Chapter 305: The Box’s New Feature
Chapter 305: The Box’s New Feature
Zao Ying was startled when she peeked into the study. Manuscript paper was scattered everywhere inside.
A middle-aged man was slumped over a desk, buried under a huge pile of manuscript paper.
Beside him, a young gentleman of about thirteen or fourteen was arguing with the middle-aged man.
After listening for a few moments, Zao Ying felt dazed. Terms like mass, friction coefficient, horizontal force, vertical force… all unfamiliar, incomprehensible words.
Li Daoxuan, however, caught the gist.
Song Yingxing was indeed learning remarkably fast. It seemed he had grasped all of Elementary Math in just a few days. His current subjects were first-year physics and first-year chemistry.
He was just a little slower than Young Master Bai’s progress, but catching up quickly.
This made Young Master Bai feel the pressure!
Song Yingxing was sketching on paper: “After learning that matter is made of things like molecules and atoms, I can guess why a spring regains its elasticity after being heated red-hot and rapidly cooled. It must be because the heating and cooling process causes changes at the molecular or atomic level, changes we just can’t observe right now.”
Young Master Bai suggested: “Then we should build a magnifying glass to see it, right? We’ve already learned the principle of the magnifying glass. Find a glassmaker to craft one and test it out.”
Song Yingxing shook his head: “Hard, too hard… Our glassmakers can only make magnifying glasses that enlarge things two or three times. To see molecules or atoms, we might need hundreds of times magnification. The glassmakers don’t possess that level of skill.”
Hearing their discussion, Li Daoxuan recalled something. When modern people study subjects like physics, chemistry, or biology, they always use “microscopes” in lab classes to observe things like cells, bacteria, molecules, and atoms. It helps them understand the world alongside the physics book.
But his little people didn’t have this luxury. The “celestial experimental instruments” mentioned in the “Heavenly Books” were beyond their reach, and making their own was nearly impossible.
How could they learn without experiments?
He had to help them!
He opened the online shopping site and searched…
“Miniature microscopes” suitable for the little people didn’t exist, impossible to buy. Only microscopes for regular human size were available, which were far too big for them.
However, Li Daoxuan quickly realized a small upright microscope seemed only slightly taller than the five-story rooftop terrace of the school building. He could place the microscope right next to the teaching building. Then, the little people could climb to the fifth-floor terrace, build a scaffold on the rooftop, and climb up onto the microscope to look down through it.
The microscope’s tray, where the “specimen” is placed, was at about the height of the second floor.
The little people could climb out from a second-floor window onto the tray to place whatever item they wanted to observe.
Following this principle, they could manage to use all sorts of modern lab equipment.
Excellent. Li Daoxuan immediately added a batch of physics, chemistry, and biology lab apparatus to his cart. Buy it all, purchase everything.
Meanwhile, Zao Ying finally spoke up: “Excuse me… who is Mr. Song?”
Song Yingxing raised his head from the sea of papers: “I am. How do you do?”
Zao Ying replied: “Instructor He sent me to find you. He said you could provide blueprints for bows suitable for cavalry use.”
Song Yingxing sighed: “Oh, this again? Such a small matter. Let me think… suitable for cavalry? Well, of course, that’s the Kaiyuan Bow. Cavalry units of the border army generally use the Kaiyuan Bow. Can Gaojia Village still not make it?”
Young Master Bai chuckled beside him: “Cannot! We’ve never dealt with the technology for the Kaiyuan Bow here. The Deity completely bypassed all the tech trees related to bows and arrows.”
Song Yingxing relented: “Fine then, I’ll draw one.”
He grabbed his paper and pen, scratched away rapidly, and in moments, the Kaiyuan Bow was drawn. He added copious annotations beside it, then pushed the blueprint into Zao Ying’s hands: “Take it, take it.”
With that, he buried his head back into the pile of manuscripts.
Zao Ying was taken aback. Who exactly was this? Sketched the border army’s standard weapon on the spot? How was this even possible? It felt almost unbelievable!
Li Daoxuan watched as Zao Ying left, looking bewildered, and couldn’t help but smile.
He thought: This Kaiyuan Bow is just a transitional toy; after our firearms are mass-produced, even the cavalry will need to use firearms…
“Dragon cavalry, aren’t you scared?”
Just then, Li Daoxuan suddenly noticed that outside the box, a line of words was flashing.
He had thought it was some village ringing a bell to summon him.
Looking closer, he realized it was actually the Rescue Index that, unwittingly, had reached the round number of 1500 points.
Below the Rescue Index, a strange button had appeared: “Expand”.
The one flashing was this newly appeared “Expand” button.
“A new function? Hey, ‘expand’, could it mean what I think?”
Li Daoxuan truly felt the box needed to be expanded.
The box was only a bit over two meters long and a bit over one meter wide, allowing him to see only a 500m x 300m visual area.
This view was too small; as his territory grew, it became increasingly inadequate.
Lately, he had felt the “rainfall” couldn’t cover everything anymore.
Because he could only see in the 500m x 300m range, he could make it rain only in such a tiny area.
If the rainfall time was too short, it wouldn’t moisten the land properly; he had to make it rain for a few hours every few days at least.
How could he possibly handle that?
So he could only provide a large pool for each village and let the villagers dig channels themselves to divert water.
But this method’s effect wasn’t as good as rainfall.
Now, with this “Expand” function added to the box, it was clearly meant to help solve this problem.
Overjoyed, Li Daoxuan reached out to tap that “Expand” button.
But as his finger was halfway there, he suddenly remembered something and stopped.
He looked around at the box’s surroundings…
The box was placed in his bedroom, with his computer on the left, his bed on the right, a chair in front, and the wall pressing against the back.
Without exaggeration, there wasn’t an inch of extra space around the box; if he expanded it now and the box grew bigger, the result would be either the box getting crushed or his furniture getting crushed.
Furniture breaking was minor; he could just spend money to replace it.
But if the box broke!
The possibilities were vast.
Including but not limited to:
Disasters occurring in the Tiny Kingdom, wiping out all the small people.
The Tiny Kingdom merging with the real world, with Ming Dynasty small people running around everywhere.
The two worlds colliding and exploding, killing everyone all over.
…
Just thinking about it was terrifying!
“No good, I need to change locations.”
Li Daoxuan looked left and right; the bedroom was too small and he couldn’t operate there, so he figured he could only go to the living room.
First, he cleared out a large space in the middle of the living room.
Then he dragged the box into the living room.