As the bronze doors of the Taiji Flag Commercial Alliance Arbitration Court were pushed open, a strange gust of wind—a mixture of burnt glazed glass, fermenting wheat seedlings, and garlic-skin vinegar—blew Huwa's garlic-skin judge's hat right onto the head of Ali, the Persian merchant. "Quiet down, all of you!" Huwa barged into the court riding a green-ox-wood cart, his garlic gavel still stained with crumbs from the garlic-scented steamed bun he had eaten for breakfast. "If you lot mess around with tech-sharing again, I'll sentence you to be saddles for the yaks!"
Case One: The "Leaking" Glazed Garlic Mortar
Looking miserable, Muhammad pointed at the glazed garlic mortar on the floor, which was shattered into eight pieces: "I used the green-ox dyeing technique to color the mortar, and added Uncle Zhang's sesame-cake yeast as a binder. Now it automatically blurts out merchants' pricing secrets!" No sooner had he finished speaking than the mortar shards suddenly shouted in unison: "Shopkeeper Wang's rouge costs only two strings of cash to make!" An uproar filled the courtroom, and Shopkeeper Wang's face turned as red as if it had been soaked in a dye vat.
"Is this tech-sharing or commercial espionage?" Huwa scratched his head. The Protagonist pushed up his garlic-skin glasses: "According to Article 9 of the Commercial Alliance Twenty Rules, tech-sharing requires a confidentiality agreement." The final verdict: Muhammad had to use Persian glassmaking techniques to make "sound…
Chapter 580