Favorite of the Beast-world: I Got Rich Through Farming-Chapter 309 - 199: The Beloved Large Stone Castle + Making Glass

’But no matter how big the insects are, it’s unlikely their wings could be the size of a French window. Does that mean she’ll have to live in a drafty house?’

"We’ll make glass!" she announced loudly.

"G-glass?" The Beastman scratched his head again, dislodging several more hairs. ’What should I do? I understand less and less of what the City Lord is saying.’

"HISS~?" Gu Yin also raised his head and looked at her in confusion, resting his head on her shoulder and flicking his tongue.

An Jin smiled warmly at the man and the snake. "This thing... it’s like the insect wings we used to cover the windows, only bigger and more transparent. Hmm, you’ll understand once we’ve made it!"

After so many successful ventures, her fantastical ideas were always quickly accepted by the Beastmen. They would immediately turn to follow her instructions, throwing themselves into production and manufacturing.

The Beastman couldn’t help but grip the blueprint in his hand tighter. Afraid of crumpling it, he quickly loosened his grip. "Lord City Lord, just tell us! What should we do next? What materials do we need to find?"

A few more Beastmen leaped down from the wall and gathered around, rubbing their hands together, eager to get started.

Glass is a silicate-based non-metallic material made by firing inorganic minerals found in nature. To put it simply, it’s made by heating sand, like quartz sand, which is a process remarkably similar to making ceramics.

’Since the Beastmen were able to successfully fire ceramics, making glass probably won’t be too difficult.’

The quartz sand used for making glass has a very high melting point, but soda ash can lower it. Therefore, glass production usually involves mixing soda ash and quartz sand in a specific ratio, heating them, and then letting the mixture cool and solidify.

Both soda ash and quartz sand exist naturally in the world.

’If she could just find both and bring them together, wouldn’t that create glass?’

The one thing she wasn’t short on right now was manpower for resource gathering.

With over ten thousand Beastmen from several cities combined, it took them less than half a month to find all the materials she needed.

And so, not long after, a new member joined the ranks next to the ironworks and the pottery kiln—the glass kiln.

The grand process of glassmaking had officially begun.

An Jin had extremely high hopes for the glassmaking endeavor.

People in the modern world, long accustomed to the glass all around them, often overlooked its enormous contribution to the development of human civilization.

It was no exaggeration to say that in the vast, millennia-long history of human civilization, the invention of glass was a major turning point—an engine of progress for human history!

If they could successfully produce glass, it would have an immeasurable and profound impact on the current civilization of the Beast World.

Convenient as it was, glass had its pros and cons. For example, while glass was very hard, it was also brittle—a fragile material. It could also shatter from uneven heating.

If some young cubs who liked to run around everywhere were to accidentally step on shards of glass...

’They would definitely cry their little hearts out.’

So, An Jin once again consulted the various materials documented in the system’s literature. She eventually settled on a specific type of ore and dispatched Beastmen to find it.

By adding a little of this rare ore to the quartz sand before smelting, the resulting glass would be hard yet elastic and difficult to shatter. Even if it did break, it wouldn’t create sharp edges, similar to the tempered glass commonly used in modern architecture.

After eliminating all potential risks, An Jin organized the glassmaking project with meticulous and flawless planning. Under her guidance, the subsequent firing process went exceptionally smoothly.

—The molten glass came out of the kiln and was flattened with stone rollers. The liquid glass, exposed to the air, rapidly began to solidify. It then entered a temperature-controlled zone for continuous cooling before being manually cut to the desired size...

Large, smooth, qualified sheets of glass were stacked one on top of another.

A crowd of curious Beastmen had gathered outside the glass kiln, far more than had come to watch the pottery firing and iron smelting.

When they saw the never-before-seen sheets of glass appear before them, the Beastmen’s eyes went wide.

They rubbed their eyes and looked at each other in disbelief. "Is this... is this the gla... glass the Clan Leader was talking about? It’s actually transparent, with no color..."

Looking from a distance, a sheet of glass lay on the ground, so transparent and free of impurities that it was as if nothing was there at all.

They almost walked right over it.

A few of the more mischievous young cubs even went up and stomped on it. The glass, which looked exceptionally fragile, turned out to be incredibly sturdy, as hard as a large, thin stone slab.