MTLNOVEL Chapter 183: Our Peat Has Too Many Uses
Riding on a horse to the village entrance of the Great Carthage Royal Capital, a villager immediately came over to lead the horse.
The Great Carthage Royal Capital is roughly fifty to sixty meters wide and long, with a large population, a good three hundred people.
The entire royal capital consists of seventy to eighty straw huts and a surrounding rickety fence wall.
The only exception is the Queen of Carthage, who has a two-story wooden palace, but she is not at home today.
She set off on a deep-sea fishing boat to go fishing. Though she's a queen, fishing is currently the most important production task for the entire Carthage Kingdom.
Otherwise, when the weather gets cold, these fish will swim to the deeper lakes in Nanze, making them difficult to catch.
The queen would drag a net to fish from a boat, also inspecting the waters to prevent other kingdoms from crossing the boundary. Sometimes she even has to have boarding battles and compete in literary and martial arts with the queens of the intruding kingdoms.
However, few dare to provoke the Queen of Carthage. Firstly, her family indeed has a thriving population, and secondly, this woman has quite a foul mouth and dirty hands.
From the village entrance, walking to the royal dock, there are about a dozen beastmen, young and old, gathered to watch Patrick and others conducting an alchemy ceremony.
Horn walked forward through these beastmen and saw a square dirt pit on the ground.
This dirt pit is about one yard deep, with its width and length roughly the same, bordered with wooden planks all around and at the bottom.
"This is to prevent the alchemical reaction from dissipating, resulting in only shallow peat distilling from swamp soil," a young man beside explained to Horn.
Horn recognized this big-headed youth before him; he was actually the White Mountain Hermitage's head in Joan of Arc Castle, named Robert.
Unlike others with lower status, he is a wealthy workshop master, who makes dyes during the day and uses scraps to make alchemical products at night.
After shaking hands and nodding with the youth, Horn walked up and started observing closely.
Six Blessed alchemists, three ordinary alchemists, and Patrick each held a walnut wood stick, positioned at their chest, vertically aligning with their elbows, resembling large crucifixes.
The Blessed and Patrick showed no expression, while the ordinary alchemists looked strained, beads of sweat appearing on their foreheads, footsteps somewhat unstable as they walked around the pit.
As they walked, they performed orderly dance-like steps, swaying left and right, chanting muttering incantations with deep "ah-ee-ah-ee-ye" strange cries.
Dragging their walnut wood sticks, walking around the pit, these alchemists' eyes emitted a faint glow — an outward sign of meditating tarot imagery.
But upon approaching them, one would notice that the soil in the pit began to emit light steam, the air above the pit slightly twisting.
Within the white steam, black mud-like substances seeped out little by little, slowly crawling over the surface.
Two beastmen held shovels, occasionally scooping up the black peat from the pit, then using rakes to turn over the swamp soil, revealing deeper layers until no more peat was produced.
Scoop after scoop of peat fell into wicker baskets. Horn lifted one basket with effort; each weighed about 80 pounds.
When the alchemical ceremony finished, the open ground displayed ten wicker baskets tightly packed with peat.
Bending over, Horn leaned close to these black peats; he reached out and touched them, finding them carrying a bit of warmth.
Pressing lightly with his fingers, he surprisingly poked a hole into the peat mass.
Robert stepped forward, smiling as he spoke, "Normal peat is like this when freshly out, but with some air drying or baking, it can be used."
"Actually, there's no need to dry it." Patrick, having finished the alchemy ceremony, walked to Horn's side, "It's just a bit hard to ignite and smokes a lot, that's all."
"Can you demonstrate the ignition effect?" Horn asked Patrick.
Patrick stepped aside, while a Salvation Army soldier had already constructed a small furnace with stones, lined at the bottom with reed straw for kindling.
With a shovel-load of peat poured into the furnace, tinder set the reed straw aflame, and soon blue flames leapt up from the furnace bottom.
Patrick probed the fire with his finger, and then licked it — "Not bad, the quality of the swamp soil here burns much better than wood."
Disregarding Patrick's odd behavior, Horn beckoned to the excited Carthage emissary, who brought out a flat-bottom clay pot specifically for boiling salt, pouring in prepared brine and setting it on the furnace.
After a while, a thin layer of salt crystals began to condense on the inner wall of the clay pot.
"Two thousand pounds of swamp soil requires about ten alchemists to collaborate in the alchemical ritual," Patrick, standing beside Horn, pointed to the peat in the wicker baskets, "producing 800 to 1200 pounds of peat in roughly a quarter of an hour."
Patrick glanced at the few ordinary alchemists, collapsed ground, "If ordinary alchemists were making 300 to 500 pounds of swamp soil in one go, they'd probably need half a day's rest, but Blessed ones only need two or three hours, and can even work continuously."
"What about refining 100 pounds of salt?"
"Probably seven or eight baskets of peat, this peat works much faster for salt boiling than wood," estimated the King's Hand of Carthage, evidently familiar with salt boiling, based on experience giving this number, "A boil takes roughly 3 hours."
Calculating with each person needing 5 grams of salt per day, subtracting the salt Horn brought, still, within a month gap, 25,000 people approximately need 7,500 pounds of salt.
For 4,000 soldiers, with salted fish prepared at 3 ounces (90 grams) per person daily, over three months totaling 32,400 pounds of salted fish meat, requiring a catch of about 50,000 pounds.
The ratio of salted fish to salt is ten to one, making it 5,000 pounds of salt, combined for a total of 12,500 pounds of salt, with fuel for boiling requiring 75,000 pounds of peat.
Thus, with ideal conditions, ten alchemists spending 19 work hours could meet the Salvation Army's salt fuel demand for over 20,000 people, with a cost nearly zero.
The only concern would be if the brine extraction speed could keep up with the peat production speed.
If assuming Thousand River Valley has 4 million people, monthly salt base demand is roughly 1.2 million pounds, base peat demand is 7.2 million pounds.
So, Horn only needs 200 alchemists with 90 work hours to meet the entire Thousand River Valley's salt boiling fuel demand.
Remember, it's not just salt boiling that needs fuel, with ceramics, brewing, dyeing, printing, baking, textiles, and so on, market demand is astonishing.
Even wet forging of iron requires fuel to heat the cauldrons!
But this is under ideal conditions, without factoring in transportation costs and a series of losses, even tariffs haven't been calculated yet.
Though, the production efficiency of this alchemy ceremony greatly exceeded Horn's expectations, the only problem may be the raw materials.
Remember, the Empire may lack many things, but certainly not swamps.
Yet just in case, environmentally-conscious young Horn asked Patrick, "Can this peat regenerate? How long would it take?"
"Quickly, I'd say tens of years, with a dedicated wizard catalyzing — a decade or so would suffice."
Patrick looked at Horn with some puzzlement — how did this little guy know peat could regenerate?
Horn immediately concluded this thing is probably similar to sulfur, considered an alternate dimensional isotope with similar functions, though its nature completely differs.
"With this, the fuel issue is resolved." Staring at the flat pot licked by flames, Horn self-commented, "What's left are just fishing and brine issues."
Pondering these matters here, Horn suddenly heard noises nearby, and he immediately realized that Hariba must be back with the tribal captives.