On the eve of her wedding, an urgent report arrived from the border, and the Marquis of Pingyang led his army to battle. To show appreciation and importance, the Crown Prince personally officiated ...
Of course, I can't let Bai Wanyi become suspicious.
Qin Wan shook her head calmly: "I'm too busy, and it's troublesome to come up with a name. Why don't you choose it?"
Tao Yao wrapped a piece of broken glass in a handkerchief, frowned, and thought for a moment before saying, "Colorless? That's not right, formless? Formless glass. Everything that has form is false. If you see all forms as non-forms, you will see the Tathagata."
Qin Wan was stunned for a moment, then immediately covered her mouth with a handkerchief and laughed uncontrollably: "This name is quite interesting."
"Isn't it good?" Tao Yao wondered. "That piece of crystal clear glass is as if it doesn't exist. If it's placed in water, it will really disappear, right? Isn't this truly formless?"
"Okay, okay, very good." Qin Wan wiped away the tears of laughter. "Go ahead and have someone carve the word 'Wu Xiang' on all these colored glazes. Okay, let Third Uncle write the inscription."
Qin Wan's third uncle, Qin Bai, is an expert in calligraphy and painting. Of course, only the Qin family knows about it. He is a low-key person and rarely passes on his calligraphy to others.
The group returned to the Qin family, and everyone gathered around Wuxiang, looking around curiously.
"Is this the result of your hard work for over half a month?" Wu Meiyun picked up a piece and looked at it against the light. "How bright it would be if I put it on the window."
Xiang Rong's eyes lit up and she said, "Lady Xiu complained to me in the winter that the windows didn't let in enough light. Lighting candles during the day hurt her eyes, and leaving the windows open was cold. Why don't you give these to me? I'll give you some silver."
Qin Wan smiled and said, "This is a failed product. The ones that don't cost money should be used by the family."
Tao Yao was shuffling beads on an abacus. "We brought back one hundred and twenty pieces of these formless colored glazes. Twenty of them broke on the way. There are a few one-foot square ones..."
After Taoyao finished sorting, she continued, "The ones that are too broken can actually be inlaid on the windows of carriages. If we go from street to street and see them, more people will see them. Then we won't have to run around telling people about Wuxiang Liuli when we sell it in the future."
Wu Meiyun joked, "Taoyao is really good at business. Let's get her married and start working soon."
Qin Wan couldn't bear to let Tao Yao go: "If she had a lover, it would be fine for her to get married, but marrying just to go out and work? Isn't that putting the cart before the horse? No, no, she can help with the housework."
Several people burst into laughter, making Tao Yao blush: "Masters, you are always teasing me."
Qin Wan said to Tao Yao, "Go find the housekeeper next to Second Sister-in-law and find out where in the mansion needs to be replaced with Wuxiang Liuli. Replace them wherever you can. As for the rest of the fragments, you can handle them as you see fit."
Colored glass is fragile, and on the way back, no matter how careful we were, a lot of it was still broken. Tao Yao replaced the broken glass windows in all the carriages in the mansion. Even though some of the glass pieces were too small, she still found a way to replace them.
Some people even laughed at her: "You're such a stingy person, you've never spent a penny. But now you're doing this, are you saving money or wasting it? You're making new windows just for a few pieces of broken glass."
Tao Yao argued, "Glass is hard to come by, but car windows can be replaced. It's not a waste to use the replaced windows elsewhere. But it would be a real waste to throw away these glasses."
Qin Wan liked the new windows very much and took a carriage around the city several times.
Spring is outside the window. The light is just right. Qin Wanfu touches the blurry colored glass and feels regretful: "If this were a clear, formless colored glass, wouldn't it be more beautiful?"
Zigui's idea was quite different: "It's bright, but it's fragile. If a thief attacks, they don't even need to shoot arrows. A brick hitting the car window will scatter the glass and hurt people."
Zhenzhen said, "Then we should find a way to make the glass tougher so it can't be broken no matter how hard we try."
Qin Wan listened to them talking and recalled what Bai Wanyi had said in her previous life.
There is a kind of glass in this world that cannot be broken even by big stones. It needs to be broken with a special tool aimed at a corner. The broken glass has round edges and is smooth and will not hurt people.
If the workmanship is good, even if the glass is broken, it will not fall off, but will just hang in one piece, waiting for manual removal.
However, now even ordinary large pieces of colored glass cannot be produced, let alone stronger glass, so Qin Wan can only put these things behind her.
Lu Yan has been busy with military affairs recently. He has to find craftsmen to make new fireworks and look for glass to make the glass greenhouse painted by Bai Wanyi.
Fireworks are easy to make, but colored glass is hard to find, especially since Bai Wanyi wants more than just a few windows inlaid with colored glass or a skylight.
Instead, entire walls must be made of large pieces of colored glaze. Not only must the skylights be made of whole pieces of colored glaze to let in light, but even the doors need to be made of colored glaze.
Let’s not talk about whether such colored glaze exists or not. Just thinking about how to splice the colored glaze together so that it is windproof and rainproof is a difficult task.
What's more, Lu Yan couldn't find a large piece of colored glaze at all. After searching all over the capital and Zhili, he could only find colored glaze one foot square for windows. Not to mention whether it was flat enough, just the color was either yellowish or greenish. There was no colored glaze that was as clear as ice or as transparent as water as Bai Wanyi said.
Lu Yan was helpless and afraid that Bai Wanyi would not agree, so he first found the pattern maker, Yang Shilei, and made a flower room pattern for Bai Wanyi to see.
The palm-sized greenhouse is made to look just like the real thing, small and exquisite. The room is fully furnished with tables, chairs, benches, flowers and trees. The fingernail-sized glazed windows above are also particularly beautiful under the sunlight.
The window on the roof was opened wide, allowing one to see the beautiful flowers inside from above. Lu Yan ran excitedly to find Bai Wanyi with the gift in his hands.
No matter how beautiful the thing is, how can Bai Wanyi be satisfied if he himself is not happy with it?
Looking at Lu Yan with big watery eyes, Bai Wanyi felt aggrieved. "This greenhouse is very beautiful. I'll build one for Grandma. We can also build another one on the farm and grow vegetables there in the winter so Grandma can have a bite of fresh food. Besides, vegetables are expensive in winter, and we can sell them. I'm sure we'll make a lot of money then."
Lu Yan felt bitter in his mouth. The cost of glass was very high, and the vegetables sold would definitely not make back the investment within two or three years. But no matter what Lu Yan said, Bai Wanyi was unwilling to use it as his own greenhouse.
"My background is not good, which has always attracted criticism. Now you are searching the city for colored glass for me. If the colored glass flower house is not built in the same way as before, won't people laugh at me? How can I survive in the capital then?"
"I will be the Marquis' wife in the future. When I go out to socialize, will people laugh at me, laugh at Ping'er, laugh at our Pingyang Marquis Mansion? Laugh at you?"
"Brother Yan, I am an orphan. It doesn't matter if I am embarrassed, but I don't want to see Brother Yan being laughed at."
Bai Wanyi's words were full of affection. Lu Yan felt something was wrong, but he couldn't refute a single word Bai Wanyi said. He could only bite the bullet and continue to look for Liuli. Now the whole city was buzzing with the news that he had made such a big fuss about marrying Bai Wanyi. Even if he didn't want to go on, public opinion would push him forward.
Unable to find Liuli, Lu Yan was so worried that a few hairs turned white. One day, he saw a carriage passing by in front of him, and the sunlight shone on a glass window, and the reflected light dazzled his eyes.