Chapter 1059: Imperial Clansman Zhu Xingshu

In contrast to the arrogance and self-importance of the Xu family craftsmen, these refugee craftsmen and apprentices burned with passion to hone and improve their skills, to reform and innovate every kind of technique and craft, because they had seen many examples — a single insignificant invention or suggestion had lifted entire families from slavery to commoner status, given them family property, and even secured them a comfortable middle-class life. Such rewards naturally sent everyone's enthusiasm soaring. The craftsmen from the Xu family always scoffed at this fervor, but secretly they dared not slack off either. Their own young master, Xu Housheng, never showed favoritism toward those of Xu family origin in his work.

Yet whether they were from the Xu family, of refugee origin, or craftsmen who had come to offer their service on their own, everyone shared one thing in common: they all looked down on these foreign devils. With noses so high, eyes of blue or green, and bodies covered in so much hair — what craftsmanship could they possibly understand? Why did Lord Jin value them so highly? Wasn't this just making it seem like our Celestial Kingdom had no skill of its own?

That Old Mac, who drank all day, had only mediocre blacksmithing skills, yet now he was a man in charge. Word was he got that position because he offered Lord Jin a little trick for casting cannons. He really had good luck — must have been blessed by some foreign bodhisattva.

What angered everyone even more was Yu Shan. Here, at last, was a man of Xu family origin who could lead and back them up, yet he spent his days hanging around those foreign devils, always talking about consulting them and learning. What a joke. There were only two great hubs for coal and iron in all the realm — one was Xuzhou, the other Foshan. What skill could you not learn in those two places? Why insist on studying with foreign devils?

Since this Yu Shan could not be counted on, everyone on one hand focused on advancing themselves, and on the other pinned their hopes on the newcomer, Zhu Xingshu. This Zhu Xingshu was a very strange figure. When you talked with him about the work of hammering iron and tending the fire, he was proficient in every aspect. Judging by the color of his face, the burn scars and calluses on his hands — these were marks only a veteran craftsman would bear. Yet his everyday bearing and manner did not seem that of someone from a hardscrabble background; he always liked to wear a long gown, swaying and swaggering about.

Though his everyday manner seemed odd, Zhu Xingshu's skill truly earned everyone's respect. He not only understood the craft of the anvil, the hammer, and the furnace, but was also thoroughly versed in those foreign devils' contraptions. Much as everyone despised the foreign devils, they had to admit that those high-nosed, deep-eyed, blue-eyed foreigners had their own methods in smithing and metalwork. The language barrier made it hard to ask them directly, yet this Zhu Xingshu could explain things to everyone. Even rarer, he never kept his knowledge to himself, passing on his skills without reservation to all. That truly won admiration.

"This Zhu Xingshu is an imperial clansman from the Huguang region. But over in Huguang, the line of the Prince of Chu is dominated by over twenty households of Defender-General and Bulwark-General rank. Every matter, great or small, must be discussed and decided by these twenty-odd households. Those outside this circle have no path forward at all. Zhu Xingshu grew up in bitter poverty. At nine, he was already working as a helper in a blacksmith's shop, and he had a real gift for the trade. But the year he turned fifteen, a Supporter-General of the local city wanted to seize that smithy by force, and also felt it unsightly to have an imperial clansman doing manual labor, so he meant to drive him out. In a fit of rage, Zhu Xingshu killed the man's guards and fled Huguang..." Xu Housheng had learned Zhu Xingshu's background in great detail from Li Laohai.

After fleeing Huguang, Zhu Xingshu went to Foshan in Guangdong. The iron industry flourished there — exactly the place where his skills could be put to use. After working there for a time, both his craft and his knowledge grew considerably. But he also caught wind of a rumor: his enemies in Huguang knew he was there and had already sent men to seize him. With that, he naturally dared not stay. During his days in Foshan, he had often heard people say that the Westerners' methods of smithing and casting had a different framework altogether, which stirred his interest deeply.

In the end, he was still a scion of the imperial clan. Poor as he was, his vision and breadth of mind differed from that of an ordinary craftsman. He also harbored the ambition to travel and see the world, so he simply left Foshan, sailed from Macau in Xiangshan County, and went out to the Southern Seas. Wandering overseas, he surely endured hardship, but luck was with him — he survived, and moreover, he learned genuine skill.

It was not that the Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch were generous or unselfish with their knowledge; rather, the local white population suffered from a severe shortage of labor. In that sweltering, humid climate, even fewer were willing to take up the torment of furnace work. The local natives were hopelessly stupid — not only incapable of learning the skills of forging and smelting, but even deeply fearful of places like blacksmith workshops. As for the Han Chinese who came from the Great Ming, they formed their own closed circles; those with skills opened their own shops. Someone like Zhu Xingshu, who understood the trade and was willing to work hard, was simply too rare.

And that was how he learned his skills.

A man like Zhu Xingshu was hard to come by — not just for the local whites, but even more so for those sea lords and maritime merchants. Though the sea merchants' ships were all merchant vessels, and the business of piracy and naval combat was just something they did on the side, the cannons and firearms aboard their ships were by no means few. At the very least, they needed the means to defend themselves.

Though plenty of those goods were crudely and shoddily made, you could not simply throw them away the moment they broke. When they truly could not be used, they needed repair. Yet the foreigners' workshops either served only foreign officials and armies, or simply had no spare capacity to do business with the sea merchants. A Han Chinese like Zhu Xingshu, who also understood how to repair and build firearms, was therefore exceptionally rare.

Once his reputation spread, several great sea lords all wanted to recruit him. In the end, he was taken in by the kinsmen of Li Laohai's clan. But though he was recruited and taken in, he was still treated as nothing more than a craftsman, valued only so much. It was because of this that Li Laohai was able to ask for him and send him over to Zhao Jin's side.

"To them, he may be of little consequence, but to us, this is a weighty gift. Zhu Xingshu understands the Frankish tongue. With him here, the skills of these foreign master craftsmen can be learned by us." Xu Housheng's introduction was very thorough.

Zhao Jin nodded repeatedly. He agreed with Xu Housheng's assessment. Even a foreigner like Louis, whose Mandarin was very fluent, fell far short of Zhu Xingshu's usefulness, especially when it came to synthesizing knowledge and bridging gaps in communication. Zhu Xingshu would be of great value.

"Li Laohai may have taken quite a bit of silver from us, but he has also done quite a lot for us. What does he want? Or rather, what do the kinsmen behind him want?" Zhao Jin asked a question. No one offered goodwill without reason. For Li Laohai to be so proactive, he must have something he was after.

"Brother-in-law, I asked Yu Zhiyuan about this. He said these old sea dogs are all in the habit of extending credit first, and then collecting the debt once it has piled up. Whatever he wants, he'll likely come knocking on our door himself." Xu Housheng answered with a smile.

Events proved that Zhao Jin and the others' assessment of Zhu Xingshu was not in the least exaggerated. The Burgess brothers had been in Xuzhou for several months, spending the entire time improving gun carriages and limbers. They had taken the large-cart-base design that Yu Shan had devised and changed it to use cart wheels and axles, with an iron frame on top to secure the cannon. This kind of gun carriage was sturdier and more flexible than Yu Shan's version, and it allowed for a much wider range of elevation adjustment.

Once this design was completed, Xu Housheng and Louis first had carpenters build a model and sent it over to Zhao Jin. Zhao Jin was very satisfied with the design — it was already very close to what he required.

However, this design also had a problem. The cannons were heavy, and building such gun carriages required high-quality wrought iron material — and a great deal of it. The production tasks at the Zhao Battalion firearms workshop were already extremely heavy; the blacksmiths were constantly forging iron stock to make firelocks and simply could not spare any attention for producing these gun carriages. Moreover, everyone had calculated it together: forging the materials for such gun carriages consumed far too much iron and labor. For now, it was not worth it.

Zhao Jin was also frustrated by the limitations in production capacity. But as soon as this Zhu Xingshu arrived, he conferred with the Burgess brothers for a few days, then dragged Louis and the others into it, and actually came up with the project of a water-powered trip hammer.

"Masters, you may not know this, but some of these foreigners have seen too little, and some think too narrowly — though more often than not, they've seen things but have no idea how they work!" Zhu Xingshu had his own explanation for the invention of the water-powered trip hammer.

This water-powered trip hammer could not be built in a hurry. At present, with the Zhao Battalion expanding and reorganizing, the firearms workshop — and indeed the entire Xu family's production capacity — was devoted to making firelocks and forging weapons and armor. So for this water-powered trip hammer, they merely drew up the plans, then had carpenters build a model and sent it over.

When he saw this, Zhao Jin was truly overjoyed and astonished. For reasons rooted in his memories, he was intensely interested in any machinery that could replace or reduce human labor, yet he had never been able to push such projects forward. From Louis to Old Mac to the Burgess brothers, they all said they had seen water-powered machinery, but none understood how to build it. He had never imagined that it would be a craftsman of Great Ming origin who actually made it.

Everyone in the Zhao Battalion knew that Lord Jin was never stingy with rewards for military merit or achievements in craftsmanship. This Zhu Xingshu was immediately promoted to a supervisory position. Though he had only been there a few days, he was already equal in rank to Louis and Yu Shan. What surprised everyone even more was that, in the midst of the current expansion and reorganization, with the allocation of manpower and resources in the Zhao Battalion a tangled mess of countless threads and everyone from top to bottom frantically busy, Zhao Jin had met with this Zhu Xingshu many times in a row. They truly could not understand why Lord Jin was so interested in matters of craftsmanship.

"... Lord Jin, when we forge the barrels for these firelocks, we must use the finest wrought iron. First, you dig a pit in the ground, line the bottom and sides with brick and stone, and when the blast furnace yields iron, you pour the molten iron into this pit. Then you stir it with a wooden pole, take it out and hammer it, then return it to be smelted again — over and over in an endless cycle. Through hammering time after time, you finally produce usable wrought iron. Twenty-odd catties of pig iron end up as just over two catties. This repeated process consumes far too much labor. If we switch to a water-powered trip hammer, it will save a great deal of effort. And the axles, bases, and other large components for those gun carriages and limbers can all be hammered out with this trip hammer, which will be far more convenient..." Though Zhu Xingshu had endured hardship in his youth, he was, after all, of imperial clan origin and had traveled far and wide. He could speak with ease and confidence even before Zhao Jin.

At this meeting, several people were present. Wang Zhaojing, Cao Ruhui, and Xu Housheng all kept glancing at Zhao Jin, thinking how rarely they had ever seen him this happy. Then they looked at the middle-aged Zhu Xingshu and wondered: just a down-and-out scion of the imperial clan — what could be so remarkable about him?

"How did you come to know the structure of this water-powered trip hammer?" Zhao Jin asked with a smile.

Thanks to "Yuan Heng Li Zhen, User Cold Night, User Ancient Charm, User Glancing Back at the Mortal World, Sui Xin Zi Wo 0, Blessing of the Light Angel" and several other old and new friends for their tips. Thank you all for your subscriptions and monthly tickets. Thank you, everyone.