The Struggle of the Reborn Prince

Chapter 73 Glass

It's the dog days of summer now. Zhao Tong and Jian Xi have been bored in the Taoist temple for a few days. The alchemy room is in a mess, the ground is full of garbage, and there are several broken crucibles thrown at the door. If you look carefully, you can still see it.

There are fluorescent lights inside.

"Jianxi, have you written down the recipe just now?" Zhao Tong asked while stirring in the crucible.

"Second Master, I have written it all down. Qingyun, that bastard, will beat him to a pulp when we catch him. What a broken formula, it's probably fake!" Jian Xi said angrily. In the past few days, the two of them have

He personally created more explosions than Qingyun in a year. His hair and eyebrows were set on fire, and his clothes were almost turned into sieves. His arms were bare and his flesh was exposed, and his face was bald by the hot flames.

The skin is black and white like a giant panda.

Zhao Tong didn't hear Xi's complaints. He added some white powder to the crucible again, and the turbid liquid in the pot slowly became clear. He was studying the notes left by Qingyun. There was a recipe for making colored glaze.

He tried several times but failed, and now he relied on his memory to cut the material again.

Taoist priests claim that the refined colored glaze is actually glass. They believe that it is a type of jade and a precious material for preparing elixirs. If they crush it and add it to the elixir, people who eat it can grow as long as jade.

Live a hundred years. Zhao Tong doesn’t believe this at all. If a person eats it, he has to pull it out intact. If the glass shards don’t puncture his intestines, he is lucky. He will live a fucking long life. Just dream!

Glass was a common thing in later generations, but now it is a rare treasure. Moreover, Zhao Tong knew that the raw materials of glass are also very common. They are just sand, lime and soda ash, which are easy to find. The difficulty for him is the formula.

, he didn’t know the proportions, so he could only experiment according to Qingyun’s formula, and wanted to figure out the process first. After several experiments, he finally understood that the ancients were not stupid. In order to prevent others from stealing the art, Qingyun tampered with the formula.

He was the only one who could figure out the password. It was a pain for the two of them, so they had to try little by little. Fortunately, Zhao Tong knew what was used, and he couldn't find it even if he tried to find someone else's door.

"Jianxi, turn up the fire!" Zhao Tong observed and ordered Jianxi. Jianxi added a few more shovels of coal to the stove and pulled the bellows, the flames sprang up and the crucible became

It was bright red, with a temperature of more than a thousand degrees.

"Second Master, be careful, don't blow up the pot again!" Jian Xi said with trembling fear. This situation has happened many times.

"Don't be afraid, as long as we succeed, you can lie down on the gold ingot and sleep!" The raw materials in the crucible slowly fused and boiled under Zhao Tong's stirring. Bubbles continued to emerge, and Zhao Tong continued to float the top.

After removing the impurities, he felt that success was just around the corner, and he was happy and joking in his heart.

"Second Master, what are you doing? Can it be as valuable as you say?" Jian Xi wiped the sweat from his face and said.

"This is the so-called colored glaze, but what we make is better than what Qingyun and the Persians do. How much do you think we can sell it for?"

"Ah?! This is colored glaze!" Jianxi was surprised. He didn't expect that he actually helped the prince make colored glaze. He knew how much this thing was worth. There were several colored glaze cups in the palace. The emperor usually

I can't bear to use it, it's worth a thousand dollars.

"I didn't expect that!" Zhao Tong said with a smile. The Song Dynasty was the richest era in history. There were so many rich people. People had no place to spend their money, so they just liked to buy some rare things to collect and show off. This is no different from modern times.

Liuli could just meet their needs and give their money a place to go. Zhao Tong seemed to have seen a pile of sand turn into large golden ingots, rolling in and flowing into his pocket.

Seeing that the heat was almost done, Zhao Tao scooped out a little with a spoon and poured it on the stone slab. The bright red liquid slowly cooled and gradually turned into a transparent crystal. "Jianxi, don't burn it, keep it at this temperature!" He waited.

After the crystal cooled completely, I picked it up, held it in my hand, and shined it on the sun. It was crystal clear and translucent. Although it still had a faint green tint, it was almost the same as the inferior glass of later generations.

"Jian Xi, we succeeded!" Zhao Tong shouted fiercely and threw himself on Jian Xi. Jian Xi was thrown to the ground unprepared. Jian Xi was stunned for a moment, but he quickly realized what he was doing. Another major invention of the prince was born.

Yes, of course this also includes my own contribution.

Glass has been made, but it requires a lot of work to convert it into money. Zhao Tong only saw glass blowers when he was a boy. At that time, reform and opening up had just begun, and various small workshops were springing up everywhere. Their family

Someone has set up a small glass factory nearby, producing soda bottles and window glass. The quality is not as good as that of big factories, but it is cheaper. Their equipment is simple, just a crucible, two iron scissors, and a few blowpipes.

, the process also uses traditional manual blowing.

The factory buildings are all open-air. I watched the master craftsmen dip their blowpipes into a piece of red glass water, and with the cooperation of their hands and mouths, they turned it left and right, turning it into crystal clear bottles like magic.

Children are still very attractive. At that time, he and his friends often went to see Qi Xi, but just to see Qi Xi, they had never done any specific tricks on him, and it was impossible for others to let him touch it.

The next day, Zhao Tong walked into the "laboratory" with several tools that had been made by the blacksmith overnight, but found that the crucible had been stuck to the solidified glass liquid. He had no choice but to change the crucible and start the refining again.

After making the glass of water, Zhao Tong imitated the 'Master' in his memory, picked up a piece of glass liquid with a blowpipe, cut it open with iron scissors, took a deep breath, puffed up his cheeks and blew out the most valuable breath of his life. The glass liquid was

He started to inflate, but Zhao Tong lost his energy. When he took a breath, the 'little balloon' hanging on the blowpipe cooled rapidly and could no longer be blown.

"Failure is the mother of success!" Zhao Tong comforted himself, changed another piece, and failed again. Once, twice, and three times, the two of them spent the whole day looking at the twisted piles on the ground.

A work that cannot stand upright or stand straight makes me want to cry but has no tears.

"It's so shocking." Zhao Tao picked up the hammer and smashed them into pieces of glass. Then he looked at the stains all over his body and his dark little hands. He sighed and sat on the ground. Why is it so difficult to do something? This prince.

When I was so old, I was eating and sleeping and being happy, but as a prince, I was busier than anyone else. He was busy planning for the future to save the Song Dynasty, busy building bridges and paving roads to improve people's livelihood, and building factories and growing vegetables.

When he was making money, he really wanted to jump up and scold his stupid father. You said that you don't take the job well as the emperor, and do all kinds of troubles all day long, which made me unlucky too.

"Second Master, don't be angry. If we can't handle it, why don't we change someone else?" Jianxi noticed Zhao Tong's frustration and asked cautiously.

"Who else? No one in the entire Song Dynasty has seen this thing. Who has this technology?" Zhao Tong shook his head and said.

"Second Master, I don't mean to let them make glass. Even if they want to make it, we can't tell them. What I mean is to find someone who can blow glass and let him blow glass for us!" Jian Xi said with a smile.

"If you know how to blow, who can?" Zhao Tong perked up, this was a good idea.

"Second Master, I think this one you play looks a bit like that candy blower walking around the streets. We can't try it with two candy blowers!"

"Cough!" Zhao Tong was so breathless that he really dared to think that a candy man cost only a penny, and making a finished product by himself would be enough for him to boast about being a candy man for the rest of his life. But now there is no other way.

You can try, "Okay, tomorrow you will send someone to find the two most skilled sugar blowers and let them try it, but you have to find a way to prevent them from telling our secret!"

"The only way to prevent him from telling the secret is to cut off his tongue so that he can't speak for the rest of his life!" Jianxi said with a fierce look in his eyes while touching his smooth chin.

"You are really wicked. If someone doesn't tell the secret, other than death or cutting out the tongue, there are two other ways: one is to give him enough money so that he can't bear to tell it; the other is to let him know the secret.

The end is worse than death!" Zhao Tong said with a smile.

"Second Master, what are you going to do to me?" Looking at the prince's smiling face, he asked shamelessly.

"Go away, you still want me to throw money at you to death. If you can't handle this, I'll cut out your tongue!" Zhao Tong kicked him and cursed.

"Second Master, I'm going to find Shunzi right now. This guy makes people scared just by looking at him. He can do this kind of thing. If he talks like a dead person with a strict mouth, he can definitely do it!" Jian Xi rubbed his thigh,

Said with a playful smile.

Zhao Tong was speechless. Jianxi was getting smarter and smarter under his training, and his mind was getting worse and worse. Now that he was mixed up with that cold guy Shunzi again, I'm afraid a new generation of black and white impermanence was born.

.

Jianxi and Shunzi worked very efficiently. Three days later, the craftsmen of the sugar blower were found, and they were not just two people. Jianxi and Shunzi strictly implemented the prince's ideas and brought all the sugar blower's family members.

I brought it back, and the meaning is very clear. If you dare to tell it, the whole family will die!

It's better for laymen to watch the fun and for professionals to see the door. Zhao Yan just demonstrated the process to the two guys. The two of them blew the glass of water as if it were sugar syrup. They only wasted a furnace of glass of water and figured out the key points of the operation. Secondly,

Two stylish fist-sized cups appeared on Zhao Tong's table.

Zhao Tan quickly sent the two finished products to Huang Jingchen's desk for him to estimate the price. The old man looked at the crystal clear glass and suspected it was an artifact. After examining it for a long time, he gave a conservative price of two thousand guan each. Zhao Tan

Without saying a word, he immediately wholesaled it to Huang Jingchen and asked him to find a market. The extra price difference would be used to fund his future activities!

Zhao Tong still had a lot of big things to do next, so the glass shop was naturally handed over to Jian Xi. Jian Xi was even more lazy and picked two people from Xiaohuangmen who were slow to react, dull, and follow the rules, and couldn't kick anything out.

He trained the talents for a while and asked them to serve the glass kiln specifically. He had divided the required ingredients in advance and labeled them 1, 2, and 3. The two people were like robots with programmed functions. They only needed to feed the ingredients according to the heat.

That’s it.

Therefore, the workshop with the least investment in manpower and material resources and the largest output ratio was born in Zhao's industry. Fortunately, Zhao Tao was not greedy for money. He only opened one furnace per month and produced only primary products. However, it also put money in the pockets of collectors in the capital.

The large amount of money he won was transferred to the Zhao Mansion.