Fan Xian's gaze swept over the trees beside the road. Behind them were endless fields, and not far away was the sound of a flowing river. He looked further and further through all of this until his gaze landed on a big workshop some distance from the river. There were faint spirals of smoke rising from it. They were not the clear smoke of a rural family, instead it was black smoke that carried a familiar smell.
Was it a blast furnace?
The commoners in this large piece of land had all been taken into the palace treasury to do work. Their wages were much higher than planting grains, thus their focus on maintaining the fields had lightened. In the midst of this swathe of fertile land, wild weeds and new grains fought for growth. It looked very mixed and chaotic.
