The Empress’s Gigolo

“Oh, its moving!” Many people started making noises when they saw the flywheel move. It was obvious that no one was moving the wooden shafts or the wheel and that they had actually started moving on their own.

As the water temperature began reaching its boiling point, the linkage and the flywheel began to rotate faster and faster. Lots of steam also started to come out through the exhaust pipe of the cylinder. The flywheel wound up the rope, which raised the water bucket from the pond. Once the bucket reached a certain height, a student emptied it before throwing it back into the pond, repeating the cycle.

“This thing is actually moving on its own.” Many of the officials walked over to observe and felt that it was rather interesting.

It was a real novelty to them because the steam engine could move on its own without the need for human force. However, everyone started losing interest in it after 10 minutes when its freshness had subsided.

Someone started voicing his doubts and asked, “Still, what can this do?”

Tong Zhenye immediately raised his voice and said, “After more than a month, is this toy all you got? Even though it looks rather fresh and interesting, with regard to fetching water, the kids can do it much faster! Even that water cart that you invented previously was more useful than this.”

“Precisely! It does seem pretty interesting, but it doesn’t serve much purpose.” Everyone started to criticize. They were astonished that Ren Baqian had built such a thing that didn’t correspond with his status.

The things that Ren Baqian produced in the past had been pretty amazing. With such great fanfare this time around, they couldn’t understand why he built this toy, yet still gathered up so many people to see it.

“You ignorant old man. This was why I said that you have a long beard, but you are a baldy who is short on knowledge. Do you really think this is a toy?” Qin Chuan immediately mocked Tong Zhenye. However, Qin Chuan’s words had also ridiculed a bunch of people, and many of the officials here looked at him with glaring eyes. There were quite a few imperial officials present who were also bald and had a beard.

“And what do you know?” Tong Zhenye grumbled.

Qin Chuan’s attitude was simply to oppose whatever Tong Zhenye agreed with and vice versa.

“This toy is pretty interesting. The most important thing is… Umm… The most important thing is that this is the product of so many people’s collective effort. In the past, these children had always been wasting their lives by playing around and drinking the days away. Now that they can actually build something like this, it’s not bad! Not bad!”

As Qin Chuan finished speaking, Tong Zhenye almost spat while laughing.

Ren Baqian’s face immediately turned black. This ignorant old man might as well have kept his mouth shut.

He turned to look at the students and saw that many of them looked sad. It was evident that the words of these two ignorant old men, Qin Chuan and Tong Zhenye, had heavily impact the students that spent more than a month to finally build the first steam engine in this world.

As for the other officials, their opinions were similar to those of the two old men.

Initially, when the students had first joined the school, they said that Ren Baqian wanted to teach everyone the principles regarding all matter in this world, and everyone was rather looking forward to it.

However, judging from the current situation, it was only this much.

Ren Baqian didn’t feel good when he saw everyone’s reaction. He thought about it a little and understood the mistake he made this time.

The steam engine’s function was immensely important and it had great significance as well, but these people completely did not understand it. Without the knowledge of someone from the future like himself, how would they be able to understand what the steam engine represented?

“You have seen that this thing is only capable of fetching water, but this is simply a newly made prototype. In reality, this thing can do a lot more. For instance, a wagon full of goods would be able to move without the use of a fork-horned cow.”

“Isn’t this still a toy then? We have countless fork-horned cows here in Dayao. If we can use them to pull carts, why do we need this?” Tong Zhenye simply didn’t understand what Ren Baqian was driving at. Ren Baqian previously built that solar powered furnace that served a great purpose by being able to smelt iron ores directly.

Then, there was also the salt well that allowed Dayao to deal with a portion of their salt needs.

The cement and the red bricks had both served a great purpose as well. Currently, the blast furnace outside the city that was under construction was being made with cement and red bricks. These building materials could also be used to bolster the city wall and build houses, which saved a great deal of labor compared to cutting rocks like they had previously needed to do.

At present, however, he really couldn’t see what this thing could achieve.

It wasn’t only him who felt this way, the others strongly agreed with what he said as well. Shi Qing, the old fox, was the only one who looked at Ren Baqian persistently with an enigmatic smile.

“The steam engine’s greatest use isn’t limited to just one sole function, but instead represents a brand new source of power—one that can replace human and animal labor!

Regardless of whether it is smelting metal, mining, or transporting goods, all of these processes require a great deal of human and animal labor to achieve. The steam engine can reduce the use of both human and physical resources to a minimum while increasing productivity to a maximum. This is the true significance of the steam engine.

For example, we can look into building a train once we have a steam engine. This thing can transport people and goods at speeds that are multiple times faster than the fork-horned cows. Its load capacity is also something that the fork-horned cows will find impossible to match. Just one of these trains will be able to transport the equivalent capacity of thousands of horned cows.

How much manpower would also be required for thousands of fork-horned cows to transport goods? What about the cost and consumption of resources during the journey? How long will it take to travel to the Protectorate of the Northeast from here?

With an improvement to the steam engine and after the construction of the train, it can travel nonstop and will only take three days to reach a destination that would normally take two weeks. Even just for the transfer of rations and soldiers during wartime, can you imagine what sort of advantage this will bring?” Ren Baqian explained with black face.

He had actually been looked down on by this old fellow.

He had actually been despised by a bunch of primitive people.

Absolutely intolerable!

“Just like what you have mentioned previously?” Tong Zhenye was a little skeptical.

Ren Baqian felt like giving this old fellow a kick and rebuked, “Have I lied about anything previously?”

“Very frequently!” Tong Zhenye reacted instantly.

“When have I lied? The solar-powered furnace and all the other things—were there any that didn’t achieve the outcome that I said they would?” He stared at Tong Zhenye. Right at this moment, Ren Baqian really felt like giving him a kick to the groin.

Did you know that this is called slander, you ignorant old man?

“What about last time when you said that you would treat me at House Yanyun!” Tong Zhenye touched his beard, looking adamant that Ren Baqian had lied to him.

The empress’s face turned pale. In a flash, she sent Tong Zhenye flying off with a kick and directed a stern look at Ren Baqian.

Qin Chuan, who was grinning at the side, burst into hearty laughter. Seeing that ignorant old man getting into trouble simply made him happy.

“I really dislike going to a brothel—it was him who insisted on bringing me there. I had no choice but to do it half-heartedly. This is called a white lie.” Ren Baqian felt wronged.

The empress stared at him for a while longer before asking, “When will you be able to achieve all the things that you said? After all, I really can’t see anything coming out of this now.”

She had some understanding of the train that Ren Baqian talked about, but the others completely couldn’t visualize it. The only way to change their opinion was to make it for them to see.

“The earliest would be around two months for a small scale steam engine locomotive. We will scale it up if we succeed with this and then build a real train.” Ren Baqian pondered over this matter. It wouldn’t be hard to make a small scale steam engine locomotive. Their current steam engine simply needed to be modified a bit, and the flywheel, that was actuated by the linkage, needed to be replaced with a train wheel.

This would be considered an easy task for him to do, but it would take some time for the students to do it. However, such tasks had to be done by the students themselves in order for them to grow.

As such, Ren Baqian’s current objective was to turn the steam engine into a small scale steam locomotive that would suffice as long as it could move. He would then size it up to scale in the future.

After building the steam engine and the locomotive, these students would have a much better understanding of the engine and also of physics. Afterward, it would be much easier for them to learn or do other things in the future.

“I shall wait to see the thing that you just described.” The empress nodded. She then shifted her attention to those sad looking students and said, “Do it well. Dayao’s future depends on you.”

Many officials were astonished to hear the empress say this. What she said wasn’t something casual.

They had never expected Her Majesty to regard such stuff as important or to actually use words like “Dayao’s future depends on you.”

In their minds, Dayao’s future still depended on those gifted kids from their various families.

However, the empress’s words had indeed gotten the students extremely excited. It seemed like they wouldn’t even hesitate to step on the battlefield now.