Chapter 875 (1/2)

Chapter 875: Vol V Chapter 235

As a result of remedying the great drought that implicated the entire Dominant Continent, Sui Xiong once produced a great amount of salt. That was really a great amount, an amount which was enough to be piled into a mountain.

Of course, this salt was coarse salt. It was bitter and astringent. Perhaps the poor people would not mind its taste, but Sui Xiong personally detested it. From his point of view, this kind of salt was trash. Not only did it taste bad, but it also contained a lot of minerals that were harmful to the human body—no matter how lacking Sui Xiong was in scientific knowledge, he also knew that seawater was undrinkable. The key reason why it could not be consumed was not that it was dirty, but rather, it had a lot of harmful minerals in it.

Sui Xiong once heard a popular science explaining why seawater could not be consumed. The excessive salt content was no doubt one of the reasons. The other reason was that it contained many other minerals. He could not remember exactly what the specific names of those minerals were, but he did have some impression of their names, like vomiting salt, Epsom salt, k… Just by listening to the name, one could tell what consequences would be.

So even though he had acquired mountains of salt while extracting freshwater from seawater for the purpose of disaster relief, he was unable to find a good way to use them. Ultimately, he tasked the chief scientist of the Church of the Void Mask, Palin, with a project to research for a way to purify the coarse salt into edible salt.

Since the solar evaporation technique was also available in this world, naturally, there would also be ways to turn coarse salt that contained a great number of impurities into refined salt that contained almost no impurities. But those ways required the assistance of magic and cost too much. They did not carry much practical value, except that they could be provided for the enjoyment of the upper classes.

The dedicated spell, “purification of coarse salt,” was a mid-rank spell. The mages who were capable of casting this spell would at least have to be the equivalent of knights. And each day, they could probably cast this spell up to two or three times. So adding everything up, they could only purify as much as 10 to 15 jin of salt a day. The spell, “purification of saltwater” was of a slightly lower level. Mages who were almost mid-rank would be able to cast this spell. Ordinary mid-ranked mages could use it about 10 times a day. But considering how salt could only be obtained after the saltwater had been subjected to complete evaporation, the efficiency of making refined salt from this spell was in fact, not as good as that of “purification of coarse salt.”

In general, considering the human resources and spellcasting materials, the value of one jin of refined salt purified by magic was probably worth about 20 gold coins—this was its cost. It was purely the production cost. And only the cost of using the solar evaporation technique could be so low. If it was cooking salt, every jin would cost three to five gold coins more. Adding on transportation… Refined salt from inland areas could at times be sold for more than a hundred gold coins per jin!

This was undoubtedly a profiteering industry. But actually, there were very few people engaged in this trade. Very, very, very few. Because in most situations, people would rather go for coarse salt that cost less than five gold coins per jin.

What? You say it tastes bad? You say it’s bad for health?

Then eat less!

This was why the market for refined salt was not big, and the profits were not very rewarding.

The mission Sui Xiong entrusted Palin with, was to research a way to purify coarse salt while keeping the cost to a minimum. And it was still the same old rule where research budget was of concern. There was no need to worry about money. Spend as much as was required.

Even so, it still took Palin more than a decade to complete this research.

The way that he and the team of researchers he led had finally found was surprisingly simple.

It was so simple that only two words were needed.

“Powder” and “wash.”