A large group of villagers were in the middle of dinner when a huge white thing suddenly descended from the sky.
"What is that?"
"It's coming down!"
"Move, move, move!"
Rice bowls went flying. A man tripped over a stool and nearly took out the person behind him. Someone's chopsticks landed in the fire. Another villager grabbed his bowl and ran without realizing he was running toward the paper, not away from it.
"It's huge!"
"Is it food?"
"Can we eat it?"
"Don't be stupid, it's paper!"
"Paper can be eaten if you boil it long enough!"
"You've clearly never tried."
"Have you?"
"...No."
The sheet settled flat on the ground. Everyone stopped and stared.
One man crept closer, sniffed it, then poked it with his chopsticks.
"It doesn't look edible."
Another villager leaned in, squinting at the diagrams. "I don't know. Maybe if we—"
"It's not food!" someone shouted from the back. "Look at the drawings! Those are strange symbols!"
"Oh."
A pause.
"Are you sure? Because the last time Tianzun sent something weird, it turned out to be chicken."
"I'm sure."
"...Are you really sure?"
The A5 sheet settled flat on the ground. Its surface was covered in dense, unfamiliar diagrams. Viewed at an angle, one of the drawings looked somewhat like a firearm.
Gao Yiye pointed at the paper and called out, "Li Da, that paper shows what you are meant to forge. Go take a look."
Li Da did not move.
He was still staring at the sky. A sheet of paper had just fallen out of nothing. No tree, no roof, no hands. Just empty air one moment, and then paper the next.
His mind went blank.
Shan Shi'er grabbed his shoulders and shook him twice. "Hey. Hey! Wake up!"
Li Da blinked. His mouth opened and closed a few times before any sound came out.
"That... that came from the sky."
"Yes," Shan Shi'er said. "It did. Now go look at it."
Li Da walked toward the paper. His legs felt strange, like they belonged to someone else. The paper was enormous, as large as a pond. He circled it slowly, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.
From the side, he could only catch fragments. Lines. Circles. Something that looked like a barrel.
No. Not a barrel. Too short. Too thick.
He frowned. He had forged enough weapons in his life to know when something did not match anything he had ever seen.
He needed a better angle. Without thinking, he scrambled up the nearby city wall. Two zhang. His hands found the gaps in the colorful bricks and pulled himself up. He had climbed worse in his years at the forge.
From the top, he looked down.
And stopped breathing.
The paper lay spread out below him like a map. In the center was a firearm. But not any firearm he had ever seen. The barrel was short. The mechanism was strange. And around it, arranged in neat rows, were detailed drawings of every single component. Springs. Levers. A bolt. Arranged in ways he had never seen before.
His eyes moved from one drawing to the next, slower and slower, until they stopped entirely on the central image.
What kind of firearm is this?
He had seen muskets. He had forged matchlocks. He had repaired three-barreled hand cannons. He knew what a firearm was supposed to look like.
This was not it.
This was something else. Something new. Something that should not exist in this world.
His hands gripped the edge of the wall so hard his knuckles went white.
"In the center... is that some kind of new firearm? And the drawings beside it... they show every part. Every single part. In detail."
He had never seen anything like it in his life.
Above, Li Daoxuan snickered.
"That's right. It's the Chassepot rifle, a prime example of early breech-loading rifles. What you're looking at is its design blueprint."
In truth, Li Daoxuan had not been idle over the past few days. He had been thinking about one question. Given access to modern raw materials, what kind of weapon could a Ming-era blacksmith actually craft with their level of skill?
He had even posted an anonymous thread on a historical military forum he frequented.
"Bros, if you traveled back to the Ming Dynasty and had modern raw materials available, what is the highest-tier weapon a Ming blacksmith could craft with their craftsmanship?"
Reply 1: A Star Destroyer.
Reply 2: Bury the idiot above alive first. Obviously an AK-47. Any random home workshop can make one nowadays. A Ming blacksmith could definitely hammer one out.
Reply 3: Stop dreaming. What the hell is the use of hammering out a shell? If the precision isn't there, every shot will blow up in your face. Plus, you can't solve the ammunition issue. A rifled gun is still the most practical option. Every time traveler uses rifled guns.
Reply 4: Did the guy above forget the OP said "has modern raw materials"? Since there are modern materials, you have rubber to solve the gas seal. Why not skip rifled guns altogether and go straight to breech-loading rifles? The Chassepot rifle is pretty great. Its precision requirements aren't as demanding as automatic rifles, and a Ming blacksmith could completely hammer it out by hand.
Reply 5: Did you guys miss the main point? If you travel back to the Ming Dynasty, of course you buy a few maidservants, lift up their skirts, and peek at them bathing. They can't resist their master anyway, so you can use them in eighteen different positions.
Li Daoxuan: Holy crap, it's you again!
Everyone else: Get the hell out of this historical military forum, you creep.
After the chaos died down, Li Daoxuan noted down the Chassepot rifle. With help from the forum regulars, he managed to gather reference photos, blueprints, and component images. He printed everything onto a single sheet of A5 paper and kept it ready, waiting to bring it out when the blacksmith arrived.
Standing atop the city wall, Li Da studied the sheet below with intense concentration.
He looked at it from the left. Then from the right. Then he tilted his head and tried again. By the time he finished, cold sweat had broken out across his forehead.
"This... this firearm... this humble one cannot guarantee he can forge it."
Li Daoxuan said, "Don't feel pressured. Give it an honest try and strive to figure it out. I can give you plenty of time. Even a few years, if necessary. If you actually manage to craft it, I will make your dream come true."
That dream was simple. Freedom from the Artisan Registry.
Hearing it from Gao Yiye's mouth, it felt like a dream.
He could not help shouting aloud, "Miss, Master Shan. It isn't that I don't trust you. It's just that what I'm about to do is no ordinary affair. I don't even know who the Great Master is, so my heart feels a bit..."
"A giant sheet of paper just fell from the sky, and you still haven't figured it out?" Gao Yiye called back loudly. "Try jumping off that city wall right now, and you'll immediately find out who the Great Master is!"
Li Da was startled. "Jump off?"
Shan Shi'er smiled alongside her. "Go on, take a jump and see."
Li Da looked down.
This was a city wall two zhang high.
What does telling me to jump off mean? Testing my courage?
He had forged iron for years, so his body was quite robust. Jumping down from this height, as long as he was careful upon landing, he would not necessarily be severely injured. At worst, he would break a leg. If doing this could get the Great Master to help him escape his Artisan Registry, it was not impossible to risk it all.
He gritted his teeth. He decided to treat the wall beneath his feet as his shackles. Escaping the Artisan Registry was always a matter of gambling one's life anyway.
Fuck it. I'm risking it.
He jumped.
The moment he jumped, he prepared himself to crouch and roll upon impact to dissipate the force.
However, right after he leaped off the wall, before he could even begin to fall, he felt something catch him.
His feet landed on something solid. Because it was so unexpected, he lost his balance completely and tumbled forward, bracing himself on the invisible "ground" with both hands. What he felt under his palms was the texture of human skin.
"Eh? Eh-eh-eh?!"
Li Da was scared out of his wits, frozen in terror and not daring to move a muscle.
Gao Yiye shouted loudly, "You are currently standing on Tianzun's palm!"
Li Da's mind went completely blank.
Li Daoxuan deliberately moved his hand, cradling Li Da as he glided slowly through the air.
Li Da felt as if he were flying through the sky, except his posture was thoroughly undignified. In the Orz position, he looked nothing like someone who was supposed to be flying.
Before entering the village, Shan Shi'er had told him that the Great Master here was Tianzun. At the time, his head had been filled with question marks, unable to understand what Shan Shi'er meant. But now, he seemed to... somewhat understand.
Li Daoxuan's hand slowly lowered to the ground and tilted slightly. Li Da slid right off, landing sitting down on the yellow soil with a face full of shock, panic, and a tiny hint of ecstatic joy.
The joy, of course, was because his dream was now guaranteed.
Once his mind cleared, he flipped over from a sitting position into a kneeling prostration, shouting at the top of his lungs, "This humble one promises to exert every ounce of strength to forge the firearm you have entrusted to me! It's just that this item seems somewhat complex, so this humble one might need a long time. Just as you said, perhaps a year or two."
If Li Da could swing his hammer and build a Chassepot rifle in just a few days, he would be a protagonist blessed by heaven with a system cheat. Li Daoxuan naturally knew this was impossible.
"Mm, take your time. No rush. While you teach Gao Yiyi to forge iron armor, slowly research this firearm. Whatever materials you need, just have Gao Yiye report them to me. In short, whenever you successfully forge it is whenever your dream comes true."
Saying this, Li Daoxuan shifted the topic. "Gao Yiye, are there any empty houses left in the village?"
Gao Yiye said with a bit of embarrassment, "None left. The only habitable empty hut was arranged for Advisor Shan's family."
Li Daoxuan said, "Oh! Then wait a moment."
He pulled a can of Pepsi out of his fridge, chugged it down in a few gulps, and let out a satisfied burp. So refreshing. Then he grabbed a pair of scissors, cut the aluminum can in half to make a small cylindrical cup, snipped out a tiny door and two small windows, and flipped the half-can upside down onto an open spot in the village.
BANG!
The villagers heard a loud thud as the earth seemed to shake slightly. Then, a brightly colored, oddly shaped blue cylindrical house appeared in a corner of the village. The characters for "Pepsi" were printed upside down on it, giving it a rather comical appearance.
Li Daoxuan said, "Li Da, you can temporarily live in this temporary hut for now. In a while, I'll arrange better housing for everyone."
Although the villagers had been shocked by divine miracles several times already, today they were once again so astonished they almost dropped their rice bowls. Tianzun's method of building houses was truly beyond awe-inspiring.
Madam Shan, who had been secretly watching from the side, was kowtowing like a pestle pounding garlic, unable to stop.