Park Roejang's knees buckled slightly.
No one in the tent spoke up for him.
There was silence for three breaths.
A voice came from the tent entrance.
"I'll draw it."
Kim Seon-a stood by the tent flap, having arrived at some unknown time.
She changed into a clean set of Goryeo clothes, her hair was pulled back, and her face was expressionless, except for a ring of redness under her eyes.
Park Roejang turned sharply to look at her, his lips trembling slightly: "Your Highness—"
Kim Seon-a ignored him, walked straight to the table, took out a fine brush from the pen holder, dipped it in ink, and began to write at the location of Incheon Port.
His hands are very steady.
Stroke by stroke, he outlined the harbor, the location of the reefs, and the direction of the main channel, even marking which shoals would be exposed during high and low tides.
No one spoke inside the tent.
The only sound was the soft scratching of the brush tip across the silk.
After finishing the last stroke, Kim Seon-a put down her brush and looked up at Gu Moran.
Gu Moran stared at the picture for five breaths, then nodded.
The military meeting adjourned.
Kim Seon-a returned to the side tent and had just taken off her cloak and draped it on the rack when the tent flap was pulled open from the outside.
Chunxiang walked in carrying a bowl of ginseng soup.
The soup was still steaming, but the hands holding it were trembling so badly that some soup spilled onto the side of the tray, which she didn't wipe up.
Kim Seon-a noticed that her eyes were red and swollen, with tear stains still clinging to the corners.
"What's wrong?"
Chunxiang placed the ginseng soup on the table, her knees buckled, and she knelt directly on the ground.
"Your Highness..."
She opened her mouth to speak, but something was stuck in her throat, and her voice was broken and intermittent. After a long while, she managed to piece together a complete sentence. "This morning before dawn, a maidservant from Great Yan Dayan's side came to find me, saying that the princess asked me to go and fetch some rouge, and I dared not refuse."
Kim Seon-a stood still.
His fingers slowly closed, gripping the fabric at the cuff.
Chunxiang raised her head, tears streaming down her face. "When I went in, there were two Great Yan maids talking inside. They didn't see me."
One person said the Goryeo princess was driven away early in the morning, while another chimed in that Prince Yi never allowed women from other ethnic groups to stay overnight, saying, "That's the rule..."
They said that women from other ethnic groups were all inferior...
Her voice grew softer and softer as she spoke, and the last few words were almost squeezed out of her throat.
The fabric cuff in Kim Seon-a's hand was twisted into wrinkles.
She didn't say anything.
The same image kept replaying in my mind.
Before dawn, Gu Moran pinched the back of her neck and said, "Time to get up," his tone flat and indifferent, as if he were shooing away someone who shouldn't be staying.
She initially thought he was afraid that word would damage her reputation.
Thinking about it now...
"Who said that?" she asked, her voice more steady than she had expected.
Chunxiang wiped her face. "This servant didn't dare to look closely, but those two maids looked very kind and spoke very politely. They didn't seem to be deliberately trying to let this servant hear them."
Kim Seon-a's hands hung at her sides, her fingertips curling up and then relaxing one by one.
Her chest felt tight, as if someone was slowly turning a dull knife inside. There was no blood, but the pain made it hard for her to breathe.
She had considered this possibility.
She was Goryeo, a foreign princess staying temporarily in the guest military tent. The Great Yan women in the back tents had been with Gu Moran for at least half a year; what was she compared to them?
The words, the actions, and the touches that made her feel, for the first time in twelve years, that she wasn't a monster when she met Gu Moran.
Is it true, or is it just a tactic Prince Yi used to coax her into signing an agreement and drawing up a sea chart?
"Your Highness," Chunxiang knelt on the ground, crawled two steps, and hugged her legs, "Your Highness, please don't ask, please don't ask, what if it's true..."
Kim Seon-a looked down at Chunxiang.
I looked at it for a long time.
He reached out and pulled her up. "Don't kneel, the soup's cold, let's heat it up again."
Chunxiang was taken aback for a moment, but didn't dare to ask any more questions. She took the ginseng soup and left.
The curtains fell.
Kim Seon-a stood alone in the tent.
She walked to the table, reached for the teacup, and her fingertips touched the rim of the cup—it was cold.
The tea had long since gone cold.
She picked it up and took a sip; the tea tasted bitter as it went down her throat.
She put down the cup and stared at the tea leaves remaining at the bottom for a while.
On the other end.
Qingwu lifted the curtain and entered Gu Moli's side tent, then knelt down to report.
"Your Highness, Chunxiang believed it and went home crying."
Gu Moli sat in front of her makeup box, holding a thin eyebrow pencil in her hand, drawing the popular eyebrow shape from the Flower-Between Pavilion.
The pen tip glided steadily across the brow bone, creating a beautiful arc.
"You cried?"
"He came out with red eyes, head down the whole way, and walking very fast."
Gu Moli put down her eyebrow pencil, wiped her fingertips with a handkerchief, and looked at Qingwu in the bronze mirror. "Next time, find an opportunity to tell Chunxiang that Prince Yi's favorite is Shen Ling'er. The two of them have known each other the longest and have the deepest feelings. The others are just there to make up the numbers."
Qingwu responded.
Gu Moli turned around, leaned back in her chair, and tapped her knees lightly with her fingers.
"Don't rush, take your time, let that Goryeo woman figure it out herself."
Sparks flew everywhere in the workshop.
Zhen Meili slapped the blueprints of the three-barreled gun in front of the blacksmith, Old Zhao. The cross-section of the gun barrel was clearly drawn on the paper, with the dimensions and forging process marked next to it.
Old Zhao, wearing leather goggles, bent over and examined the gun for a long time, then reached out and compared it to the thinnest part of the barrel.
"Girl, this pipe is thinner than my little finger. If even one air bubble isn't completely removed when pouring molten iron, it'll cause the tube to explode."
Zhen Meili slammed the hammer handle on the table. "Who told you to pour it? It's clearly written on the blueprints: wrought iron is repeatedly folded and forged into thin sheets, rolled into tubes, and then bound with copper hoops. Can't you read?"
Old Zhao choked for a moment.
He crouched down and examined the fine print at the bottom of the blueprint again, muttering to himself. After a long pause, he said in a low voice, "Then the forging temperature..."
"I'll keep an eye on the heat. You gather everyone together and get the stove lit." Zhen Meili rolled up her sleeves to her elbows, revealing a section of her forearm blackened by charcoal ash. "The prince is waiting for the goods; he doesn't have time to waste with you."
Old Zhao went off to call for help, head down.
Zhen Meili almost bumped into Tuoba Mang when she turned around.
This big guy had been standing in the doorway for who knows how long, half of his body blocking the light.
How many strokes can be produced in the first batch?
Zhen Meili counted on her fingers. "Forging gun barrels is the most labor-intensive part. One blacksmith can forge one barrel a day, and ten blacksmiths can produce a hundred gun barrels in ten days. But after deducting the defective ones, we actually get seventy or eighty barrels. Three barrels are used to assemble one gun, so we can only make about thirty guns."
She paused, "Gunpowder and lead bullets need to be calculated separately, and it will be even slower if the saltpeter stockpile is insufficient."
Tuoba Mang frowned. "Ten days is too late. We're leaving tomorrow, can't you make one for me to see today?"
Zhen Meili rolled her eyes. "Why don't you go work as a blacksmith? You can't rush things. If you fire a gun and it gets damaged, it'll blow up our own hands."
"Moreover, the prince said that the first batch only needs to be delivered to Goryeo within half a month, and he will have a clever use for it then."
"Half a month? Shouldn't we be attacking Wa by then?"
"Really that fast? What, you're launching a lightning attack on the Japanese army in Goryeo?"
"Tch, those mere Japanese pirates. I could take on ten of them by myself."
After saying that, Tuoba Mang turned and left.
Zhen Meili shouted at his retreating figure, "Go and urge them on the saltpeter matter! Those people in the warehouse are dragging their feet!"
On the other side.
Yi Prefecture, the backyard of the Prince's Mansion.
Su Yao sat in the study, with a stack of account books half her height on the table in front of her.
The top book was open, the ink still wet, and it was filled with dense records of the amounts of silver donated by gentry from various counties in Yi Prefecture.
The largest donation was 80,000 taels, and the smallest was 3,000 taels, totaling 476,000 taels of silver.
In less than three months since Gu Moran arrived in Yi Prefecture, he has revitalized a relatively prosperous border prefecture by repairing water conservancy projects, opening trade routes, and suppressing mountain bandits.
The common people's lives have improved, and the gentry have made money. Now that they know Prince Yi is going to fight the Japanese pirates, they are donating money without hesitation.
Su Yao closed the ledger and looked up at Xie Wanqing sitting opposite her. "Within three days, convert all this silver into grain and send it to Dengzhou in three batches by waterway, with each batch spaced one day apart. Don't let anyone figure out the grain transport schedule."
Xie Wanqing nodded and wrote it down on a piece of paper.
Liu Ruyan put down her needlework and looked at Su Yao.
Spring had already arrived, and both she and Xie Wanqing had changed into lighter clothes, but Su Yao still had a padded jacket draped over her shoulders, the collar tied tightly.
" Sister Su, how have you been feeling lately?"