Ma Su had finally been relieved of his gatekeeper duties. The original gatekeeper had rushed back right before the Spring Festival, announcing that he had brought his parents and his wife to settle down in Gong'an County.
"Thanks to Lord Liu's blessing, my wife just gave birth to a chubby baby boy."
The man's face was tanned dark from years in the sun, but he was practically glowing with joy as he said it.
Ma Su found the phrasing a bit weird, but getting a tasty red boiled egg out of the deal made it totally acceptable.
He was taking small bites of the egg while walking when he looked up and caught Zhuge Liang smiling right at him.
Ma Su's face instantly flushed red. Eating while walking was totally lacking in scholarly elegance.
Zhuge Liang just chuckled, waved him over, and assigned him a brand new task.
"Chopping firewood?" Ma Su looked completely lost and more than a little aggrieved.
"It is not just regular firewood," Zhuge Liang explained patiently. "Take ten strong men with you. Chop down the plants and trees around Gong'an County. Separate them by type, get thirty jin of each kind, and haul them back to the county office. I have a massive use for them."
'What massive use could that possibly be? Was the county office planning to stew a mountain of pork to feast the local elders for the New Year?'
With a belly full of doubts, Ma Su accepted the order and headed out.
Behind the Gong'an county office, Sun Qian was gathering the craftsmen once again.
Since Zhuge Liang had officially moved his workspace into the side hall, the other offices were sitting empty. Liu Bei had waved his hand and made a bold declaration. Now that they knew the recipe, they were going to make paper themselves!
After Zhuge Liang sat down and carefully calculated the cost and selling price of Zuo Bo paper for Liu Bei, every single person in the room was tempted.
A single roll of Zuo Bo bark paper was worth nearly a whole bolt of silk, selling for a whopping twelve hundred coins.
Yet the production cost was barely higher than regular hemp paper, which only sold for eighty to a hundred coins. The only difference was adding mulberry bark into the mix.
The selling price jumped more than tenfold. It was honestly absurd.
"If I had this kind of trick, why would I still be working as a butcher!" Zhang Fei had sighed.
Thinking back to Yide's words, Sun Qian could not help but smile.
He had followed his lord through thick and thin for over ten years. Securing a base in Jingzhou already felt like a beautiful dream. Now, with this mysterious light screen dropping blessings from the heavens, his long-held conviction only grew stronger.
His lord was truly a hero of the Han dynasty!
"What is all this commotion for?"
Sun Qian turned around and bowed. "Sir Liu, you have just returned?"
"Our lord just took Jingzhou this year, so naturally we have to celebrate the Spring Festival properly,"
Liu Yan said with a smile. "Gongyou, we have been friends for ten years. I told you to just call me Weishuo."
Looking at the craftsmen leveling the ground in the backyard and preparing to tear down the low sheds to build something new, Liu Yan was incredibly curious.
"Is our lord planning to rebuild this place into the main administrative seat?"
"Not at all," Sun Qian shook his head. "Our lord noticed this place has a lot of empty space, so he plans to use it for papermaking."
"Papermaking?" Liu Yan tilted his head in thought. "What for?"
"To sell for money."
Unable to wrap his head around it, Liu Yan just dropped the subject and asked, "Where is our lord anyway? I brought back a few jars of top-tier wine from the Zhang clan in Jiangdong. He is definitely going to love it."
"Our lord went to find the divine physician Zhang Zhongjing," Sun Qian answered honestly.
"Zhang Zhongjing?" Liu Yan was completely baffled. "A divine physician?"
"A divine physician!" Sun Qian nodded with absolute certainty.
Liu Yan scratched the back of his head. He had only been away from Gong'an County for three months. Why did it feel like three whole years had passed?
...
That night at the Zhuge residence, after dinner, the servants took Zhuge Qiao and Zhuge Guo out to play as usual. Zhuge Liang and Huang Yueying sat around the warm brazier, chatting intimately.
"Our lord had a talk with me. In a few days, the county is going to set up a Ministry of Works, and I will still be in charge of it. I want to recruit you as an official in the ministry,"
Zhuge Liang said with a smile. "Did you not complain about how ridiculously expensive Zuo Bo paper is? Our very first step is going to be manufacturing this Zuo Bo paper ourselves."
"Where did our lord even buy such a secret recipe?" Huang Yueying asked curiously.
"That is a very long story." Zhuge Liang thought for a moment, then pulled out the bamboo tube he always kept on his person.
He extracted the last few copied scrolls from inside and explained the whole sequence of events to her in detail.
Before leaving yesterday, Liu Bei had a private discussion with him. Given how much the future generations valued technology and craftsmen, they decided to establish a Ministry of Works right here in Gong'an County. The very first missions were to recreate Zuo Bo paper and the printing techniques mentioned on the light screen.
A medical department was also in the works. Everything was ready except for Zhang Zhongjing himself. The light screen's mention of Shu Han's top officials dying one after another had cast a heavy shadow over Liu Bei's heart.
Hearing about such mystical events made Huang Yueying's eyes sparkle with fascination. But when she heard Zhuge Liang admit that he might eventually die from overwork during a military campaign at the mere age of fifty-four, she secretly shed tears.
"If my husband meets such an end, how could I possibly go on living?"
Zhuge Liang let out a long sigh and pulled her into his arms. "We will definitely not let that happen."
After comforting her with gentle words for a while, Huang Yueying temporarily put the matter aside and suddenly realized something.
"Then the curved plow and the round water wheel from last month were also..."
"Exactly."
"So that is how it is!" Huang Yueying had an epiphany, and a bright smile returned to her face. "But husband, the Ministry of Works should not be set up inside the county office. Let me show you something."
Saying that, Huang Yueying stood up, grabbed Zhuge Liang's hand, and led him through the hall into a small room in the backyard.
Carefully lighting a bronze lamp, Zhuge Liang took in the scene before him. On the table sat a miniature round water wheel no bigger than his palm. It was placed inside a groove carved out of a round log. The wheel was connected through a crank to a tiny stone mill and pestle.
Before Zhuge Liang could fully figure it out, Huang Yueying lifted a half bucket of water and carefully poured it into the wooden groove.
The water drove the small wheel to spin in circles. The wheel turned the wooden crank. The crank drove the stone mill and the pestle.
Zhuge Liang was a master of all trades and no stranger to mechanical engineering. He walked around it twice and immediately grasped the massive advantage.
"It does not require any human power to drive it?"
"It is more than just that..." Zhuge Liang muttered to himself. "If we scale the water wheel up by five times, and expand the millstone and pestle to five times the size as well, we would only need three of these setups to meet the needs of the entire Gong'an County. We could charge people per use. Even if we only collect seventy percent of the market price... no, no, no, even if we only take fifty percent, all the common folks in Gong'an would come here to process their grain!"
"No, no, no, what if we only charge ten or twenty percent, or even take absolutely nothing?" Zhuge Liang began pacing anxiously around the room. He could feel a door in his mind cracking open, and through that crack, a mesmerizing golden light was spilling out.
Huang Yueying understood her husband's excitement and joined in his brainstorming.
"If we only charge ten or twenty percent, would that not massively reduce the burden on the widows and orphans in the county?"
"The widows and orphans could easily make a living..."
Zhuge Liang followed her train of thought. "Their required labor would be drastically lowered."
"If we also had similar water wheel devices in the fields to use water power for farming..."
"Then the common people would not have to toil all year round," Huang Yueying seemed to understand the grand vision too. "When food and clothing are plentiful, people learn propriety and righteousness. A world of great peace would be right in front of us."
But very quickly, Huang Yueying poured a bucket of cold water on the idea. "To spread this across all nine provinces, how much timber would we need? And how many craftsmen?"
"Furthermore, water flows endlessly, and the joints of the water wheel would wear out incredibly fast. If we scale it up five times like you said... no, even if we only scale it up three times, the wooden joints might only survive for half a day."
"All of this would cost an astronomical amount of money. Plus, water wheels can only be used in places with fast-flowing water. Out of all the lands under heaven, how many places actually meet such conditions?"