novelAbuy #670 - Purple Egg Sweet Beans and Blue Coffee
#670 - Purple Egg Sweet Beans and Blue Coffee
“The pendulum measurement system has a problem?” Horn frowned, looking at the surveying monks standing in a row in front of him. “Are you sure it's not the angle or the ball being too large, causing the simple pendulum to become a compound pendulum?”
Entering mid-February of 1447, the entire northern county of Black Serpent Bay began to gradually warm up, but this was not the reason for the monks' sweating.
When the Northern County Council was established, with the votes of the Joan Party and the Shadow Society, they unanimously agreed to join the Holy Axis, handing over customs and diplomatic rights and accepting the garrison.
In order to ensure the smooth progress of federalization, Joan specially set up an office for Horn in the temple of Long Dike City.
In recent days, the heads of wizard families, the leaders of large and medium-sized secret societies, newly appointed officers, and the elders of the Black Serpent Bay village community have all visited here.
In the future, when Horn leaves, this will be the Holy Axis office, used to allocate tariffs, arbitrate justice, and convey Horn's will.
After the Holy Axis office was stationed in the Northern County Council, it began to promote the metric system - meters, cubic meters, tons, and other units.
This was one of the planned projects for 1447, originally limited to the Thousand River Valley, but since the Northern County had already sided with Horn, it naturally had to be included.
However, problems arose as soon as the metric units were implemented in Black Serpent Bay.
From the mouths of the craftsmen and monks in charge of surveying, Horn actually heard that pendulum measurement had varying degrees of error in the Black Serpent Bay area.
The small ones had only three to five centimeters of difference, while the large ones had seven to eight centimeters of difference.
“We repeated it many times, conducted a large number of tests, and the results were consistent.” The measuring monk handed a small bag to Horn's side, “However, according to the law of natural theology, we conducted a large number of explorations in the vicinity, looking for commonalities, and then we discovered this.”
Reaching out to open the small bag, Horn pinched a sticky, reddish-brown waxy soil from the bag, like weathered plasticine.
“What is this?”
“The locals call it hollow soil.” The monk stood up straight, but dared not look at Horn, only looking at the top of his head, “According to the three laws of mechanics you proposed, the acceleration of gravity should be constant, so we believe that this soil affects the measurement of the pendulum.”
Lowering his head to look at the reddish-brown clay in his hand, Horn weighed it, and found that it was much lighter than ordinary clay.
Is it these things that cause gravity anomalies?
Pendulum ranging is based on the acceleration of gravity. If other conditions remain unchanged, the shorter the pendulum length, the smaller the acceleration of gravity.
After such a long time of confirmation, Horn can basically confirm that this world macroscopically conforms to Newton's coffin lid.
But now there is actually a gravity anomaly that shortens the pendulum rope length by seven or eight centimeters, which is a bit strange.
But can it be stranger than metal being almost non-conductive? Can it be stranger than water vapor disappearing out of thin air?
After the initial doubts, Horn calmed down. He pondered for a moment: “How about this, dig up more of this soil, send a part to the Dragon Language Alchemy University for experiments, and send the other part to the Joan Party to see if they have any information.”
“Yes, Your Eminence.” A row of monks tapped their chests in salute at the same time, and then walked out of the office in the temple in a robotic manner.
After they left, Horn threw the clay into the bag, but did not continue to deal with official business. Instead, he walked to the window and looked at the several vegetable plots planted in the yard.
The lush vines lay on the supports, and tender new shoots poked their heads out of the moist soil, swaying in the blazing sunlight.
I have to say, Black Serpent Bay is indeed a magical treasure land.
Not only does it have sweet branches, a magical crop that produces white sugar, but also a large number of other magical crops.
Horn specially set up an agricultural experiment team under the name of the office, specializing in the promotion, research, and commercialization of these crops.
For example, the vegetable purple egg, common on Vegetable Market Street in Long Dike City, is a unique crop that the Thousand River Valley does not have.
Its shape is similar to a purple-skinned round eggplant, but it can grow as big as a pumpkin.
Cutting it open, you can smell a faint metallic smell, and only when you eat it, will there be a tomato-like sweet and sour taste.
Like the potato root, the purple egg has a considerable amount of neurotoxin, and one bite is enough to kill, but fortunately, the toxins are concentrated in the outer skin, so there is no problem as long as you peel it before eating.
Leaving aside the taste, the first point that Horn values most is its growth rate.
It can produce sweet and sour flavored seasoning vegetables in three to four months. Although the yield per plant is low, the individual is large, which can provide a large amount of food in a short time, and it is very easy to preserve.
Even in the hot climate of Black Serpent Bay, it can be preserved for a long time, let alone in the Thousand River Valley.
For farmers, taking out half an acre of land to grow this vegetable is a rare embellishment in their daily light diet.
Another important agricultural crop is the sweet bean.
Horn's eyes shifted to the other side of the vegetable plot, which was a tall stalk, with a pomegranate-like round ball with a diameter of about 5-10 cm hanging from the top.
The first time he got the sweet bean in his hand, he thought it was some kind of fruit, until the locals peeled off the skin to reveal the green round beans inside.
Although it looks a lot like mung beans, the actual taste is very similar to the old corn kernels made when recalling bitterness and sweetness.
It is not only hard but also very prickly to the throat, and you have to chew for a long time before you can swallow it.
This sweet bean is the staple food of the people of Black Serpent Bay. The taste is very poor, but the yield is very high. Although it is not as good as potato roots, it is about 200 to 300 pounds per acre.
However, according to the locals, if you only eat sweet beans, you will have hallucinations after eating for a long time, and you will never feel full, and you will be hungry after eating.
This is why the people of Black Serpent Bay still import a lot of food despite having this high-yield food.
But for Horn, this food can just solve the gap in the Thousand River Valley Plain County where oats and other relief-type grains cannot be grown.
Through these two crops, Horn can carry out economic complementarity between the two sides through industrial product output and economic crop input, and can also improve the living standards of both sides, which is definitely a win-win situation.
Although these two crops have more or less problems, they can be completely handed over to Catherine and the batch of agricultural miracle priests to improve.
Catherine is not the only wizard who has the ability to manipulate plant spells. Horn has dug up several in Black Serpent Bay during this time.
Of the crops mentioned earlier, the only one without problems is the pearl rice.
Horn initially thought that this pearl rice was corn, but the people of Black Serpent Bay told him that it was a berry-like round fruit that grows on trees.
After frying and sifting off the skin, you can get white pearl-like rice grains, which are ground into powder and soaked in hot water, which will turn the water into a light blue color, with a unique fragrance and can also refresh your mind.
This blue pulp tastes bitter, and the people of Black Serpent Bay always like to add various seasonings to it, such as cinnamon cloves lizard tongue, fennel cardamom aloe juice, until it is added into a viscous liquid before it can be eaten.
Therefore, in Black Serpent Bay, this pearl rice blue pulp is a heavy-tasting niche drink.
But it is different when it is placed in Horn's hands.
After the experience of coffee and tea, Horn simply added milk and white sugar to the blue pulp, and instantly changed its flavor.
During his time in Black Serpent Bay, he almost replaced black tea with this blue pulp and personally renamed it "Blue Pulp Coffee".
Although he doesn't understand why he added two strange syllables after blue pulp, it does not prevent this drink from starting to spread on a small scale in the Salvation Army.
One of the reasons why Horn promotes this blue pulp coffee besides his feelings is to suppress the heavy drinking culture in the Thousand River Valley.
It's not that he opposes drinking, but that the people of the Thousand River Valley drink too much, almost using alcohol as all the entertainment drinks in their lives.
Therefore, during this time in Black Serpent Bay, Horn spent most of his time fiddling with these vegetables in addition to organizing the Northern County Council.
But peaceful time is always limited. Sitting back at his desk, Horn had to pick up the conscription roster of the new army of the Northern County Council.