Li Daoxuan needed to go out and find someone to make a 200:1 model.
But now that he knew the world inside the box was in the late Ming dynasty, he really did not feel comfortable leaving it for too long. He was worried he would come home to find little people's corpses strewn everywhere.
After some thought, a light bulb lit up over his head. He moved his home security camera over, aimed it at the Scenery Box from close range, and adjusted the angle.
He opened the camera app on his phone and could clearly see the general situation inside the box.
Now he could go out without worrying.
He quickly hailed a taxi and headed for his friend Cai Xinzi's home.
Fifteen minutes later...
Li Daoxuan stood in the living room of his friend Cai Xinzi's home.
Cai Xinzi was a businesswoman specializing in "models"-cars, ships, figurines, robots, dinosaurs... In short, she made just about any model you could imagine.
That was why, when Li Daoxuan had received the Scenery Box as a birthday present a few days earlier, his first thought had been that Cai Xinzi had sent it.
Seeing her old friend arrive, Cai Xinzi grinned. "Heh heh, Daoxuan, you haven't dropped by in ages. What are you trying to swindle out of me this time?"
Li Daoxuan smiled. "No swindling this time. I'm paying for a custom order."
Cai Xinzi gave him a sidelong look. "Oh, please. You still haven't paid me for that custom Liaoning model last time. Every time you come here, it's daylight robbery."
Without another word, Li Daoxuan took out his phone and transferred 1,000 yuan.
Cai Xinzi jumped in surprise. "Holy crap, you paid that readily? This is bad. Whatever you want must be a nightmare to make. I'm not taking it. I'm refusing this order."
Li Daoxuan laughed and scolded her. "You rascal. When I pay promptly, you refuse, but when I don't pay you at all, you don't even care."
Cai Xinzi said, "A merchant's intuition."
Li Daoxuan held his hands about half a meter apart. "I want a Hakka Walled House about this big, at a 200:1 ratio."
Anything he put into the Scenery Box grew two hundred times larger. If the model was half a meter long, it would become a hundred meters long inside the box-just about the right length for a large Hakka Walled House.
Cai Xinzi was astonished. "What do you want that for?"
Naturally, Li Daoxuan could not tell her the truth, so he casually offered a white lie. "I watched the animated film Big Fish & Begonia recently and got hooked on Hakka Walled Houses. I want a model to display at home."
"Oh, I see," Cai Xinzi said. "Why commission one? I've got a ready-made 100:1 version here. It looks imposing and magnificent..."
"No!" Before she could finish, Li Daoxuan flatly refused. "I want 200:1."
Cai Xinzi said, "Too big for you? I've also got a 144:1 version..."
"No!" Li Daoxuan said. "It has to be a custom 200:1 model."
Cai Xinzi began to lose confidence. "Damn it, I knew that paying so readily meant a whole heap of trouble afterward. Go on, then. Apart from 200:1, what other specifications do you have? I don't even need to hear them to know they'll be ridiculously complicated."
Li Daoxuan chuckled. "All right, here comes the list. The entire Hakka Walled House has to be built from extremely strong materials. None of those flimsy foam boards, and no plastic sheets either. Wood burns too easily, so ideally, the whole thing should be made from... Uh, what material would be best? I'm no expert. Help me figure it out."
Cai Xinzi gave him a sidelong look. "Use pressed composite board. It's strong and lightweight, so you won't throw your back out carrying it home."
Li Daoxuan thought it over. She had a point. Modern pressed composite board really was good stuff. Its thickness would multiply two hundred times inside the box, which would make it pretty damn impressive. Ming-dynasty swords and firearms certainly would not penetrate board two hundred times thicker, and even a Frankish Cannon might not punch through it.
Wait!
I can't be careless about making it two hundred times thicker. I need to ask how thick it is to begin with.
Li Daoxuan asked curiously, "How thin is the thinnest composite board?"
Cai Xinzi said, "About three millimeters."
Li Daoxuan mentally multiplied three millimeters by two hundred and froze. Holy crap, it'll become sixty centimeters thick inside the box? That would take up far too much space. If the partition walls between rooms were that thick, the number of rooms inside the walled house would drop drastically.
He frowned. "Can't it be any thinner?"
Cai Xinzi shook her head. "No. If you want anything thinner, you'll have to use sheet iron. That comes in one-millimeter thickness."
Li Daoxuan did the calculations in his head. One-millimeter sheet iron would become twenty-centimeter iron plate inside the box. Excellent. Sheet iron was fantastic. It would take up less space than pressed board and be even stronger.
"All right, one-millimeter sheet iron it is."
Cai Xinzi said, "Hey, a model made from that kind of sheet iron won't look very substantial. It'll make people think, 'Ah, they cut corners on this model.'"
Li Daoxuan said, "I don't need it to look substantial. Cutting corners is exactly what I want. Oh, and you can't just finish the exterior and call it done. The interior has to be extremely detailed too. Every room must be built exactly to scale..."
Cai Xinzi said, "That's impossible. A Hakka Walled House has over two hundred rooms. Do you have any idea how much handwork it'd take to make all those tiny doors and windows detailed enough to open and close? Add ten thousand!"
Li Daoxuan thought, Holy crap, that expensive? I'll just skip the doors and windows. All I need is the main structure. I can let the little people make the doors and windows themselves.
Li Daoxuan said, "Then leave out all the doors and windows. Just leave dark holes where they're supposed to go. Also, traditional Hakka Walled Houses have flaws in their drainage design. Update that with a modern solution."
Cai Xinzi nearly flipped the table. "You goddamn idiot, why are you worrying about drainage design for a model? If you use a modern solution, it won't be an authentic Hakka Walled House anymore, will it? What collector's value would a model like that have?"
Li Daoxuan said, "Because I want to! I'm the client now. No matter how outrageous my demands are, you have no room to resist."
Cai Xinzi said, "..."
At a loss for any comeback, Cai Xinzi nearly spat out a mouthful of blood. After rolling her eyes, she grumbled, "Why don't you add a few wheels underneath the Hakka Walled House while you're at it? Install a motor and a remote control too, so the whole thing can charge around like a giant tank..."
She had only meant to vent, tossing out some trash talk to mock "the client." She had not expected those ridiculous words to make Li Daoxuan's eyes light up.
He slapped his thigh. "Holy crap, Cai Xinzi, you're a genius! Do exactly that. Give it wheels, a motor, and a remote control. Turn it into a super walled-house tank that can charge through anything, unrivaled under heaven."
Cai Xinzi said, "Holy crap, don't take that suggestion seriously! What you'd end up with wouldn't be a Hakka Walled House. It'd be a toy for some twisted kid, with absolutely no aesthetic or collector's value."
Li Daoxuan patted her shoulder and laughed heartily. "A toy for a twisted kid is exactly what I want. I don't care about aesthetic value. Oh, make the tires bigger. It needs to handle a little off-roading."
"You want it to go off-road too?" Cai Xinzi rolled her eyes. "The client's gone mad! I goddamn knew it. Ever since Pangu split heaven and earth apart, there hasn't been a single normal client."
After venting, she added, "Tires, motor, remote control-another thousand yuan!"
Li Daoxuan paid, agreed on delivery in a month, and finally headed home.
At the supermarket by the entrance to his residential complex, he also picked up a two-hundred-gram chicken breast for five yuan.
Once home, he casually and gently placed the chicken breast in front of Gao Yiye...
At that moment, Gao Yiye was fetching pond water to fill the water jar at home. She was walking unsteadily with two buckets on a carrying pole when the Heavenly Deity's enormous hand suddenly appeared, holding an immense piece of chicken. He slowly set it down in front of her, then whisked his hand back into the sky.
The Heavenly Deity's gentle voice rang out from above. "A reminder for everyone: if you're used to plain food, eating too much meat at once will upset your stomach. Tell everyone to take it easy."
PS: Scientifically speaking, if a Hakka Walled House model were enlarged proportionally by two hundred times, its weight would increase geometrically, making it as heavy as a real building. Even if the wheels and motor also grew two hundred times larger, they theoretically could not move it, and the rubber around the tires could not support that much weight. However, after this Hakka Walled House is placed in the box, it doesn't merely appear in the late Ming dynasty. Its physical form still sits inside the protagonist's Scenery Box, and it remains subject to the physical laws of his world. That is why the walled-house tank can work inside the protagonist's Scenery Box.
PS: That explanation was very scientific, wasn't it?
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