Night had already deepened.
Yet the fire in Zhiwei's workshop had not gone out.
Inside the furnace, red-hot coals roiled without pause, sending wave after wave of heat rushing into their faces.
Gu Changfeng stood beside the furnace, sweat trickling from his forehead down along his temples.
He looked at the clay pot before him, then glanced at Shen Zhiwei.
“Miss, are you really going to try it tonight?”
“Yes.”
“It’s already midnight.”
“I know.”
“The Marquis is seeing you tomorrow.”
“I know that too.”
Gu Changfeng couldn’t help giving a bitter smile.
“Then why aren’t you resting?”
Shen Zhiwei was bent over, weighing the materials.
She was using the simplest kind of balance.
Weights sat on the left, quartz sand on the right.
She adjusted them bit by bit,
until the beam finally held steady.
“Rest can wait.”
“The experiment might not.”
Gu Changfeng: “…”
He understood that sentence now.
The Miss was making something again.
And judging by the look of things, if she didn’t succeed tonight, she wasn’t leaving.
“Quartz sand.”
Shen Zhiwei pointed to the tabletop.
“Three parts.”
“Soda ash, one part.”
“Lime, half a part.”
Gu Changfeng wrote everything down.
“This is glass?”
“This is the initial formula.”
“Will it work?”
“In theory.”
“In theory?”
“It means we don’t know yet.”
Gu Changfeng couldn’t help asking, “What if it doesn’t work?”
Shen Zhiwei looked up.
“Change it.”
“What if it still doesn’t work?”
“Keep changing it.”
“What if it never works?”
Shen Zhiwei smiled.
“Then we keep changing it.”
Gu Changfeng stared at her.
He suddenly understood.
When this Miss did something, “don’t do it” had never seemed to be an option.
There was only—
How do we do it?
Shen Zhiwei had not chosen glass on a whim.
In her scientific research plans, glass was an extremely important foundational material.
It could be used to make containers.
Windows.
Lenses.
Laboratory glassware.
In the future, it could even extend into optics, medicine, chemistry, and electrical equipment.
But it was the last item that mattered most to her.
Electricity.
Without glass, many precision electrical devices would be impossible to build.
More importantly, the ancient world already had liuli.
But liuli was still a long way from modern transparent glass.
She wasn’t trying to “invent” glass.
She wanted to turn glassmaking into a controllable, repeatable process.
That was the true challenge.
Nature would never lower the difficulty just because she was a transmigrator.
The materials might be impure.
The furnace might not get hot enough.
The proportions might be wrong.
There might be too many impurities.
Any one of those problems could make the experiment fail.
And she didn’t even have an instrument for accurately measuring temperature.
She could only judge by the color of the flames, the state of the materials, and years of experience.
This was also the first time she had truly realized that knowledge and tools were two different things.
She knew the answer,
but she had no ready-made means of obtaining it.
So she had to start from scratch.
The first batch of materials was sent into the kiln.
The kiln door closed.
Gu Changfeng began adding charcoal.
“Make the fire a little stronger.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t add too much all at once.”
“Understood.”
“Let the temperature rise slowly.”
Gu Changfeng nodded.
He didn’t understand the theories Shen Zhiwei talked about, but he had worked as a blacksmith all his life.
He knew the temperament of fire extremely well.
The flames gradually brightened.
The kiln walls began to glow red.
Shen Zhiwei stood nearby with a long iron rod in her hand.
Every so often, she opened the viewing hole.
“Raise it more.”
“Raise it more?”
“Yes.”
Gu Changfeng gritted his teeth and added charcoal.
The flames suddenly surged upward.
A wave of heat rushed toward them.
Shen Zhiwei stepped back.
The loose hair at her forehead was already damp with sweat.
But her eyes remained fixed on the kiln.
She had no thermometer.
No high-temperature camera.
No thermocouple.
She didn’t even have an accurate timer.
None of the conditions of a modern experiment existed here.
She could only rely on the most primitive methods.
Observe.
Record.
Compare.
Correct.
“Now.” Shen Zhiwei suddenly spoke.
“Seal the kiln.”
Gu Changfeng quickly closed the kiln mouth.
The two of them stood to the side and waited.
One hour.
Two hours.
Three hours.
The flames gradually weakened.
Shen Zhiwei still didn’t open the kiln right away.
“Don’t rush.”
Gu Changfeng asked, “Why?”
“If the material inside is still very hot, sudden contact with cold air could easily make it crack.”
“I see.”
“This is called annealing.”
Gu Changfeng repeated the word.
“Annealing.”
“Remember it.”
Shen Zhiwei nodded.
“It’ll be important from now on.”
The next morning, at dawn,
three rounds of rooster calls sounded throughout the marquis’s residence.
Shen Zhiwei was still standing in the workshop.
Gu Changfeng had already fallen asleep against the wall.
The furnace fire from the previous night had long since gone out.
Yet Shen Zhiwei was astonishingly alert.
She walked up to the kiln and took a deep breath.
“Open it.”
Gu Changfeng woke with a start.
“Did it work?”
“I don’t know.”
Together, they opened the kiln door.
A wave of heat rushed out.
Gu Changfeng’s eyes widened.
Inside the clay pot lay a grayish-white solid with a deeply pitted surface.
Some areas even had a faint green tint.
Gu Changfeng froze.
“This…”
Shen Zhiwei picked up the tongs and pulled the lump out.
She examined it carefully for a long time.
Then she shook her head.
“Failure.”
Gu Changfeng let out a breath of relief.
“Good. It failed.”
Shen Zhiwei looked at him.
“What do you mean, ‘good’?”
Gu Changfeng gave an awkward smile.
“At least it didn’t leave us with nothing.”
Shen Zhiwei picked up a hammer instead.
“Who said it left us with nothing?”
Bang!
The first strike.
The solid cracked open.
Bang!
The second strike.
A small piece of translucent material fell away.
Shen Zhiwei’s eyes lit up.
She held the piece up to the light.
Morning sunlight passed through it.
It was cloudy,
but it definitely let light through.
“Not a complete failure.”
Gu Changfeng leaned closer.
“Does this count as glass?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“There are too many impurities.”
“The transparency is also insufficient.”
“But we’re headed in the right direction.”
Gu Changfeng grinned.
“So we’re halfway there?”
Shen Zhiwei thought about it.
“Maybe one-tenth.”
Gu Changfeng: “…”
He suddenly felt that the Miss’s standards for “success” were terrifyingly high.
Shen Zhiwei recorded the result.
Experiment number: 002.
Result: partially melted.
Problems: insufficient transparency, greenish color, incomplete melting.
Hypothesis: raw-material purity insufficient; furnace temperature insufficient; proportions require adjustment.
After she finished writing, she suddenly remembered something.
“Gu Changfeng.”
“Yes.”
“Are there any places near Jingcheng that sell quartz sand?”
“There are.”
“Can you find some that’s whiter and cleaner?”
“I can look.”
“And soda ash.”
“That’s difficult to find.”
“Go find it.”
“Yes.”
“Also…”
Shen Zhiwei pointed to the piece of translucent glass.
“Keep that.”
“This too?”
“Keep it.”
“What for?”
“We’ll know someday.”
Gu Changfeng nodded.
He had learned by now.
Nothing the Miss chose to keep was ever truly useless.
By noon, Shen Mingyuan finally arrived.
Shen Zhiwei was in the workshop.
She didn’t even know her father had arrived until Qinghe came hurrying over.
“Miss!”
“What is it?”
“The Marquis is here.”
Shen Zhiwei looked up.
“Now?”
“He’s right outside.”
She set down her brush and walked out.
At the courtyard gate, Shen Mingyuan stood waiting.
This was the first time Shen Zhiwei had truly met the “father” of this body.
The middle-aged man was tall and broad-shouldered.
A battle-hardened severity showed in his features.
The dust of travel still clung to him.
Father and daughter looked at each other.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Shen Mingyuan studied her, his eyes complicated.
“Zhiwei.”
“Father.”
Shen Zhiwei gave a slight bow.
Shen Mingyuan was silent for a moment.
“Your health… has really recovered?”
“Much better.”
“The estate physician said you escaped death by a hair.”
“Yes.”
Shen Mingyuan’s brows drew together.
“Do you know who harmed you?”
Shen Zhiwei raised her eyes.
“Not yet.”
“But I’ll investigate.”
Shen Mingyuan looked at her as if he hadn’t expected that answer.
“You weren’t like this before.”
Shen Zhiwei didn’t reply.
She knew the man standing before her was not a good father.
At least, he had not been one to the original owner of this body.
But she had no intention of developing hostility toward him simply because of the original owner’s memories.
She needed evidence.
“Did you come to the workshop for something?”
“I heard you were making something.”
“I am.”
“What?”
Shen Zhiwei pointed to the translucent solid on the table.
“Glass.”
Shen Mingyuan walked over and picked it up.
“This is?”
“Glass.”
“It doesn’t look like it.”
“The first version.”
Shen Mingyuan fell silent.
He examined it for a long while.
“Where did you learn this?”
Shen Zhiwei’s heart stirred.
That was the hardest question to answer.
“From books.”
“What books?”
“Many.”
“How have I never heard of them?”
“Just because you haven’t heard of them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
Shen Mingyuan stared at her.
Shen Zhiwei did not look away.
After a long while, he suddenly laughed once.
“You’ve changed.”
“Yes.”
“You used to be too afraid to say more than a few words whenever you saw me.”
“People change.”
Shen Mingyuan did not press her.
He put the glass back on the table.
“Do what you want.”
“Really?”
“The marquis’s residence gave you this workshop so you could do something with it, not so you could fool around.”
Shen Zhiwei nodded.
“I’ll prove it.”
“Prove what?”
“That this isn’t fooling around.”
Shen Mingyuan gave her a look and turned to leave.
At the gate, he suddenly stopped.
“Zhiwei.”
“Yes?”
“If you need money, tell me.”
Shen Zhiwei froze for a moment.
“Okay.”
Shen Mingyuan said nothing more.
After he left, Qinghe couldn’t help saying, “The Marquis seems… not to have blamed you.”
“Mm.”
“He even said to ask him if you need money.”
“Mm.”
Shen Zhiwei lowered her head and looked at the piece of translucent glass.
“Looks like he isn’t as cold as I imagined.”
Shen Zhiwei had no time to dwell on it.
The glass experiments had to continue.
For the second batch, she re-sieved the quartz sand.
For the third, she increased the proportion of soda ash.
For the fourth, she adjusted the lime.
For the fifth, she changed to a new clay pot.
For the sixth, she redesigned the kiln.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Failure.
Failure.
Failure again.
One time, the glass even exploded outright.
Fragments flew everywhere.
Gu Changfeng instinctively stepped in front of Shen Zhiwei.
“Miss, watch out!”
A shard sliced across his arm.
Blood immediately seeped out.
Shen Zhiwei’s expression changed.
“You’re hurt.”
“It’s just a small injury.”
“Don’t move.”
She grabbed his hand and quickly cleaned the wound.
“From now on, everyone stands farther away when we’re making glass.”
“And…”
She looked at the shards.
“Protection.”
“What?”
“Your eyes. Your hands.”
“Both need to be protected.”
Gu Changfeng nodded.
Shen Zhiwei suddenly fell silent.
She knew she had been too hasty.
Scientific research was not an adventure.
Especially not in an era without proper equipment.
She could accept failure,
but she could not trade human lives for results.
“Starting today,” Shen Zhiwei said, turning around, “the workshop will establish safety rules.”
“First, separate the experimental area from the rest area.”
“Second, every high-temperature experiment must be supervised.”
“Third, every injury must be recorded.”
“Fourth, no one may alter the experimental conditions without my permission.”
Gu Changfeng nodded.
“Understood.”
Shen Zhiwei gazed at the shattered glass covering the floor.
“What we’re changing is the era.”
“We’re not trading our lives for the results.”
Seven days later,
everything began again.
This time, Shen Zhiwei started with the raw materials.
She personally selected the quartz sand.
She washed it repeatedly with water.
Let it settle.
Dried it.
Then sieved it again.
She reprocessed the soda ash as well.
The lime was sieved too.
She even carried out the most primitive comparative experiments.
The colors of different sands.
The degree of melting.
The transparency of different finished products.
She recorded every result.
Gu Changfeng gradually learned.
He began writing down the numbers on his own.
His handwriting was still crooked, but he could now record every experiment.
“Sand A.”
“Soda ash, two.”
“Lime, one.”
“High heat.”
“Result: cracked.”
Shen Zhiwei looked at the records he had written.
She smiled.
“Very good.”
Gu Changfeng looked embarrassed.
“My writing’s still bad.”
“That’s fine.”
“As long as it can be read.”
“That’s progress.”
The seventh experiment.
The eighth.
The ninth.
Then the eleventh.
The kiln door opened once more.
A pale-yellow transparent solid lay quietly in the clay mold.
Gu Changfeng held his breath.
“Miss.”
“Yes?”
“This time…”
Shen Zhiwei picked it up and held it against the light.
Morning sunlight passed through the solid.
The light refracted and shone clearly across the back of her hand.
There was no obvious cloudiness.
No large bubbles.
Its transparency was still inferior to modern glass,
but it was transparent glass in the truest sense of the word.
Shen Zhiwei froze for two seconds.
Then she smiled.
“It worked.”
Gu Changfeng could hardly believe it.
“It really worked?”
“It really did.”
“We made it?”
“Yes.”
Gu Changfeng slapped his thigh.
“We did it!”
The entire workshop erupted.
The craftsmen rushed over.
“Where is it?”
“Let me see!”
“It’s really transparent!”
“Oh my god!”
“Can it show someone’s reflection?”
“Can we make windows with it?”
“Can we make bottles?”
Everyone chattered over one another.
Shen Zhiwei said nothing.
She only stared at the glass in her hand, a feeling she couldn’t put into words suddenly welling up inside her.
She had conducted countless experiments in the modern era.
She had succeeded.
She had failed.
She had won awards.
She had even stood inside world-class laboratories and watched the most advanced equipment operate.
And yet, at this moment,
a crude piece of ancient glass made her happier than anything ever had.
Because this time,
she hadn’t been standing on the shoulders of giants.
This time, it had been her—
leading a group of people who had nothing,
starting from zero,
and creating the first piece of glass.
Shen Zhiwei placed the glass on the table.
“Gu Changfeng.”
“Yes.”
“Record it.”
Gu Changfeng immediately brought over the notebook.
“Experiment number?”
“011.”
“Project?”
“Transparent glass.”
“Result?”
Shen Zhiwei paused.
“Success.”
Gu Changfeng smiled as he wrote it down.
“Success.”
Shen Zhiwei added, “But it’s not enough.”
Gu Changfeng blinked.
“Not enough?”
“This is only the first piece.”
She looked toward the workshop.
“We need to be able to make a second piece reliably.”
“A third.”
“A hundredth.”
“Even a thousand pieces in one day.”
Gu Changfeng nodded.
He understood.
The Miss had never been satisfied with a single success.
What she wanted was—
to turn success into a method.
At dusk, Shen Zhiwei brought the glass back to the courtyard.
Qinghe was lighting the lamps.
Shen Zhiwei walked to the window and held the glass in front of the flame.
The lamplight passed through it, and the light in the room immediately softened.
Qinghe stared in amazement.
“Miss…”
“Yes?”
“It’s really beautiful.”
Shen Zhiwei said nothing.
She looked at that transparent glow.
Then a thought suddenly occurred to her.
If glass could be mass-produced,
the next step would be windows.
If large windows could be used throughout a building, houses would no longer have to remain dim during the day.
After that:
lenses.
Telescopes.
Microscopes.
Chemical glassware.
Medical instruments.
Electrical equipment.
A complete technology tree was gradually unfolding in her mind.
She suddenly smiled.
“Qinghe.”
“This servant is here.”
“Tell me.”
“If one day, every window in Jingcheng were transparent, what would happen?”
Qinghe thought about it.
“Then the inside of every house would be very bright during the day.”
“Exactly.”
Shen Zhiwei looked out the window.
“And one day,”
“I’ll make the night bright too.”
“Not with oil lamps.”
“Not with candles.”
“But with…”
She softly spoke two words.
“Electric lights.”
Qinghe didn’t understand, but those two words felt impossibly far away.
She didn’t know that at this very moment, Shen Zhiwei had already written them into her plans.
That same night,
at the Jing Prince’s Residence,
Xiao Chengyuan sat in his study.
A newly delivered secret report lay on the desk.
“The legitimate eldest daughter of the Yongning Marquis’s Residence, Shen Zhiwei, at an abandoned workshop on the western side…”
“Gathered craftsmen.”
“Improved papermaking.”
“And successfully produced transparent liuli.”
Xiao Chengyuan’s finger stopped at the final sentence.
“Transparent liuli?”
The guard lowered his head.
“Yes.”
“It is said to be clearer than ordinary liuli.”
“It can already transmit light.”
Xiao Chengyuan’s eyes darkened slightly.
“She’s the legitimate eldest daughter of a marquis’s residence.”
“Where did she learn this?”
“We haven’t found out yet.”
The room fell quiet.
Xiao Chengyuan picked up the secret report and read it again.
For some reason, he suddenly remembered the firelight that had appeared in the abandoned workshop a few nights earlier.
The young woman standing within that firelight.
Quiet.
Focused.
As if she had no idea what fear was.
He set down the report.
“Keep investigating.”
The guard cupped his hands.
“Yes.”
“But don’t alert her.”
“I understand.”
Xiao Chengyuan lifted his head and looked out the window.
In the distance, a faint point of lamplight could be seen in the direction of the Yongning Marquis’s Residence.
A thoughtful look rose in his eyes.
A woman who could make transparent liuli on her own…
How many secrets was she still hiding?
At that moment, Shen Zhiwei had already picked up her brush again.
She wrote down her next goal on the paper:
“Improve the glass and make the first true glass window.”
After pausing for a moment, she wrote another line beneath it.
“Next step: lenses.”
Because she knew that the true age of scientific research had only just begun.