Published: March 12, 2025
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-THREE: CRYSTAL HORNED INSECT
Not knowing what to prepare is one thing, but once Zhao Hai began to prepare, he realized he had underestimated the situation. He thought that as long as he had the oil press ready, he could start producing nut oil.
However, when it actually came time to prepare, he discovered there were still many things he lacked. First, they needed a place to wash the nuts. After taking the nuts out, they must be cleaned before being pressed for oil; otherwise, the nut oil would contain hairs from the nut skin, affecting its quality.
Secondly, they needed to continually feed nuts into the oil press, which required manpower and tools. The manpower part was easy to manage since Zhao Hai could use undead beings as substitutes, but he still needed to prepare the tools. Although he had quite a few living supplies, he did not yet have the tools for pressing oil.
Thirdly, they also needed containers, either wooden barrels or iron boxes; they couldn't just let the oil pour onto the ground. Producing a thousand pounds of oil a day was not a small amount, so they needed quite a few containers.
At the moment, Zhao Hai had no carpenters, and no one to make wooden barrels. The cost of iron barrels was prohibitively high, and Zhao Hai's current funds were insufficient to buy many iron barrels; he could only buy some wooden barrels to use for now.
As a result, Zhao Hai realized that his current amount of money was barely enough for anything. Even if he wanted to develop quickly, it would not be possible.
Zhao Hai had no choice but to wait until the oil press arrived and then go to Casa City to see how much the wooden barrels were, and then prepare to buy some.
Now, Zhao Hai felt a bit regretful. He shouldn't have bought the oil press first; it would have been better to save that money to buy other things. What he should do now is to save some Blue-eyed Rabbits first and have Laura find a buyer for them, as this would be a no-cost transaction for Zhao Hai.
Although, due to funding issues, the oil factory might not form any significant scale for the time being, the room still needed to be organized. When the oil presses arrived, there had to be a place to install them.
While the slaves were cleaning the room, Zhao Hai and Merlin left the castle and headed straight for the lake in the mountains. There were no fish in the lake, possibly due to the toxins from the beast tide, but it couldn't be ruled out that there might also be powerful water-type magical beasts in the lake. If there really were water-type magical beasts, the fish they threw in would essentially be feeding the magical beasts. To be safe, Zhao Hai decided to have Merlin investigate the lake in the mountains thoroughly to confirm whether or not there were magical beasts present.
Galen and Meg followed along. If they really did find powerful water-type magical beasts in the lake, they could help deal with them.
Although they had surveyed the area before, this time Merlin was more detailed in her investigation, and she was also looking at the direction of the water flow. After all, if they didn't understand the flow of the water in the lake, it wouldn't matter how many fish they threw in; they would all swim away.
Fortunately, the lake really didn't have any water-type magical beasts, and the water flow didn't seem too rapid. There were also no creatures in the water, which seemed to be due to the strong toxicity from the magical beasts and undead beings in the swamp area. Thus, the lake in the mountains had no life.
Zhao Hai was still a bit uneasy and sent an undead being into the lake to check the source of the water. Unfortunately, he couldn't find the source at all. The lake had an odd structure; on Zhao Hai's right side, there was an inlet, while on the left side, there was an outlet. Both the inlet and outlet were mined tunnels dug by dwarves, but something was blocking these two openings.
The undead being reported that the inlet and outlet were blocked, so they couldn't get through. This surprised Zhao Hai. He hurriedly entered the space and opened a screen to see what was blocking the water below.