DLERB -Chapter 208 My Crown Princess—It’s Her

The Qilin Hall.

Sunlight fell onto the girl’s oil-stained face.

The gray footprints beneath her bare feet stood out harshly against the palace’s spotless golden floor tiles.

“Impudence!”

A sharp voice broke the silence.

Scholar-official Sun Jing rushed out from the ranks, pointing at the girl, his finger trembling.

“What place do you think this is?! How dare such a filthy person set foot here!”

He turned toward the Imperial Guard commander at the entrance.

“What are you all doing?! Drag this wild girl out immediately!”

The nobles in the hall immediately echoed him.

“She’s defiling His Majesty’s eyes!”

“Throw her out! Throw her out!”

Amid the shouting and condemnation, the girl stood completely still.

She held the dirty scroll in her arms and carried the rough wooden box on her back, as if everything around her had nothing to do with her.

Ying Ziye moved.

He rose from his seat and walked into the center of the hall.

Ignoring Sun Jing’s shouting, he simply looked at the girl.

“What is your name?”

The girl raised her head and spoke for the first time. Her voice was soft, but clear.

“Mo family. Gongshu Wan.”

Gongshu.

The moment those two characters were spoken, the noise in the hall dropped by half.

Wang Jian and Meng Tian exchanged a glance.

Even Li Si paused his reprimand.

Among Qin artisans, who had not heard of the legendary Gongshu Ban?

This surname alone represented the highest inheritance of mechanical engineering.

Li Si was the first to react.

He stepped forward and looked at Gongshu Wan.

“You claim you solved all three questions?”

He pointed at the massive cloth hanging outside the Vermilion Bird Gate.

“Then let me test you.”

“Second question—how much grain is needed to supply a 100,000-strong army on campaign?”

This question had nearly driven him, the Chancellor, insane over the past three days.

He did not believe it.

He refused to believe that a rural girl could solve something that had stumped the entire court.

Gongshu Wan did not answer immediately.

She placed the scroll in her arms down, then walked to a bronze heating tripod nearby.

Under everyone’s puzzled gaze, she reached in and picked up a half-burned piece of charcoal.

Then she squatted down.

On the white jade floor of the Qilin Hall, she began to draw.

Lines… strange symbols…

Li Si could not understand them.

Kong Fu and the Confucian scholars behind him were completely baffled.

“Meaningless scribbles!”

“This is absurd!”

Gongshu Wan ignored them.

Her hand was steady. The charcoal scraped across the jade floor with a soft shhh—shhh sound.

Soon, a long and complex calculation appeared on the ground.

At the end, she drew a heavy underline beneath a final number.

She stood up and dusted off her hands.

“Reporting to the Chancellor.”

“Based on current military standards, the required grain supply is 1,314,000 shi.”

The number was precise down to the last unit.

Li Si froze completely.

His own aides had calculated for three days and nights—and arrived at a similarly vague estimate of around 1.3 million shi.

How had she done it?

But Gongshu Wan was not finished.

“However, this number can be reduced.”

She squatted down again and sketched a wheel.

“The Qin army’s grain carts have overly thick axles, directly connected to the wheels. When rotating, friction is extremely high.”

She tapped a point on the drawing with charcoal.

“If ball bearings are added here, and the axle design is improved, effort can be reduced by 30%, and load capacity increased by 20%.”

She looked up at Li Si.

“Thus, grain loss can be reduced by another 10%. The final requirement becomes 1,180,000 shi.”

“Good!”

A thunderous shout interrupted her words.

It was Wang Jian!

No one knew when the old general had left his seat, but he rushed forward in three strides.

He didn’t even look at the complicated calculations—his eyes were locked firmly onto the axle diagram on the ground.

Like an excited youth, he ignored all status and authority and squatted down directly.

Meng Tian also came over and squatted beside him.

The two highest military commanders of Great Qin now looked like craftsmen, pointing and discussing the rough sketch on the floor.

“Brilliant!”

Wang Jian slapped his thigh hard, his voice echoing through the entire hall.

“Just this small modification—it reduces effort by thirty percent!”

He looked up, face flushed red, and shouted toward Qin Shi Huang’s direction:

“Your Majesty! It’s divine! This girl is a genius!”

“This one axle alone is worth an army of one hundred thousand! No—more valuable than that!”

Li Si stood nearby, his face pale.

He had lost.

Completely and utterly.

“Hmph!”

Kong Fu’s old face turned the color of liver.

He pointed at Gongshu Wan and shouted angrily:

“So what if you understand a bit of arithmetic!”

“That first question—the talk of angles and geometry—is nothing but heresy! How do you explain that?!”

The Confucian scholars behind him also joined in.

“Exactly! Explain that!”

“Don’t think you can fool us with mere craftsmen’s tricks!”

Gongshu Wan turned around and walked back to her wooden box.

She said nothing.

She simply pressed lightly on the side of the box.

Click.

With a soft sound, the four sides of the wooden box slowly unfolded outward.

Inside was a miniature mechanism composed of countless gears, rods, and copper plates.

A trebuchet.

Far more complex and refined than the standard military design—by at least a hundred times.

Gongshu Wan’s fingers gently adjusted a few gears on the model.

She then spoke to a terrified attendant nearby:

“Please place that bronze wine cup under the pillar thirty paces away.”

The attendant hurried to comply, hands trembling.

Gongshu Wan’s finger hooked onto a thin trigger mechanism.

She pulled gently.

Whoosh!

A stone the size of a fingernail shot out violently.

It traced a perfect arc through the air.

Clang!

A crisp shattering sound rang out.

Thirty paces away, the bronze wine cup shattered on impact.

The entire Qilin Hall fell into dead silence.

Kong Fu and all the Confucian scholars behind him stood frozen, mouths wide open—unable to say a single word.

The so-called teachings of sages they were so proud of suddenly looked unbearably pale in the face of that single clear strike.

“Witchcraft! This is witchcraft!”

Kong Fu finally snapped out of his shock and screamed like a madman.

“Your Majesty! This woman is a demon! She uses western sorcery and witchcraft!”

“These tricks and crafts are beneath dignity! They will corrupt the foundations of Great Qin!”

Ying Ziye smiled.

He stepped forward and picked up the intricate trebuchet model from the opened box.

It felt slightly heavy in his hands, every component perfectly interlocked.

He weighed it once.

Then he turned to the frenzied Kong Fu.

“Grand Tutor Kong.”

“Can your ‘nobility’ make a trebuchet strike more accurately?”

Kong Fu’s shouting stuck in his throat.

Ying Ziye no longer looked at him.

He held the model and walked back step by step to the center of the hall, facing Qin Shi Huang on the dragon throne.

His voice rang clearly through the silent hall.

“Father.”

Ying Ziye raised the model in his hand.

“Your son has made his choice.”

His hand pointed—using that pinnacle of craftsmanship—toward the girl standing amid charcoal sketches and oil stains.

“My Crown Princess… is her.”