SWDnovel #184 - Our peat has a wide range of uses.
#184 - Our peat has a wide range of uses.
Riding the horse to the entrance of the Gadar King's capital village, a villager immediately came to lead the horse.
The Gadar King's capital is about fifty or sixty meters in length and width, with a large population of three hundred people.
The entire capital consists of about seventy or eighty thatched houses, and crooked and dilapidated fence walls.
The only exception is the two-story wooden palace of Queen Gadar, but she is not here today.
She went fishing on an offshore fishing boat. Don't underestimate her as a queen, because fishing is currently the most important production task of the entire Gadar Kingdom.
Otherwise, when the weather gets cold, these fish will run to the deeper lakes in Nanze(Nanze: South Marsh), making them difficult to catch.
The queen will take a boat to cast nets for fishing, and also patrol the waters to prevent other kingdoms from crossing the border. Sometimes she has to engage in boarding battles plus verbal and martial arts duels with the queens of other kingdoms who cross the border.
However, few people dare to provoke Queen Gadar. The first reason is that her family is indeed prosperous, and the second is that this woman's hands and mouth are quite dirty.
Walking from the entrance of the capital village to the royal wharf, you can see a dozen beastmen, old and young, standing and watching. Those being watched are Pasrik and others who are performing the alchemy ritual.
Passing through these beastmen, Horn came to the front and saw a square pit in the ground.
This pit is about a yard deep, and the length and width are also about a yard. All sides and the bottom are inserted with wooden boards.
"This is to prevent the alchemical reaction from escaping, causing only shallow swamp soil to distill peat," the young man next to Horn introduced.
Horn knew the big-headed youth in front of him. He was actually the head of the White Mountain Hermitage in Jeanne d'Arc Castle. His name was Robert.
Unlike other people with lower status, he is a wealthy workshop owner who makes dyes during the day and alchemy products from scraps at night.
Shaking hands and nodding with the young man, Horn stepped forward and observed carefully.
Six blessed alchemists, three ordinary alchemists, and Pasrik each held a walnut stick, holding it in front of their chests, perpendicular to their elbows, the whole person like a large cross.
The blessed ones and Pasrik had no expression, while the ordinary alchemists looked strained, and beads of sweat oozed from their foreheads. The steps they took around the pit were a little unsteady.
As they walked, they danced steps that looked like dance steps, swaying from side to side in unison, chanting words in their mouths, making a low "Ah yi ah yi ye" strange cry.
Dragging the walnut wood and walking around the pit in front of them, the eyes of these alchemists glowed slightly. This is the external manifestation of the meditation Tarot imagery.
But if you get close to them, you will find that the soil in the pit begins to emit a faint steam, and the air above the pit is actually slightly distorted.
In the white steam, black mud-like objects seeped out little by little, slowly covering the surface.
Two beastmen held shovels and shoveled out the black peat from the pit from time to time, and then used rakes to turn over the swamp soil, so that the lower swamp soil was exposed, until no more peat was generated.
Shovelful of peat fell into the wicker basket. Horn reached out and lifted it. It was very laborious. Each basket was about 80 pounds.
When the alchemy ritual ended, ten full wicker basket filled with peat were lined up in a row on the open space.
Bending down, Horn approached the black peat. He reached out and touched it, and it actually felt a little warm.
Applying a little force with his finger, a hole was actually pressed out of the peat.
Robert stepped forward and said with a smile: "Normal peat is like this when it first comes out. It can be used after being left for a while or dried."
"Actually, there is no need to dry it." Pasrik, who had finished the alchemy ritual, walked to Horn's side, "It's just that it's more difficult to light and the smoke is heavier."
"Can you demonstrate the effect of ignition?" Horn asked Pasrik.
Pasrik stepped aside, and a Salvation Army soldier had already piled up a small stove with stones, and the bottom of the stove was covered with reed straw for ignition.
Shoveling a shovel of peat and pouring it into the stove, igniting the reed straw at the bottom with tinder, blue flames soon darted up from the bottom of the stone stove.
Pasrik put his finger into the fire to test it, and then put his finger to his tongue and licked it: "Not bad, the quality of the swamp soil here is very good, it burns much better than firewood."
Ignoring Pasrik's abstract behavior, Horn beckoned and called the excited Gadar envoy, and asked him to fetch a flat-bottomed pottery pot specially used for boiling salt, poured in the prepared brine, and placed it on the stone stove.
After a while, a thin layer of salt crystals condensed on the surface of the inner wall of the pottery pot.
"2000 pounds of swamp soil requires about ten alchemists to participate in the alchemy ritual together." Standing next to Horn, Pasrik pointed to the peat in the wicker basket and said, "It can produce 800 to 1200 pounds of peat, which takes about a quarter of an hour."
Pasrik glanced at the ordinary alchemists who were slumped on the ground: "If it is an ordinary alchemist, it is estimated that they will have to rest for half a day to make 300 to 500 pounds of swamp soil. For the blessed ones, two or three hours of rest is enough, and they can even work continuously."
"What if you want to extract 100 pounds of salt?"
"Probably seven or eight baskets of peat. This peat is much faster than boiling salt with firewood." The Gadar King's hand, who was watching, was obviously very familiar with boiling salt. After a slight estimate, he gave this number based on his experience, "It takes about 3 hours to boil once."
According to 5 grams of salt per person per day, minus the salt Horn brought with him, there is a shortage of one month, and 25,000 people need about 7,500 pounds of salt.
The salted fish prepared for 4,000 soldiers, according to three ounces (90 grams) of fish per person per day, is 32,400 pounds of salted fish in three months, and the required catch is about 50,000 pounds.
The ratio of salted fish to salt is ten to one, which is 5,000 pounds of salt. Adding it all up, it is 12,500 pounds of salt, and the fuel required to boil this salt is 75,000 pounds of peat.
So, under ideal circumstances, ten alchemists can meet the fuel needs for more than 20,000 Salvation Army soldiers with 19 man-hours, and the cost is almost zero.
The only thing worth considering is whether their brine extraction speed can keep up with the peat production speed.
Assuming that the Thousand River Valley has 4 million people, the basic demand for salt each month is about 1.2 million pounds, and the basic demand for peat is 7.2 million pounds.
Then Horn only needs to dispatch 200 alchemists, 90 man-hours, to meet the fuel needs for boiling salt in the entire Thousand River Valley.
You know, it's not just boiling salt that needs fuel, such as pottery making, brewing, dyes, printing and dyeing, baking, textiles, etc., the market demand is amazing.
Even wet-forged ironware requires fuel to heat the medicine jar!
But this is only under ideal circumstances, such as transportation costs and a series of losses and even tariffs have not been taken into account.
But the production efficiency of this alchemy ritual really exceeded Horn's expectations. The only problem is probably the raw materials.
You know, the empire may lack everything, but it does not lack swamps.
But just in case, the environmental protection youth Horn still asked Pasrik: "Can this peat be regenerated? How long will it take?"
"Soon, a few decades, if there are special wizards to catalyze, ten years is enough."
Pasrik looked at Horn a little puzzled, how did this kid know that peat can reborn.
Horn immediately determined that this thing is probably similar to sulfur, which is a homonymous other-dimensional isotope, although the functions are similar, the essence is completely different.
"In this way, the fuel problem is solved." Looking at the flat-bottomed pot being licked by the flames, Horn murmured to himself, "Then there are only the problems of fishing and brine left."
Just thinking about these things, Horn suddenly heard a noisy sound not far away. He immediately realized that it should be Hariba returning with the barbarian captives.