Huo Dong told them that they would have lunch at the house, and then he took the mother and daughter around and around, probably to a small building at the innermost part of the house.
The small building is quite far away from the house. There is a wall between the small building and the house. There is a back door, and there is a large garden through the door.
Various trees, flowers and plants are in full bloom, the wind here is cooler and the air is better.
What comes into view is a large lake with lotus leaves and small boats on the lake. There is also an exquisite small bridge across the lake. You can reach the small building by crossing the bridge.
Behind the small building is the back mountain. There is a back door in the high wall behind the building, so it should be possible to enter the back mountain.
Liu Yuhan was astonished. This room within a room was designed with great care. It should be like the TV dramas we watch in ancient times, with secret doors and passages.
It is called a small building, but it is actually a pagoda. It should be as high as a modern four or five-story building. You should be able to overlook the surrounding scenery when you walk to the top of the tower.
Liu Yuhan’s first impression was that this pagoda would be great as a monitoring station.
"The several recipes we're developing are all being developed here. We're going into a secret passage, and it might be a little dark. Auntie and Miss Xiaohan, please watch your step."
Huo Dong took them into a room in a row of houses next to the small building. Judging from the layout, it was a study.
There was a screen at the back of the study. When they walked over, they didn't know how Huo Dong operated it, but the seamless wall opened. The mother and daughter followed him in, and Huo Yi was waiting for them outside the door.
It was Liu Yuhan's first time to enter a secret passage and see such a secret passage for the first time, so he couldn't help but take a few more glances out of curiosity.
The secret passage wasn't dark at all. Every few dozen meters there was a candlestick with lit candles. The further you went inside, the less stuffy it felt. Instead, it felt a bit cooler, without the feeling of being short of air and having difficulty breathing. The secret passage must have been designed with ventilation.
After walking for about a cup of tea, Liu Yuhan wondered, "Is this secret passage really that long?" There were actually three forks in the secret passage. If they hadn't followed Huo Dong, they might have gotten lost.
"We're here. This is it." Huo Dong gestured to the mother and daughter to climb the stairs.
Liu Yuhan felt her eyes brighten. She narrowed her eyes slightly, walked out of the secret passage, and went to the house upstairs.
This is a small courtyard. The wall is so high that it's hard to tell where someone is, busy in the courtyard or in the house.
Seeing Huo Dong coming, a manager came over, saluted him and called him "Young Master".
"This is Huo Qi, who's good at experimenting. He's in charge of the progress of these prescriptions."
Huo Qi bowed respectfully to the mother and daughter.
Huo Qi is a tall, thin, middle-aged man with a fair complexion.
He first took them to see the crude salt extraction process. There were six large water vats in the room, filled with extracted fine salt. It was even finer than the salt Liu Yuhan had extracted last time, a testament to his dedication to excellence.
In the next room, several large stoves were burning, and a few strong men were fiddling with coarse salt. A row of large vats were all filled with coarse salt.
Next was making ice from saltpeter. The room was filled with a lot of saltpeter that had been dug up. Huo Dong told them that the saltpeter had been brought from the islands, and he had sent his men to check the nearby mountains to see if there were any saltpeter mountains.
There were some remaining broken ice cubes in the large wooden basin. Huo Dong told them that a batch had been shipped away in the morning and they would transport the ice cubes to Jiangjia Port.
Jiangjia Port will transport some southern-specific medicinal materials, wool products, pearls or seafood to the inland or the capital. With ice, the quality of some special goods can be better guaranteed.
Jiangjia Port is located in a coastal city within Fu'an City. It was the dowry given by his grandmother to his mother. Jiangjia Port is one of the small ports of Jiangjia.
His maternal grandfather was a military man, holding the rank of deputy governor of the second rank, and served in Qingyun City, which was a southern city next to Fu'an City and also a coastal city.
My maternal grandfather’s immediate superior was his grandfather, General Huo.
My grandmother's family has been in business for generations, mainly doing port business, especially the ports in the south, where the Jiang family owns most of them.
The reason why their parents knew each other was because their grandfather and maternal grandfather knew each other.
At first, my grandmother was a little displeased with the daughter of a warrior and hoped that my father would marry a dignified, well-educated and well-mannered lady from a noble family.
Later, it was my grandfather who mediated, and my father insisted on marrying my mother. After my mother got married, she was very filial to my grandparents and gave birth to several children and grandchildren. Only then did my grandmother slowly let go of her worries.
Huo Dong led them to the wall and opened the wooden door. It was truly a room within a room. This side was also a small courtyard, but slightly larger. Inside the large room, the materials for making gunpowder were sorted and piled in a corner.
Several men were working on gunpowder, their faces grimy but unaware of it. Their hands were busy, and every now and then they would take notes.
There is also an old-fashioned weight in the room, which is unique to this era and is used to accurately measure weight.
Each tightly sealed bamboo jar has only a small opening and is hollowed out in the middle. It is used to hold gunpowder, and long, thick cotton strips are used as fuses.
There were also sections of bamboo tubes. Huo Dong told them that they had already used bamboo tubes to test the gunpowder in the back mountains. The gunpowder did explode, and everyone was delighted! However, the power was still not very strong, and they were not satisfied. So they wanted to use bamboo jars to fill them with more explosives and test the effect again.
The ancients were really smart. Liu Yuhan didn't even know what she came here for, but it was obvious that Huo Dong was doing a great job.
She only knows the theory but not the practical operation, and she doesn't quite understand the points in the theory.
"Brother Huo Dong, you did a great job."
"But if you want the gunpowder to be more powerful, you have to be more careful about safety. You can make the flammable fuse thicker and longer. It will be safer to throw and less likely to extinguish."
"As for the material ratio, you don't have to follow the data I gave you. You can try changing it and see if the effect is better?"
"Also, could gunpowder be buried underground for assault? We'll need to research the fuse aspect, though. If there's a violent collision, wouldn't it be better if the gunpowder could explode on its own without ignition? These are just random thoughts I came up with, and I don't really understand them."
Huo Dong had some thoughts flashing through his mind. He asked the mother and daughter to wait for a moment, then went into the room, wrote something with a pen, and chatted with a few people who were researching gunpowder.
The mother and daughter waited for him for a cup of tea.
Huo Dong came out and led them back the same way.
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