A Stone Mortar for Ten Thousand Households

Chapter 49: A Stone Mortar for Ten Thousand Households

"You... You're talking nonsense! When have I ever done that?" The man they called Xiao Si trembled as he spoke. Outside, Zi Bofeng listened helplessly. People in this village all went by their generation and birth order; there were plenty whose full names even Zi Bofeng didn't know.

"Talking nonsense?" Si Gou looked every bit the villain. He snorted and kicked the table, sending the dishes they'd just finished eating flying in every direction. Half of them splattered all over Xiao Si. "Don't think I don't know. You badmouth the Scholar behind his back, and to his face. Xiao Si, your family's so poor you're practically living in a broken basin. If the Scholar hadn't risked his life to plead with the officials for you, would your whole family still be alive? You'd have starved to death long ago. All the food and drink your family has now—where do you think it came from? The Scholar gave it to you. You eat the things he gives you, then curse him behind his back. Xiao Si, you've got some nerve. I never took you for the sort who picked up his chopsticks to eat, then put them down to curse the cook. That's a neat trick. How could I not learn from you? The Scholar said you should keep learning as long as you live. If I don't learn, won't I, Si Gou the wandering knight, turn into a drowned dog?"

"Where'd he learn all that nonsense..." Zi Bofeng pressed a hand to his forehead.

Then he remembered that Si Gou was a lazy good-for-nothing who spent all day mooching food and loafing around. He often went to the place where Zi Bofeng taught just to listen to his stories. "Wandering knight," "keep learning as long as you live"—he'd picked all of that up from Zi Bofeng.

"I'm telling you, Xiao Si, don't think you can get away with it. In this life, there's only one person I respect, and that's the Scholar. Damn it, if you dare badmouth the Scholar behind his back, you're picking a fight with me. And if you pick a fight with me, of course I'll pick one with you." This fellow had waited until he'd eaten his fill before making trouble. Who knew where he'd learned to be so deviously nasty?

Zi Bofeng noticed that after Si Gou said this, Xiao Si didn't dare utter a word. He only trembled on the ground. But Zi Bofeng also saw that the ink dot representing Xiao Si had miraculously turned black—pitch-black. A thin black ring had appeared around it, as if he'd been locked in place.

On closer inspection, the black ring around him was exactly the same shade as Si Gou's.

Was this what it meant to forcibly raise someone's favorability?

No, it wasn't favorability. It was respect and obedience.

As long as they didn't dare free themselves from Si Gou's threat, they could only be as obedient as he was.

So you can use it like this? Zi Bofeng wondered in surprise. He understood, actually, that although the Porcelain Shard's display looked a lot like a game interface, that was only because he was fond of and familiar with interfaces like that. What truly mattered was the right time, the right place, and the right people.

He'd set aside the right time and place for now. As for the right people, winning them over didn't necessarily mean changing their hearts. It could also mean forcing them, or ruling them with an iron fist. In short, it was best if they obeyed willingly, but if they didn't, a little force was acceptable.

The Porcelain Shard cared only about the result, not the means.

Of course, relying entirely on an iron fist would never win the people's hearts for good. But when it came to one or two ungrateful wretches, using a little force was no problem.

Before long, Si Gou staggered out of the courtyard. Zi Bofeng had already stepped aside to hide. Seeing that Xiao Si hadn't followed him out and hadn't spotted him, he quickly waved. "Si Gou! Si Gou, over here!"

"Scholar!" Si Gou hurried over as soon as he saw Zi Bofeng and bowed. "Scholar! You're back?"

He looked like a real lackey.

Zi Bofeng smiled and nodded. He pulled a piece of pastry from his robes—something he'd brought back from Meng City, planning to sneakily eat as a late-night snack—and handed it to Si Gou. "Here. Have some."

"I'm not a kid." Si Gou watched Zi Bofeng turn and ride away on his donkey, then scratched his head. He really couldn't figure out his Scholar.

"Tasty!" He took a bite. It was sweet all the way to the heart. Si Gou broke into a grin again. Standing up for the Scholar had been worth it. The Scholar had been thinking of him, too.

After rewarding his lackey, Zi Bofeng checked the overhead map on the Porcelain Shard. Most of the villagers in Lower Yan Village were already as black as ink. He was doing pretty well in the village. As for the others, well, Si Gou could deal with them. Zi Bofeng didn't need to spell it out. Si Gou might be a hooligan, but he was clever. Especially these days, whether from spending so much time with Blue Stone and Zi Bofeng or not, he'd become much sharper than before.

The spiritual energy enveloping Lower Yan Village had already been torn open in a great gap. The area around Blue Stone, in particular, had been completely cleared.

This spiritual energy was the right time.

If anything was still missing, Zi Bofeng thought, it was the right place.

By "the right place," he didn't mean the advantage of the terrain. Lower Yan Village sat at the foot of a mountain, far from convenient roads, and had no particular geographical advantage. He meant the facilities on the ground. He remembered the grand construction projects he'd seen back then. As Village Chief, he couldn't help feeling that unless he built something, he wasn't really doing the job.

Ever since he'd arrived in Lower Yan Village, it had been struggling through one crisis after another. The whole village had barely developed at all. But lately, the wild beasts in the nearby mountains had grown more numerous, and the vegetation had grown lush. The village's poor fields were no longer so barren, and the villagers' seasonal crops had started yielding decent harvests. They no longer worried about having enough to eat and drink, and there were often wild game and mountain delicacies on the table. They'd finally managed to claw their way clear of starvation.

Take Little Stone, for instance. His head was still huge, and his neck was still skinny as a stick, but at last he had a little meat on his bones. He wasn't so black anymore, either, though he was still as filthy as a mud monkey, always running up the mountain or splashing through the water instead of behaving himself.

Now that the harvest was better, Zi Bofeng could finally shout, "Damn it, I want to eat fine white-flour bread!"

He'd been eating coarse rice and coarse flour every day. It wasn't that he couldn't swallow it, but he was sick of steamed buns and flatbreads that crumbled as soon as he bit into them.

He'd kept reassuring himself that coarse flour made decent porridge, that eating it would clear out his system and be good for his health. But these past few days, he'd finally stopped fooling himself.

You might fool a man's heart, but you couldn't fool his stomach!

When Zi Bofeng returned home, he heard a series of dull thumps from the courtyard. His father was pounding flour, while Little Stone crouched nearby with a small broom in his hand. Every few strokes, his father paused, and Little Stone swept the wheat and flour flat. Two little puppies circled around his feet. When his father started pounding, they got scared and shrank away; when he stopped, they crept back around, watching curiously.

It was hard work. The pestle weighed at least ten or twenty pounds, and pounding enough flour for a family of four to last several days took most of the morning. Sometimes his father spent the day in the mountains with the villagers, then came home at night and pounded flour bare-chested until midnight. Zi Bofeng hated to see it. But Zi Jian wouldn't let him do this sort of work. In fact, Zi Bofeng really couldn't manage it. He'd tried once and couldn't even hold a writing brush for several days afterward.

Things had been better lately. Si Gou and Zhuzi sometimes came back to help, but Zi Jian was too proud to accept help from others and still did the work himself. If the family didn't want to pound flour, they could take it to the village's little stone mill. But the hand-powered mill was terribly slow, and there was usually a line of people waiting. So the Zi Family still pounded their own flour.

Zi Bofeng had once planned to use the Monster Raising Art to make a stone mortar that could pound flour by itself. But he had too much to do and only so much energy. There was no way he could manage everything.

Seeing his father working so hard, Zi Bofeng's thoughts suddenly fell into place. "Dad, I want to build a mill. A water-powered mill."

"A water-powered mill?" Zi Jian paused. "How would you build one? Where?"

Whenever Zi Bofeng proposed some far-fetched idea, Zi Jian's first instinct had been to object. But now his son's standing kept growing, and Zi Jian had stopped voicing his objections so often.

"I've already planned it out." Zi Bofeng went into his room and brought out a map. He'd copied it from the one hanging in his study.

The stream that flowed past Blue Stone joined several other streams along the way. By the time it reached Lower Yan Village, it had become a small river. Another mile downstream, it converged with several more streams. That was the source of the Meng River. The current wasn't large, but it was swift, and the river flowed all year round. Zi Bofeng had marked a spot a hundred yards or so below the confluence. Back then, Yan Lao Wu hadn't agreed to the plan.

Now Zi Bofeng was bringing it up again. Whatever it took, he was going to convince the villagers.

"This spot should work, but we don't know how to build a water-powered mill," his father said. "We'd have to go into the city and hire someone to inspect the site."

"No need to go to all that trouble." Zi Bofeng brought out another sheet of paper. "Dad, take a look. I've drawn a rough plan. Does it look doable?"

Zi Bofeng was only talking theory. When it came to masonry and carpentry, Zi Jian was the expert. Zi Bofeng's design wasn't very professional, but Zi Jian had years of experience. He took a look and said, "This... shouldn't be hard to build."

Of course it wasn't hard to build!

A water-powered mill was just a waterwheel, a transmission rod, and two millstones—one above the other. All you had to do was connect the three.

The principle wasn't complicated. Zi Bofeng's design might have been a little too idealistic, and it might have had one flaw or another, but it would definitely work well enough. They could improve it if any problems came up.

The biggest job was getting a stonemason to carve two large millstones, then transporting them to the site.

"I'll go talk to the old man..." With Zi Jian's approval, Zi Bofeng was overjoyed. At last, he could do something practical and bring some benefit to the villagers. He'd waited long enough.