The Empress's No.1 Lackey-Chapter 259 - 227, please teach me, Lord

"The priest looked rather tired."

Gongshu Tianyuan’s chubby face stiffened as he forced a smile,

"No problem, just a bit short on sleep, please come in... hehe, my humble abode is quite modest... It was only just now that I learned Lord and Your Majesty were coming, so I took the liberty of inviting people to extend the invitation."

It was far more than lack of sleep,

he hadn’t slept at all last night!

Normally, with his level of cultivation, going without sleep for several days wasn’t a big deal, as long as he didn’t expend too much energy.

But if he stayed up all night exhausting his mental and spiritual energy, operating his brain at high capacity for thinking and experimenting... no matter how advanced his realm was, he couldn’t handle it.

As for the "instigator," it was undoubtedly Zhao Douan with those few careless strokes he left on the spectacle drawing, the principles of lenses.

That was also why Gongshu Tianyuan was so eager to invite him over.

Zhao Douan followed curiously into this workshop-style courtyard.

Different from the gardens of literati and scholars, several large rooms in the courtyard held all kinds of cluttered objects.

The room they entered was quite spacious, but only had a small bed in the corner.

Apart from that, there were only a few large desks in the room, covered with various tools.

Next to the wall,

there were shelves lined with all sorts of odd trinkets, like a rudimentary industrial museum.

"Hehe, it’s a bit messy here."

Gongshu Tianyuan saw Zhao Douan looking around curiously, his chest puffed slightly, and pride surfaced on his haggard, chubby face.

In Zhao Douan’s previous life, he had met some tech wizards with his leaders and knew well the temperaments of these people.

Without any pleasantries, he actively displayed his ignorance and curiosity,

"I heard that the Recording Scrolls, which are highly priced on the black market, are the priest’s handiwork? Is this the place where you create magic artifacts?"

Gongshu Tianyuan smiled slightly, his favorite thing was to show people his work.

Of course, the precondition was someone he respected.

Seeing Zhao Douan asking questions, he cleared his throat and took him to the shelves, explaining,

"Indeed, our cultivation practice requires us to continuously create artifacts, and these are some of my works. For example, this one."

He casually took a palm-sized disc from the shelf.

After tapping it lightly, flames suddenly erupted from the disc. He flipped the dish back and forth with his hands, and the fire remained unextinguished.

"This device is called ’Wood Fire Pass,’" Gongshu Tianyuan said with a smile. "I often need fire when crafting magic artifacts, so I created this. It doesn’t need ignition nor will it spread, just like a candle, burning until the mana inside is depleted."

He tapped it twice more to extinguish the flame.

A lighter... Zhao Douan nodded, finding it quite amusing.

Looking around, he saw a wooden Western Regions barbarian, holding a jug of wine in his hand, and curiously asked,

"What’s this?"

"Oh," Gongshu Tianyuan laughed,

"This is the ’Wine-toasting Barbarian,’ cough cough, I enjoy delving into cultivation and am not good at socializing. Every time I meet with my fellow disciples, I am often obligated to toast, which is very bothersome, so I constructed this little man. As long as it’s placed on the dining table, it will go around toasting everyone, and anyone it toasts, as long as their realm doesn’t surpass the Divine Chapter, no matter what they are doing, they must be controlled to forcibly drink a cup before they can break free..."

Indeed, what he didn’t say was that when he first developed it, a malfunction caused a group of magicians to be forcibly controlled for an entire night, with no one able to escape.

It wasn’t until they were dead drunk and had slept for three days that they finally woke up...

"..." Zhao Douan inhaled sharply.

Next to the little man, there was another wooden Buddhist monk that was as tall as a wine barrel, holding a broken bowl in one hand and a Zen staff in the other:

"And what is this?"

Gongshu Tianyuan wrapped his sleeves around himself with a nostalgic face,

"This is one of my early works. At that time, I was annoyed by the monks of the Divine Dragon Temple, so I created an ’Alms-Begging Monk’ and threw it into the Divine Dragon Temple. Anyone who saw it and took out money to fill its bowl would be thanked with a ’Thank you for the alms.’"

What kind of bizarre thing is this... Zhao Douan said warily,

"And if they don’t give money?"

Gongshu Tianyuan pondered for a moment, patted the monk’s bald head, and said lightly,

"If they don’t give, it will raise its Zen staff and teach them a lesson in martial arts until it successfully begs for alms and reports back."

Zhao Douan: "..."

Gongshu Tianyuan looked crestfallen:

"Unfortunately, the bald monks from the Divine Dragon Temple came looking for me pretty soon, and Master gave me a good scolding."

Zhao Douan steadied his mind and hesitantly looked towards a yellow paper skirt:

"This won’t attack a person, right?"

"Oh, this is a good thing," Gongshu Tianyuan’s eyes brightened, and he said with considerable pride:

"When female cultivators travel outside, what they fear the most are their menstrual periods... With unceasing bleeding, the Great Mother God causes a drop in their mana, leading to a few days of weakness, but if they count the days and wear this paper skirt in advance, and then take it off, it can eliminate the weakness brought on by the menstrual period once...

Unfortunately, this object is difficult to make, and the price is expensive, so even the noblewomen in the capital are seldom willing to buy it.

Only the female cultivators are willing. I once went to Jizhao Temple, thinking of selling it to those Buddhist Bodhisattva women, but they didn’t recognize its value."

Towards the end, the demeanor of this heir of the Master Craftsman, whose train of thought was certainly unique, grew lonesome.

It seemed he was upset because his work wasn’t being recognized.

... Not to mention, how big of a grudge do you have against Buddhism? Even though this thing sounds impressive, wouldn’t it really be seen as a provocation or harassment...

Besides, this differs so much from what I imagined a master of weapons who can forge divine weapons, or a Daoist priest who might take a full cycle of sixty years to produce a furnace of elixirs... Zhao Douan wore a complicated expression.

"Hehe, I’ve made Lord you laugh, you also think these objects are flashy without substance, right?"

Gongshu Tianyuan smirked self-deprecatingly, then suddenly sat down with a thump.

This content is taken from fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm.

In the corner, a round stool with long legs rushed over to cushion his fall.

No... this isn’t about being flashy without substance... Zhao Douan wasn’t in a position to evaluate.

Gongshu Tianyuan’s face expressed an even thicker shade of despondence.

He suddenly fell from a state of excitement to dejection and muttered:

"It’s not that I want to create these peculiar objects, it’s just that in the Craftsman God’s lineage, if one wants to achieve a breakthrough, they must create something truly groundbreaking.

Swords, armors, Suppressing Objects, horsetail whisks, and such, the predecessors of magicians over the past thousands of years have elevated them to an extremely high level... Even if I replicate a thousand of them, my cultivation level wouldn’t break through, I had to find a different path..."

Zhao Douan was moved and hadn’t realized the path of magician cultivation was so painstaking:

"Have you not consulted with the Heavenly Master?"

Gongshu Tianyuan’s head drooped ever lower:

"Master also said that I was heading in the wrong direction. He mentioned that the Artisan God was merely a manifestation of mortal worship and that originally, the Artisan God was meant to create for the multitudes of common people, whereas the magic artifacts I made had a very narrow use...

However, I cannot think of anything new that the common people would need... until I saw your blueprint!"

With dark circles under his eyes, Gongshu Tianyuan in his dirtied robes suddenly looked up, his expression becoming fervent:

"The Ice-making Skill may benefit the masses, but it truly cannot be considered craftsmanship, yet on those eyeglasses blueprints that you gave to the sixth sister disciple, the brief mention of the text allowed me to see a new possibility!"

He jumped up, grabbed Zhao Douan’s hand, his expression eager, his manner earnest:

"I have invited Lord you here just for the principle of light refraction you mentioned in your writing. Could Lord explain it in detail?"

Zhao Douan was stunned.

His face slowly took on a bizarre look.

It was only now that he began to grasp why Heavenly Master Zhang’s fifth disciple had sought him out.

"This... could it be that the priest is overthinking it? It’s just some secular knowledge..." Zhao Douan tried to pull his hand back, but it wouldn’t budge.

Gongshu Tianyuan shook his head, his expression firm. He had a strong hunch that if he could understand that so-called principle, he might be able to produce marvelous devices that didn’t require mana to operate.

As his master had said, this was indeed the right path of cultivation, and also the chance for him to advance further.

"Please teach me, Lord!" Gongshu Tianyuan pleaded earnestly, with tears in his voice.

Zhao Douan sighed softly and said:

"Then I will speak about it briefly, but whether it will be helpful to you or not, I cannot guarantee."

Gongshu Tianyuan, overjoyed, quickly fetched the blueprint and pulled out a whiteboard for convenience.

Zhao Douan cleared his throat, turned towards the whiteboard, wrote down a few words, and said:

"To explain light clearly, first, we need to understand two words."

It was as if he was once again back at the Xiuwen Pavilion.

On the whiteboard, Zhao Douan wrote two large characters:

"Physics"