"According to the newspaper, the brat emperor of the puppet dynasty wanted to imitate our Great New and build ironworks. To construct the furnaces, he even pried up the floor tiles from his own palace. And guess what happened?!"
Inside an ironworks in the Southern Wasteland, during the post-lunch break, a literate worker looked at a newspaper posted in the most conspicuous spot and cheerfully recounted its contents to the fellow workers gathered around him.
Reading the newspaper every day was one of the workers' few forms of entertainment.
After all, entertainment in this age was truly scarce. The greatest pleasure was probably nothing more than a warm bed with one's wife and children.
Yet the appearance of newspapers had opened a door onto a new world for many people. Even though these papers were all outdated, printed more than ten days ago, the events themselves had happened even earlier.
Even so, many felt that their once cramped and closed-off world had suddenly broadened. Some who had long since gone numb even developed a yearning for the world beyond, stirred by the things described in the papers.
"Old Feng, quit keeping us in suspense. Hurry up and tell us what happened next!"
Someone immediately urged him on.
Hearing that, the literate man stopped dragging it out and said at once:
"So, those high officials in the Ministry of Works directly sold off most of the good bricks, then passed inferior ones off as good and used them to build the furnaces. Tell me, those furnaces burn without stopping every day, at temperatures over a thousand degrees. If they used shoddy bricks, how could they not break?!"
"Apparently, when that old emperor went to inspect the construction site, those high officials put the bad bricks on the inside and the good