Chapter 357 — Squandering the Family Fortune, Draining the Treasury
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
When the eye opened, fire gushed forth. When the eye closed, it turned in place upon the terrace.
This was the Sun-Shooting Divine Cannon Shen Mu had designed from the Sun-Shooting Sacred Pupil! Hundreds of calculation masters at once crowded around, climbing over every part of the huge platform, measuring, calculating and breaking it down, resolving the giant cannon into one component and part after another, recording the structure, length and breadth of each, permitting not the slightest error.
And the formation patterns on every component and part had to be measured out as well; the volume of calculation was immense. Shen Mu had not designed every single part of the Sun-Shooting Divine Cannon; he had designed only the cannon's main body.
But no foundry could possibly exist large enough to cast such a monstrous cannon in one piece. So to refine it, it had to be broken down into individual parts and components, forged separately, and then assembled.
This was precisely why Shen Mu needed so many calculation masters.
With so many people measuring and calculating in concert, coordinating them was a discipline in itself, and not the slightest error could be allowed. Shen Mu simply invited Emperor Yanfeng out from the capital to coordinate the calculation masters' efforts. The Emperor's wounds had healed, but they had been so grave that his divine storehouse was still a battered ruin in need of recuperation, and his cultivation had not recovered.
Shen Mu and the Little Poison King, Fu Yuanqing, had treated him, and the medicine had been so fierce that it tormented both him and the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping badly; Emperor Yanfeng still brooded over it. "Your Majesty, these calculation masters are all people I invited.
They are not Your Majesty's subjects. If something displeases you, Your Majesty cannot have their heads cut off," Shen Mu cautioned.
Emperor Yanfeng laughed. "I am not the sort of tyrant who keeps 'off with his head' on his lips. Set your mind at ease, dear minister.
" "The Imperial Preceptor of Jingping is attacking Loulan's Golden Palace.
When we came back, the fighting had not yet begun," the Minister of Works reported to Emperor Yanfeng.
Shen Mu at once summoned the officials of the Ministry of Works and discussed matters with them, and the Minister of Works reported to Emperor Yanfeng: "Superintendent Shen complains that the five foundries Your Majesty granted him are too small, and that they are set too far apart.
He intends to tear down all five and build a new one by the river. " Emperor Yanfeng raged: "Tear down my five foundries? Those foundries were built with real gold and real silver! He spends money with both hands like that — it isn't his money he's spending!
I want his head!
" The Minister of Works smiled. "Has Your Majesty forgotten? The foundries of our Jingping were all improved and designed by Superintendent Shen.
" The Emperor's expression softened. "He is indeed a capable man.
Note his head down for now.
" After a while, Shen Mu requisitioned tower ships, dismantled the five foundries and hauled them to the bank of the Tu River.
Ling Yuxiu's talent for leadership and command was no small thing, and Shen Mu asked her to come and help coordinate the work of building the new foundry. Shen Mu also ordered various divine metals and divine materials, heavenly treasures and earthly rarities carried out of the national treasury and sent to the new foundry. Emperor Yanfeng, for his part, was busy coordinating and directing the many calculation masters so that no mistakes would occur, pouring all his energy into it.
More than ten days later, the calculation of the Sun-Shooting Divine Cannon was complete. The many calculation masters pooled their work and, using primordial qi, shaped part after part and component after component, fitting tens of thousands of them together without the slightest discrepancy — exactly one Sun-Shooting Divine Cannon.