William Carter nodded in agreement: “Alright, I’ll leave it all to you—unless you can chew it with your teeth.”

……

Chapter Six: Striving to Invent for a Better Life (Part One)

The journey back to the manor at the foot of the mountain was uneventful. The first thing William Carter wanted to make was a circular saw. He took half of a car hood, drew a large circle on it, carefully cut out the circle with scissors, then snipped sawteeth along the edge, and used a file to smooth it out... After that, he chiseled a square hole in the center, installed a square bronze rod into it, and then made a hand crank—a manual circular saw machine was born.

Its efficiency was abysmally low, but compared to the era’s method of chopping planks with axes alone, it was much faster.

All men have a bit of a mechanical hobby. After the circular saw was finished, “Lian” couldn’t put it down. Tirelessly, he cranked the saw, and when he saw the planks being cut off, he joyfully tossed the saw aside, jumped into the courtyard, and howled nonstop, causing the warriors guarding the area to think a cunning jackal had slipped through their defenses and was rampaging in the yard...

Perhaps this is what gave ancient people a sense of accomplishment.

After the circular saw was made, William Carter lost patience for hands-on work himself. He directed the craftsmen to copy the design, and also instructed them to make a saddle for him, so he could ride into the mountains for leisure in the future.

Once the saddle was finished, horseshoes, a riding crop, and a bit were needed... After this set of equipment was completed, William Carter had no intention of promoting its use, because he remembered: the first to introduce cavalry, King Wuling of Zhao, was fiercely opposed by the nobility and met a tragic end. So he only made a dozen or so sets, then mounted a horse and took a dozen or so willing attendants for rides in the mountains.

He wasn’t just wandering aimlessly; he was familiarizing himself with the surroundings and searching for emergency escape routes. Of course, to cover this up, he also looked for ores, plants, and tree species...

By the time the saddle was finished, it was already autumn—there was no precise way to denote months in the Spring and Autumn period (the Taichu calendar, which used the lunar year, was established in the early Western Han). At that time, historians often used the four seasons to record events, and spring and autumn were the busiest times for people, so the annals often recorded things as “spring of such-and-such year” or “autumn of such-and-such year.” Modern people thus call this era the “Spring and Autumn” period.

Because of this, William Carter didn’t know the exact month. He guessed it was late August or early September by seeing the fruit ripening on the plants cultivated in the courtyard.

According to Ethan Brooks, William Carter had arrived in the spring, just in time for planting season. Later, William Carter dug out some seeds from his backpack and had people plant them. Of course, to be cautious, William Carter only planted half of each variety. Unexpectedly, all these seeds bore fruit—whether this was due to luck or the particularly good climate of the Spring and Autumn period, who could say.

Ethan Brooks had no questions about the strange seeds William Carter sowed. Perhaps he thought they were just species from the “exiled prince’s” homeland, planted out of homesickness. To comfort this foreign “prince,” Ethan Brooks even selected a group of skilled farmers from the territory to carefully tend the seeds in the fields.

In short, the climate near the manor was humid, with little temperature difference between day and night, and the land was fertile. With careful tending, all the seeds planted blossomed and bore fruit. The varieties included peanuts, cotton bolls, tomatoes, red chili peppers, kidney beans, cumin, star anise, pepper, soybeans, and yellow soybeans; among the fruits, grapes and apples had also sprouted and grown branches.

There were only a handful of each seed, but with the farmers’ careful care, every type managed to grow. William Carter himself couldn’t bear to eat any; he had already ordered the farmers to harvest and tend them carefully, and to pick them only when fully ripe, saving the seeds for next year’s expanded planting.

During this period, many bricks “invented” by William Carter were also fired. The appearance of the circular saw made it possible to mass-produce molds for various pottery. The use of coal allowed the kiln’s temperature to surpass previous levels, so the pottery fired in the small mountain brick kiln was of excellent quality—the finished ceramic walls, when struck, rang with a metallic sound.

During this time, Ethan Brooks went into the mountains again. Seeing this, he immediately gathered a large number of potters to learn the technique. Once they had mastered the craft, the potters disappeared in the blink of an eye, presumably relocated by Ethan Brooks elsewhere.

With this batch of potters graduating, the Zhao clan’s finances seemed to improve significantly. When Ethan Brooks next came to the mountains, he was better dressed, and brought more food, cloth, and slaves.

The small brick kiln was running continuously, and the bricks produced piled up in the courtyard. William Carter began to consider building a large red-brick compound, wandering around in search of the ores needed for construction. But after a few days, Samuel Clark came to complain: “My lord, why do you insist on doing everything yourself, leaving the servants idle... I heard you’ve been digging for coal everywhere lately. Just give the order for such work, and the servants will do it. My lord should focus on your studies.”

William Carter smiled at Samuel Clark and asked in return, “How’s the food lately?”