Lime is not only used for building houses. Like soda ash, it is one of the fundamental industrial raw materials with an extremely wide range of applications.
It can even be used as medicine.
That is why the lime works at Xihewan is so large, with three lime kilns alone.
In the northwest corner of the lime works stands a small workshop staffed by only six workers.
Yet this tiny workshop is the most heavily guarded spot in the entire Long Snake Valley industrial zone, watched day and night by armed escorts.
The six workers were hand-picked by Xiao Yu herself; people who could be trusted absolutely.
This was Jin Feng’s glass laboratory, and inside stood a furnace built specially for melting glass.
When Jin Feng rushed in, two of the workers were staring excitedly at the floor.
On the ground lay several lumps of green crystalline matter: the largest about the size of a fist, the smallest only as big as a walnut.
“Sir, look! We did it!”
One worker pointed at the lumps, beside himself with joy. “This stuff is beautiful!”
The lumps were glass. The workers simply had not managed to get it into moulds in time, so it had cooled into clumps on the floor.
Because of many impurities, the colour was far from pure, heavily tinged with green, and the transparency was very low.
Jin Feng glanced into the furnace and saw there was still plenty of molten glass. He picked up a hollow iron blowpipe that had been prepared long ago and was just about to dip some out for a test when he heard an escort at the door shout, “Halt!”
He knew the Ninth Princess had followed him. He had no choice but to put down the pipe, run to the door, and bring the Ninth Princess, Qing Mu Lan, and the others inside.
Everyone except Qin’er and A Mei was stopped outside by Jin Feng.
“Such huge pieces of coloured glaze!”
The moment the Ninth Princess entered, her eyes fell on the solidified glass clumps.
“You know what this is?” Jin Feng asked, frowning.
In the history of his previous world, glass had first been made by the ancient Egyptians, but for some reason the knowledge did not spread.
It was the Phoenicians who truly popularised it. They stumbled upon glass by accident and made a fortune.
For a very long time, glass was an extremely expensive luxury item known as “water jade”.
Because of its rarity, glass in ancient times was worth far more than the same volume of gold or most natural gems.
Historical records from the Tang dynasty noted that a Hu merchant once used just a few glass beads to buy a costly mansion in the bustling city of Chang’an.
In Jin Feng’s plans, glass was a vitally important commodity.
If handled properly, the profits would rival those from soap and black steel knives.
His confidence came from investigations showing that Dakang currently had no glass at all.
Yet the Ninth Princess had recognised it at a glance, which meant she had seen it before.
“I do. A few years ago, envoys from the Wa kingdom brought several pieces of coloured glaze as tribute to my father. Father liked them very much.”
The Ninth Princess answered.
“What was the quality of the glaze they brought?”
“Not as large as these. The biggest was only the size of a pigeon egg, the colour was very cloudy, and there were many bubbles inside. They were not as attractive as these, though they were a little rounder.”
The Ninth Princess replied.
Hearing this, Jin Feng relaxed.
Cloudy colour and bubbles meant the other side’s glass-making technology was still extremely primitive.
In truth, glass development had stagnated for centuries. For hundreds of years people believed glass was naturally green and could not be any other colour.
Only later did they discover the green tint came from tiny amounts of iron in the raw materials.
Change the raw materials, and glass of other colours could be produced.
Processing was also simple: cool the molten glass into beads of various sizes and they would fetch high prices. No further working was needed.
For more than a thousand years glass was treated as gemstone before large sheets appeared.
Jin Feng not only knew how to change the colour of glass, he also knew how to make exquisite glass vessels and large flat panes.
Still, he did not lower his guard.
In his previous world, glass progressed slowly because when the technology reached the Italians, they locked it down. They confined the glassmakers to a small island for life, never allowing them to leave.
This effectively prevented the technology from leaking and eliminated competition.
Without competition there was no drive to improve.
Once the technology finally spread, development accelerated rapidly and all manner of glass products emerged.
Glass quickly changed from luxury to everyday commodity.
Now that Jin Feng possessed the most advanced techniques, he naturally intended to make a fortune first.
To know both oneself and the enemy ensures victory in every battle. Jin Feng asked, “Did the Wa envoys say where they obtained it?”
“They did,” the Ninth Princess replied. “They said they seized it from a band of red-haired pirates.”
“Red-haired pirates?” Jin Feng’s eyes narrowed slightly.
There were very few natural redheads in Asia. The most likely explanation was that these red-haired pirates were white people from Europe.
Before Jin Feng’s transmigration, the original host had been merely a mountain scholar with little experience of the wider world.
Industry in Dakang was extremely backward, so Jin Feng had assumed the whole world was still in a very primitive era.
But if Europeans had already reached the Wa kingdom, that at least meant Europe was more advanced than Dakang, and their shipbuilding was certainly superior.
He wondered whether the Europeans had already discovered America.
Lost in thought, Jin Feng did not pause in his work. He inserted the blowpipe into the furnace.
The raw material for glass was simply sand. At high temperature the sand melted into a viscous liquid similar to syrup.
This was the molten glass.
He scooped out a small glob, but before he could even start blowing, the glass fell to the floor.
Undeterred, Jin Feng dipped the pipe again.
Learning from the first failure, this time he let the glass cool slightly at the furnace mouth before removing it.
This time it did not drip. Jin Feng quickly put his mouth to the other end of the pipe and blew.
Glass is highly ductile; under normal conditions a glob this size could be blown to the size of a basketball without bursting.
Yet for some unknown reason, after only a couple of puffs the glass exploded.
Fortunately Jin Feng was wearing protective clothing, but one worker had stood too close; a small shard hit his foot and he leapt into the air with a yelp.
Jin Feng refused to give up. He shook off the failed glass and tried again.
Still failure.
Once, twice…
After more than a dozen attempts, his cheeks ached terribly, yet not a single try succeeded.
Sometimes the glass dripped straight away, sometimes it cooled too much and would not blow at all, sometimes it burst the moment he started blowing.
By now the floor was littered with cooled glass blobs. All the workers kept well back, afraid of being scalded again.
“Where exactly is the problem?”
Jin Feng muttered, rubbing his sore cheeks.
