Ren Baqian did not really care about the policewoman. However, after seeing her, he wondered what happened to the Jin family after he fled.

After returning to his car, Ren Baqian gave Chen s.h.i.+ a call. He should understand more about this matter.

Ren Baqian found out that after he escaped, the Jin family descended into a chaos. Since the leaders and all their next-of-kin had died, the remaining members of the Jin family fought an epic battle over the inheritance.

At that point in time, some surviving members of the Jin family did think about seeking revenge. However, before they had the chance to do so, the police eradicated them and pursued their past misdeeds.

After all, the Jin family did not have a clean background. Given the severity of this incident, the police conveniently brought up their past misdeeds and arrested them.

Of course, there were also some people that contributed to their downfall in the dark.

After making the call, Ren Baqian felt at ease and dropped this matter completely. The Jin family had fallen into pieces and could no longer create any trouble for him.

After returning to that strange world, Ren Baqian did not have much going on for the next few days. Occasionally, he would visit the construction site for the educational inst.i.tution. The foundation of the three brick-made cla.s.srooms had already been built. Ren Baqian would ask the person in charge to add whatever ideas he thought of to the construction blueprint of the inst.i.tution.

For example, swings, pavilions, a moat to direct the water from a nearby stream into the compound of the inst.i.tution, etc., etc... Ren Baqian spent the rest of his time cultivating or receiving one-on-one tutoring from Tong Lan.

Every time he was thrown to the ground by Tong Lan, he would remember that a man once said, "When my background music is turned on, I am invincible!"

Ren Baqian happened to be the complete opposite of that man.

"When my background music is turned on, I will never win!"

Ahhh, such a painful revelation!

Teleporting between Earth and the strange world, his cultivation progress still remained very slow. However, the amount of force that he could exert had already increased to roughly 2200 newtons.

At this point in time, Ren Baqian was approaching the bottom of the lake. He could no longer see the surface of the lake, and he reckoned that he was not far away from the lakebed.

Touching the lakebed would imply that he had completed the Visualization of Water and had attained the level of Man Wheel.

Achieving this level would bring about qualitative changes to one's body.

After attaining the level of Man Wheel, his entire body would undergo some changes, indicating that he had taken an important step forward.

In Great Xia, only one in one thousand pract.i.tioners could attain Man Wheel, and only one in one hundred Man Wheel pract.i.tioners could attain Earth Wheel.

These two ratios had an important implication.

The level of Man Wheel was an extremely important stage in cultivation.

Early in the morning, Ren Baqian washed himself up. He shaved his head revealing a clean scalp.

He even shaved his mustache.

Following which, he took a cold bath. Then, he picked up Gungun, which had been hugging his legs, and threw it onto Tiantian.

Tiantian and Gungun had been recently sent to Pingle Park. Ren Baqian missed them a lot and told the empress of his request. Subsequently, she asked someone to send the two little chaps to Pingle Park.

When Ren Baqian arrived at Yangxin Palace Hall, the empress was reading a book.

"Your Majesty, do you want to go back to Earth with me? You will get to experience our Chinese New Year's celebration and home-cooked meals." Ren Baqian was standing beside the empress. He placed his weight onto the wooden couch as he tried to see what she was reading.

"You are going home?" the empress straightened her back and asked. Conveniently, she slammed the book on his chest.

"Yes," Ren Baqian replied, nodding his head. It had been a very long time since he last visited his family. If it weren't for the empress, he would have gone back and visited them a long time ago.

"I'm not going," the empress rejected him flatly.

Hearing these words, Ren Baqian heaved a sigh of relief in his heart. Even though the empress treated him quite well, given her temperament, she still treated other people quite coldly.

Furthermore, given her dominating aura of ultimate power, ordinary people would be terrified of her.

Ren Baqian knew this because a vacuum would appear around her region whenever she exuded her aura, causing people to not dare to near to her.

If he really brought the empress back to his family's house, he was afraid that there might be many awkward moments.

Therefore, Ren Baqian felt that it was not yet the right time to bring the empress back to his home.

However, it was still up to the empress whether or not she wanted to go back with him. From the look of it, the empress really did not want to go with him.

"The solar furnace should be reaching Mount Damo, right?" Ren Baqian asked. It had been half a month since the solar furnace was sent to Mount Damo. Because the escorts were delivering mostly gla.s.sware, they had to be extremely careful, but they should still arrive at Mount Damo in half a month's time.

"According to the original plan, it should arrive tomorrow," the empress replied. Previously, she had already received the news regarding it.

Using yiniao, she should receive the news sometime today.

After all, she and Ren Baqian weren't the only ones paying close attention to this matter. There were many imperial officials that cared about it as well.

This issue could affect the entirety of Dayao. The Ministry of Works, the Ministry of Revenue, the Ministry of War, and everyone else awaited news.

...

Mount Damo. Tens of craftsmen were busy fixing pieces of parabolic mirrors to an enormous frame. In the distance, a group of people watched them with excitement.

"This thing can melt Mount Damo?" Gu Xiong, the overseer of Mount Damo's mine, looked at those workers and asked. After hearing the words of those who brought the solar furnace here, he felt incredulous even until now.

"You will see later." This voice belonged to Tao Jiyuan. He followed along to Mount Damo this time around.

Naturally, he heard a lot about this solar furnace from those people who saw what Ren Baqian did. He also heard Feng Hu talking about it before.

He heard that it could use solar energy to melt iron.

However, he was unsure of the exact details.

The workers were busy fixing the parabolic mirrors to the frame, looking as though they were piecing together a puzzle.

Half a day had pa.s.sed before the craftsmen had finally finished fixing the parabolic mirrors to the frame. Following which, they took out some flat mirrors and began adjusting their angles.

Eventually, all the mirrors were able to reflect the sunlight to the solar furnace, which in turn directed the sunlight to a half-meter-square area on the body of Mount Damo.

Everyone focused their attention on that area, trying to see what would happen.

In less than two minutes, they saw that area turn red, emitted smoke, and then burst into flames.

Three minutes had pa.s.sed, and molten iron began to flow down the wall of the mountain.

"Success!" The person who cheered was the leader of the craftsmen, Peng Ze.

Following which, the rest of the craftsmen cheered as well.

They had finally succeeded after working so hard for so long.

Everyone else stared at the molten iron flowing down Mount Damo with shock in their eyes. The solar furnace actually worked...

Previously, the method of burning the mountain had already increased the output of iron several times. With this gadget, the output of iron could be increased up to hundreds of times.

Subsequently, those craftsmen began to set up the second solar furnace. The number of parabolic mirrors they brought allowed them to build three solar furnace. At the same time, someone was teaching Gu Qiong how to adjust the angles of the mirrors and the frames.

After all, they couldn't melt just one area of the mountain.

The craftsmen also placed metallic boxes below the mountain to collect the molten iron.

Even though the molten iron would heat up the metallic boxes, it wouldn't cause them to melt. After all, the temperature of the molten iron kept on decreasing as it flowed down the mountain. Some molten iron had even cooled down completely, forming iron stalact.i.tes down the side of the mountain.

These iron stalact.i.tes could be easily broken off with a hammer.

Two hours had pa.s.sed. A total of one thousand catties of molten iron and iron stalact.i.tes that were broken off were collected.

A solar furnace could be used for six hours in a day. Due to the position of the sun in the sky, sunlight couldn't always be reflected off the flat mirrors into the solar furnace.

However, six hours alone were enough to produce three thousand catties of iron.

With three solar furnaces, a total of nine thousand catties of iron could be produced.

Excluding the cloudy days and rainy days in a year, there was at least 200 sunny days. This implied...

Tao Jiyuan sat on the ground, not caring about his image anymore. Having only ten fingers, it took quite a while to calculate the amount of iron they would have in a year.

"Eighteen million catties of iron!" Tao Jiyuan's lips trembled when he arrived at this number.

This number truly terrified him. When the others heard this number, they began to shudder in shock as well. Gu Qiong's face reddened, looking as though he was drunk.

One had to know that Dayao produced less than ten thousand catties of iron per year in the past.

With the solar furnaces, the amount of iron that could be produced now was equivalent to one hundred years' worth of the combined output of iron from Mount Liucui and Mount Damo in the past.

This number was truly scary.

With enough manpower and sunlight, this number would keep on increasing.

If a saber needed twenty catties of iron to forge, they could now forge one hundred thousand sabers in a year.

One had to know that the main reason why Dayao had one hundred thousand soldiers was that they did not have enough weapons. Among the commoners, a saber could even be a family treasure.

When the Ministry of Works, the Ministry of War, and the Ministry of Revenue got ahold of this news, all three Ministries broke out into a commotion. The commotion was so loud that everyone on the streets could hear them. Tong Zhenye's and Qin Chuan's laughter lasted for exactly one hour.

Even though they had seen Ren Baqian display the might of the solar furnace before, they were still amazed. They never expected it to be so powerful.

That night, Tong Zhenye and Qin Chuan hosted a banquet for their subordinates at House Yunyan. In the end, the banquet became the Ultimate Battle of Brothels again.

And just like before, Tong Zhenye got the last laugh once again.

When the empress first got hold of this news, she was stunned. Following which, a look of joy appeared on her face. With this output of iron, Dayao could forge two hundred thousand weapons in two years.

They might not even need to forge so many weapons. As long as they could forge fifty thousand weapons, they could train an additional fifty thousand soldiers. They could a.s.sign thirty thousand soldiers to the Protectorate of the North and ten thousand soldiers to the Protectorates of the Southeast and Northeast each.

Even if Great Xia, the Yun Nation, and the Chen Nation attacked Dayao together, she did not need to worry about them anymore.

The empress was feeling very excited. She stood up and paced around the palace hall. She was thinking about the person that she could share her joy with, but he wasn't here at the moment.

...

At this point in time, Ren Baqian still did not know what was going on.

Even if he knew, he wouldn't be as happy as the others.

Eighteen million catties of iron were merely nine hundred tons of iron. This was still far from the amount of iron that the Tang Dynasty could produce in a year.

This number paled in comparison to the output of iron on Earth as well. One had to know that China produced 1100 million tons of iron in a year. Nine hundred tons of iron was not even enough for a small city to use.

However, this was still an immense improvement to Dayao.

At least Dayao's weapon reserve would no longer be controlled by other nations.

All along, Dayao never had a lack of powerful soldiers. The only thing they lacked was weapons.