How can I bow my head and serve the powerful officials?

Xie Chengze had no idea that Emperor Jian, who was far away in the capital, had fallen ill again. He was leading the students to tour Yuji Mountain and watch the grand spectacle of the people of Yizhou digging the mountain.

The Tianfu Plan is proceeding in an orderly manner. The people in the eastern county of Yizhou have taken the lead. Liang Wanda, following the instructions given by Xie Chengze, has asked them to start digging the mountain by the method of "burning the mountain and cold pouring".

The so-called burning mountain cold pouring is to first dig a deep groove in the middle of the rock, then put a lot of firewood in it, and set fire to the rock. The rock will turn red and scorch when it encounters high temperature. At this time, the cold river water will pour on the hot rock, and the rock will expand and contract due to heat and cold, and it will burst.

At this time, the stonecutters can climb up the rock and it will be much easier to hammer and chisel with axes.

The villagers from the southern counties, including women and the elderly with male children in their families, were assigned to live in the homes of villagers from the eastern counties. They were responsible for digging stones, preparing three meals a day, carrying river water to irrigate the mountains, and raising livestock. The men would live together in temporary chicken feather houses. Some of them would help dig the mountains, while others would transport the excavated stones to the middle and upper reaches of the Minjiang River.

"Why not throw these stones directly into the river?" Zhu Xiaobiao asked in confusion.

"These stones will have other uses in the future." Xie Chengze explained, "Remember, there are two plans in the Tianfu plan, one is to open the mountain, and the other is to split the river."

Zhu Xiaobiao's mind worked quickly, "Are these stones related to splitting the river?"

"So smart." Xie Chengze couldn't help but raise the golden fan and tap his head gently. "How come this little head gets smarter the more I tap it?"

Zhu Xiaobiao couldn't help blushing again because of the praise.

Why does the Second Prince like to praise him so much?

"It's this mountain. Digging is too slow. It would be much better if we had gunpowder." Looking at the villagers digging the mountain with their bare chests in this hot weather, Xie Chengze couldn't help but feel distressed.

Don't get me wrong, he doesn't feel sorry for the people, he feels sorry for himself.

For every extra day the villagers dig, he will pay them one more day of wages. The key is that he has other uses for this money. In case there is not much left at the end, he will still think of other ways to make money.

Is it so easy to think of ways to make money? You can't just rob houses and kill people and become rich overnight. You still have to think hard, and thinking hard means losing hair, and losing hair means becoming bald.

Xie Chengze doesn't want to be bald.

He also wants to be the most handsome old man in the world when he gets old.

The curious kid Zhu Xiaobiao asked again, "What is gunpowder?"

Xie Chengze: "It's just a kind of...explosive."

Zhu Xiaobiao: "Explosion?"

Xie Chengze: "You don't even know about the explosion? Did you know that flour cannot come into contact with open flames? In a certain space and a certain proportion, the combination of the two will explode and injure people."

Zhu Xiaobiao shook his head. He couldn't cook and had never been a cook. He didn't understand what Xie Chengze was saying. "Then can the young master make gunpowder?"

Surrounded by students, Zhu Xiaobiao called them all "Young Master".

Xie Chengze wiped his face silently.

Yes, he can, and he even knows exactly how to refine the raw materials. But... refining this thing doesn't quite fit his identity...

……

Xie Chengze was very sad and upset.

He sat on a small stool, his legs shaking like sieves, his hands folded helplessly in front of his extremely handsome face.

Directly in front of him was the toilet shared by all the county residents.

My family, who understands that in ancient times, in order to extract saltpeter, one of the three raw materials for gunpowder, you actually had to extract it from human and animal feces!

He was the second prince of the Jian'an Dynasty, recognized as the most handsome man in the world. Now he had fallen to the point of refining feces?

Is there any kindhearted person who can rescue him?

Xie Chengze's legs were shaking more and more, and just when he was about to have an orgasm, he was suddenly poked in the back.

This scared him so much that he staggered and almost fell off the stool. Turning back, he saw a tall and burly man who looked both familiar and unfamiliar.

Seems like I've seen it somewhere.

Xie Chengze thought about it carefully before he remembered, oh, this seemed to be the student with Bian Yangchun and others, the one with very little presence.

I forgot what it was called.

"Is there something wrong?" Xie Chengze asked, looking up.

The burly student seemed to be extremely introverted. He hadn't said a word during their journey together. He just nodded slightly and said nothing more.

Xie Chengze: ...

"No, brother, what do you want to say?"

As if sensing Xie Chengze's impatience, the burly student squatted down, picked up a small stone nearby, and wrote on the ground: "I am a mute."

Xie Chengze: Ah——!

Damn it—!

Xie Chengze, who was already autistic, became even more autistic.

"I want to ask," the burly student wrote on the ground very quickly, his handwriting smooth and beautiful, "can a big earthquake really split mountains and crack the ground?"

Xie Chengze admired his writing for a while, then said, "Of course, it can be done in a large earthquake."

"Can we move mountains?" the burly student wrote again.

"Moving the mountain is not possible." Xie Chengze shook his head.

"What about Yugong moving the mountains?" After the burly student finished writing, he raised his head and showed a suitably confused expression.

Xie Chengze understood what he meant instantly and explained patiently, "Mountains are moved because of crustal movement. Crustal movement is... um..."

He opened his hands and tried to express himself in terms that the ancients could understand, "There are many stone plates under the earth, just like my hands are two stone plates. On this plate is the Taihang Mountain in Yuzhou, and on this plate is the Wangwu Mountain in Yuzhou. The two plates are usually quite peaceful, but sometimes the underground is too hot and they can't stand the heat and snap apart. Or they may love each other so much that they would rather die than separate, and even deliberately squeeze together to collide and merge into a mountain in order to prove that they love each other forever."

Xie Chengze looked up and asked, "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

The burly student was silent for a moment, silently raised his thumb, then took out a thin booklet from his chest and quickly wrote something down with a small charcoal pencil.

Xie Chengze:?

You have paper and pen, but you still write on the ground? Is it because I am not worthy?

Xie Chengze leaned over to take a look and found that the burly student had written exactly what he had just said, but he omitted the words about everlasting love. It probably just recorded that there were stone plates under the ground, and the stone plates would move in various ways due to things like heat.

He couldn't help but touch his chin, "Aren't you afraid that I'm fooling you?"

The burly student glanced at him and then wrote on the ground: "You understand burning mountains and cold water, and you seem to understand earthquakes."

Xie Chengze also picked up a stone and erased the word "seems" from the burly student's answer, replacing it with "a little bit".

Burly Student: ...

The burly student looked at the words on the ground and said silently in his heart: How ugly.

He asked some more questions about earthquakes. Seeing that he was so eager to learn, Xie Chengze broke down everything he knew and told him. Finally, he said, "This is all I know."

The burly student wrote again: "How much do you know about earthquake prediction?"

"I don't know. I only know about the seismometer." Xie Chengze said, and then he became puzzled again, "Why are you so interested in earthquakes?"

The burly student's attention was focused on the first half of his sentence: "What is a seismograph?"

"…It is a device that can predict earthquakes. It is made of fine copper and looks like a wine jar. There is a copper column inside that can sense the vibration of earthquake waves. There are eight directions on the seismometer. Each direction has a dragon head with a dragon ball. Under each dragon head there is a toad corresponding to it. When the earthquake wave causes the internal column to vibrate, the copper ball in the dragon head's mouth in the corresponding direction will pop out. I heard that a real seismometer can sense vibrations thousands of miles away."

The burly student quickly recorded it again, and even drew a rough outline on paper, and finally held it up to show Xie Chengze.

"The wine bottle should be fatter, and a little more concave here. The outside should be like this. As for what the inside of the seismometer looks like, I don't know." Xie Chengze corrected him patiently.

The burly student nodded, and after taking notes, he put away his notebook contentedly. He originally raised his butt to walk, but then he remembered something and squatted back down.

Dad once said that when making friends, you can’t just talk about yourself.

So he wrote on the ground again, "Brother Cheng, why were you staring at the toilet just now?"

Xie Chengze: ???

Xie Chengze almost broke his voice, feeling a sense of panic that his quirk had been discovered by someone he knew, "...How long have you been staring at me?"

The burly student answered honestly, "Half an hour."

Xie Chengze: ???

I'm not saying anything, brother, you stared at me in the toilet for an hour???

Are you a pervert?!