CH-071

On the first night in Dunstan, Shulec went to bed early to recover his strength.

Before bed, Father Simeon and Ramon had brewed some warming ginger tea for him, soaked his feet in hot water, and then placed a warm stone in his bedding — after that he could generally sleep through the night undisturbed.

The truth was that Shulec had started researching how to stay warm back in the summer.

After all, by the time of the Song Dynasty, there were not only hand warmers but also pocket warmers — essentially a medieval version of today's heat packs.

It seemed like he had no need to fear the cold.

But he also couldn't not say that the poor households around him had quite worrying heating conditions.

Thinking about it carefully — in early Republican-era northeastern China, the homes of poor families were just as cold inside as outside, with no distinction. Or, to put it another way, one of the old slogans about prioritizing the "warmth and sustenance" of the people showed that the heating problem had long been a major difficulty in people's lives.

So Shulec had never intended to avoid the heating issue.

But he also found the situation wasn't quite as grim as he had imagined.

For one thing, the local climate hadn't reached the extremes of deep northeast China. When you thought about it, the ancient imperial capitals had tended to move east or south — never north — precisely because of the fatal disadvantages of harsh northern climates. The conditions where Shulec was living were not quite so dire.

For another, the locals lived in brick-and-stone houses that could retain heat, and were accustomed to using fireplaces to warm up. In winter, they also hung woolen blankets on the walls or piled straw to block the cold drafts — all of which was far more effective than paper-covered windows and doors at keeping warm.

Elder Yager had also wanted to show Shulec how they kept warm with heated stones, saying: "We sleep better when there's a warm stone in the bedding."

Shulec couldn't quite picture the process, and then learned it was simply a heated stone wrapped in cloth and placed in the bedding. "Won't it cause a fire?"

"Occasionally it does catch a few times," Elder Yager answered honestly. "But it's very cheap — far cheaper than wood and fuel."

By "fuel," Elder Yager meant coal.

Shulec had then remembered that coal had indeed begun to be used for heating in the fourteenth century, and by the late part of that era had become an important heating source. The chimneys in the old houses were designed for coal smoke.

Elder Yager continued: "We've already gathered several smooth river stones from the mountain to use in rotation for Lord Alis."

When he heard they were using river stones, Shulec felt somewhat reassured.

River stones, unlike ordinary rocks, were far less likely to crack under heating.

Although the heating and winter preparations were done as thoroughly as possible, each winter was still a prolonged ordeal.

Because winter was so long, and the nights so long too.

The warm stone only maintained heat for less than two hours — it couldn't last through the whole night. He was always jolted awake in the cold.

And so, since summer, Shulec had been working on the design for a heated wall and a heated sleeping platform — a kang.

He worried about uneven heat distribution; worried about too much smoke making people uncomfortable and poor ventilation; worried about insufficient materials, especially since though the technique for firing red bricks had stabilized, the cost was still higher than wood fuel or basic materials, and might not be easy to make widespread.

For the most part, when he wasn't confident about something, he preferred not to talk about it until he had tried it himself, for fear of raising hopes he couldn't fulfill and causing unnecessary trouble for others.

Fortunately, the church's construction work was never sparse, the summer days were long, and he had more free time to practice.

As substitutes for red brick, stone and clay were available on the mountain nearby.

In these matters, there were people in the town who knew far more than Shulec.

After the Harvest Festival, Shulec had started to have more dealings with people in the town. Introduced by Elder Yager's family's carpenter, Shulec also had two willing bricklayers to help.

The outer structure was no different from a cooking range or a high wall to those bricklayers — with just a few words of explanation they could handle leaving the fire opening and the smoke vent themselves.

The draft system inside could be determined by the chimney effect — judging the direction and height difference of the fire opening and vents to achieve even distribution of heat and efficient smoke drainage.

Most importantly, cold weather outdoors actually made it easier to fire the kang correctly, which was precisely why the heated sleeping platform was so important in the deep northeast. The heat from a single firing could last eight to ten hours, enough warmth through the whole night.

But explaining this part was particularly difficult. He couldn't convince people who didn't understand, so he basically ended the discussion about the technical details with a gesture toward divine revelation, as he usually did.

Only the smoke channels required Shulec's own diagrams to explain.

"What are smoke channels?" Elder Yager tilted his head and asked.

Shulec replied, "Think of it as the path the heat travels inside the kang. Without channels, the heat would be drawn straight up the chimney and the kang would be useless."

Elder Yager had no idea how this process would work, and upon hearing "chimney," asked in confusion, "Doesn't the chimney connect to the fireplace? How does it connect to the cooking range?"

Shulec couldn't fully explain the principle that "the taller the chimney, the stronger the draft and the better the air flow inside the kang, which in turn sustains continuous heating." Nor could he elaborate that "if smoke doesn't flow well and combustion is incomplete, carbon monoxide can't be vented and will accumulate indoors." He just said, in fairly plain terms, that were as comprehensible as he could make them: "A fireplace uses a vertical chimney, while the kang uses channels in the floor — keeping the warmth down at ground level. A single cooking range fire is enough — no need for an open flame inside the room, which means maintenance isn't so troublesome either."

He had heard that while the rule was supposed to be cleaning it out every three years, plenty of village people in the countryside were lazy about it and went ten or fifteen years without cleaning.

Elder Yager's eyes filled with more questions. Before he asked them, he already felt a little guilty, as if he were doubting Shulec.

He asked what it was that he was worried about.

Shulec wasn't bothered at all, since in the early stages of design it was actually necessary for everyone to understand what they were trying to do — otherwise it couldn't succeed.

So Elder Yager was free to ask all his questions, and they came faster and faster: "Where does the chimney go?" "Since the chimney connects to the fireplace, how does it connect to the cooking range?" "And if the kitchen and the bedroom are in different rooms, what then? We have at least two rooms in our house — would this need two cooking ranges and two chimneys?"

Elder Yager already had a fireplace, and thought connecting it to the kitchen range would be a great deal of trouble: "Can the kang connect to the fireplace instead?"

These questions made the bricklayers beside them frown deeply. It seemed like an enormous amount of effort just to build a warming device, and they didn't even know if it would work or be safe.

But since they were being paid to do the work, they had no particular objections — all they did was follow instructions.

Hearing Elder Yager ask this, Shulec answered unhurriedly, trying to make it comprehensible to everyone: "A fireplace and a kang work on different principles. A fireplace uses a vertical chimney, while the kang runs channels along the floor — trapping the warm air at ground level. One cooking range fire will do — no need for an open flame inside the room. This means maintenance isn't so burdensome either."

He paused and added: "One cooking range can work with multiple channels, and those can be merged into a single chimney for venting. If you can't fit a chimney indoors, you can put it on the outside — it can't exit directly through the kang's vent."

The bricklayers, seeing Shulec being so patient, had been puzzled about why the chimney was necessary at all since the smoke would just exit through the vent — it seemed as superfluous as putting a flower on a hat. But they were genuinely confused: "Why do we need a chimney?"

"Don't we need the chimney to draw the smoke out?"

"Right, the 'drawing' is the key point," Shulec explained. "The air circulation inside the kang keeps the heat moving, and it also carries uncomfortable gases out. Without this draft, even if the kang heats up, it won't circulate well enough to keep heating continuously."

All three of them heard this with partial understanding.

But Shulec felt that explaining it as "chimney effect — the taller the chimney, the stronger the draw, forcing air to circulate inside the kang and sustain heating" would go right over their heads, as would "if smoke doesn't flow smoothly, carbon monoxide can't escape and will accumulate." The plainest terms he could use were what he'd already said.

Elder Yager had always given Shulec his unconditional support — whatever he wanted to do, he'd cooperate. But he had understood the explanation and was still worried: what if after all this enormous effort, it still turned out to be worse than a fireplace? It would be such a lot of bother for nothing.

So all his questions were gentle, roundabout expressions of doubt that the kang was too much trouble.

"What would we burn in the cooking range — would we have to burn it all night to stay warm?" Objection one: they didn't have enough fuel to burn all night.

"The fireplace is right inside the room. We can add a log whenever we like. The kitchen is on the other side of a wall — we'd have to walk all the way around in the middle of winter when no one wants to go out." Objection two: stoking the fire is too much trouble. No one wants to leave the room at night to do it.

"And since the kitchen and the bedroom are on opposite sides of a wall, you can't see what's happening. What if there's a fire?" Objection three: can't see it, too dangerous.

Shulec could read his hesitation perfectly, and smiled: "One firing is all it takes. The kang is for retaining heat, not for heating constantly. As long as the design is right, one firing can last eight to ten hours — no need to burn fuel all day. Imagine sleeping through the night in a room as warm as if it were held in the palm of hot stones — how warm and comfortable that would feel!"

One of the bricklayers, hearing this, was himself tempted: "Just one firing? That… sounds very fuel-efficient?"

"Right," Shulec said, glancing at the traditional open fireplace they were using, which was extremely wasteful of heat and used a lot of fuel. "Would I have gone to all this trouble if it weren't about staying warm and saving fuel?"

Hearing this, everyone fell quiet — as if this one sentence had suddenly brought them back to their senses. They finally understood what Shulec was actually trying to do. It had been right there from the beginning.

They were probably too overwhelmed by new terminology to hear the main point.

But before Shulec could finish feeling reassured, Elder Yager and the two bricklayers were already full of enthusiasm, and Elder Yager was eager to begin construction at his own home immediately.

Shulec hadn't yet planned to put it into practical use — he wanted to try a prototype in the church first. If it failed, he would think of another approach.

"Lord Alis, I believe you'll definitely succeed!"

"……"

No, you're trusting too early.

Shulec's hybrid wheat had just failed once.

In any case, the kang-building project got started after the Harvest Festival rush. The two bricklayers were eager to see it take shape. They had prepared a large amount of materials even before work began, and with their ample building experience, a single-room kang was completed in less than two days — without a hitch.

What followed was incremental adjustment —

They also needed a blacksmith to cast iron fittings.

They needed to add an iron cover plate for sealing the fire opening; install a damper for the flue — equivalent to a valve setting, to prevent the chimney from drawing too hard; and put a windcap on top of the chimney.

Once everything was in place, it was time for a test fire.

Shulec burned the cooking range for a full two hours and used fifteen kilograms of firewood before the kang slowly started warming up. Standing to the side, watching the fire in the firebox devour wood like a living thing, his heart sank lower with every passing minute.

The others watching him silently pile on wood, face serious, not saying a word.

The more he burned, the more uneasy he felt, as he kept reviewing his design, wondering where he had gone wrong.

Ninety minutes in, the fire slowed. He simply used the range to stew a pot of mushroom and vegetable noodles, and with some measure of remorse invited the old men up onto the kang to eat and test the warmth at the same time.

Steam rising, the smell filling the room, he was hoping the food could at least salvage some of his credibility crisis.

After the old men finished eating, they lay down on the kang to rest and test the heat retention.

No one spoke. The house was almost eerily quiet.

That evening, when Shulec brought dinner around, he cautiously touched the kang surface — still warm.

He finally exhaled slightly.

At least the heat retention was there for all to see.

Elder Yager looked at Shulec and said, "Lord Alis, I have to be honest with you — the kang's shortcomings are… quite obvious."

Shulec stiffened, and replied drily, "Though it does use more fuel than expected, the heating effect… is serviceable."

He didn't dare be too confident, thinking he really should have done more research before transmigrating.

Just as he was steeling himself to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to fix it —

Elder Yager and the three old men simultaneously widened their eyes: "What are you talking about, Lord Alis?! This is very fuel-efficient!"

"Our fireplace burns six or seven hours and takes thirty-something kilograms of firewood!" Elder Yager held up his hand, perfectly serious.

"Exactly!" The two bricklayers and the blacksmith were nodding vigorously. "And you still have to take turns stoking the fire through the night, otherwise you freeze awake."

Shulec was stunned, and then the corners of his mouth curved up against his will.

He quickly caught himself, and carefully asked, "So the shortcomings you mentioned… were exactly?"

"The kang surface isn't very comfortable to sleep on," Elder Yager answered evenly.

"……?"

"The layer of yellow clay and straw was too thin." The bricklayer added, "Not comfortable enough to sleep on!"

"…………"

Shulec was speechless and silently added "thicken the sleeping layer" to his mental notes.

In any case, after this successful trial, Shulec, Elder Yager's household, and the people of Savoy town and the surrounding villages all began arranging heated kangs in an organized rush, and even people in the neighboring Stone Hollow pastoral district who heard the news started looking into building their own.

Father Simeon had already been sleeping on a heated kang by the time winter arrived.

For all of them, the coldest part of this winter was getting off the kang.

The warm stones felt like nothing compared to it.

*

That night, Shulec was woken by the cold, and while he was re-heating his warm stone, Ramon came padding in with his bedding: "Lord Alis, it's so cold here. Can I sleep with you tonight?"

Shulec laughed at this: "Should we ask Father Simeon too?"

Shulec thought Father Simeon probably hadn't been this cold on the road either.

"Yes!" Ramon went off to find Father Simeon next door.

Father Simeon had actually been asleep, but Ramon opened the door and let a draft in, and Father Simeon shivered and woke up.

"We only have two more nights like this — we can endure it."

Father Simeon refused at first, but when he heard Shulec had agreed, he immediately agreed too.

Especially because Shulec also had a little fox whose body heat was off the charts.

An opportunity like this couldn't be missed.

They dragged a bed from another room, pushed it together with Shulec's, and then all three of them lay across the joined bed sideways. Sharing body heat like this was indeed much warmer in the deep of winter.

With that, Ramon couldn't fall asleep and started chatting: "I wonder what kind of bishop Savoy will get now?"

"Who else could it be?" Father Simeon answered without hesitation. "It'll be Father Alis, of course."

He was, as always, completely sincere: "If Father Alis really becomes bishop, I'll ask Bishop Hugo to formally absorb the Stone Hollow pastoral district into Savoy. That mountain church of ours is too inconvenient. Anyway, the travel time from there to Savoy's church is about the same, and one church is plenty when the time comes."

"Really!" Ramon was delighted at the idea of a familiar face joining them, and said, "Father Simeon, if you come, it'll definitely be much livelier. And how could a diocese not have a priest?"

Shulec could only laugh helplessly: "I'm a priest, aren't I!"

Ramon said, "Lord Alis — you'd be bishop by then… actually, I also hope Lord Alis becomes bishop."

But that day he had heard many people say that Father Alis was too young — there was no way he would be put forward for bishop.

Father Simeon continued to have unshakeable faith that Shulec could become bishop: "Father Alis is so outstanding — he'll definitely become bishop."

Shulec smiled helplessly. "This also doesn't depend entirely on what I want. Last time Bishop Holm said my doctrinal commentary was very poor — he definitely doesn't fully accept the idea of me becoming bishop. Not to mention there's a cardinal coming from the capital. I have no idea how he thinks."

Shulec also didn't want to admit directly that he absolutely wanted to spend his days as a happy-go-lucky small fry.

He would just have to talk around it.

"I wonder what kind of important figure the cardinal is?" Ramon grew curious.

Father Simeon was equally in the dark.

He had always kept his ears firmly closed to worldly affairs.

They would have to wait until tomorrow to find out.

By now it was late at night, and after chatting for a few more minutes they felt drowsy again.

Naxi, on the other hand, had drifted half-awake. Seeing that he was now far away from Shulec, and that the two people who always used him as a hot water bottle were nearby, he quietly slipped back into Shulec's embrace while no one was looking and found a comfortable spot to carry on sleeping.

The next morning at nine o'clock.

While Shulec and the other bishop candidates were being led around the Dunstan Cathedral by Nun Rita in an orientation, they were suddenly informed —

The Dunstan Bishop required them all to prepare to go to the hunting ground.

The cardinal arriving from the capital would be waiting for them there.

Shulec immediately asked, "Will we be there long?"

Rita couldn't imagine why he would ask this, and answered coldly and quietly, "It is winter hunt season right now, and hunt events typically last a full day. Since the meeting was arranged for that location, we will certainly be there for the whole day."

Shulec understood at once.

Before they set off, he hurried quietly back to his room and stuffed his set of seasonings into his bag.

Tonight — it was probably going to be a roasted meat feast.