Chapter 109 Chapter 109 Update.
That day, Ji Xu recovered from her illness and sat in front of the door to bask in the sun. The little girls passing by were all respectful to her, feeling a bit like when they saw Yu before.
"The Second Master is out."
I only heard Xing talking outside from the inner room.
Ji Xu quickly stood up to greet him, and followed the Second Master's sedan chair to the Alchemy Building.
"That's all right?" said the second master on the sedan chair.
"Okay." Ji Xu said.
"Your illness is getting better quickly." The second master said in an ambiguous tone.
The door of the alchemy building opened, and the sharp eyes of the maid inside swept over her. When she reached the door of the main hall, Ji Xu had a premonition that once she stepped in, she would be deeply bound to this second master.
But there was no other choice. If Tian was inside, she would not be able to rescue her because of her strong support from the County Magistrate's Office. If she took the Second Master's boat, there might still be hope of rescue. She took a deep breath and entered the hall.
Inside, there were towering lacquer pillars with a nine-headed snake body painted on them, and the snake bodies corresponded to nine alchemy furnaces. The furnaces were taller than people, with round outer walls supported by three legs. Unlike most of the tripods nowadays that are made of bronze, this one was forged from black iron.
Those white-clothed servants walked between the furnaces. They all had faces that had never been seen outside. Smoke rose from the furnaces, and walking among them gave one the feeling of being in the ninth heaven, surrounded by clouds and mist.
However, Ji Xu noticed that the smoke was white. When he looked from the outside before, a line of black smoke rose straight into the sky from the Alchemy Building.
Just as I was wondering about the source of the black smoke, I had already arrived at an inner room with the Second Master. I saw a wall full of lattices and a servant girl was placing the newly refined pills into a drawer.
Ji Xu saw that it was the same one that Madam Qu had given her before. The Second Master waved the man away and went to the inner room.
He turned the switch hidden on the wall, and the wall, which was originally tightly closed, opened to both sides with a rumble, and a dark corridor appeared in front of him. As he walked deeper, he saw candles on both sides illuminating the way.
Ji Xu followed the Second Master, walking deeper and deeper along the stone steps until she could hear the crisp sound of bangs, a sound that was common in Tie Si.
The further down you go, the hot air hits your face, which is very similar to Tie Si's.
She saw a brighter fire at the exit from a distance, so she went out and realized that she was in mid-air, where there was a platform carved out.
And the thing below was different from the small crucible furnace that Tie Si had seen before.
Miners were carrying ore baskets in from the underground tunnel, and another row of people were carrying coal, pouring it down one after another beside a round blast furnace.
Next to the furnace, slaves broke the ore into pieces, shoveled it and poured it onto an iron mesh sieve in the shape of a human figure, leaving only small pieces of ore after screening.
These ores, coal dust and black soil were mixed into refining materials, which were carried by two miners, climbed up the ladder to the top of the blast furnace, and loaded into the furnace one by one.
I saw that the blast furnace was built with red refractory bricks, was two zhang high and twenty-six feet wide, with stairs on the outer wall. Miners were loading materials up and down. It took more than twenty miners working around it to make such a huge machine run.
There are four such blast furnaces.
At the foot of one of the blast furnaces, four or five strong slaves with their bare chests were working together to push and pull the bellows on the ground. The red flames in the furnace reflected the faces closest to them.
The man had a dark complexion, no nose wings, only two round holes on his face. It was the escaped slave Ye whom he had seen in the portrait of Duting. Ji Xu recognized him silently.
At first glance, on the south side of the blast furnace, there is a long furnace channel deep in the ground. Red molten iron flows out from the furnace channel. Behind the furnace channel, there are countless slaves responsible for forging and quenching. This is clearly an iron smelting place hidden underground.
As for the forged iron tools, they were not farm tools like hoes and sickles. Instead, they were all shiny knives and swords.
"Second Master, the molten iron output of the Xuanwu furnace is very slow today. I'm afraid it won't be enough to forge this batch of swords."
The person who came up to the round platform along the stone steps was Mrs. Qu's younger brother, Manager Qu. He glanced at Ji Xu next to him and spoke without being on guard against her.
Ji Xu followed them down, and while he was looking for Tian's figure among the dusty and dark-faced miners, he was quietly listening to the conversation between the Second Master and Manager Qu.
Only then did I know that the second master who was obsessed with gods was proficient in iron smelting. Unlike what was said outside, the iron smelting technique of the Wang family's ancestors had been lost.
He checked and found that there was something wrong with the bellows.
"The furnace is tall and large, with a dilapidated bellows and weak wind. The heat inside is uneven, making it prone to explosions. I've ordered the Xuanwu furnace to stop working and repair it before it can resume operation."
Manager Qu hurriedly arranged for someone to invite a specialized carpenter to repair it, but he did not stop the work of the Xuanwu furnace. The four blast furnaces, Qinglong, Zhuque, Xuanwu, and Xuanwu, were operating day and night. The miners were divided into two shifts, all working to make swords and halberds. How could they stop at will? The Second Master was too strict about these matters.
So he just responded, "Yes, yes."
After a while, he came back and said, "It has been stopped."
"Call Gui here." said the Second Master.
Manager Qu was the county magistrate's man, so he was not surprised at this moment and even bowed and said:
"I will fetch Gui Nu right away so that I can talk to my mother about my longing for her."
Ji Xu was shocked and looked at the Second Master for a moment. The Second Master said with a normal expression:
"From the moment you entered my courtyard, my brother has had someone investigate your origins."
Ji Xu understood. Her excuse of leaving her hometown to offend the gentry could only fool the servants in the mansion. But for the prefect in charge of a county, it would be too easy to look at her biography on file. The reason for her journey to Youzhou as recorded in her biography was to find her mother.
As for Tian's origin as a mining slave, they must have recorded it. As long as one has enough power, it is not difficult to find out that they are mother and daughter by comparing the two.
"Kui, come here."
Manager Qu came to a dark corridor and waved at a woman carrying iron ore.
It is said that Tian was doing well in the black mine outside. She originally wanted to wait for Mrs. Lai's reply and then secretly transport the ore to sell for money. However, what she waited for was Manager Qu who replaced Mrs. Lai. One day at the end of the year, she was transferred to this underground place where she never sees the sun. She even had to eat, drink, defecate and urinate in here. The guards were a hundred times stricter than those in the mine outside.
Tian met Ye here, but as one of them was carrying ore and the other was working as a blacksmith, they had no chance to talk. She guessed that perhaps the superiors had discovered that she was mining privately and even smuggling miners out, so they sent her here.
She secretly observed that this Manager Qu was also the one in charge here, so she usually treated him with courtesy and flattery. Now she quickly took off her backpack and went over to him.
"What do you want, Steward Qu?"
Manager Qu led her up the stone steps. Tian had been here for so long, always hunching over in the cave. This was the first time she stood so high up and could see the scene of iron smelting underground. She couldn't help feeling sad that she would never be able to go out and see her daughter again.
When he reached the half-walled cave, he saw someone and rushed over, crying and wailing:
"It's my Xu, my Ah Jiao... Damn you thief! You've kept me and my daughter from seeing each other for so many years."
He ran his hands over her face, then held her and looked at her again and again. "You've grown taller and thinner. How much do you eat a day?"
Ji Xu also shed tears and said, "Mother is the one who has lost weight. She is suffering in this torturous place."
Speaking of this ghost place, Tian became alert, tucked away her tears, glanced at the second master behind her who was obviously dressed as a noble, pulled her over and asked quietly:
"Mother is just worried that you sisters will have no rice to cook. What is going on? How did you get here?"
Ji Xu recounted the events that had taken place during his three years in the palace and the two years when Tian was away, simplifying them and asking how Tian came to be detained there.
Here, the mother and daughter were talking about family matters when they suddenly heard a loud thunder. The ground beneath their feet shook. Not only the mother and daughter, but even the second master on the couch stood up and went to the high platform outside.
I saw a blast furnace exploded into seven or eight pieces, and the ground around it collapsed several feet deep. Boiling molten iron splashed everywhere like meteors, some of which fell on people. The miners on the ground were frightened and ran away.
However, they were shackled and could not move quickly. In addition, the iron officer whipped them and shouted:
"Silence! Silence! Fifty lashes for the Runner!"
The commotion underground gradually died down, and the groans of pain from the two miners on the ground became more and more miserable. They were burned by the molten iron, one on the face and the other on the body, and they rolled on the ground in pain.
"Second Master! The Xuanwu furnace exploded!"
When Manager Qu came up, the Second Master had already come downstairs. His expression had changed when the blast furnace exploded. Knowing that he was pretending to obey but actually disobeying, he pointed at him and cursed:
"Pig man! You're such a donkey! The furnace is hot and cold, and the material is hanging there for too long. The center is burned out, and the hanging material fell into the boiling molten iron. How can it not explode?"
Manager Qu said with a sad face:
"Master, if this batch of things cannot be produced, I will have to go to see you with my head on my shoulders. That's why I dare not stop for a moment."
Seeing that the Second Master was going there in person, he hurriedly followed to dissuade him, "Second Master, don't go over there. Be careful not to get splashed by the molten iron."
But he was ignored. The second master stayed near the broken furnace and ordered his men to disperse and stay five feet away from the Xuanwu furnace. He stayed behind to carefully deal with the broken furnace.
"You go away too, don't come over." He said to Ji Xu.
Tian was also frightened at this moment. She came in underground to carry ore and encountered a blast furnace explosion. After hearing what the second master said, she hurriedly pulled Ji Xu away.
The two scalded miners were also moved away from the remaining furnace, which was in danger of exploding again, and to a corner, where kind-hearted miners were already pouring cold water over their wounds.
However, there was little cool water underground. One of them was closest to the basalt furnace and was the one pushing and pulling the bellows in the front. Before the explosion, the basalt furnace made a sound like drumbeats. However, he still couldn't avoid it in time and was burned on the face, including his eyes and nose, which were already bloody.
His cries became weaker, and the cold water was no longer poured on him, but on the other person who was slightly injured.
When they were working by the stove, they were bound to get burned by iron stars, but they would just rinse with cold water and it would pass.
The Second Master had stopped the remaining furnace, but he was still upset. He looked at this scene and said:
"This man must be sent up for medication."
Manager Qu said, "He's already dying. Second Master also knows the rules. No miner can come back alive after coming down here."
It is even more unrealistic to ask the medical officer to come down. These are just lowly miners and are not worthy of treatment. Moreover, this place is hidden from the eyes and ears, and it is impossible to let outsiders come down easily.
Seeing the Second Master's cold expression, Manager Qu said, "Please, Second Master, don't make things difficult for us who work under you."
The second master said hello twice with a cold face, turned his sleeves and left, ignoring the dissuasion and entering the county court's official office.
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