Chapter 316: The Emperor Who Vomited Blood (1)
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
This news was even more shocking than being a marquis. How could there be a mine? Back then, when they spent a few hundred taels of silver to buy the mountain, they never expected to be able to dig a mine inside!
Wait, the small mountains she bought all had mines. Then what about the few desolate mountains that His Majesty had rewarded her father?
“Dali is fine. Brother Erniu, please send him back to rest. He doesn’t have to work for the next few days. Big Brother, Shuanzi, come with me.” After Yu Wan finished instructing, she carried the shovel with Yu Feng and Shuanzi to the surrounding desolate mountains. Afraid that they didn’t have enough manpower, Yu Shaoqing, Shuanzi’s brother, Hunter, and the others also went.
In the end, they all found very high-quality ores, even more than those on the small mountain.
They had been trapped in these desolate mountains for generations. Because of this, the roads were blocked and news came slow. Lotus Flower Village had become the most barren village in the surrounding villages, but who would have thought that there was such a precious mineral vein hidden behind the barrenness?!!
“In the past, there were no such stones in the mountains,” said Shuanzi’s brother. He had often gone into the mountains to hunt before he was captured to the border, so he was quite familiar with the terrain in the mountains. The roads he walked now were all the ones he had once walked, but the desolate mountains in his impression were not like this.
Yu Wan smiled. “Brother, that’s because there’s an earthquake.”
Not only did the earthquake destroy the fertile fields of Lotus Flower Village, but it also changed the terrain of the back mountain and the ores buried deep underground. Only then did they discover it so easily.
In the Great Zhou Dynasty, iron was a controlled product. Other than preventing them from privately forging weapons, one of the main reasons was that the Great Zhou Dynasty’s mineral veins were rare. Moreover, no new mineral veins had been discovered for several years. In the long run, they would probably have to buy ores from their neighboring countries at a high price.
Yu Wan did not know about this, and Yu Shaoqing did not say anything, but it did not stop Yu Wan from estimating their value.
Yu Wan was overjoyed. From now on, she was also a person with a mine!
Not only was the information in Lotus Flower Village blocked, but the news inside was also very difficult to spread. However, the Emperor had always been looking forward to Yu Shaoqing’s painful reaction, so he asked Eunuch Wang to keep an eye on Lotus Flower Village.
Eunuch Wang walked into the Emperor’s bedchamber in the evening. In fact, he had received the news in the afternoon, but he hesitated for a full two hours before gathering his courage to walk in.
The Emperor had been nourishing his hair in the bedchamber for the past few days. He had used the special-grade knotweed and felt that his bald head had already grown small hairpins. This made the Emperor happy. In time, he would have thick black hair again.
“Your Majesty.” Eunuch Wang walked around the screen and bowed respectfully.
The Emperor weighed the knotweed in his hand that was always used to nourish his hair and said indifferently, “What? Did Yu Shaoqing make a move?”
The Emperor smiled disdainfully. “Let me guess, did he finally recover and know that he has been slapped in the face? He’s the mighty Marquis Zhongyong, but he doesn’t even have a decent fief. I want to see where he can put his face.”
“…” Eunuch Wang secretly calculated his chances of survival after telling the truth.
“Why aren’t you saying anything? Could it be that he fainted from anger?” The Emperor sneered.
Eunuch Wang gripped his horsetail whisk tightly and finally made up his mind. “I have two pieces of news to report to His Majesty. One is good news and the other is bad news.”
The Emperor was in a good mood when he thought of Yu Shaoqing crying. He smiled and said, “Tell me the good news first.”
Eunuch Wang wiped his cold sweat and said, “The good news is that our Great Zhou has discovered a new iron mine.”
“Oh?” The Emperor’s eyes lit up and he straightened his back. This was indeed good news. The Great Zhou’s iron mine was about to run out of iron, and they almost couldn’t produce weapons. Wasn’t everyone saying that the royal family had suffered the wrath of the heavens? Once the mineral vein was out, he wanted to see who still dared to say that it wasn’t the blessing of the heavens.
“What about the bad news?” The Emperor asked with a smile. With such a huge surprise, any bad news was nothing.
Eunuch Wang braced himself and said, “The bad news is… the new mineral vein is the few barren mountains you gave Yu Shaoqing.”
The Emperor: “???”
The Emperor: “!!!”
The Emperor spat out a mouthful of blood and fainted beautifully—
In Lotus Flower Village, Yu Wan and the others went down the mountain with the villagers. Finding the mineral vein was a joyous occasion. Not only were they happy, but the villagers were also happy. Who would dare to laugh at their Lotus Flower Village’s mountain for being a useless desolate mountain? Hehehe, it was clearly a mine!
On the way back to the village, the village headman asked Yu Wan and the other two a very serious question. “Is the tofu business still going on?”