The lab’s acrid smell still lingered in his nostrils. When he opened his eyes again, it was the fourth year of the Zhenguan era.
Qin Fang, dressed in a ragged hemp robe, huddled beside a pile of corpses outside Chang’an. All he had left was half a ration bar.
As he gnawed on tree bark, starving, Qin Fang suddenly remembered how to make ice using saltpeter.
The nobles of Chang’an would pay a fortune for ice, and Qin Fang made the first block of the summer with a broken clay pot. The chancellor sprang to his feet and declared, “This young man is an auspicious omen!”
On the day the emperor summoned him, I presented an improved curved-shaft plow and a new papermaking technique.
In the Taiji Palace, Li Er stroked his beard and smiled. “To have this young man is like receiving a timely rain.”
I thought it was the invention of farming, but I didn't expect it to be a crime-solving novel