Chapter 813

Qingzhou Province was already getting hot as June approached. The bright sunlight, baking the cement roads, made the air steamy.

Xiao Ming returned to the imperial palace after lunch and waited for Lu Tong in the imperial study.

In the afternoon, when the pendulum clock’s hour hand pointed to two o’clock, Lu Tong arrived punctually outside the imperial study. With him was a young man, about thirty years old.

The young man wore the white robe of Bowen Academy and carried a pile of items Xiao Ming was very familiar with.

“Greetings, Your Majesty.”

Upon entering the imperial study, Lu Tong and the young man bowed to Xiao Ming.

After standing up, Lu Tong introduced him, “Your Majesty, this is a student from Bowen Academy, named Liu Chuanzhi. I entrusted the rubber to them.”

“Liu Chuanzhi? A good name,” Xiao Ming said with a smile.

“Thank you, Your Majesty, for the compliment,” Liu Chuanzhi stammered a little, clearly nervous.

Xiao Ming’s eyes held a smile. These people who dedicated themselves to scientific research often didn’t interact with outsiders for long periods, so their characteristics were largely similar.

He said, “You needn’t be nervous. I am not a man-eating tiger. Are these the rubber products you manufactured?”

Liu Chuanzhi then remembered the rubber in his arms and hastily said, “Yes… yes, Your Majesty. According to the information Your Majesty provided, I, your humble commoner, successfully mastered the method of vulcanizing rubber. With the metal molds provided by the machinery department, I have now manufactured a batch of rubber products.”

Xiao Ming nodded. The rubber supplied by the Dutch could only be called raw rubber. This raw rubber was very sticky and easily broken, so it could not be used in industry.

Vulcanized rubber, however, was called cured rubber. This type of rubber had none of the raw rubber’s faults and possessed high elasticity, heat resistance, and tensile strength. It also did not dissolve in organic solvents. Contemporary rubber products were basically all vulcanized rubber.

Looking at Liu Chuanzhi’s arms, Xiao Ming’s smile grew richer. In fact, shaping rubber was not very difficult, because at high temperatures, rubber would become a fluid, similar to molten steel.

Molten steel could be shaped using iron molds, and rubber could naturally also be shaped using iron molds. This was also how Xiao Ming shaped rubber in contemporary times.

The only thing that needed to be done was to vulcanize the rubber before shaping it.

This vulcanization required using a substance as a cross-linking agent, which was sulfur. Different qualities of vulcanized rubber could be produced depending on the time and temperature. There were many vulcanization methods, the simplest of which was to directly heat the two substances together.

“Your Majesty, this is a tire, this is a rubber hose, this is a piston…” Liu Chuanzhi took out all the products he brought, listing them off like treasured family possessions.

Xiao Ming took each one from his hand, carefully examining it before putting it down.

For him, rubber was a crucial link in industrial development: shoe soles, hot water bottles, elastic bands used in daily life.

Gloves and blood transfusion tubes used in medicine, various tires used in transportation, conveyor belts used in industry, irrigation hoses used in agriculture, sealing equipment used in scientific experiments, and aircraft, tanks, cannons, etc. used in military affairs, all depended on rubber.

The West was able to surpass the East so greatly in technology largely because they controlled rubber. It was unfortunate that, just like in contemporary times, rubber in this era was still controlled by Europe.

Although he had obtained some rubber tree seeds from the Dutch, going from seed to tree was a long process.

Of course, he had another solution, which was rubber grass, but according to information, the original habitat of rubber grass was in contemporary Yili, Xinjiang, and in this era, rubber grass was clearly still under barbarian control.

Only after he drove out the barbarians could he plant rubber grass in this area. However, conquering and holding this place also seemed to be a difficult task.

So, for him, the most suitable method at present was to purchase rubber from Europeans.

As for occupying South America, he still had a long way to go. Even if he now had a fleet of ironclads, the journey from the Great Yu Empire to South America would still require fixed ports to provide fresh water and coal. Otherwise, his fleet would be paralyzed halfway before even reaching the Americas.

“Excellent, excellent.” Faced with one rubber product after another, Xiao Ming could not help but feel excited. With rubber, many machines could be realized.

And he believed that one of the most pressing problems to solve was transportation.

The most profound realization this era gave Xiao Ming was that to get rich, one must first build roads. Only with convenient transportation could the exchange of various resources be rapid.

Lu Tong and Liu Chuanzhi looked at Xiao Ming’s excited expression and exchanged smiles, their faces beaming.

Xiao Ming put down the medical blood transfusion tubes and other rubber products. He said, “What reward do you wish for?”

“Your Majesty, this rubber is merely a small effort, relying on the information Your Majesty provided. I, your humble servant, dare not ask for a reward,” Lu Tong chuckled.

Xiao Ming ignored him. He said, “If you don’t want it, does Liu Chuanzhi not want it either?”

Lu Tong scratched his head and chuckled, while Liu Chuanzhi looked embarrassed, opening his mouth but ultimately saying nothing.

Xiao Ming, seeing this, said, “Liu Chuanzhi, from now on, the Great Yu Empire’s rubber will be entrusted to you. You naturally need not be modest now. How about this: to allow you to concentrate on rubber production, I bestow upon you a thousand taels of silver and a fifty mu farm. How does that sound?”

“Thank you, Your Majesty, for your immense grace!” Liu Chuanzhi’s body trembled with excitement upon hearing this.

Previously, he was merely a poor scholar. The reason he entered Bowen Academy was that his family had no spare money to support him in going to the capital for the imperial examination. But he never expected this decision to bring him a different turn of fate.

Xiao Ming helped Liu Chuanzhi, who was bowing in gratitude, to his feet. He said, “I am not a stingy person. As long as you work diligently and contribute to the Great Yu Empire, titles, land, and money are not a problem. Now, my army has captured vast lands outside the pass, so you need not worry about me having no land to reward.”

Liu Chuanzhi nodded deeply.

After asking the two some more questions about rubber, Xiao Ming dismissed them.

Once the two had left, he immediately sat down and picked up his fountain pen.

Currently, this fountain pen could only be used by dipping it in ink while writing. Now with rubber, he could finally have a fountain pen that could absorb ink. After this, he planned to recommend fountain pens for official use to all Great Yu Empire officials, saving time on writing with brushes and also saving paper.

Taking a blank sheet of paper, Xiao Ming drew the structure of a bicycle on it. Unlike the bizarrely shaped early bicycles in the West, Xiao Ming directly designed a mature “28-bar” bicycle, which was the crossbar bicycle from the early days of contemporary China.

This type of bicycle had a triangular stabilizing lever structure in the middle, which could bear more weight.

His reason for designing this old-fashioned bicycle structure was primarily to consider the bicycle’s practical issues at present. After all, bicycles at this time were used as transportation tools, emphasizing sturdiness and the ability to carry people and heavy objects.