That night, the Queen of Leighton decided to try it personally.
Just like before, although the Queen of Leighton was tangled in confusion, she still decided to try the novelty from Her Majesty Sophia. As the most beauty-loving woman on this plain, she could truly no longer endure the bitter sensation left on her gums by willow twigs.
But since childhood, it had always been this way; everyone was like this. No one had ever thought of a solution, nor had anyone thought that brushing teeth could be made easier.
When, under the service of her female attendant, she dipped the soaked horse tail hair into mint coarse salt and sent it between her lips and teeth for the first time, that wondrous tactile sensation instantly made her eyes widen.
"There is no sharp stinging of willow twigs; instead, it is like countless gentle little hands caressing my gums."
Queen Elena marveled, as if her teeth rarely received such gentle treatment. At that moment, Queen Elena felt she was not rinsing her mouth, but strolling through the mint fields of Mason covered in Holy Light in the early morning.
"Gurgle...
Hah—"
When the Queen spat out the last mouthful of clear water and revealed a mouthful of teeth crystalline as jade to that expensive but blurry mercury mirror, her entire person was stunned.
"Your Majesty!"
Disregarding etiquette, the Queen lifted her nightgown and rushed toward the King's Bedchamber.
"This feeling... my breath is actually cleaner than the morning snow!"
The next morning, the King of Leighton also completed his first morning brush amidst skepticism. When he stood on the terrace, breathing out a mouthful of refreshing breath into the cold wind, this seasoned politician suddenly felt a chill run down his spine.
He did not indulge in comfort like the Queen; instead, he fell into a terrifying deduction.
"Sophia, this young girl of only sixteen, is too terrifying."
The King of Leighton pinched that toothbrush, speaking in a deep voice to his subordinate cabinet ministers:
"Do you think this is just a brush? No! Look, after using this brush, we can no longer endure the crudeness of willow twigs. After using Mason's soap, one feels that locust bean pods are like chaff. Sophia is reshaping our senses! She is using this ultimate civilized experience to make us subconsciously admit that Mason is the center of the world, while we are just a group of barbarians who have just learned to brush our teeth!"
The ministers heard this, revealing expressions of sudden realization and terror one after another.
"Your Majesty is wise!"
The Old Chancellor held the toothbrush with trembling hands.
"Queen Sophia is influencing us silently like spring rain! When the breath of all of us carries the mint scent of Mason, when we have to grasp the wooden handle of the Black Rose every morning, how can we still raise our longswords against Mason? Our teeth have already become her captives!"
Thus, the cabinet meeting that was supposed to discuss how to resist Mason's expansion turned, within a short hour, into a commercial discussion on how to purchase Mason toothbrushes in large quantities.
"We must buy more; only by letting the people of Leighton also use fresh gadgets can we avoid being eliminated quickly."
A minister waved the order form in his hand excitedly.
"Yes, not just for brushing teeth, but to not fall behind! If next spring, when Leighton's ministers open their mouths in diplomatic settings and still smell of willow twigs, while Mason's officials breathe fragrance, then we will have completely lost the moral high ground of civilization!"
"Perhaps, could we attempt to make this thing ourselves?" one of the ministers said. "This toothbrush doesn't look as complex as soap and shampoo."
Consequently, he quickly received an appreciative look from the King of Leighton.
Inside a side hall of the Leighton Palace, several top-tier court carpenters and leatherworkers were urgently summoned. Before them, that horse tail hair toothbrush belonging to the King was placed on a pure silk cushion, undergoing a scrutiny akin to dissection.
"Your Majesty, my Lords, this..."
The old carpenter rubbed his eyes, his voice carrying a few tremors of absurdity.
"The structure of this thing is surprisingly simple. This wooden handle is nothing more than ordinary redwood; although the polishing technique is exquisite, we can also achieve it. The most critical bristle clusters are tied tight with silver wire, inserted into drilled holes, and then sealed with resin. As long as there is enough horse tail hair and sufficiently skilled craftsmen, without resting, we can make several hundred a day."
The ministers who had been holding their breath were stunned.
In their subconscious, products from Mason, whether it was the soul-cleansing soap or the shampoo that made long hair silky, should all be some kind of unpryable, complex alchemy Divine Miracle. But now, this holy object that changed the morning breath of the Royal Court was actually so... mediocre?
"You are saying, anyone can make this thing?" a minister asked in disbelief.
"Yes, My Lord."
The old carpenter tapped the table with certainty, his gaze landing on the horse hair toothbrush.
"This requires no magic, nor does it require complex formulas, just a pair of dexterous hands."
The side hall fell into a strange deathly silence.
However, just a few seconds later, the Old Chancellor suddenly slapped his thigh fiercely, his face instantly turning from astonishment to pale white, and then filled with awe.
"Your Majesty! We absolutely must not imitate it privately!"
The Old Chancellor's voice echoed in the empty side hall, carrying a shudder of having seen through the truth:
"Gentlemen, have you not seen it yet? This is precisely the most terrifying aspect of Queen Sophia! She deliberately threw out something with extremely low technical content that anyone can easily replicate. How is this selling brushes? This is clearly an ultimate test of our moral depth and degree of obedience!"
"Think about it, if we covet that tiny profit and privately start producing this kind of cheap imitation, we would be personally tearing up the civilized contract with Mason. In the Queen's eyes, we would become those barbarians who have an empty appearance but no integrity. At that time, what welcomes us might no longer be soft toothbrushes, but those Thunder Muskets that can instantly send assassins flying!"
King Leopold of Leighton sucked in a breath of cold air; the thought of ordering the secret construction of a factory instantly vanished into smoke.
"The Chancellor is right; this is a kind of civilization bait."
The King stared tightly at that toothbrush, as if staring at a trap that could detonate at any time.
"She is watching to see if Leighton truly understands how to revere the power of wisdom. They did not send the toothbrushes to all parts of the world, but sold them to our Leighton first. This shows she really wants to know Leighton's attitude. If we view this invention as cheap wood and horse hair, then we will never be able to touch Mason's true core secrets."
And after that, they would also completely lose their friendship with Mason. And losing the friendship with the heavily powerful Her Majesty Sophia would be a major loss for Leighton.
In their wild imaginations, Queen Sophia must be sitting on Mason's throne at this moment, lazily playing with her fingernails, waiting for the people of Leighton to reveal greedy fangs.
"Then... what should we do? If we don't produce, we will be led by the nose by Mason forever. Since we can make it, why not make it ourselves instead of continuing to buy from them at high prices? But if we produce privately, we will anger that Tyrant."
A minister wiped his cold sweat anxiously.
"We can buy!"
The Old Chancellor's eyes were sharp.
"We must apply to Her Majesty Sophia for a Civilization Permit! We will not only buy toothbrushes but also buy the right to manufacture Black Rose style toothbrushes within Leighton's territory. We will proactively pay a massive royalty fee specifically dedicated to respecting her wisdom!"
"Brilliant!"
The crowd echoed in agreement.
"This way, we can not only solve our domestic supply but also demonstrate to Her Majesty that Leighton is the country in this world that understands how to respect original alchemists the best! We are using gold coins to exchange for Her Majesty's trust, exchanging for that admission ticket to the future!"
"Buy it! Buy the right to make toothbrushes, and we can also immediately sell to other countries to make a big profit!"
The afternoon of the next day, a letter handwritten by the King of Leighton, sealed with wax stamped with the highest specification insignia, was urgently sent to the station of the Mason caravan.
In the letter, the King of Leighton praised the second life the toothbrush gave to humanity with extremely humble and flowery rhetoric. And with trepidation, he proposed: hoping to exchange an annual price of five thousand gold coins for the special permission for Mason to open OEM factories in Leighton, and promised that every brush handle would still be carved with the Black Rose logo.
Not only that, in order to express reverence for the Queen's wisdom, the King of Leighton additionally included three chests of top-quality raw timber from the south and a litter of fat lamb cubs, beautifully termed: providing the cornerstone for Your Majesty's next flash of inspiration.
At this time, Vasha, who was drinking hot tea at the Leighton office, looked at this letter that was practically begging to give money, and her entire person fell into a long silence.
"Your Majesty, I originally thought you just wanted to sell horse hair toothbrushes."
Vasha felt a myriad of emotions in her heart. Looking toward the direction of the Mason Palace in the north, the awe in her eyes almost overflowed.
"It turns out you are using this tiny brush to make the King of a Kingdom pay taxes to you even before breathing. Your methods are truly tens of thousands of times more brilliant than the Royal House of Orr."
Inside the side hall of the Mason Palace, Sophia was facing the secret letter from Leighton sent back by Vasha via fast horse, falling into a long gaze.
The snow outside the window had stopped. The sunlight shone on the parchment through the gaps in the ice flowers, illuminating the words 'five thousand gold coins' with exceptional brilliance.
Sophia gently pointed at that number on the letter paper. In her usually cold pale golden pupils, a touch of genuine, satisfied spirit rarely seen floated up.
"Five thousand gold coins...
This is not a small sum. In the current Kingdom of Mason, where a thousand things wait to be done and even every piece of gravel must be counted in expenses, this money is enough to pay for the rations of the subjects of the entire territory for the next quarter, and can even allow that laboratory of Irene's, which has almost become a gold-swallowing beast, to operate luxuriously for a long time."
Sophia did not feel that this money was an unearned windfall; on the contrary, she felt a kind of extreme healing.
This wealth exchanged through intellectual property was much more elegant than simple resource plundering, and it was precisely the new Order she wanted to establish.
"Willow, go to the West Tower and call Irene over."
Sophia ordered without turning her head.
"Tell her that the horse hair she tossed about has now turned into a small mountain of real gold and silver."
In less than a quarter of an hour, Irene ran in like the wind. She had evidently just left her workstation, the tip of her nose still carrying a bit of fine redwood sawdust. But after listening to the content of the letter read by Sophia, those azure eyes instantly widened into perfect circles.
"Five thousand gold coins?! Every year?!"
Irene screamed, then jumped in place excitedly.
"Heavens, Your Majesty! The King of Leighton is actually so tactful? I thought he would secretly find a few carpenters to blindly figure it out themselves!"
Sophia signaled for her to sit down, pointing at the letter and analyzing calmly:
"This is where the King of Leighton is smart. The principle of the toothbrush is too simple; as long as one has seen the real object, any decent craftsman can replicate it. If we refuse, he could very well switch to underground production. At that time, not only would we not receive money, but we would also fall into endless diplomatic wrangling."
"So, his proactive payment of this royalty fee now is to show goodwill to Mason."
Irene also put away her playfulness and began to think seriously.
"He is using this money to buy a rule, and also buying a chance to be on good terms with Your Majesty."
The two went through a brief discussion and quickly reached a consensus: permit Leighton to do contract manufacturing, but the rules must be set by Mason.
Mason would provide standardized drilling spacing and bristle planting process guidance to ensure the toothbrushes produced by Leighton wouldn't be too shabby and lose face for the Black Rose.
After that came the distinction between Mason-made and Leighton-contract-manufactured, which was the point Sophia valued most.
"All authorized production toothbrushes must have the subsidiary words 'Mason Authorized · Leighton Made' carved on the end of the handle. And what comes out of our West Tower are the original authentic products possessing the sole Black Rose wax seal."
"Correct!"
Irene waved her small fist.
"This is called the brand effect! What Leighton makes are ordinary consumer goods, while what we Mason produce will always be the haute couture that nobles fight over. We want everyone to know that even if it is a single horse hair, Mason's craftsmanship is insurmountable."
When Chancellor Victor came in to confirm the final terms of this trade, looking at the reply letter already drafted on the table, his entire person fell into deep shock once again.
Your Majesty has actually created an unprecedented model of rule!
Fanatical tears flickered in Victor's old eyes.
She didn't use a single soldier, yet with just a single brush, she made the Kingdom of Leighton become an economic vassal of Mason. This annual five thousand gold coins, how is this an authorization fee? This is clearly a 'Civilization Tax' that Leighton pays to Mason!
Your Majesty allows them to do contract work to remind them at all times in their daily lives who the source of civilization is.
Victor bent his waist respectfully, his voice trembling slightly:
"Your Majesty, this old minister admires your deep foresight tens of thousands of times over. For this money, I suggest prioritizing investment into Cement and settling the subjects."
Sophia responded faintly. This considerable sum of money still needed to be discussed at length.
The letter was stamped with the Queen's Black Rose seal and sent to Leighton by the fastest messenger.
In the rear garden of the Mason Palace, the originally withered and yellow branches and leaves seemed less desolate under the 'magic power' of gold coins.
Sophia stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, watching Irene run happily back to the laboratory to prepare the authorized technical documents, and a trace of stability rarely felt rose in her heart.
This money was the first cornerstone for Mason to move toward prosperity. Although the financial constraints hadn't been completely resolved, at least this winter would no longer be that hard to endure.
____
________________________________________
🌸 Help Love Bloom!
Our girls need a little push... and you can help!
💖 Gift for Everyone: Once we hit 300 Powerstones, I'll release +1 bonus chapter to warm your hearts.
🚀 Community Reward: If we reach 20 supporting members, we'll have a +5 chapter marathon across all stories! The romance won't stop.
👻 Come to our secret corner: Search for GirlsLove on (P). You know that's where the magic happens... 😉