The Empress’s Gigolo

“No, no, no, this is not what I meant. The planet will be affected by this force, but it is not just a matter of falling down. I will elaborate on this later, but right now, what you need to know is the concept.

To put it simply, when the planet is in motion, it will create various topological conditions, such as mountain ranges rising from flat land, oceans becoming plains, mountain ranges levelling to flat land, and so on. Of course, it will take a long time, in terms of millions of years.

In some cases, oceans became plains or mountain ranges and the sea water didn’t evaporate in time before being swallowed into the ground by the change. After countless years of change, they were discovered accidentally by people,” Ren Baqian said.

“Teacher, you mean this place was previously an ocean?” Shi Gan asked. What Ren Baqian said was really astounding.

This place was the inland area of Dayao and thousands to ten thousand kilometers away from the sea. Was this place originally an ocean? Did he mean that the location of Dayao and the Yun Nation was originally an ocean?

“There is such a possibility and this is just a guess. An analysis on the composition of the black water in the Black Pool is needed to verify this.” Ren Baqian nodded his head.

The crowd was startled and then started asking, “What’s next? Are we just trying to prove this?”

“Next, you should know that salt is obtained from seawater…” Right after Ren Baqian said this, the crowd was shocked. “We can produce salt here?”

Dayao lacked salt and even the children knew that. Most of the salt in Dayao was imported from other countries. If salt could be produced here, the significance was something even the kids understood.

“That will depend on the composition of this water.” Ren Baqian didn’t want to say for sure. but tasting the water earlier had proved there was salt within. They only needed to know whether it could produce edible well salt.

“How do we find out the composition of the water?” the crowd asked.

“What is chemistry used for? Chemistry is for analyzing, transforming, and extracting materials. However, your standards are all too low to conduct these experiments. Therefore, treat this as a field trip,” Ren Baqian said with a smile.

Then, he asked Na Gu, “Has this place ever dried up before?”

“I don’t know.” Na Gu was a little overwhelmed. She didn’t understand half of what was said, but felt it was something very advanced.

“Bring me a rope,” Ren Baqian shouted behind him. He wanted to test the depth of the Black Pool.

Soon enough, a stone about the size of a human head was quickly tied to a rope and thrown into the pool. It went in with a “plop” sound, and the water splashed about.

Apart from throwing the stone inside, there were no other signs of life in the pool.

“Sir, the rope has stopped.” The rope lowered by the guard had stopped after five or six meters.

“Find me a stick and push the rope forward. Try to drop it at the center and test out a few places.” The students ran to find branch after receiving Ren Baqian’s order.

Although Ren Baqian didn’t confirm it, the thought of producing salt excited all of them.

If they could succeed in producing salt, it would be a significant event.

After several attempts, the deepest part was found to be about 10 meters.

Ren Baqian noted down everything after doing some calculations. He thought of going to the stream in the mountains that flowed with light brown water.

“In the direction they are going, it will take one day to walk there. We will take at least one and a half days to get there,” Na Gu said.

Based on Ren Baqian’s estimation, he needed to go back to Earth first before going to that place.

They immediately headed back to the stronghold. Whenever there were sounds of any small animals, the guards would quickly hunt for them. After all, even a mosquito’s leg had meat. There wasn’t much food in the stronghold, so it would be best to solve the food problem themselves.

Once they reached the stronghold, Ren Baqian made arrangements for half of the guards to build houses and half of them to go hunting.

At night, Ren Baqian woke up Lin Qiaole. “I am going to rub the Hearthstone. Do you want to see?”

Ren Baqian felt he that he had to at least inform Lin Qiaole or else she would go mad if she woke up and discovered he was gone. This girl was silly, but quite pragmatic at times.

“What is a Hearthstone?” Lin Qiaole forced her eyes open and gave him a confused look.

Ren Baqian, “…”

“Anyway, I need to go away for a while. It will take about one day, and you don’t need to worry,” Ren Baqian informed her.

“No way, Her Majesty asked me to protect you.” Lin Qiaole was awake now.

“The place I am going to is a state secret which the empress knows. Just wait for me here.” Ren Baqian waved his hands, took a bottle of water collected from the Black Pool, and walked to a corner of the room. He thought of going back to Earth and disappeared in a flash.

At the moment of his disappearance, Lin Qiaole felt a fluctuation in the air. Her eyes blazed, and she lunged at Ren Baqian like a lioness, but she failed to get ahold of him and caught only thin air.

“Eh?!” Lin Qiaole was surprised and stretched her hands twice to grab him, but there was still nothing.

“Where is he? This is very strange. Her Majesty tasked me to protect him, but if he dies in another place, the empress wouldn’t blame me, right? Hey, he still hasn’t given me the candies …” Lin Qiaole muttered a few words. She sat down against the wall, stared at the location where Ren Baqian had disappeared, and was unable to keep her eyes open after a few minutes.

Immediately after going back to Earth, Ren Baqian contacted Yang Sen to arrange a laboratory for him to conduct the analysis. Then, he hurriedly headed to Shanghai.

In any case, he would be finding someone to analyze the contents of the black water. Sooner or later, those people in the laboratory would find out as well. As such, he might as well save them the trouble by letting them do the test.

Seeing Ren Baqian with a bottle of water, Yang Sen was thrilled. After some time, the results finally came out. “Is this brine?”

“What is it composed of?” Ren Baqian asked. Yang Sen handed him the results directly.

Ren Baqian took a glance and saw Na,K, Ca, Mg, Li, Br, I, Cl, SO(2-)4, CO3-, B2O3, and HCO3. (Sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, bromine, iodine, chloride, sulphide, sulphate, carbonate, boron trioxide, and bicarbonate). In addition to these substances, there were many other chemicals he couldn’t even remember.

He reckoned his chemistry teacher was about to jump out of his coffin.

“What are these things?” Ren Baqian asked unabashedly.

Yang Sen, “…”

“Get a researcher to explain to Mr Ren.” Yang Sen made an internal call. Ren Baqian asked him, but who could he ask?

This question was also recently asked by the one of the researchers.

After a short while, a bespectacled and desolate looking young man came to give them a lecture.

The final conclusion was that this was just black brine. There was nothing special about it and bringing this kind of sample to the laboratory was simply a waste of their time.

“There is nothing else?” Ren Baqian was puzzled. This material was from another world, so shouldn’t there be some differences? The previous sample of soil that he brought back to Earth contained many microorganism that weren’t found here.

“Although there are slight differences, they weren’t significant. These microbes only give us a little bit more insight into the ecology of our target world. Other than that, the composition of the black brine isn’t much different and was not what we anticipated. To put it simply, it is just black brine from another world,” the young man said as he adjusted his spectacles.

Ren Baqian secretly gave a thumbs-up after the young man left. He spoke the truth, and it was no wonder that he was a researcher.

He was definitely not just a dabbler like Ren Baqian.

Ren Baqian chuckled because it didn’t matter. After all, not everything in the other world was useful.

“How’s the cultivation going on?” Ren Baqian asked curiously. He wanted to know how they were progressing on the basic skills.

“The time has been too short to see much effect,” Yang Sen simply said as there was nothing to hide.

Ren Baqian nodded his head, it seemed that the details of the initiation stage were just like this. They had to attain at least the Man Wheel level and convert essence blood into essence qi before they could obtain what they desired.

“It is worth noting that you have to cross a barrier when transitioning from essence blood to essence qi. Many people become stuck in front of this threshold,” Ren Baqian reminded.

“We are aware of this problem. Although each manual didn’t elaborate, the four manuals did confirm this fact. How about you briefly explain to uswhat problems to pay attention to and the main points of each stage,” Yang Sen suggested.

Ren Baqian gestured with his hands. “I cannot help you with this because my cultivation method is different from these and I don’t know these methods very well either.”

“Oh?” Yang Sen’s eyes lit up. He was able to pick up some information from Ren Baqian’s words.

“That is to say there are many cultivation methods?”

“Kind of. However, some cultivation methods require a specific type of person. The methods that I brought here are the most suitable for all of you,” said Ren Baqian after thinking for a moment and nodding his head.

The cultivation methods of the aboriginals and Great Xia were already different.

There were some differences between the [Ruyi Visualization] cultivated by Ren Baqian and the cultivation methods of Great Xia. If this wasn’t the case, he wouldn’t have succeeded in cultivating it.

Yang Sen nodded his head and didn’t bring up the topic of giving them references from the martial arts manuals anymore.

After all, the four martial arts manuals were invaluable to Earth.

If he was too greedy, the other party might resent it. Plus, he still didn’t know what the other party needed, and the other party was also not someone who was utterly selfless.

He would only have the opportunity to bring up the request after both sides had cooperated further.

After leaving the laboratory and before going back to Shancheng, Ren Baqian had Shen Fong prepare the reference materials for distilling the black brine into salt.

Having found out the composition of the black brine, he was quite relieved. He didn’t encounter the problems anticipated and solved the situation with little fanfare.

Although he was a little disappointed, he couldn’t help but to say that this was the best result.

Previously, he had checked some information about distilling black brine to produce salt, but he would have needed to spend more time if he did it himself.

After distilling for a long time, the substances containing sulfuric acid would form monomer crystals and could be dissolved by splashing water on them. As for the salt, it dissolved slower, therefore it remained.

Ren Baqian could imagine the sensation that would ensue when this news reached the imperial court.

No matter how much manpower or material was needed, Dayao wouldn’t let go of this opportunity.

They would be able to depend on themselves for salt.

Also, he could go back and prepare to write the historical records, “The great pioneer, scientist, and educator Ren Baqian led 24 disciples to Nine-peaked Mountain to research salt production and to solve the salt scarcity problem that plagued Dayao since its founding.”

The only regret was that the solution was too simple. There were no twists and turns, so the story would be boring and totally uninteresting to read. He couldn’t show the breathtaking and heart rending experience of undergoing and overcoming the 81 obstacles needed to produce salt.

As he thought about it, seven bottle gourd dolls went to the castle to defeat Snow White and the seven dwarfs in order to save the little match girl. The experience of this mission was enough to write a soul stirring novel.

The other story would be about the Lich King killing the little match girl and Snow White with one slap and sending the seven dwarves to live in seclusion. Which story was more attractive?

Therefore…

Ren Baqian felt that since there weren’t any problems, he would create some for himself.