The sun hung high above the West Market, beating down mercilessly.
Qiao'er squatted behind a wonton stall, holding a chipped carving knife in her hands, her fingers covered in old calluses and new scars.
She had picked an excellent spot, where she could clearly see the plaque above the entrance of the Bureau of All Trades without being jostled by the crowd.
The sixteen-year-old girl was very thin, wearing a washed-out coarse cotton dress with seven or eight patches.
She had been staring at the plaque for an entire morning.
Regardless of gender, regardless of background, only skill matters.
Qiao'er couldn't recognize all the characters on the notice; the auntie selling roasted flatbreads next to her had read those words for her.
After reading them, the auntie had added, "Girl, stop dreaming, that's a place for men."
Qiao'er didn't say a word.
The girl held a palm-sized wooden box tucked in her bosom, a nine-ring mortise and tenon mechanism she had spent three months painstakingly carving out of scrap wood, knife stroke by knife stroke.
Inside, twelve parts interlocked, hooked with springs and hidden latches; a single flick could make it spin nine times in a row.
Manager Zhao of the Zhao Family Woodwork Shop in the east of the city had seen it once and slapped the table on the spot.
"Good stuff!"
Then Manager Zhao turned around and put a price tag of three taels of silver on the thing, placing it in a prominent spot in his shop, while the wages he paid Qiao'er were—eighty copper coins.
Of course, Qiao'er had to go demand an explanation.
Manager Zhao crossed his legs, slammed his teacup on the table.
"A wild girl with no father and no mother, you should be grateful you even have a bite to eat in my shop."
"Think it's too little? The people lining up for work at the entrance of the South City Alley wouldn't even get eighty coins."
Qiao'er was weak and alone, so she had to swallow her anger.
What else could she do?
Just as she was thinking about these frustrating matters, a noisy clamor suddenly erupted behind her.
Three or four scholars in long gowns gathered together, cursing at the top of their lungs.
"Absurd! Utterly absurd! Letting a widow be the Farming Commissioner is one thing, but now they want women and cripples to be officials? Does the Great Qian dynasty still have any decency left?"
"A hen crowing at dawn, a sign of a falling nation!"
"This woman Xu Qinghuan has no sense of shame herself, and now she wants to drag a bunch of low-class mud-legged peasants into the royal court. If word gets out, where will the scholars of the world put their faces?"
Qiao'er pulled her hands back.
She shuffled two steps back behind the crowd, lowering her head, not daring to look at the plaque anymore.
Right at that moment, a brass gong sounded.
Clang—Clang—Clang—
Three strikes of the gong, sharp and crisp, vibrating the bowls and plates on the wonton stall.
The crowd swooshed apart.
Two rows of soldiers from the Northern Pacification Army stood bolt upright, their armor neat, their waist sabers glaring in the sun.
They formed an escorting guard of honor.
That was a display reserved only for welcoming superior officials.
Two people walked out from between the soldiers.
The first was Zhao Tiezhu.
The one-armed man wore a cyan official uniform, with a mandarin duck rank badge sewn on his chest, indicating his rank as a ninth-grade artisan of the Great Qian dynasty.
The empty right sleeve was folded and tucked into his waist, but his back was straighter than the soldiers'.
Following behind Zhao Tiezhu was Liu Zaohua.
The limping woman had changed into the same official uniform, with a silver hairpin added to her hair bun, a hairpin issued by the imperial court.
It was a standard item that only female dependents of officials were entitled to wear.
But Liu Zaohua herself was an official.
The Bureau of All Trades of the Great Qian Dynasty, the first batch of officially appointed artisans.
The West Market was dead silent.
The auntie selling roasted flatbreads didn't even notice the dough ball dropping from her hands to the ground.
The scholars who were cursing vigorously just a moment ago had their mouths hanging open, unable to make a sound.
Zhao Tiezhu walked to the entrance of the Bureau of All Trades, stopped, turned around, and faced the crowd.
He was not good with words; he merely touched the rank badge on his chest with his only remaining left hand and grinned.
There was something in the expression on his face that weighed more than any words.
Liu Zaohua didn't stand with her husband.
She limped past Zhao Tiezhu, stepped on the stairs, and walked alone up to the high platform erected in front of the Bureau of All Trades.
Hundreds of people below the platform all craned their necks to look at her.
Liu Zaohua took out two things from her bosom.
In her left hand was a bronze seal, the official seal of a ninth-grade artisan of the Bureau of All Trades; in her right hand was a bulging cloth bag. She opened the bag, and the shining silver ingots blinded people's eyes in the sun.
"Ten taels!"
Someone in the crowd gasped.
Liu Zaohua held up the official seal and the silver, sweeping her gaze over the people below the platform.
She finally looked at those few scholars and stopped.
"Were you the ones cursing just now?"
The scholars took half a step back.
Liu Zaohua tucked the bag of silver into her waist, freed her hand, and pointed at the nose of the leading scholar.
"The Imperial Envoy said, those who can forge sharp weapons are all outstanding talents of the nation! These hands of mine can repair repeating crossbows to kill the Helian people. What can you useless trash who only know how to spew shit do?!"
Her voice was so loud it seemed ready to blow the roof tiles off the entire street.
The scholars' faces turned red and white in turns, their lips trembling as they tried to retort, but the commoners around them had already burst into laughter.
"Well scolded!"
"She has an official seal and silver, what do you have? You have a fart!"
"Exactly! You can't even repair a crossbow, and you have the nerve to jabber here!"
Qiao'er stood behind the crowd, trembling all over.
She looked at the limping woman on the platform.
Official uniform, official seal, silver.
And that sentence.
—Those who can forge sharp weapons are all outstanding talents of the nation.
Qiao'er's eyes turned red.
Only one thought kept turning over in her mind: She is also a woman, she also has skills, why can't she?
The face of Manager Zhao deducting her wages flashed before her eyes.
Then it was covered by the cyan official uniform on Liu Zaohua.
Qiao'er gritted her teeth and charged forward.
Her thin little body squeezed left and right through the crowd, knocking the people beside her off balance.
A scholar blocked the middle of the road. Qiao'er reached out and pushed him straight to the side.
"Get out of the way!"
In front of the long registration desk, an old artisan from the Armory Bureau was boredly flipping through the roster.
Smack! Qiao'er slammed the wooden box from her bosom onto the desk.
The old artisan lifted his eyelids.
"You? How old are you?"
"Sixteen."
"What can you do?"
"Carving, and wooden mechanisms."
The old artisan gave an "hmm" and casually picked up the palm-sized wooden box.
This thing looked unremarkable, with a rough surface and a few knife marks on the edges that hadn't been polished clean.
The old artisan turned it over a couple of times, expressionless, and reached out to flick the hidden latch on the side.
Click.
The mechanism inside the box moved.
But the old artisan's hand stopped.
He lowered his head and leaned in closer to look.
Twelve wooden parts of different sizes interlocked, with interlocking teeth; flicking one place caused the other eleven places to move in sequence.
That hidden latch was connected to three springs. The force of the springs changed direction twice, finally pushing a wooden shaft thinner than a chopstick to rotate.
The entire mechanism ran without the slightest jam.
As soon as this precision component appeared, the old artisan's butt left the stool.
He turned the wooden box over, then upright again, opened the bottom plate to look at the internal structure, his fingers trembling.
"The precision of this interlocking..."
The old artisan raised his head, looking at the very thin little girl in front of him, his voice changing pitch.
"Did you make this?"
"Yes."
The old artisan stood up abruptly, shouting to the back: "Lord Li! Lord Li, please come over here for a moment!"
Li Sheng was maintaining order. Hearing the shout, he ran over in a few quick strides.
The old craftsman shoved the wooden box into his hands, his lips moving rapidly.
"This girl's work is even tighter than the interlocking mechanisms of the military crossbows! This is real skill, not some trickery!"
Li Sheng weighed the wooden box in his hand. Without a word, he fished out an iron plaque and a cloth bag filled with silver from his waist and stuffed them into Qiao'er's hands.
"From now on, whoever dares to bully the craftsmen of the Bureau of All Trades makes an enemy of the Zhenbei Army!"
He shouted this so loudly that the entire street heard it.
Qiao'er looked down at the iron plaque and silver in her hands, her tears dripping down and smashing against the iron.
She wanted to say something, but her lips trembled for a long time without a single word coming out. Finally, she hugged the silver, squatted on the ground, and cried until her whole body shook.
This scene fell into the eyes of the surrounding commoners, proving more effective than any grand words.
A sixteen-year-old orphan girl had relied on a broken carving knife to exchange for an official status, silver, and dignity.
The West Market intersection erupted into a clamor.
Blacksmith Old Liu was the first to rush over, nearly flipping the registration table.
"I'm signing up! I've forged iron for thirty years, and the calluses on my hands have been worn down eight layers deep. Feel them!"
Bricklayer Zhang Laosan pushed his wheelbarrow forward, squeezing through the crowd. Half a bucket of unused mortar still rested on the cart.
"Make way! Make way! Stop pushing! I'm signing up too!"
Carpenters, leatherworkers, coopers, knife sharpeners... one after another, they surged forward with red eyes.
Those pedantic scholars were squeezed so hard they couldn't even stand steadily. Cursing and swearing, they retreated, pushed around by the wave of the crowd.
No one paid them any attention anymore.
On the outskirts of the crowd, Su Mu stood under a crooked locust tree, forgetting to fan himself with the folding fan in his hand.
He watched Qiao'er crying on the ground, watched the commoners desperately squeezing toward the registration desk, and watched Liu Zaohua standing on the stage, hands on her hips, scolding those scholars.
Su Mu folded his fan and tucked it into his waistband.
He turned around and walked toward the backyard of the temporary headquarters.
He had figured out what to say, and he no longer wanted to put on any airs.
A person like Xu Qinghuan was worth him emptying out the entire fortune of Luoxia Valley.
Su Mu had just turned into the moon gate of the backyard.
Bang!
A loud explosion came from the direction of the east wing, spraying dust, black smoke, and wood splinters all over the courtyard.
Su Mu was pushed back two steps by the shockwave, his head and face covered in ash.
From within the smoke, a woman rushed out, stumbling and crawling.
Her face was covered in black soot, her hair was a messy nest, and her left hand still gripped a smoking half-section of a copper pipe.
Jenny Huang wiped the soot from her face. Without even pausing to catch her breath, she looked around.
She happened to catch sight of Li Sheng walking back from the front courtyard, holding Qiao'er's mortise-and-tenon mechanism.
She leaped over in a few quick bounds, snatched the wooden box from his hands, and turned it over and over, fiddling with it.
"This is the mechanism! Three interlocking layers—trigger one, and all three move together." Her eyes shone brightly. "My repeating musket will never misfire again!"
Jenny Huang spun around twice hugging the wooden box before finally noticing Su Mu standing rigidly at the moon gate.
The soot-faced Jenny Huang looked him up and down.
"Where did this pretty boy come from? Don't get in the way of us from the Bureau of All Trades doing our real work!"
