Gunpowder had barely arrived, and Li Daoxuan already felt as energized as someone who'd just discovered a whole new way to ruin his enemies' day.
At long last, the strings of firecrackers he had prepared for ages finally had a use other than scaring chickens.
"Yiye! Hey, Yiye!" he called. "Get him settled in the Workshop. Report to Gao Yi-yi, and arrange a temporary room for him. Let him rest for a day. I'll assign work tomorrow."
Gao Yiye agreed and led Xu Dafu toward the main keep.
Xu Dafu was nervous, but also slightly hopeful. After all, he'd just seen the lantern-maker receive three whole taels of silver for his craft. That alone was enough to rekindle a man's confidence in life.
The Workshop was lively during the day — hammers clanging, saws whining, people yelling about tools they misplaced but probably dropped on their own feet. But it was already night, and most craftsmen were asleep. Only the blacksmith's shop still glowed with a stubborn furnace. Li Da sat beside it holding a spring, frowning like the spring had personally insulted his mother.
The scene made the whole Workshop feel rather… haunted.
Shansier had just been here, dragging the lantern-maker along. After finishing one assignment, Gao Yi-yi turned around to find Gao Yiye bringing yet another stranger.
Gao Yi-yi smiled. "Another craftsman? And this gentleman is…?"
"Gunpowder Maker," Gao Yiye said.
Gao Yi-yi jolted upright. Over by the smithy, Li Da snapped his head up like someone had fired a shot.
Gao Yiye added, "Dao Xuan Tianzun wants him in a temporary room."
"Temporary?" Gao Yi-yi blinked. "Not in the Workshop proper?"
Li Da muttered, "I think I know why… probably because of that… capital explosion incident."
The villagers of Gaojia had never heard of such a thing, but Li Da, who had lived in a county town, had. Xu Dafu, the actual gunpowder maker, certainly had. The man's face twitched.
"If I'm handling gunpowder here… inside the lord's own keep… well… if it explodes…" He didn't finish the sentence, but everyone could imagine the smoking crater.
Gao Yi-yi sighed. "Fine. Temporary room for now. We'll wait for Dao Xuan Tianzun's arrangement."
He placed Xu Dafu in the room next to the lantern-maker.
That night, neither of the newly arrived craftsmen could sleep. They were too excited — whispering, gossiping, imagining their futures. Their old lives had been dull, miserable, and occasionally hungry. Their new lives… well, even half an hour here was worth ten years out there.
At dawn, Gao Yiye — with matching panda eyes — knocked on their doors. Xu Dafu opened his, also displaying a pair of panda eyes. They stared at each other like two sleep-deprived raccoons.
"You haven't eaten yet, right?" Gao Yiye asked.
Xu Dafu pitifully nodded. The lantern-maker had already been dragged away by Gao Yi-yi for work, but Xu wasn't supposed to follow, so he'd simply sat hungry and polite, too timid to ask for food.
Gao Yiye chuckled. "I haven't eaten either. I've been so busy I haven't cooked in days. Come on — let's grab a bowl of rice noodles, then wait for Dao Xuan Tianzun's orders."
"Rice noodles?" Xu Dafu asked. "What's that?"
A short walk later, he discovered.
The shop, "La Ba Rice Noodles," was already packed at dawn. Gao Laba himself was spinning like a top, dumping noodles into boiling broth, fishing them out, adding toppings, and yelling at people not to rush him.
The village chief, Mister Wang, and several "wealthy but allergic to cooking" villagers were squeezed inside, some slurping happily, others anxiously waiting for their bowls.
Gao Yiye paid ten copper coins for two bowls and said, "You're unmarried, right? When work gets busy, you won't have time to cook. Just come here — Uncle Laba's noodles are great. Supposedly a southern specialty."
Xu Dafu was stunned.
Five copper coins for one bowl? In Xi'an Prefecture, no one would dare eat such a luxurious thing. Unless it cost one or two coppers at most.
But here? The shop was bursting with customers.
Something was very wrong with this village… or very right.
While he and Gao Yiye slurped away, Li Daoxuan was already preparing the new Firearms Bureau of Gaojia Village.
The Bureau would one day replace most cold weapons and arm every villager with firearms. Meaning a colossal amount of gunpowder would be stored there.
Meaning: one wrong spark and hello, Apocalypse.
So the Bureau had to be far from the main keep, far from the labor camp, far from the short-term worker settlement — ideally tucked in a secluded valley, the way later generations built military bases.
He tapped randomly on the compass-like directional panel in his box. Two li northwest stood a small, bare, rocky valley — perfect.
He scraped out a path the way only he could: with a metal scraper dragged over the earth. Several swipes later, a wide yellow dirt road stretched from village to valley. Villagers could pave it with cement later.
Now for the building itself.
Modern military bases used reinforced concrete, but he wanted something both sturdy and… simple.
He grabbed a stone planter from his balcony — an oval basin several dozen centimeters long, made of thick stone. Drilled four large holes on the rim for the cardinal gates, drilled a ring of small holes as windows, then flipped it upside down over the valley.
Done.
A massive, entirely stone-built, fortress-like structure — ugly, bare, and absolutely perfect.
Back in the village, Gao Yiye and Xu Dafu had just finished their noodles when Dao Xuan Tianzun's voice cut in from above:
"Yiye! Lead him out of the village. Head northwest. You'll see a newly built road. Follow it."
Gao Yiye hurriedly obeyed.
Xu Dafu stepped onto the dirt road and immediately sensed something wrong — the soil smelled freshly turned, the edges still fluffy. Even the side banks showed the marks of a tool that had just carved the earth open.
He wisely kept his questions to himself.
After two li, the valley appeared — along with an enormous, bald, stone building dominating the landscape, sprawling almost half the size of the main fortress itself.
And that was the future Firearms Bureau.
Footnotes
Gunpowder Makers — historically treated with both reverence and fear. One wrong move and everyone loses their eyebrows, homes, and possibly lives.
Capital Explosion Reference — nod to the famous Tianqi Explosion of 1626. Half of Beijing evaporated. People still argue if it was gunpowder or something… more dramatic.
Rice Noodles (mifen) — historically a southern specialty. In many northern regions, a bowl costing five coppers would indeed be outrageous.
Military Bases in Valleys — even in later dynasties, secluded terrain was used for storage of volatile materials so explosions would bury themselves rather than entire cities.
Dao Xuan Tianzun's Building Method — obviously impossible by historical standards, but perfectly normal for someone casually cheating with mystical construction hacks.