Chapter 72

Chapter 73: Glass

It was now the height of the dog days of summer, and Zhao Cheng and Jianxi had been cooped up in the Taoist temple for several days. The alchemy room was in a mess, the floor strewn with dregs, and a few broken crucibles were thrown at the door. If one looked closely, they could still see the glow inside them.

"Jianxi, did you remember the formula from just now?" Zhao Cheng asked while stirring in the crucible.

"Second Master, I remember it all. That Qingyun is a bastard. Once we catch him, we'll beat him half to death. What a lousy formula, it's probably fake!" Jianxi said angrily. In the past few days, the two of them had caused more explosions than Qingyun in a year. His hair and eyebrows were singed, and his clothes were almost like sieves, with his arms bare and his skin scorched, looking like a panda with patches of black and white.

Zhao Cheng didn't hear Jianxi's complaints. He added a bit of white powder to the crucible, and the murky liquid slowly became clear. He was studying the notes left by Qingyun, which contained a formula for making glass. He had tried it several times but failed. Now, he was trying again based on his memory.

The Taoists called the glass they refined "liuli," believing it to be a type of jade, a precious material for making elixirs. They thought that if ground and added to elixirs, people could live as long as jade. Zhao Cheng didn't believe this at all. If people ate it, they would just excrete it in the same form. If the glass shards didn't pierce their intestines, they would be lucky. The idea of living for a hundred years was a dream!

Glass was a common thing in the future, but in the present, it was a rare treasure. Zhao Cheng knew that the raw materials for glass were very ordinary—just sand, lime, and soda ash—and easy to find. The difficulty for him was the formula. He didn't know the proportions, so he had to experiment according to Qingyun's formula, hoping to figure out the process. After several experiments, he realized that the ancients weren't stupid. To prevent others from stealing their techniques, Qingyun had altered the formula, making it a code that only he could understand. This made their work even harder, but at least Zhao Cheng knew what materials were used, which would be impossible for others to figure out.

"Jianxi, stoke the fire!" Zhao Cheng observed and instructed. Jianxi added a few shovels of coal to the furnace and pumped the bellows, causing the flames to rise, turning the crucible red, reaching over a thousand degrees.

"Second Master, be careful, don't let it explode again!" Jianxi said nervously. This had happened multiple times.

"Don't worry, if we succeed, you'll be sleeping on gold ingots!" The materials in the crucible slowly mixed and boiled, bubbles rising continuously. Zhao Cheng kept removing the impurities that floated to the surface. He felt that success was just around the corner and joked with Jianxi.

"Second Master, what are you making? Is it as valuable as you say?" Jianxi wiped the sweat from his face.

"This is what they call 'liuli,' but ours will be better than what Qingyun and the Persians make. How much do you think it will sell for?"

"Ah?! This is liuli!" Jianxi was surprised. He never thought he would help the prince make liuli. He knew how valuable it was; there were a few liuli cups in the palace that the emperor rarely used, each worth a fortune.

"Surprised, aren't you?" Zhao Cheng smiled. The Song Dynasty was the wealthiest era in history, with countless rich people. With so much money, they liked to buy rare items to show off, just like in modern times. Liuli could satisfy their needs and give their money a place to go. Zhao Cheng could already see a pile of sand turning into golden ingots, rolling into his pocket.

Seeing that the temperature was right, Zhao Cheng scooped out a bit of the bright red liquid and poured it onto a stone slab. The liquid slowly cooled, gradually turning into a transparent crystal. "Jianxi, stop the fire, keep this temperature!" He waited for the crystal to cool completely, picked it up, and held it to the sun. It was clear and transparent, though it still had a slight green tint, but it was almost indistinguishable from the inferior glass of the future.

"Jianxi, we did it!" Zhao Cheng shouted, pouncing on Jianxi, who was caught off guard and fell to the ground. Jianxi was stunned but quickly realized that the prince had made another significant invention, and he had a part in it.

The glass was made, but to turn it into money, a lot of work still needed to be done. Zhao Cheng had only seen glassblowing when he was a teenager, during the early stages of reform and opening up. Small workshops sprang up everywhere, and there was a small glass factory near his house that produced soda bottles and window glass. The quality wasn't as good as the big factories, but it was cheaper. Their equipment was simple—a crucible, two iron scissors, and a few blowpipes. The process was still done by hand.

The factory was open-air, and he often watched the masters use the blowpipes to dip red-hot glass, turning it into clear bottles with their skilled hands and mouths. It was very attractive to children, and he and his friends often went to watch. However, he never actually tried it himself, and they wouldn't let him touch anything.

The next day, Zhao Cheng brought some tools he had the blacksmith make overnight into the "laboratory" and found that the crucible was already stuck to the solidified glass. He had to replace it and start over. After refining the glass, Zhao Cheng tried to blow it, following the memory of the "master." He picked up a piece of glass with the blowpipe, cut it with iron scissors, took a deep breath, and blew out the most valuable breath of his life. The glass did puff up, but Zhao Cheng ran out of strength. By the time he caught his breath, the "small balloon" on the blowpipe had cooled and couldn't be blown anymore.

"Failure is the mother of success!" Zhao Cheng consoled himself, but he failed again. After several attempts, the two of them spent the whole day, and the results were a pile of misshapen, unsteady objects. They were on the verge of tears.

"This is too discouraging." Zhao Cheng swung a hammer and smashed them into pieces, looking at his dirty, blackened hands, and sighed. Why was everything so difficult? At his age, other princes were just eating and sleeping, enjoying life, but he was busy planning the future and saving the Song Dynasty, building bridges and roads to improve people's lives, and setting up factories to make money. He really wanted to jump up and curse his foolish father for not being a good emperor and causing him to suffer.

"Second Master, don't be angry. If we can't do it, why don't we find someone else?" Jianxi, seeing Zhao Cheng's frustration, asked cautiously.

"Who? No one in the entire Song Dynasty has seen this, let alone has the skills." Zhao Cheng shook his head.

"Second Master, I don't mean to let them make liuli. Even if they wanted to, we can't tell them, right? I mean, find someone who can blow, and let them blow the glass for us!" Jianxi smiled.

"Who can blow?" Zhao Cheng perked up. This was a good idea.

"Second Master, I think blowing glass is similar to the street candy blowers. Why don't we find a couple of them to try?" Jianxi suggested.

"Ah!" Zhao Cheng almost choked. He was really daring. A candy blower made a penny per piece, but one of his finished products would be enough for the blower to blow candy for a lifetime. But with no other options, it was worth a try. "Alright, send someone to find the best candy blowers tomorrow, but make sure they don't reveal our secret!"

"The only way to keep them from talking is to cut out their tongues so they can never speak again!" Jianxi stroked his smooth chin and said with a sinister look.

"You're really despicable. To keep someone from talking, there are two other ways: give them enough money so they won't want to talk, or let them know that talking will be worse than death!" Zhao Cheng smiled.

"Second Master, what do you plan to do to me?" Jianxi asked shamelessly, looking at the prince's smile.

"Get out! Do you want me to throw money at you? If you don't do this well, I'll cut out your tongue!" Zhao Cheng kicked him and scolded.

"Second Master, I'll go find Shunzi. He's a scary guy, good at this kind of thing, and he's as tight-lipped as a dead man. He'll definitely do it!" Jianxi rubbed his leg and grinned.

Zhao Cheng was speechless. Jianxi was getting smarter and more devious under his guidance. Now he was teaming up with Shunzi, the cold and ruthless guy, and a new generation of "black and white" enforcers was born.

Jianxi and Shunzi were efficient. Three days later, the candy blowers were "found," not just two, but their families as well. The message was clear: if they talked, their entire families would die.

As they say, amateurs watch the show, but professionals see the method. Zhao Cheng only demonstrated the process once, and the two candy blowers treated the glass like molten sugar. They wasted only one batch of glass before figuring out the key points. In the second round, two fist-sized cups appeared on Zhao Cheng's desk.

Zhao Cheng quickly sent the two finished products to Huang Jingchen's desk for an appraisal. The old man, seeing the clear glass cups, thought they were divine artifacts and gave a conservative price of 2,000 strings of cash each. Without a word, Zhao Cheng sold them to Huang Jingchen wholesale, letting him find buyers and using the extra profit as his activity fund.

Zhao Cheng had many other important things to do, so he handed the glass workshop to Jianxi to manage. Jianxi, being lazy, picked two slow-witted, dull, and rule-following eunuchs, trained them for a while, and had them take care of the glass kiln. He pre-measured and labeled the ingredients as 1, 2, 3, and the two eunuchs, like programmed robots, just needed to add the ingredients according to the temperature.

Thus, the workshop in the Zhao family estate that required the least human and material resources but had the highest output ratio was born. Fortunately, Zhao Cheng wasn't too greedy, only opening the kiln once a month and producing only basic products, but it still managed to siphon a large amount of silver from the pockets of collectors in the capital to the Zhao family estate.

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End of Chapter 73

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