At this, Matthew Bolton was also secretly alarmed, but he furrowed his brows and asked, “Why has the heir become so fascinated with the Mohist mechanical arts?”

“Hmm?”

Charles also noticed this man’s disapproval and was rather surprised. “Er Lang, do you perhaps look down on this chain-blade box?”

“It’s not that. The power of this thing is truly astonishing. Even a child with no strength to truss a chicken could use it to kill a Martial Master. However—”

Matthew Bolton paused, a bitter smile appearing on his face. “I wonder, has the heir ever calculated how much silver was spent to make these two items? You’ve always been careful with money—why so extravagant this time?”

Charles was taken aback. He then asked the nearby guards about all the expenses, and after carefully calculating, he was left speechless.

The mechanism of the ‘chain-blade box’ and the outer barrel of the ‘sleeve repeater’ were not expensive. But the internal components were all made of extremely costly rare iron and refined steel. For example, the dozen or so springs inside were forged from rainbow gold-iron, a rare metal worth a hundred taels of gold per tael. Several gears were also made of refined gold. He hadn’t realized before, but now he understood that all these materials were exorbitantly priced.

After careful calculation, he found that just the materials alone had cost him seven thousand taels of silver, and the processing fees paid to several workshops amounted to another thousand taels. These two items alone equaled one percent of his official annual income.

Thinking of this, Charles felt as if a bucket of cold water had been poured over his head; all his excitement and joy vanished without a trace.

“Eight thousand taels of silver would be more than enough for the heir to hire ten sixth-rank Martial Masters as bodyguards for a year. It could also buy eight four-star Mohist armors, or hire people to take the lives of a dozen Martial Masters or officers.”

When Matthew Bolton said this, he shook his head slightly and commented, “These things are good, but they’re just too expensive.”

“You’re right.”

Charles immediately lost interest. The cost of these two items was enormous, and he hadn’t felt it when he was excited. But now that Matthew Bolton brought it up, he felt the pain in his wallet.

Thinking back to the detailed guide on forging, the materials required for the later devices were even more outrageous.

Even as the heir of the Duke of An, with a wealthy family background, he felt he couldn’t afford it.

He definitely wouldn’t make a second one of these things, but it would be nice to show them off to his friends.

With this thought, a smile returned to Charles’s face. “By the way, have the heirs of the Marquis of Pingliang and the others come to visit me recently?”

—The heir of the Marquis of Pingliang, Robert Hill, the heir of the Marquis of Yongchang, Brian Clark, and the fourth-rank Cavalry Commandant John Carter, were precisely Charles’s ‘close friends’, the other three of the so-called Four Evils or Four Plagues of the capital.

Chapter Six: Beans Boiling the Beanstalk

When Matthew Bolton heard this, he immediately knew what his young master was planning, and looked at him helplessly. “In the past few days, all three of them have come to visit, but were stopped by the old lord.”

Charles had expected this, and asked, “What about my grandfather? Where is he now?”

“The Earl of Anxi and General Foster were summoned by His Majesty today and went to the palace at the hour of Chen.”

Matthew Bolton was well-informed; with Charles’s wealth, there was no shortage of information in the Duke of An’s residence.

“It’s said that when they left, both of their faces looked very unpleasant.”

“They probably went to the palace to be scolded on my behalf. How could their faces look good?”

Charles laughed, then strode out of Cuiyi Garden without hesitation. His injuries had mostly healed by now, and after eight days cooped up in the residence, he was truly bored.

Just as he stepped out of the courtyard, Charles suddenly remembered—wasn’t today September 29th? It was also the day foretold by the stone tablet, when he would obtain the inheritance of the Eternal Evil Emperor and Gongshu.

Looking up at the sky, it was indeed a sunny day, with sunlight everywhere and not a cloud in sight.

Charles hesitated only briefly, then still went out, but to be safe, he brought all his guards with him.

As the heir, those responsible for his safety were not limited to Matthew Bolton alone. Great Qin had strict rules: the heir of a duke was entitled to three squads of guards, totaling one hundred and twenty men. Among them, Charles’s most trusted were four: David Foster, James Foster, Henry Foster, and Thomas Foster. The four were not brothers, nor members of the Ying clan by blood, but after their ancestors entered the Ying household, they took the family surname. Since childhood, they had been assigned by his father to follow Charles, so they were considered reliable.

Moreover, these Good Fortune were all seventh-rank Martial Marquises, their strength only slightly inferior to Matthew Bolton. Even in the capital, where experts abounded, they were not weak. Especially after Charles spent a fortune to have custom seven-star Mohist armors made for each of them, their combat power became even more formidable.

This time, Charles brought David Foster and James Foster with him, along with their Mohist armors. Matthew Bolton did the same, following Charles’s orders and bringing his own ninth-rank Mohist armor, ‘Lingwei’. At this moment, each of the three had several guards carrying a three-foot-tall black box for them.

It should be known that in this world, only divine-grade Mohist armors could open up a pocket dimension and store the entire set within the void. Anything below divine-grade had to be carried in a special case, as these heavy armors could not be hidden away. The case was also specially made, called a ‘Juyuan Box’. It could hold a Mohist armor up to two zhang tall, and reduce three hundred stone of weight to less than three stone, so even an ordinary third-rank warrior could lift it. It could also gather spiritual energy inside to nourish the armor.