my magic industry

Chapter 8 Raw Materials
Probably the shady man that Xia Lin saw yesterday was a resident staff member of the northern military in the imperial capital.

Seeing Harper walking out of the station in cold sweat with straight eyes, Xia Lin knew that Harper also met the disabled soldier yesterday, so he shook his head speechlessly.

It seems that my friend's psychological quality is not very good, so this is not good, after all, he still has a lot of affairs that need to be negotiated and left to him to deal with.

"Xia Lin, what are we going to do next?"

Harper, who finally came back to his senses, looked at the Northern Army Garrison not far away with lingering fear, and asked Xia Lin.

"Accompany me to the North District to buy a house and settle down my family, and then go to investigate the market and find some profitable businesses to support our magic research."

Xia Lin succinctly explained the upcoming itinerary, and finally asked another question:
"Harper, do you know where there is any news about the property?"

"Buy a house? Let me think about it...then we should go to the Adventurer's Guild."

Harper pondered for a moment, and then mentioned a location that made Xia Lin feel a little confused. In fact, he thought that Harper would take him to someone similar to the real estate agent in his previous life to see the house.

He has no channels in this area, but a child like Harper who grew up in the Central District should know many people who are engaged in this area.

"Isn't the Adventurer's Guild a place to issue missions to hire adventurers? Can you buy a house there?"

"Of course, I remember that the Adventurer's Guild has a bulletin board for posting transaction information, and you can post various sales and purchase messages on it as long as you spend one silver maar.

Lots of people post their homes for sale there.If you look for those nasty intermediary businessmen, the intermediary fees will cost a lot of money. "

Harper saw that Xia Lin seemed to regard the Adventurer's Guild as a terrifying existence that was only related to the feat of slaying dragons in the adventure stories played by the bards on the street, and explained patiently.

"So that's the case, let's go and have a look!"

Xia Lin nodded thoughtfully, unexpectedly, someone in this world has already realized the role of traffic, and even tried to use it.

Sure enough, there are smart people in any era, but Xia Lin is quite skeptical about how useful those advertisements can be in this world where the illiteracy rate exceeds 90.00%.

Arriving near the Adventurer's Guild in the Central District of the Imperial Capital, the surrounding people seemed to have a lot of martial arts. Basically, seven or eight of the ten pedestrians were adventurers carrying weapons wrapped in cloth.

It was a pity to see two rare mages appearing in such a place, and a deputy head of a large mercenary group who claimed to be the Wind Wolf Mercenary Group tried to recruit the two of them.

Xia Lin found the notice board standing outside the Adventurer's Guild, and found that there were indeed a lot of transaction information written in charcoal on the lime plastered surface.

He and Harper searched together, and when they saw the news of the sale of houses in the North District, they recorded the above contact address on the parchment they brought with them, and planned to look at them one by one later.

However, there are not many houses for sale in the North District. Even if two people search the bulletin boards, there are only four houses.

Xia Lin felt that Harper alone was enough to deal with it. In order to increase efficiency and train Harper, Xia Lin simply gave Harper five gold lents and asked him to go and buy a suitable house for himself.

In order to buy a house that suits her wishes, Xia Lin roughly explained her requirements to Harper:

One is to have at least two floors, and it is best to have a yard. If it is not possible, a combination of one floor and a yard will do, so that he will have enough space for his next small workshop production.

The second is that there are many rooms. There are five people in Xia Lin's family, and it is convenient to have at least four rooms. Xia Lin doesn't want to live with her elder brother who snores at night.

Mage meditation is the most taboo of external interference, so even the dormitories of the military students in the academy are all narrow single rooms, and the wooden doors and walls are specially made quite thick for sound insulation.

Of course, if the mage's mental power and concentration are strong enough, it is not impossible to meditate in a noisy environment, but the efficiency will be reduced a lot.

As for the others, it would be great if you can buy the matching furniture with a small sum of money. Xia Lin simply doesn't have the time and budget to equip the house with new furniture one by one.

Xia Lin himself went to the market to see what raw materials he could find, what the cost of various raw materials was, and to see what he could use to earn some research funds next.

After agreeing on a meeting place with Harper, Xia Lin came to the largest Hema Market in the Central District.

Although the scale of this market is not as large as the wharf markets in the southern and northern districts, the convenient transportation still allows most of the guilds and chambers of commerce in the imperial capital to set up bases here to collect and distribute goods in the central and western districts.

These strongholds are connected in succession, thus forming the huge Hema Market covering three or four blocks.

Faced with such a huge market, if you have no clue, you may not be able to find what you need after searching for a long time.

Naturally, Xia Lin would not waste time aimlessly like this. He had already determined the approximate goals when he was formulating plans B, C, and D.

The dye industry is one of the origins of modern chemistry in the previous life. According to Xia Lin’s chemical history knowledge, in the era of natural dyes, if you want to make the dyeing of cloth bright and even, and it cannot be washed off, you need the role of mordant.

The commonly used mordants include alum, soap alum, bile alum, etc. These minerals are Xia Lin's target.

Needless to say, the herbal medicine shop.

The Sassen Empire is located in the south of the mainland, and the climate is hot and humid. The terrain in the south is mostly swampy and dense forests. If there is not a group of doctors born out of the native witch doctors in the south to ensure basic medical care, the Sassen Empire may be plagued by epidemics every year.

Herbal medicine is a brand-new medical system established by doctors for hundreds of years by absorbing the witch medicine system of witch doctors and the magic medicine system of alchemists. In it, there should be some rare animals, plants and minerals. Element.

As for the stone store, Xia Lin only bought quicklime, a raw material widely used in the chemical industry.

The food store is to find out the prices of the cheapest oil and soybeans, and to see if they can try to produce soap, a must-have profitable commodity for travelers.

Originally, Xia Lin only hoped to be able to find a few raw materials he needed here and be satisfied, but after going around in the huge market according to the plan, Xia Lin's harvest was even greater than he expected.

Alum, green alum, bile alum, Glauber's salt, lime, diatomaceous earth, sulfur, saltpeter, these basic chemical raw materials, he has found stable supply channels from corresponding stores.

Although both sulfur and saltpeter are used by physicians as medicinal materials in small doses, and the sources of herbal medicine shops are very limited, they are still a clear source of sulfuric acid and nitric acid.

And even if there are only the first six chemical raw materials, Xia Lin can do a lot of tricks.

Among other things, with diatomaceous earth as a natural adsorbent, Xia Lin only needs to buy brown sugar in bulk, and then add diatomaceous earth to the brown sugar solution to easily obtain a clear sugar solution, and then white sugar.

Adding soybean milk to the white sugar solution can also obtain crystal clear rock sugar through a series of processes.And these two things obviously mean huge profits in this era.

After an afternoon of data collection and market research, Xia Lin left the Hema market with these key materials contentedly. After meeting with Harper, he got another piece of good news.

There was a seller who urgently needed funds to make up for the shortfall in the business because a sea trade ship invested in Daffa Port capsized in a storm. The asking price for a standard two-story house of about [-] square meters that he was eager to sell was only four Kim Lunt.

You must know that the average price of houses regulated like this in the North District is at least five guilds or more. The moment Harper heard the seller's offer, he decisively finalized his willingness to buy.

However, out of a responsible attitude, Harper still went through some bargaining, and finally bought the house at a price of three gold lents and fifty silver mahrs on the condition that everything in the house was included.

This price can be said to be unprofitable. After Xia Lin got the land deed, house deed and the remaining money from Harper, she couldn't wait to go to her new home with Harper.

Xia Lin was also very satisfied with this house located in the seventh building on the north side of Yinyu Street on the west side of the North District.

There are two floors with an area of ​​[-] square meters each. The first floor has a kitchen, dining room, front hall and small toilet. The second floor is divided into two rows of four rooms separated by corridors. Comes with a bunch of old furniture.

These include two sets of tables and chairs and various kitchen utensils on the first floor, two toilets in the small toilet, wooden beds in the four bedrooms on the second floor, some bamboo baskets for storing things, wooden boxes and wooden shelves, etc.

Looking at this house, which could almost be called a handbag, Xia Lin decided to take over her parents and siblings from the slums tomorrow.

Then I am going to start the business of making white sugar, and if possible, I will also make some refined salt, and use the brine filtered out of coarse salt to prepare the raw materials for the subsequent plan.

In order to thank Harper, Xia Lin gave Harper a bonus of ten silver mals without hesitation after seeing the condition of the house.

Then he invited Harper to a nearby restaurant for a seafood risotto worth thirty copper bis, and gave him half a day off tomorrow morning with pay.

After seeing off the contented Harper, Xia Lin returned to the house she had just bought, lit two candles for illumination, and sat at the dining table on the first floor by the dim candlelight, serving white sugar, refined salt and soap production is planned.

The source of raw materials, the manpower required, the size and quantity of containers for cooking sugar and salt, the source of charcoal fuel, the source of water for dissolving materials, etc., all factors must be clearly planned one by one.

Xia Lin will also draw the drawings of the simple centrifuge and filter device that need to be built.

When making plans, Xia Lin looked up at the layout of the kitchen on the first floor, and thought that he would probably need to hire stonemasons and carpenters to expand the number of stoves and do some fire prevention measures.

On the first floor of [-] square meters, it should be no problem to plan a workshop area of ​​[-] to [-] square meters. After adding partition walls, the front hall can also be transformed into a facade for future sales of white sugar, rock sugar, refined salt and other commodities.

But after making money in the future, you still have to consider buying a manor outside the city, which is convenient for keeping secrets and has enough land to accommodate various factories that will be needed in the future.

(End of this chapter)