Inside the World 40 Tractor & Tool Workshop, fifty burly blacksmiths stood around the gleaming red Model-5 Spirit-Furnace Lathe, looking down at their big, calloused hands in shame.
Big-Hammer Zhao held the thick paper instruction booklet—and the basic primer for the Furnace-Blood Scripture—right side up after Abacus Su gently flipped it over for him, but his eyes still couldn’t make sense of the neat black characters on the page.
“My Lord,” Big-Hammer Zhao said in a low, rough voice, “back in the Blood-Iron Pits on World 41, the overseers broke the fingers of any miner who even drew a word in the dirt with a stick. They said slaves only needed to know how to swing a pickaxe and bleed into a bowl. We want to build tractors for you, and we want to cultivate Qi so we can protect Dry-Well Kingdom... we’re just too stupid to read these immortal words.”
next to him, Grandma Sun—a sixty-four-year-old former cabbage-brine stirrer who had floated over in Barrel #18—held her little seven-year-old grandson’s hand and wiped away a tear. “My Lord, don’t waste expensive paper books on old bones like me. Just let me sweep the street with a broom. Maybe my little grandson can learn ten words over the next five years...”
