After two weeks, it was clear that the locomotive carriage was almost half the size of the courtyard.

Ren Baqian eventually couldn't hold it in any longer and asked, "You bunch of blockheads! Why don't you just replace the frames with metal?"

"Metal is too expensive! We can't afford it!" Tong Lan put herself forward and replied with the courage of her convictions. Everyone else nodded as well.

Ren Baqian was enraged to the point that he almost laughed. A bunch of officials' offspring… Fine, even though they were the good-for-nothings among the descendants of the officials, they must have quite a bit of pocket money? If so many of them pooled together a sum of money, they should be able to afford metal right?

Considering that the kids didn't seem to be faking their expressions, Ren Baqian actually thought about how he didn't really care about the current metal production situation in Dayao, so he decided not to say anything further.

However, he had recently discovered an interesting phenomenon. It was alright in the past, but ever since the students started building the steam engine, they had gradually divided themselves into three layers of operation.

The first layer comprised of Tong Lan and s.h.i.+ Gan, the two strongest ones. At present, it was also evident from their bodies that only these two looked slightly cleaner, whereas the rest were a little dirtier.

Even this duo had different levels of cleanliness. Tong Lan's entire body was fresh and clean. Wearing a white s.h.i.+rt, her clothes completely didn't fit in with the messy environment that she was in.

As for s.h.i.+ Gan, even though there was a little bit of dirt on his chest and sleeves, Ren Baqian could tell with one look at s.h.i.+ Gan's hands that they were clean and showed no signs of manual labor.

However, s.h.i.+ Gan did intentionally dirty his clothes a little just so he didn't look that special.

One could only say that he was worthy of being the Great Elder's son. He was on a different level than Tong Lan, who was a foolish girl that only thought about muscles.

These two were mainly responsible for giving out orders and putting forth plans and ideas. Among them, s.h.i.+ Gan had proposed quite a number of useful suggestions, while Tong Lan's only function was to move her mouth and be a mascot.

Even though Tong Lan looked like she had contributed quite a fair bit lately, all she did was fight with s.h.i.+ Gan and suggest rotten ideas because she had entirely conflicting opinions with him.

The second layer included the slightly stronger students. They did less of the manual labor, and their main roles consisted of doing odd jobs and contributing ideas. Unexpectedly, the majority of this group of people were children of the commoners.

This group of people were slightly more hardworking and were pretty strong as well. After entering Ren Baqian's school due to a freak combination of factors, their performances had generally been pretty good.

The last layer was headed by Du Laoliu and the others, the good-for-nothings from the families of various officials. Each of them sank down into the hard toil and were very dirty.

The aboriginals' principles of honoring the strong and their predatory behavior had presented itself at its best.

However, Ren Baqian felt that such differentiation wasn't too bad either. At least the arrangement was much better than having all the commoner children do the hard labor. After all, the prevalent practices in Dayao were still rather unsophisticated.

After cla.s.s, Ren Baqian went to inquire at the Ministry of Works.

After asking, he found out that those students really couldn't afford it… Their a.s.sertions were real and not bogus.

Even though the ore extraction from Dayao's iron mine in Damo had been pretty successful over the last six months and rapidly grew Dayao's metal production, the prices hadn't decreased much.

The demand for metal in Dayao was indeed too high.

Although the amount of ore extracted from the iron mine at Mount Damo had been pretty high, the top priority was to satisfy the needs of the army. During a war, the demand for weapons would always be very high.

In addition, the people's militia also required quite a large amount of weapons.

After satisfying these two needs, the amount of metal left for the commoners was quite small.

All in all, the iron mine at Mount Damo had only been using the solar-powered furnace to extract ore for slightly more than six months. Taking everything into account, there were only about 500 tons of metal produced, which was about 50,000 weapons forged. Even though this was already about 100 times faster than before, the time that had elapsed was too short to produce enough metal.

There were indeed more weapons among the people compared to before, but they were mostly gathered in the north with the main source of supply coming from the weapons that Great Xia had previously left behind. These were melted down and reforged into new ones.

As such, the price of metal was still on the high side and only slightly lower than it was before.

It would still be possible for the students to pool together some pocket money to buy a couple of weapons, but anything more than that would be impossible.

500 grams of metal would cost around four taels of silver. The various frames of the steam engine, linkages, and wheels would require at least 500 kilograms of metal, which would cost 4,000 taels of silver.

The lowest ranking official only earned around six taels of silver per month. Even though most of these students came from rather well-off families, aboriginal officials weren't wealthy enough. Also, the majority of these students were good-for-nothings that weren't well liked in their families, so they didn't have much pocket money. As such, they really couldn't afford to pay 4,000 taels of silver.

Seeing this, Ren Baqian went back to the palace and requested for the empress to specially transfer 1,500 kilograms of metal to the school as well as order the Ministry of Works to send a few blacksmiths over. A courtyard had been part.i.tioned out of a corner of the school compound. Every day, all the students clanged and banged over there after school. Eventually, the production of the locomotive carriage once again got back on the right track.

In fact, as long as they had a clear objective and also settled the problem of the motive force, it wouldn't be too difficult to complete the task. It was only a matter of how much time would be needed to design a suitable frame and to build the locomotive carriage.

Even though Ren Baqian was holding on to a complete preliminary blueprint of a 20th-century locomotive, he didn't intend to take it out. He wanted to let the students experience the challenge and improve bit by bit because that would be worth much more than a train.

Ren Baqian had always been quietly observing their changes, awaiting the day that they finally transformed.

Ren Baqian's daily life had also transformed into what he was looking forward to; he was busy running between two places: the palace and the school.

Apart from teaching cla.s.ses every day, he would meditate in the palace as well as get himself walloped by the little lolita once every few days. In his free time, he would accompany the empress in the palace, just sit there, and get lost in thought. Otherwise, he would be walking around in the palace and observing the minute changes around him.

For instance, the street lamps that could be spotted everywhere.

In the few months after returning to Lan City, Ren Baqian had begun to carry out his "Palace Illumination Project." Whenever he was free, he would bring back some street lamp equipment and batteries.

After a few months, there were now street lamps set up within the palace at 20-meter intervals that brightly lit up the palace throughout the night like a city that never slept.

The empress was very happy with such changes. When she had free time at night, she would sit on the rooftop of her room and drink while overlooking the brightly lit palace.

At the same time, such changes made the bodyguards and palace maids rather unused to it. They no longer needed to hold torches and lanterns at night anymore. In just over a few months, the palace suddenly turned into a city that never seemed to sleep. Regardless of whether it was night or day, there wasn't a single place that was dark.

Even in other parts of Lan City, one could see the exceptionally bright palace at night.

The greatest impact on them… Was that they couldn't simply pee anywhere they wanted to anymore… It was too bright…

After all, one would need a lot of courage to pee anywhere they wanted to if the area was brightly lit and under the glaring eyes of so many others.

All the ministers in the imperial court were also amazed by the big changes in the palace. They had already discovered the street lamps in the palace much earlier on. After all, with lampposts and lampposts of street lights lined up along the paths, it would be hard for anyone to miss them.

However, there weren't many of those at that time. In addition, the war with Great Xia and the pacification of Tianjing Basin came one after the other. Both Ren Baqian and the empress weren't at the palace during those events, leaving those in Lan City to make wild guesses.

However, no matter what they guessed, there was one point that everyone was certain about—that the street lamps were definitely expensive treasures that would absorb light in the daytime and release it at night.

They didn't expect that the palace would be filled with these treasures within just a few months after Ren Baqian and the empress returned. The lighting left no areas in the palace neglected. It was true that they were extremely beautiful, but that actually made many people even more worried. With so many treasures lying about, they had no idea where those things came from or how much they had cost.

With the northeast and southeast still at war, such sudden changes in the palace had invited quite a fair bit of criticism.

In fact, this wasn't the only thing that changed. Many of windows in the palace halls had been changed to gla.s.s. However, everyone knew that gla.s.s was produced by the royal family. As such, even though it was expensive, it didn't give rise to much controversy.

On the contrary, it was these street lamps that were regarded as treasures more precious than night pearls. After all, how bright were night pearls? How could they compare to the street lamps in the palace?

This led to a private discussion between many of the ministers that concluded that the empress had changed and was becoming more extravagant!

Plus, the cause of this change was none other than the princ.i.p.al of the Black Bamboo Academy.