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墨書 Inktalez
"Did you hear there's a disturbance here?" Zhou Liangzhang pushed aside the grass with an abacus, his eyes darting around in search of someone.
"In response to your inquiry, my lord," Seventh Uncle trembled as he bowed, "this old man is here to fulfill filial duties—by providing water access for the Dragon King."
Just as Zhou Liangzhang was about to explode with anger, the one-armed veteran suddenly slammed a hammer down on a rock drill. Chunks of stone flew up, grazing Zhou Liangzhang's cheek and leaving a mark on his slick satin collar.
"You!"
"My hand trembled." The old soldier shook his empty right sleeve, but the cold glint in his one eye made the Yard Officers collectively take a step back. "Back in the day at Salhu..."
Before he could finish, several Yard Officers had already grabbed Zhou Liangzhang and were escorting him away. Lin Dahe noticed that as Zhou Liangzhang was leaving, he secretly scattered something into the rock crevice—it was a type of black powder that could burn skin!
"Don't touch that!" He hurriedly stopped Aunt Wang's son from trying to clean it up. "Use a wooden shovel to scrape it off and seal it in a ceramic jar."
Cui Xiaoman crouched down, poking at the powder with a twig. "It's the same stuff we found in the fields last time..."
"The same kind." Lin Dahe looked towards the western mountains. "The Zhou family mine must have something strange going on."
The system interface suddenly updated: [Task Progress 38%], and the countdown had reached [62:07:22]. Even more unsettling was that the red dot representing Zhou Liangzhang was rapidly moving toward the county town—where a skull icon flickered, marked as "Household Wang's Registrar."
When the last loose piece of blue stone was pried from the rock wall, everyone fell silent. Moonlight streamed through the newly opened gap, illuminating the gray-white rock layer across from them—it resembled a cold iron wall, even a steel drill could only leave a white mark on it.
"Firestone." The one-armed veteran tapped it with an iron hook; the echo was deep and resonant like a drum. "This material was used for beacon towers along the Great Wall back in the day."
Lin Dahe felt the rock surface as system analysis data scrolled before his eyes: [Silica Content 92%, Mohs Hardness 7]. He opened the skill tree for "Basic Demolition Techniques," and a red warning immediately popped up: [Lacking basic materials such as saltpeter and sulfur].
"If only we had thunder cannons..." Zhao Blacksmith's son muttered quietly, "My grandfather said they used those for mining during the Hongwu period."
In the ancestral hall late at night, oil lamps cast shadows of three figures onto the family tree. Lin Dahe was flipping through records related to firearms when the one-armed veteran suddenly pressed down on his hand. "There is indeed saltpeter in this village."
They followed the veteran to the grass hut where Mad Old Woman had lived. Moonlight slanted through broken windows, illuminating a faded spinning wheel in the corner. The veteran lifted a bed board, revealing a ceramic jar wrapped in oil cloth.
"We found this while repairing the roof two years ago." He pried open the wax seal; inside was a jar full of gray-white crystals. "The old woman hid it her whole life."
Lin Dahe pinched some between his fingers and touched it to his tongue—the intense numbing sensation made him sneeze—pure saltpeter! The system immediately displayed a formula: [Potassium Nitrate 75% + Charcoal 15% + Sulfur 10% = Black Powder].
"Lacking sulfur." The veteran sighed. "Within a hundred miles, there's only..."
"The Zhou family mine!" Cui Xiaoman burst in from outside, her skirt still dripping with water. "I followed the tracks of their mining carts and discovered they're refining sulfur in West Mountain Hollow!"
She opened her palm; several yellow-green ores glimmered ominously under the light. Just as Lin Dahe reached out to take them, an alarm suddenly blared from the system: [Arsenic-bearing Pyrite poses contact poisoning risk]!
"I'll go get it tomorrow." Cui Xiaoman wrapped up the ores in cloth but suddenly started coughing. "Anyway..."
"No way!" Lin Dahe grabbed her wrist. "I have a plan."
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