struggled for a day, and on the ground was a pile of crooked and uneven works that couldn't stand upright or straighten up, it's frustrating to the point of tears!

  "It's too frustrating!" Zhao Zhen slammed his hammer and shattered them into glass pieces, his hands covered in dirt, his small black hands lamenting as he sat on the ground. Why is it so hard to do things? When others were his age, they were carefree and happy, but he was busy planning for the future, saving the Song Dynasty, building bridges, paving roads, improving people's lives, and even starting a factory, growing vegetables, and making money in all sorts of ways. He really wanted to jump up and scold his foolish father, saying "You're not doing a good job as emperor, always causing trouble and making things difficult for me!"

  "Second Master, don't be angry. If we can't manage it, can't we change to someone else?" Seeing Zhao Che's dejection, he carefully asked.

  "Who would have seen this thing throughout the entire Song Dynasty? Who could possibly possess such a technique?" Zhao Shi shook his head and said.

  "Second Master, I didn't say let them make glass, they just want to make it, we can't tell him no. What I mean is find someone who knows how to blow glass and have him blow glass for us!" Xianji said with a smile.

  "Who will blow it? Who can blow it?" Zhao Chu's spirit lifted, this line of thinking is not bad.

  "Second Master, you and that street performer who blows sugar are quite similar. Why don't we find two sugar blowers to try it out!"

  "Cough" Zhao Chuang was so angry that he almost choked to death, how dare he think like this? A sugar figurine only costs a penny, and if he can make one himself, it's enough for him to brag about making sugar figurines for his whole life. But now there's no other way out, we can try, "Alright, you send someone tomorrow to find two of the most skilled sugar blowing craftsmen, let them try, but you must think of a way to keep our secret from being revealed!"

  "Don't let him reveal the secret, there's only one way, that is to cut off his tongue, and make him unable to speak for the rest of his life!" Jian Xi said with a menacing glint in his eye as he stroked his smooth chin.

  "You're really ruthless, aren't you? To keep a secret from getting out, aside from killing or cutting off one's tongue, there are two other methods: one is to give him enough money so he can't bear to speak out; the other is to let him know that speaking out will lead to consequences worse than death!" Zhao Ke said with a smile.

  "Second Master, what are you planning to do with me?" asked Wang Ye's smiling face, without any reserve.

  "Get out! You still want me to throw money at you? If you can't handle this, I'll cut your tongue off!" Zhao Ze kicked him and scolded.

  "Second Master, I'll go find Shunzi right away. This guy is so intimidating that it's scary just thinking about him. He's also capable of handling this kind of thing, and another thing is that his mouth is as tight as a dead man's, he can definitely do it!" Ji Xi said with a smile, rubbing his thigh.

  Zhao Che was speechless, seeing Xi becoming more and more clever under his own training, with a worse temper. Now he's hanging out with Shunzi again, that cold-blooded guy, it seems like the new generation of black and white is about to be born.

  Jianxi and Shunzi were very efficient in handling matters, and three days later, the sugar blower's artisans were 'found' to come, but not two people. Jianxi and his men strictly implemented the king's idea, bringing back all the sugar blower's family members, the meaning was very clear, if they dared to speak out, the whole family would die!

  No need to say that outsiders are bustling, insiders are doorways. Zhao Ke only demonstrated the process to the two guys, and they took the glass water as sugar syrup and blew it away. They wasted a furnace of glass water to understand the operation points. In the second round, two fist-sized cups with shapes appeared on Zhao Ke's table.

  Zhao Ye quickly sent the two finished products to Huang Jingchen's desk and asked him to appraise them. The old man suspected that the crystal clear glass cup was a divine artifact, and after examining it for a long time, he gave a conservative price of 2,000 yuan each. Without saying another word, Zhao Ye immediately sold them to Huang Jingchen, asking him to find a sales channel, and the extra profit would be his future activity expenses!

  Zhao Zhe had many more important things to attend to, so he naturally handed over the glass workshop to Jian Xi to manage. Jian Xi was even lazier and selected two people from the small yellow gate who were slow-witted, dull, and followed rules rigidly, unable to think outside the box. After training them for a while, he had them specifically serve that glass kiln. The required materials were all divided up in advance and labeled 1, 2, so the two people were like robots programmed with a set procedure, only needing to add materials according to the firing schedule.

  Thus, the workshop with the least investment of manpower and resources in the Zhao family's industry was born. Fortunately, Zhao Shi was not greedy for wealth, so he only fired one furnace per month, producing only primary products, but also pulled a large amount of silver from the pockets of collectors in the capital to the Zhao family.