The resolution to build public toilets in the territory, which Lind had just proposed, was immediately agreed upon by Lena and quickly passed.
The priority of this task was elevated a level by Lena, who even took money out of her own pocket as an additional reward.
There was no other choice. Although the royal capital in the game looked glamorous, the level of sanitation at the border was far from satisfactory; it perfectly replicated the medieval experience.
Even during the Age of Exploration, most Western cities, especially port cities, were filled with filth, and one had to wear a broad-brimmed hat to protect against the waste thrown from above and avoid stepping in fresh droppings while wearing high heels.
Forget about using dung as fertilizer; some ordinary people didn’t even have the concept of a toilet and just solved their needs on the spot.
Having always lived a noble life, Lena did not consider this issue at first, and Lind, who had been fleeing for a long time, also overlooked it. As a result, the current territory was filled with stench, especially after the subjects had their meals. If toilets were not built soon, Lind felt he might become pickled in the smell.
“Lord, the water is boiling.”
Lila entered the tent, holding a stack of experiment reports to report to Lind.
“As before, while the boiling water produced steam, it still did not create sufficient propulsion as you described.”
Listening to Lila’s report, Lind scratched his head in frustration after receiving the experiment report.
Boiling water didn’t work in this world.
Although the process of boiling water was exactly the same as in his previous life, the power generated by the steam was much less, only enough to make the boiling water bubble a bit.
Lind had also suspected that the water in this world might not be water at all, but apart from the steam not being able to generate power, all the physical reactions were almost identical to water from his previous life.
Something must be preventing or diluting the power generated by the steam, and the most likely culprit was—magic power.
The experiment report confirmed Lind’s guess. More accurately, it was the water element of this world that diluted the power generated by the steam. However, under the current conditions, this was all they could test.
As for what the diluted power turned into and whether the water element could become a new source of power, nothing was known.
In summary, relying on boiling water to create power was definitely not going to work. If one wanted to start industrialization, other methods had to be found to generate stable power.
What worried Lind the most was if the power of steam could be diluted, then would the power generated by gunpowder also be diluted by the fire element? What kind of microscopic system did this world have? Could microbial actions also be different from those in his previous life?
If that were the case, it might not even be possible to successfully start composting in the current territory.
Although Lind always believed that the greatest advantage of a transmigrator was not just modern technologies like gunpowder steam engines, but rather the mindset of standardization and industrialization along with insights far ahead of the times, he still felt a bit uneasy when he couldn’t boil water.
However, Lind quickly adjusted his mindset. After all, this was a world of magic. Clinging to boiling water to create a power source was rather short-sighted; wasn’t there such a convenient energy source as magic?
Having inherited the skill attributes of the female protagonist, he could manually conjure holy light, yet he was still clinging to the physics of his previous life, which seemed a bit idealistic.
Moreover, the physics from his previous life wasn’t entirely useless; at least it wasn’t a state of “physics no longer exists” in this world. Whether it was pulleys or levers, they could be put to use, and gravity was still the same as in his previous life. Lind didn’t have to worry about becoming a hydrogen man.
Having adjusted his mindset, Lind put down the report and asked, “Have you successfully replicated the sugar production?”
“Although the quality is somewhat poor, the first batch has succeeded, but…”
Lila hesitated before saying, “It’s still not able to be mass-produced.”
“I understand. There’s no need to rush; just bring me a batch of finished products and arrange the trip to Fasen Town.”
“Understood.”
Lila elegantly lifted her skirt but did not leave immediately. Instead, she stared at Lind with dark circles under her eyes.
Reluctantly, Lind had no choice but to say what Lila had told Lena before: “Lila, the head maid, there are still many issues in the territory that need solving, and you cannot rest yet.”
Although Lila looked exhausted, Lind was helpless; Lena’s knights were unwilling to do chores themselves. Lind could only refer to the past standards of hard-working and efficient personnel.
Even though boiling water had failed, at least sugar production had succeeded.
The territory had beets that could be made into white sugar. After washing, shredding, leaching, heating, precipitating, simmering, and finally cooling it naturally, after repeated experiments, Lind could finally slightly improve his diet.
However, due to the lack of professional equipment, the entire process was very primitive. Even the separator could only use the most basic crank and wooden barrel, producing very little white sugar each day.
Even with assembly line processing, the lack of equipment could not be compensated; the output was still very low.
But it was enough. The female workers in the territory trembled with excitement when they saw the white sugar crystals that were extracted.
Lind had learned from Lena that in this era, white sugar was almost always produced by alchemists, and the process was extremely complicated, involving very abstract materials, even including bat tears and frog urine, requiring a large variety of strange things to refine into some crystallized white sugar.
The subjects still believed Lind had secretly used some kind of magic to produce these sparkling white sugars instead of relying on his own efforts.
This also related to the assembly line work where these workers could not know the entire sugar-making process, but Lind was not planning to correct it.
The complicated sugar-making process was probably born out of market demand; after all, the more complex and mysterious the process, the more the nobles liked it.
The sugar raw materials brought by the Lars family were somewhat more acceptable to Lind than those mentioned earlier, at least they used bee dung, and the raw materials were at least sweet.
Well, it seemed not entirely acceptable.
It could only be said that due to the presence of magic, the technological tree of this world was abstractly a bit outrageous. Beets growing by the roadside had sweetness, but because the nobles discarded such food meant for commoners, no one ever thought to use them to make sugar; they all pursued completely nonsensical items made through magic.
As for the yellow mud water method, to Lind in the present, it was no different from alchemy. Yellow mud water was not ordinary mud; some speculated it was a type of alkaline clay, but no one had been able to replicate how to make this alkaline clay.
This wasn’t a record error; it was simply a matter of poorly transmitted information.
Lind had always disliked those who denied the entire “Sky Work” due to an inability to replicate a single location; at least the dragon bone waterwheel recorded in there was still being used in Lind’s hometown. He even had stepped on it as a child.
And Lind had just finished drawing the blueprints for the dragon bone waterwheel, preparing to promote it in the territory.
What troubled Lind the most in the current territory was not the knights, who occasionally created trouble for him, nor the occasional conflicts between the original subjects and the subjects brought by the Lars family.
The biggest problem in the territory was the lack of labor.
In reality, the territory currently had around 700 to 800 people. If you removed Lena’s knights and those veterans assigned by Lind as clerks, there were still too few people who could work.
Building toilets requires people, constructing houses requires people, clearing wasteland requires people, and the experiments arranged by Lind also require people. Even though Lena went into the mountains daily to look for mines (which was actually just for fun), the population allocation was still severely lacking.
For experiments like cement and gunpowder, although they couldn’t start research due to material issues, it was evident that they required a large amount of labor, and it couldn’t just be ignorant serfs.
The letter Lena sent to Duke Lars had already been mailed, and Lind could only pray that Duke Lars would send more craftsmen to the territory and not bring any more luxury goods, especially sugar made from bee dung.
As for someone replacing the female protagonist, Lind had already asked Lena to find someone, although having the villainous daughter from the game look for the original female protagonist was a bit strange.
Of course, due to the lag in information in this era, Lind did not know that Lena had not rebelled yet, while the original female protagonist was the one who had already staged a rebellion.
