Chapter 31: The God of Wealth Strikes Again (Requesting Votes)
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Mu Guiying—no, Li Chang’an—had found himself a new source of amusement.
He intended to train Su Mai to become a scientist!
Ever since the boy had asked him why bird droppings fell faster than leaves, he had begun subjecting the little monkey to merciless instruction.
First came a lesson on the three states of matter, followed by buoyancy and resistance, and finally an explanation of units of time and standards of measurement.
But it soon became clear that the matter could not be explained away. The Great Song simply lacked the practical conditions necessary for precise measurement.
So he decided to undertake the grand educational enterprise of teaching his nephew. Once again, he shouldered the signboard of the Little God of Wealth and set out to enlighten the world.
Of course, the Grand Empress Dowager’s search for him had not yet been called off. He could not openly wander about under the identity of Li Chang’an.
He had Guangxiao find him a fortune-teller’s Daoist robe, dressed little Su Mai as a young acolyte, and slipped out with the boy behind Su Shi and Wang Fu’s backs.
Precise measurement required far too much prerequisite technology. Accurate timekeeping instruments had been born only from a civilization-leaping endeavor such as the Age of Exploration.
John Harrison’s marine chronometer was obviously out of the question. It had not taken shape until the eighteenth century, after several generations of clockmakers had laid the necessary technical foundations.
For now, the only method he could think of was the one used in laser speed measurement: a uniformly rotating gear.
A gear with many teeth would be made to spin rapidly. By counting how many teeth passed during a given interval, one could determine how far the target unit had traveled.
With that, the speed of sound could be calculated in a newly invented unit.
He had checked. At least among the texts of the present Song era, not a single work had yet measured the speed of sound.
If Su Mai completed such a feat in his own name, Li Chang’an was certain the boy would remain grateful to his uncle for the rest of his life.
The two of them slipped quietly out of the government office. Carrying the fortune-teller’s banner and with Su Mai’s divining satchel slung over his back, they headed toward the Directorate of Military Equipment.
Halfway there, however, Li Chang’an stopped again.
The Directorate of Military Equipment in this era was nothing like the military-industrial research institutes of later generations. Its rough fellows probably had less education than he did.
If he wanted to develop precision equipment, he would have to seek out craftsmen who made jewelry and mechanical furniture.
In this age, the true experts really were to be found among the people.
The Northern Song maintained a separate household registration for artisans, chiefly to make them easier for the government to manage.
Whenever the authorities had work to assign, they employed a policy known as “cooperative hiring,” summoning craftsmen to designated locations at extremely low rates to manufacture whatever the government required.
The exquisite porcelain of the Northern Song imperial kilns had been produced by craftsmen hired in precisely this way.
Uncle and nephew hired a donkey cart and went straight to the guild of gold-and-silver craftsmen in Kaifeng, asking to meet its guildmaster.
The guildmaster’s surname was Bi, and his given name was Kuo. His family had been a clan of hereditary craftsmen since the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang, and had lived in Bianjing for several centuries.
They were wealthy, influential, and highly skilled. The court had bestowed upon their patriarch the title of Grand Director of Works, giving the family extraordinary standing.
When he heard that two Daoists wished to see him, he assumed some Daoist sect had sent them to commission religious statues.
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When the gatekeeper brought them inside, Guildmaster Bi was filled with disappointment.
At a glance, the two men were clearly unimportant. They were probably nothing more than a pair of impoverished beggars.
Li Chang’an, however, paid no attention. He pulled a set of illustrated plans from his bundle and asked directly, “I have several ingenious objects I would like to have made. Unfortunately, I have asked throughout the capital and found no one willing to undertake the work, so I have come to trouble you, Guildmaster. Would you take a look?”
Guildmaster Bi accepted the plans, assuming they contained nothing particularly difficult—perhaps merely a box for a Daoist to store scriptures or alchemical recipes.
Then he saw the first drawing.
He immediately sat up in alarm. This thing was far from simple.
There was a gear with three hundred and sixty teeth, a spring mechanism, a crystal viewing window, and an entire leveling apparatus.
It was not extraordinarily intricate, but his instincts told him that it must serve some important purpose.
Li Chang’an explained the requirements. The gear had to rotate at a uniform speed, completing one full revolution in the time it took for a pulse to beat once.
The crystal viewing window also needed clear graduations for precise readings. The machine had to be connected to an external mechanism so that it could be stopped accurately.
After hearing the long list of conditions, Guildmaster Bi began to lose confidence.
This was far more difficult to make than an ordinary Luban puzzle box. A typical mechanical box merely needed to resist tampering from the outside, along with a complete self-destruct mechanism.
Difficult. Extremely difficult.
At that moment, Li Chang’an took out a banknote from the government treasury—one thousand strings of cash.
“If the guildmaster can find someone to make it, and it passes inspection without error, you shall receive every last coin.”
Guildmaster Bi took a sip of tea. Its bitterness made his face twitch, and he spat to the side.
“Very well. Leave the plans. I will give you an answer within three days.”
“No rush. There is more.” Li Chang’an turned another page in the booklet.
“This is called a bearing. The exact dimensions may vary; an outer diameter of two or three inches will do. Bronze is sufficient. It should have inner and outer bearing shells, eight cylinders between them, and retainers on both sides. I will pay another thousand strings for a method of producing one hundred at a time.”
By the time Li Chang’an finished speaking, Guildmaster Bi had begun wondering who these people truly were.
One thousand strings—as though it were merely paper money printed in his own household?
And these were treasury notes. Could this be a prince of the imperial clan? Yet he had never heard of a young member of the royal family so extravagantly reckless.
“This is called a mineral lamp. Its raw material is a kind of stone that produces bubbles of combustible gas when exposed to water. The equipment must be airtight. The gas should emerge from here…”
And so it went.
In a single breath, Li Chang’an placed more than a dozen orders. The most expensive was one thousand strings; the cheapest, fifty. Guildmaster Bi was left utterly stunned.
Was this fortune finally arriving in his horoscope today? He had actually encountered a living Bodhisattva.
Only after everything had been arranged did the guildmaster remember to ask the visitors’ names.
“There is no need to trouble yourself. I shall leave one thousand strings here as a deposit and return in person to collect the goods.”
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Once they left, Su Mai looked at him differently. It seemed that even his pupils had changed from round to square.
His uncle was far too wealthy. A single banknote from him was worth more than his mother’s entire fortune.
“Uncle, I want a sugar figurine!”
“No. They’re made with spit. Filthy!”
The sugar figurine seller was so furious that, had he not noticed the two young men, he would have charged forward and beaten them.
Sugar figurines cost three coins each. In the end, Guangxiao paid out of his own pocket and granted Su Mai his wish.
“Uncle, what’s that? Is it tasty?”
Li Chang’an glanced over. It was a vendor selling meat-filled flatbreads, and the aroma drifting past was delicious.
“Dead pig meat. Not tasty. Filthy!”
If the old woman selling the flatbreads could have killed people by pinching them with her eyelids, the three of them would have been reduced to dust on the spot.
“Your mother already said that if you grow any fatter, you’ll become an iron-eating beast, round as a ball. No more talk of food. Otherwise, we’re going straight back to the residence!”
That finally quieted the little fellow. It was not easy to get out for some fun, and they could not spend the whole outing satisfying his appetite.
On the road to the Great State Temple, they encountered a lantern seller. The man wore a sorrowful expression, his eyes lowered and his head bowed.
Li Chang’an’s mischievous spirit stirred.
“Boundless God of Wealth! Why does this worthy patron sigh so heavily?”
The shopkeeper looked up. Seeing a Daoist, he assumed the man had come to beg for alms. After fumbling around, he pulled two coins from his waistband and handed one to the Daoist.
“Half for whoever sees it, I suppose. I don’t have much left myself!”
Li Chang’an found this amusing. The man had only two coins remaining and was still willing to give one away. Clearly, he was worth saving.
He pretended to calculate for a long while, moving his fingers and narrowing his eyes as he studied the shopkeeper.
“How strange. How very strange! You possess the signs of great wealth, yet a mass of black energy obstructs your fortune. Has some trouble befallen your household?”
Seeing that the Daoist still had not left—and had begun speaking like a fortune-teller—the man had no choice but to hand him a lantern.
“I can’t keep this shop open. Every merchant in the city is being forced to borrow fifty strings under the Green Sprout loan system. My profit margins are thin, and I can’t repay the two-percent interest. Soon there won’t be a single lantern seller left in the city.”
The revelation immediately piqued Li Chang’an’s interest.
The Great Song had inherited the Tang tradition of lantern festivals. It was the last dynasty in history to truly love its holidays, and selling lanterns was an excellent business.
“Since fate has brought us together, I shall waive your three questions. I am the Little God of Wealth of Eastern Capital Bianliang, and today I shall help you!”
At these words, the shopkeeper hurried to his feet and scrutinized him, full of uncertainty as to whether he should believe the man.
“Speak. If I cannot help you, I will pay those ten strings myself!”
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