🏠Chapter 35.5: The Workshops of the Valley
🌍 January 2nd, 97 BCE — Deep Winter ❄️
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The first machines had been lies made flesh—half illusion, half necessity. Nano's tricks had helped shape them, but once they stood, they built their successors: truer, sharper, more precise. By autumn, the villagers themselves were refining gears, replacing crude bearings with smoother ones, building second and third versions of the tools Junjie had shown them. What began as sorcery was becoming honest craft.
When a joint or a fitting still came out too rough, Junjie fed it into the Fabricator's infeed, and it returned as if gods had shaved it clean. But more and more, the villagers found they needed the Box less often. Their own hands were learning the patience it once disguised.
By the end of the year, the valley's industrial quarter had the feel of a living body with many hands. The forge and foundry anchored it, but beside them rose new halls:
   • A metalworking shop of lathes, drills, mills, and grinders.
   • The Woodwright's Hall, where timber was planed and joined as precisely as steel.
   • A glassworks and ceramics hall, its kilns glowing day and night.
   • A tannery and textiles shed, where leather, canvas, and cloth took shape.
   • And the armory annex, plain on the outside but guarded, where the most dangerous devices took form.
Each trade fed the next: wood and iron, cloth and leather, fire and water. The villagers no longer spoke of the workshop, but of the Workshops—a thing greater than the sum of its parts, a seed of industry sprouting in the valley.
And with that growth came pride.
"Look at this cut," one smith said, holding up a freshly turned gear. "No more wobble, not a tooth out of line. Spins smoother than a potter's wheel."
"Aye," laughed his apprentice, running a calloused thumb over the polished steel. "Remember the first set we made? Rattled like dice in a cup. Now they sing."
In the Woodwright's Hall, carpenters leaned on their planes, admiring a beam that slotted perfectly into its joint. "No gaps," one boasted. "You could pour water over the seam, and not a drop would leak through." His partner grinned. "If my grandfather saw this, he'd swear we'd bound the timber with spells."
At the glassworks, the glow of the kiln lit the workers' faces. One held a new beaker up to the light, its walls even and flawless. "Clear as mountain ice. Not a bubble, not a crack." Another patted his shoulder. "Soon we'll be making windows fit for temples."
Even the armory men, silent as ever, shared a rare smile as they watched a hammer fall true on a hardened edge. One muttered, almost proud: "Better than bronze. Better than anything we've had."
Tamra stood at the grinder with two younger boys, guiding their hands as they trued the teeth of a new gear. "Steady," he told them. "Let the stone do the work. Don't force it." The gear spun smooth under their touch, and he allowed himself a rare smile. Jinhai, nearby at the lathe, checked tolerances with a caliper and nodded. "Good enough to mesh without chatter. Better than the first ten I ever made."
Master Blacksmith Goren himself passed through, running his thumb over a gear's edge. "If we keep this pace," he said, his voice carrying weight across the shop floor, "our grandsons won't need the gods' Box at all. Our hands will be enough." The men and apprentices straightened at that, pride swelling in their chests.
The valley had begun by whispering of Junjie's miracles. But now, in the Workshops, they boasted of their craft—each tool sharper, each joint tighter, each flame hotter. What had once seemed sorcery was theirs to shape with their own hands. And though few realized it, every beam planed true and every gear cut smooth was one more step toward the ships that would rise in secret, waiting to carry them beyond the mountains.