The Prime Minister's Darling

The man gave a slight smile, “Miss, you have a little brother?”

Gu Jiao gestured with her fingers, “Not one, three.”

The man: Only giving one gift seems rather unjust!

The man gave Gu Jiao two more gifts, causing the servants nearby to feel their master’s pursed strings tighten. Why did he have to ask such a question? Wasn’t he digging his own grave? But there was no place to vent their vexation.

It was their master’s own vanity after all.

When Gu Jiao left the Medical Hall, her little basket contained three more extravagant gift packages!

At the entrance of Huichun Hall, the man gave Gu Jiao a salute, “Miss, until we meet again.”

Gu Jiao glanced at him, “I’ll see the doctor again, what’s wrong with you?”

With that, she carried her basket and disappeared into the crowd without a backward glance.

The servant was furious and gritted his teeth, “Master, did you see her….”

The man was stunned as well, as no one had dared to talk to him like that in many years. But upon recovery, he laughed joyously, “Yes, what is wrong with me? Why do I want to see a doctor? Isn’t it good to be healthy?”

“Master….”

“We should head back to the capital, let’s go.”

—

After leaving Huichun Hall, Gu Jiao headed to the only iron shop in town.

The iron shop had been open for over twenty years and could be considered an old establishment.

Just as Gu Jiao arrived at the shop, she heard the rhythmic sounds of iron forging. The business was booming, keeping the blacksmiths very busy.

The shop didn’t have a counter, so Gu Jiao called over an assistant and asked, “I ordered some ironware here last month, and today is the day to collect it.”

The assistant, hauling a heavy basket of iron ore, shouted into the Grand Hall, “Old Wang! Someone’s here to collect their goods!”

“Coming, coming!” A blacksmith, drenched in sweat, rushed out. He had a towel around his neck, which he used to wipe the sweat off his face as he looked at Gu Jiao, “Who’s here for goods? Are you?”

She wasn’t recognized because last time the order was placed by a Huichun Hall carter.

Gu Jiao hummed a response and handed him her order receipt.

Literacy was rare amongst the ancient scholars, and even rarer amongst blacksmiths, hence the use of numerical order tokens. Each order token had a corresponding number, which indicated which batch of goods it belonged to.

“Your order isn’t ready.” Old blacksmith frowned and said.

Gu Jiao replied, “But you promised it would be ready today.”

Wiping sweat off with his towel, the old blacksmith said, “We just couldn’t finish in time, there’s nothing we could do.”

“About how much longer?” Gu Jiao asked.

“Well…” the old blacksmith pondered, “One or two months probably.”

Gu Jiao was puzzled, “That long? The farm tools I ordered weren’t that much, were they?”

The blacksmith sighed, “It’s not your order. Last month, the shop undertook a large order before yours, for a thousand pieces of mining equipment. We’re only halfway done! We don’t have enough hands or enough furnaces…”

“Old Wang! Time to forge!” A blacksmith inside shouted.

“Yeah! I’m coming!” Old blacksmith shouted back into the shop, then turned to Gu Jiao, “Miss, maybe you should check back next month.”

Gu Jiao wasn’t willing to wait that long.

After the old blacksmith went inside, Gu Jiao also entered the iron shop. The blacksmiths were all frantic, too busy to pay attention to a young girl.

Truthfully, the shop wasn’t short on manpower. With their number of workers, they should easily accomplish making a thousand pieces of ironware in a month.

So, the problem probably wasn’t a shortage of hands.

Gu Jiao observed their blast furnace, and immediately identified the problem.

Smelting iron requires extremely high temperatures. To reach such temperatures, blast furnaces usually use a bellows. Gu Jiao had thought that the iron shop of this era would at least employ a water-driven bellows system, but it turned out they were still using the most primitive form of human-operated bellows.

Human-operated bellows, commonly referred to as a hand bellows, have the drawback that each nozzle only has one bag, which collapses once with every pump.

A blast furnace typically has four to six nozzles, meaning that at any time, only six pumps can be made simultaneously.

This efficiency is much lower than a water-driven bellows system.

The water-driven bellows use water power to drive the bag. Each time the water wheel rotates, the bag can be collapsed several times, greatly saving time and manpower.

Gu Jiao shared her thoughts with the old blacksmith.

The old blacksmith was astonished. How could a young girl dressed in common clothes know all this?