Dawn of the Empire

Chapter 42: The Shortcomings of the Magical Arts Society

Yu Xuanji rambled on at length, but her message seemed to boil down to just one thing—the Magical Arts Society was short on both money and manpower. Ou Yang shook his head as he listened. With the way they operated, no amount of money would ever be enough—so how could they not be short on manpower? “At the end of the day, you don’t really want to reform, and you can’t even figure out where to start,” Ouyang finally couldn’t help but interrupt Master Yu’s complaints. Everyone was staring at Ou Yang, their eyes seemingly filled with reproach, but even Yu Xuanji couldn’t come up with a rebuttal. “It’s a foregone conclusion that the state will reform the Magical Arts Society. And your response is to turn to the parents of your apprentices—those with connections and influence—to resist?” Ou Yang shook his head. “All right, not exactly ‘resist,’ but you’re just planning to pay lip service while doing the opposite behind the scenes.” He fixed his gaze on Master Yu’s nose and demanded, “Can’t you produce more than fifteen thousand Clarity Charms right now? If the court cuts the Magical Arts Society’s funding, won’t you be unable to produce even ten thousand? Do you really think the court will fall for that? The Emperor and the Cabinet have even overhauled the interests of the gentry—do you really believe the Magical Arts Society is so irreplaceable that the court wouldn’t dare abolish you?” Yu Xuanji opened his mouth but couldn’t utter a word. In the past, what Ou Yang was saying would indeed have been pure nonsense, but the current Republican Emperor and his Cabinet—what outrageous act would they not dare to commit? If they could tamper with the interests of the gentry and reform the imperial examinations to make science the standard for selecting officials, how could they possibly hesitate to reform the Magical Arts Society? “Next year, we’ll cut your funding. You’ll only produce 10,000 Clarity Charms. The year after that, we’ll cut it again—will you stop producing them altogether, even 5,000? If we don’t give you a single coin, will you stop producing even a single Clarity Charm?” Yu Xuanji felt a twinge of shame. Although they were not the majority, there were indeed colleagues who intended to resist the state’s reforms in this manner—after all, no one but them knew how to cast spells. “What possible purpose does this kind of passive resistance serve? Every sector of the nation is now striving forward; every department, every family, and even every individual is fighting for more and better benefits for themselves—except you! Only you spellcasters are so narrow-minded, clinging to your tiny, sesame-seed-sized vested interests that you can’t even see the broader world beyond your doorstep!” Greater benefits? A broader horizon? Master Yu’s eyes lit up, and he didn’t even notice the disrespect lurking between the lines of Ou Yang’s words. Ou Yang pushed back his chair, stood up, walked over to the wall, and gave the radiator hanging there a hard kick. “For this thing, you pay ten yuan and someone will come right to your door to install it—stove and all. It’ll last ten years with normal use without breaking down. You can use it for heating, cooking, and boiling water. And it’s way safer than those fire pits that nearly suffocate people every year.” The heating stove was also a patent of the Scientific Society. It had originally been designed by a member living in Liaodong, who, inspired by the steam engine, had created it himself and installed it in his hometown as a gift for his parents. But now it had become standard equipment for households of the commoner class and above in all cold regions; even the imperial palace in the capital had installed quite a few. The inventor was now one of the country’s wealthiest men and a Gold Emblem Member of the Scientific Society. “The profit on a single stove is one yuan and five hundred wen. How much profit would ten million units yield? And that’s not all—each coal briquette yields a profit of one wen. Is there any household above the commoner class that can’t afford to burn them? But how much does a single stove burn in a day? Multiply that by the number of cold days in winter, then multiply that by ten million stoves—have you ever considered what that figure would be? With such a massive profit every year, haven’t any of you from the Magical Arts Society ever felt a twinge of envy?” How could they not be envious? The Scientific Society held 200,000 patents, of which more than 5,000 could bring immeasurable wealth and honor to both the Society and its inventors. The water-pipe stove was merely an unremarkable item among these profitable patents; even more staggering was the textile machine. Steam-powered wool-spinning machines have completely crushed the nomadic tribes herding sheep on the grasslands. Even when the old empire managed to defeat the steppe peoples, it could never truly control the grasslands; exterminating one Tatar tribe merely made room for another to take its place. Now, however, the “sheep devouring people” phenomenon is just as ruthless in this realm. Tribal members who dared to neglect tending their flocks and shearing wool—focusing instead on riding horses and drawing bows—were all sent to their graves by their own Taiyi overlords. Just how much progress have various new types of looms—silk, wool, cotton, and hemp—brought to the textile industry? How much wealth have they generated for the imperial court and the Scientific Society? Since the court gazette makes no mention of it, there’s no way to know. But the textile industry is the backbone of the major merchant guilds, and it is a fact that some even claim thirty percent of the empire’s tax revenue comes from textiles. In short, the total tax revenue from the textile industry certainly exceeds that from land taxes. “If the Scientific Society were to submit a memorial today requesting 10 million yuan in funding to invent something, would the Emperor and the Cabinet even bat an eye? What about the Magic Association? Never mind increasing their funding—they’re already running out of their current 7 million!” Ten million is nothing—if the Scientific Society dared to ask for it, the Ministry of Revenue would even grant them one hundred million. Everyone has complete confidence in the Scientific Society’s profitability; at worst, they could settle their debts with their profitable patents—a veritable gold mine and silver stream. But what about the Magical Arts Society? Even if Master Yu were to publish the casting method for the “Thunderclap Palm,” the common people would still have to be able to learn it. It’s not even as good as a few basic training methods from the Green Forest sects—at the very least, those allow ordinary people to practice them to strengthen their bodies and improve their health. “Why is the Scientific Society so dominant? The reason is simple: by the middle to late He Tai era, science had already begun to gradually enter the lives of the general public. Through the development of the sugar and salt industries, the Scientific Society had already established a solid foundation. From the very beginning of the Republic era, science became an integral part of the imperial examinations, and from then on, nothing could stand in the way of the Scientific Society’s growth.” Ou Yang sat back down in his chair, giving everyone present a moment to digest what he’d said. “The Scientific Society has never lacked funds, because our foundation is built upon the state’s imperial examinations. We don’t have to spend a single coin on apprentices, as the cost of training them is spread across the general public.” He fixed his gaze on Yu Xuanji once more and said, enunciating each word clearly, “The biggest difference between the Scientific Society and the Magical Arts Society is that the Scientific Society operates within an ever-expanding virtuous cycle, while the Magical Arts Society merely admires its own isolation.” Everyone present—including the youngest, Zuo Shuijing and Wang Lin—was quietly pondering the implications of Ou Yang’s words. In the eyes of Zuo Shuijing, Wang Lin, and perhaps even Zuo Hengbai, Ou Yang had cut straight to the heart of the two associations—Scientific Society and Magical Arts Society—and laid bare the shortcomings of the Magical Arts Society. However, in the eyes of several older attendees, Ou Yang had already pointed out the direction for reforming the Magical Arts Society—completely opening its doors to both the nobility and commoners of the Empire, and directly integrating grassroots training, including apprentice education, into the Empire’s educational system. After all, the Empire has never been stingy about pouring money into the education system. High-level spellcasters can focus on competing with the Silver and Gold Badge holders of the Scientific Society to see who has made the greater contribution to Huaxia. “But…” Wei Xuezheng thought of another problem: “Not everyone has the aptitude to become a spellcaster. If students fail the spellcasting exam, it would be terribly unfair to those who know nothing about spellcasting.” “Just make spellcraft an elective course, and give spellcasters a few extra points on the exam.” It’s just a special admissions system—of course we should draw on the positive experiences from my past life. Yu Xuanji suddenly recalled that when she’d walked in earlier, she’d heard Ou Yang say that Zuo Shuijing could easily balance her studies and spellcasting without neglecting either. At the time, she’d assumed he was joking and hadn’t taken it seriously. Now it seemed that was indeed this young man’s genuine belief.