Li Chen woke up before the sun. His body was a map of pain. Every muscle in his back felt like it had been pulled tight and knotted, and his hands were so stiff he could barely curl them into fists. The blisters from the bamboo fibers had popped during the night, leaving his palms raw and stinging. But as he sat up in the dim light of the morning, he didn't feel like a dying prince. He felt like a man with a deadline.
He looked at the ceiling. The sagging ridgepole was still there, a constant reminder of the structural rot surrounding him. He couldn't fix the palace yet, but he could fix the province. To do that, he needed more than mud and bamboo. He needed the secret to permanent strength.
Uncle Chen entered the room with a basin of warm water and a look of deep worry. The old man hadn't slept either. He had spent the night listening to the rain, terrified that the Prince would never wake up from the exhaustion of the dike.
"Your Highness, you must stay in bed," Uncle Chen said, his voice trembling. "The Governor has sent word. The dike held through the night. You are a hero to the people, but even a hero needs to eat and rest."
"I don't need to be a hero, Chen. I need limestone," Li Chen said, his voice raspy. He pushed the silk blankets aside and stood up. The room spun for a second, but he gripped the bedpost until his vision cleared. "Tell me about the Pale Shoulders. The hills to the west. I saw them from the ridge yesterday."
Uncle Chen blinked, confused by the sudden question. "The Pale Shoulders? My Prince, those hills are useless. The soil is thin, and the rocks are brittle. They break if you try to carve them, and they turn into a white dust that burns the skin if it gets wet. The farmers avoid that place."
Li Chen felt a surge of energy that had nothing to do with health. White dust that burns the skin. Brittle rock that turns to powder. It was the perfect description of high calcium limestone.
"It is exactly what I need," Li Chen said. "Get Lao. Tell him to gather twenty men and every cart we have left. We are going to those hills."
"But the mud, Your Highness! The roads are gone!"
"Then we will walk," Li Chen said, his eyes turning hard. "And bring shovels. We aren't just looking for stone. We are looking for the blue clay near the riverbed."
The journey to the Pale Shoulders was a test of will. The mud was even worse after the night's rain, a thick, grey paste that threatened to swallow the cart wheels. Li Chen rode a small, sturdy pony, his teeth grit against the jolting pain in his spine. He watched the laborers as they struggled. These men were strong, but they were tired. They didn't understand why they were being sent to dig up useless rocks when there was so much work to be done in the fields.
Lao walked beside the Prince's horse, his massive shoulders heaving with the effort of pushing a stuck cart. He looked up at Li Chen. "Your Highness, the men are asking questions. They say you saved the dike with magic, but now you want to dig in the burning hills. Is this for a tomb?"
"It is for a birth, Lao," Li Chen said. "I am going to show you how to turn a mountain into a liquid, and how to turn that liquid back into a stone that never breaks."
Lao didn't understand, but he nodded. He had seen the Prince stand in the freezing river until the work was done. That was enough for him.
When they reached the base of the white cliffs, Li Chen slid off his horse. He walked to a jagged outcrop and picked up a piece of the pale rock. He struck it against a piece of iron he had brought from the kitchen. It shattered into sharp, white shards. He touched a tiny piece to his tongue. The sharp, alkaline burn was unmistakable.
"This is it," he whispered.
For the next six hours, Li Chen was a foreman again. He didn't just tell them to dig; he showed them where to strike. He explained that they didn't want the surface rocks, which were weathered and weak. They needed the deep stone, the heart of the hill.
"Break it into pieces no larger than a man's fist!" he shouted over the sound of the pickaxes. "The smaller the stone, the more even the heat! We are looking for purity!"
While the men mined the limestone, Li Chen took a small group to the edge of the marsh. He made them dig deep into the bank until they reached a layer of heavy, blue grey clay. He felt the texture between his fingers. It was smooth, almost oily. It was rich in the silica and alumina he needed for the chemical reaction.
"Four parts white stone to one part blue clay," Li Chen muttered to himself, his mind running through the ratios. "If I can get the temperature high enough, I can create the clinker."
By the time the sun began to set, the carts were loaded. The men were covered in white dust and grey mud, looking like ghosts. They were exhausted, but Li Chen wouldn't let them stop. When they returned to the palace courtyard, he ordered them to clear a large space in the center.
"Now," Li Chen said, looking at the pile of raw materials. "We build the kiln."
This was the part that worried him the most. In his world, a cement kiln was a massive, rotating steel tube lined with firebricks. Here, he had nothing but mud and air. He had to build a vertical shaft kiln, a structure that could trap heat and reach temperatures that would melt bronze.
He sat on the ground and began to draw in the dirt. He showed Lao how the base needed to be narrow to create a draft. He explained the concept of the cooling zone and the burning zone.
"We need a constant flow of air from the bottom," Li Chen explained. "Lao, you will build a set of bellows. The largest ones this province has ever seen. We need to force the air into the fire. If the fire stays orange, we fail. We need it to be white. The color of the sun."
The construction of the kiln took three days. Li Chen didn't sleep more than a few hours a night. He watched every brick being placed, ensuring the clay was packed tight to prevent heat loss. He was a man possessed. The Governor came by once, looking at the strange tower in the middle of the courtyard with a look of pure confusion.
"Prince Lu," the Governor said, holding a silk handkerchief to his nose to block the smell of the wet clay. "The people are calling you the Stone Prince. But I see you building a chimney in your backyard. Is this how an Imperial Royal spends his time?"
Li Chen didn't even look up from the blueprints he was scratching into a wooden board. "Governor, the wood in your province is rotting. Your bridges are sagging. Your walls are crumbling. I am building the only thing that can stop the rot. If you want a province that lasts a thousand years, stay out of my way."
The Governor huffed and left, but the workers stayed. They were caught up in the Prince's intensity. They saw the way he checked the alignment of the air vents. They saw the way he measured the thickness of the walls with a string.
Finally, the kiln was ready. It was a ten foot tall cylinder of hardened clay, reinforced with iron bands Li Chen had scavenged from the old palace gates.
"Load the fuel," Li Chen commanded.
They layered the kiln with charcoal and wood, followed by a layer of the limestone and clay mixture. Layer after layer, until the shaft was full.
"Light it," Li Chen said.
The fire started small, a flickering orange glow at the base. But as the teams of men began to pump the massive bellows, the sound changed. It went from a crackle to a roar. The air around the kiln began to shimmer with heat.
"Faster!" Li Chen shouted. "I want to hear the wind screaming through the vents!"
Lao and his men stripped to the waist, their muscles bulging as they pumped the bellows in a steady, punishing rhythm. The temperature rose. The orange flame turned yellow, then a brilliant, blinding white. The heat was so intense that the men had to stand back, shielding their eyes.
Li Chen stood as close as he could, his face reflected in the white glow. He was watching for the clinker. He needed the stone and clay to partially melt and fuse into small, grey nodules. If it stayed as powder, it was just lime. If it melted too much, it was glass. It had to be just right.
For six hours, they kept the fire at its peak. The sun went down, and the kiln became a pillar of light in the dark courtyard. The servants watched from the shadows, whispering about the Prince's "white fire."
Finally, Li Chen raised his hand. "Stop. Let it die down."
The men collapsed where they stood, their skin red and slick with sweat. The roar of the fire faded into a soft hiss. They waited through the night for the kiln to cool.
In the morning, Li Chen walked to the base of the kiln. His heart was pounding. He opened the iron grate at the bottom. Out tumbled a pile of grey, ugly, burnt-looking rocks. They were about the size of marbles, rough and jagged.
Lao picked one up, his face falling. "It... it looks like trash, Your Highness. Just burnt stones."
Li Chen took the grey nodule. He felt its weight. He saw the slight glassy sheen on the surface. He felt a smile spread across his tired face. It wasn't trash. It was clinker. It was the heart of Portland cement.
"Uncle Chen," Li Chen called out, his voice shaking with excitement. "Bring me the heavy iron mortar. And a bowl of clean water."
He spent the next hour grinding the nodules into a fine, grey powder. Every strike of the pestle felt like a step toward the future. When he was done, he had a small pile of grey dust.
He mixed the dust with a bit of sand and just enough water to make a thick, heavy paste. He took two broken pieces of a stone flowerpot and slapped the paste between them. He pressed them together and set them on a table in the sun.
"Now we wait," Li Chen said.
The workers gathered around the table. They looked at the grey mud with doubt. They had seen mortar before, made of lime and sticky rice. It took weeks to dry and was never very strong.
Four hours later, Li Chen walked back to the table. He picked up the stone pieces. He handed them to Lao.
"Pull them apart," Li Chen said.
Lao gripped the two halves of the stone pot. He pulled. His muscles bunched, and his face turned red. He grunted, put his foot on the table for leverage, and pulled with everything he had.
The stone didn't budge.
Lao stopped, panting, his eyes wide with shock. "It... it won't move. It's like they were never broken. It's one piece of stone again."
A silence fell over the courtyard. The workers looked at the Prince, then at the "burnt stones" on the ground. They had just seen a miracle. They had seen a man create stone out of mud.
Li Chen looked at the joined pieces. It wasn't perfect, and it wasn't the high grade concrete of his old life. but it was stronger than anything this world had ever seen.
"This is the end of the age of rot," Li Chen said, his voice clear and strong. "We have the liquid stone. Now, we build the bridge."
He looked toward the river, where the old wooden bridge had washed away months ago, cutting the province in half. He didn't see a gap anymore. He saw a span of reinforced concrete that would stand for five hundred years.
"Lao," Li Chen said. "Get the carts ready. We are going back to the Pale Shoulders. We are going to need a lot more stone."
As the men scrambled to obey, Li Chen leaned against the kiln. He was exhausted, his hands were ruined, and his exile was far from over. But for the first time, he knew he wasn't just surviving. He was winning. He had given the Empire a new foundation, and soon, he would show them how high he could build.