The West Market was the largest marketplace in Daqian, covering nearly two thousand acres and housing over thirty thousand shops of all sizes.
Yan Jiji, who had recently been honored with the Celestial Artisan Imperial Gold Medal and was already known as the "World's Number One Craftsman," had his "Lucky Iron Shop" located right here.
Rows of red-brick chimneys stood tall, with pillars of thick smoke rising straight into the air.
Buckets of honeycomb coal were poured into the furnaces as if they were free. Well-built craftsmen, bare-chested and sweating buckets, bustled about the workshop with fiery enthusiasm.
In a corner of the workshop, Yan Jiji and several other craftsmen gathered in a circle, their expressions grave as they stared at the blueprints spread across a table.
The blueprints depicted strangely shaped mechanisms—some large, some small, some with gear-like teeth. Besides Yan Jiji, the other craftsmen guessed they were either weapons or perhaps wall decorations.
