Starting Today, I’ll Work as a City Lord - CH 75

Mina squatted in front of the salt pile. Looking at the black salt ores, she found it hard to associate them with the white salt she had previously seen.

“Young Master, does the salt we eat come from here?” Mina asked in a soft voice.

“Yes. It’s incredible, right? This world is way more complicated than it seems. In my hometown, people can go up in the sky and down into the ground, and travel hundreds of kilometers¹ in a day.”

“What? How is that possible?” Nicole said, her eyes widening and jaws dropping. She would have been fine with anything else, but flying and traveling hundreds of kilometers in just a day was way too unbelievable for her.

“Ha ha ha… Nothing is impossible. Maybe we can also do it in the future. Eh, we probably will,” Liu Feng said, smiling. With the current industrial power of this world, asking him to build aircraft, excavators, and the like would be asking the impossible. However, there were other ways he could try to accomplish these goals.

“As for flying, are you talking about bird beastkins? But I haven’t heard anything about them in a long time,” Anri said, frowning.

“Bird beastkins?” Liu Feng asked, blinking his eyes. “Are they the beastkins with wings?”

“Hmm? Young Master, have you seen them before?” Mina said, surprised. “I haven’t seen any since about 5 years ago.”

“No, I have never seen them before. Mina, you were the first beastkin I saw,” Liu Feng said, shaking his head. He realized that he still had a lot to learn about this world.

“They are the beastkins with the most amount of freedom due to their ability to fly. However, they all disappeared without a trace after the blizzard 5 years ago,” Mina said sadly. All the beastkins of the other races were envious of the bird beastkins because they could fly freely in the sky.

“Alright, let’s not think about the sad things anymore and start making salt,” Liu Feng said, hurriedly changing the subject. If they continue, they would bring up a ton of bad memories, which would ruin a perfectly good day. Girls are cuter when they smile.

What do we do?” Anri asked excitedly. She was interested in odd things and had recently been pestering Nicole to teach her to make sweets.

“Bring all the tools over!” Liu Feng shouted.

Someone immediately went to get the tools. Salt sieves, hammers, cloth, charcoal, wooden barrel, iron pots, and stone mills were all brought in.

Then soldiers went to guard the door. That was how Liu Feng usually did things. Every time Liu Feng planned to do something big, he would have soldiers guard the house he was in. He would even make soldiers guard the roof.

“Let’s start then!” Liu Feng said. He took a hammer and smashed the salt ores into smaller pieces. He then poured them into the stone mill and turned it while adding water.

Mina took the initiative to turn the stone mill and pushed it around easily. Even though strength wasn’t a specialty of cat beastkins, they were still stronger than humans by a long shot.

The salt ores were ground into powder, which then mixed with the water, turning the water murky and dark gray.

“This…” No one in the room understood what was happening, as they couldn’t see any salt.

Liu Feng got another barrel, covered the barrel with 3 layers of linen, and poured the water onto the linen. The linen filtered out many unwanted substances. The water also became a slightly lighter color.”

“Eh? The color of the water became lighter,” Anri said, hurriedly writing something down in her notepad.

“All the salt are in the water. The reason why the salt that everyone sees aren’t white is because there are a lot of contaminants in the water,” Liu Feng explained. He then picked up another wooden bucket and covered it with 7 layers of linen, and poured in the water again. The color changed again and became a light brownish and reddish color.

“The water is relatively clean right now and most of the contaminants have been filtered out. Now we just need to remove the toxic contaminants from the water…”

Liu Feng wrapped a few pieces of charcoal with linen and put them in a wooden funnel. He then wrapped some more charcoal with linen and put that on top of the previous one and placed the funnel on top of a small barrel. “Charcoal is a good thing. Not only can we use it to make fire, but it can also absorb many toxic substances.”

Then he poured water into the funnel, and the water that fell into the barrel below had a light green color.”

“The color changed again,” Nicole said, amazed.

“This water is now safe and non-toxic. Now we just have to boil the water dry,” Liu Feng said. He poured the water into an iron pot, and Nicole immediately started a fire.

“Is that all we have to do?” Mina asked, looking at the boiling water in the pot.

“We just need to wait for a while before we can see the salt,” Liu Feng said, laughing lightly. This was the method that he had found back when he was searching on earth.

Time passed, and the water in the pot was boiled dry, leaving behind a layer of light green crystals.

“Is this salt?” Niu Ben asked, his eyes widening. How come these salts look completely different from the ones that I know?

“This is rock salt. You’ll know after you taste it,” Liu Feng shrugged. He got a piece of rock salt and put it in his mouth. It had a pure salt taste and had no bitterness.

Niu Ben took a pinky sized rock salt and put it in his mouth. It was so salty that his expression changed, but he resisted the urge of spitting it out as he was unwilling to waste it.

“Let me try it.”

“Salt actually appears in such a magical way? I’ll definitely regret it if I don’t try it.”

“I want to take some back with me to cook meals with.”

Salt merchants, be afraid. No one will buy your overpriced salt anymore.

Translator’s Note:

¹ I am not sure if this is kilometers or miles. Kilometer is 公里 while miles is 英里. The author only wrote 里. I assume it’s kilometers since pretty much only the US, Liberia, and Myanmar use imperial measurements.

I don’t have a computer right now because reasons and translating using a phone is a pain so don’t expect any chapters until I get a computer.