chsdbacks #131 - Slime Corpse, We Like You
#131 - Slime Corpse, We Like You
In the ruins of crumbling walls, the Papal Palace's lights always shone the brightest.
Because Pope Hohen and the Saintess Jeanne both lived in that wooden house, their fluorite lamps glowed much brighter than ordinary people's.
Like stars in the night sky.
Hohen squatted on the ground, pushing the fluorite lamp's light to its limit.
Sweat beaded on his forehead as he nervously directed the light onto the ground.
On the wooden floor sat a pottery basin, filled with black sugar water dissolved in clarified lime water, into which slime gel had been added.
Reddish-black clumps of gel floated in the water, and Hohen could clearly see a ring of pale yellow frosting congealed on the basin's walls.
This was Hohen's idea for developing the economy: refining white sugar.
Pure white sugar was a high-end luxury, costing as much as 18 dinars per pound.
Black sugar, on the other hand, cost only 2 dinars per pound, so after deducting labor and material costs, the net profit could reach 10 dinars.
You should know, Pond Swamp Town was located in the south, so even without sugarcane, growing high-sugar fruits was easier than in the north.
If he could produce white sugar, the southern location advantage would quickly turn it into a strong industrial chain.
The first method he thought of was the yellow mud water sugar refining method from *Tiangong Kaiwu*.
So, after buying a lot of black sugar, Hohen poured yellow mud water on it all afternoon, but to no effect.
Later, Hohen thought about it. What was the composition of yellow mud water? Its adsorption capacity was not even as good as activated carbon, so how could it be used as a decolorizing agent?
Then the only explanation was that the so-called yellow mud water was not really water from yellow mud, but rather red soil-dyed kaolin.
So the most useful component was likely montmorillonite in the kaolin, but the question was, did this world even have montmorillonite?
After asking Sisi, Hohen discovered that this world really had something with a similar effect, and it was often used to make anti-diarrheal medicine.
That was dried and ground slime gel powder.
He had gone full circle.
With a try-it-and-see attitude, Hohen put the slime gel powder into the black sugar water soaked in lime water and stirred constantly.
As the slime gel re-coagulated, the original black sugar water actually began to turn red.
After standing for a while, the upper layer was a pale yellow transparent liquid, and the lower layer was a murky reddish-black sediment.
As the upper clear liquid evaporated in the shade, it actually precipitated "white sugar".
Because there was no centrifugal separator, this white sugar frost actually contained molasses and could not reach a snowy white color at all; at most, it could only be considered yellow sugar.
This was already whiter than the whitest white sugar on the market. If he could get activated carbon and a hand-cranked separator in the future, he might really be able to produce white sugar.
"Slime corpses, we love you." After testing it on mice and confirming it was non-toxic, Hohen happily hummed a little tune and handed the prepared sugar water to Jeanne.
"Try it." Hohen took a sip of his sugar water and smiled at Jeanne.
Jeanne looked up from her book, *Knight Sifar*, picked up the sugar water, took a sip, and frowned: "It's too sweet. I'll drink it later."
With that, she lowered her head again, transcribing sentences from *Knight Sifar* word by word.
Under the influence of Hohen, this small-town exam taker, Jeanne had been seriously studying recently.
Her progress was slow, but she was indeed steadily reading through half the book.
In Hohen's view, she had to choose either a cheetah or knowledge to explode.
The daily routine during this time was Jeanne teaching Hohen breathing techniques in the morning, and Hohen teaching Jeanne writing and arithmetic in the afternoon.
Neither of them was progressing very quickly.
A gust of cool wind seeped in through the door crack. Hohen looked towards the door and saw Granpwen walking in with a box.
"What are you doing here so late?"
"Mr. Thomas sent you a gift. They said they heard you like books, so they found some books with a lot of words."
"They even know that." Opening the box, Hohen blew away the dust on the covers. "Where did these books come from?"
"Picked them up from all over the place, some were dug out of the nearby ruins."
"Such good luck? Not stolen, are they?" Picking up a book, Hohen shook it, shaking out the dust and grass leaves between the pages.
In the empire, books were not cheap. They actually managed to pick up almost twenty of them.
"Probably, not, I don't think so." Answering hesitantly, Granpwen wiped the sweat from his head. "This area used to be a commercial port with many warehouses. Later, there was a fire, and then a flood came when it was halfway rebuilt, so it was abandoned.
If I'm not mistaken, these books should have been left by those merchants."
Hohen really needed books, because he needed them to train talents and understand the situation in the empire, but when he opened one of the books, he fell silent again.
"Madlan, go tell them that I appreciate the thought, but books with a lot of words are not necessarily books; they could also be ledgers."
Hohen flipped through all the books in the small box and found that they were all messy ledgers from various chambers of commerce.
"Then what should we do with these ledgers?" Granpwen asked, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
Throwing them back into the box, Hohen covered his mouth and nose: "Didn't I teach those child soldiers and elder bishops double-entry bookkeeping and statistics? They've been idle recently, so let them practice with these."
The ledgers were already useless, so he might as well use them to train their ability to handle complex affairs and data.
Hohen didn't expect them to really learn anything from it; he just wanted them to get familiar with it.
He knew that his hands-on approach wouldn't last long. It was fine with these 1200 people, but it would be more troublesome when it expanded to 10,000.
Along the way, Hohen, Armand, Jeshka, and even Bonder took turns teaching the child soldiers, elders, and bishops, as if they were wearing shackles.
After using Hohen's simplified alphabet, they could at least read some words and do some simple arithmetic.
"Oh, right, Your Majesty, there's one more thing in six days..." Granpwen stood there shyly and awkwardly.
"Speak quickly if you have something to say, fart quickly if you have something to fart."
"I'm planning to hold a wedding with Dia, probably in six days..."
"Bang, bang!"
Before Granpwen could finish speaking, the sound of gunfire in the night sky drowned out the rest of his words.
Jeanne immediately jumped up and ran towards the sound of the gunfire, but Hohen grabbed her wrist.
"It's the legion commanders from the new camp." Hohen smiled calmly. "Don't worry, I've made arrangements in advance."
Listening to the sound of gunfire, Jeanne stood at the door, looking in that direction for a long time before turning back and asking, "How did you know?"
"This morning, I used financial power to undermine them. If they don't resist now, when will they resist?"
"Do they even have the guts?"
"An old dog still has a few rotten teeth. Even if it was Messala herself coming to seize power today, they would try." Hohen yawned. "What's our civilization level? If there's no bloodshed in the transfer of power, it's not called a transfer of power."
Looking at Granpwen, who was still standing there holding the box, Hohen laughed: "Six days later, right? Don't worry, I'll officiate your wedding. I'll definitely be there."
As soon as Granpwen left, hurried footsteps sounded again.
With a joyful smile on his face, Das strode up to Hohen.
"Your Majesty, those bandits ran away. We killed five and wounded three. What should we do?"
"Hang the dead ones up for public display, treat the living ones well, and send them back tomorrow."
"Why not kill them all?" Das asked.
"Kill them? If you kill them, who will know how strong we are?"