150 – Ironwood Quality Thorns

At the present stage, apart from the shops opened by the few freedmen, the remaining workshops and shops of the Flower Town were opened by Liszt. Anyway, there weren't many freedmen. Liszt didn't mind. He monopolized the business of the Flower Town, this was his turf.

Since he said that he wanted to build workshops, then they would be built.

Gort only had some misgivings: “Sir, the soap workshop can be handed over to Burnell, the brewery can be handed to Frank, Burdin, and Huntel, and the cooper shop can be handed to the many coopers… As for the peanut processing workshop, what is it? To whom should it be handed to?”

“That would be to do simple processing of harvested peanuts. You can boil or fry them together with the sh.e.l.l and then sell them, you can just sell the kernel, you can make peanut b.u.t.ter, or you can develop some peanut recipes with unique flavors. In a nutsh.e.l.l, bland peanuts should be made tasty. It's the same principle as making pineapple bread.”

“Who will make the tasty peanuts?”

“Among the serf we purchased, aren't there a few who had worked as cooks in a foreign castle? My castle doesn't need so many cooks for the time being. Have these people come up with ways to make tasty peanuts… There's one thing to keep in mind, Adviser Gort.”

“Yes?”

“The prices of agricultural produce produced by the Flower Town are very low, and they are not worth trading. However, after being processed, they could be sold at a good price. We could even buy agricultural produce from outside to be processed. I hope that the Flower Town can become the processing center for agricultural produce.”

Gort understood him: “The Tulip Castle very seldom sells whole magic ingredient tulips. Instead, magic ingredient tulips would be made into finished magic ingredient products and then sold outside. It's the same principle, right?”

“Your understanding is correct.”

“I'll go make the arrangements now.”

Shortly after Gort left, Liszt also left the castle.

He rushed to the underbrush with the thorns sprite worm's worm stalk to go look for the fast-growing wooden thorns. Standing amid the underbrush, apart from the thorns bushes, he could only see bare slopes in the distance. Among the thorns underbrush, there were fast-growing poisonous thorns and fast-growing spiky thorns, each occupying a large tract of land separated from the rest.

“Sir Lord!” 2 worm protection team members hurriedly stepped forward and greeted Liszt. They were serfs of the dairy farm. However, due to their robust physiques, they were selected by Röhm as worm protection team members, getting a good-paying part-time job.

Liszt asked: “Did you find any unusual thorns in the underbrush?”

He had asked Röhm to tell to the worm protection team members here to pay more attention to the growth of thorns. If there were any unusual thorns, they were to report immediately.

A member hesitated for a moment: “Sir Lord, I don't know whether the thorns are unusual.”

“Oh, what's the matter?”

“There's a field of thorns. The thorns there became… became very st.u.r.dy.”

“Very st.u.r.dy you say? Take me to see them.”

The worm protection team members quickly took Liszt to the st.u.r.dy thorns.

There, whether it was the color or the spikes, the thorns looked ordinary. However, when compared with ordinary thorns, they were twice as thick. They clearly stood out, unlike what the worm protection team member claimed.

Of course, commoners had limited IQ, so Liszt showed understanding, saying: “Cut off a thorns.”

The worm protection team had no iron tools, they only had fairly cheap bone weapons.

They quickly pulled out their bone blades and fiercely slashed at the thorns. Thorns were small shrubs and were not difficult to cut. Besides, these thorns were still young. The worm protecting team members were confident that they could chop off the thorns with a strike, and show their valiance in front of the Sir Lord.

However, they were embarra.s.sed instead. When the bone blades slashed at the thorns trunk, they issued a sharp and clear sound and bounced off, leaving only a very shallow mark.

“Uh.” A little agitated, the 2 worm protection team members brandished their bone blades again, chopping down vigorously. However, every time they chopped at the thorns trunk, they could only leave shallow marks. After striking a dozen times in a row, they could not even cut open a thumb-wide crack. Instead, they chipped off their bone blades.

The bone blades were about to break.

“Stop. Thomas, give them Knight swords to have a try.” His eyes s.h.i.+ning, Liszt roughly understood the variation nature of the fast-growing wooden thorns.

Taking the Knight swords, the worm protection team members continued to chop down. Yet they still were unable to cut the thorns off quickly. Fortunately, the Knight swords were made of fine steel and were very resilient. By chopping down continuously, they ground the thorns little by little until they finally cut off a wrist-sized thorns. Then they cut off the tiny branches until they had a bare thorns pole.

Panting, they handed it to Liszt.

Holding the thorns pole in his hand, Liszt could feel the impressive weight of the pole.

“It's very heavy and very st.u.r.dy and resilient. If I'm not mistaken, its wood variation is likely to be in the direction of ‘ironwood'.”

Ironwood, as the name implied, was wood as hard as iron. On Earth, many wood was known as ironwood – iron birch, redwood, and the like. They were harder than iron, sank in water, were inhospitable to insects, and even nails could not penetrate them. Many s.h.i.+ps, vehicles, special buildings, and even s.p.a.cecraft parts were made of ironwood.

The current fast-growing wooden thorns still could not meet the standards of ironwood.

However, it was its ‘fast-growing' characteristic that determined its value. Even if it didn't meet the standard of ironwood, it still surpa.s.sed ordinary wood by far and was superior to iron.

“With this quality, fast-growing wooden thorns is akin to iron that grows on its own!”

It wasn't that there were no ironwood quality trees in the Thorns Ridge – rock tree, stone tree, among others. However, they were very few in numbers and grew very slowly, taking upwards of 100 years to mature. With every tree that was felled, there would be a tree less.

As fast-growing wooden thorns could mature quickly, its value was great. Liszt himself found it hard to imagine.

“Previous poisonous and spiky variants cannot compared with ironwood, at all! This is a treasure of thorns! My thorns sprite worm, good job! As a treat, I'll give you as much jade powder you can eat tonight!” This was a thorns sprite worn chain mission reward, it was due to the influence of the thorns sprite worm's worm stalk that such a variation took place.

The more he thought about it, the more he felt like the thorns sprite worm had a fighting chance in terms of evolution into a thorns lesser sprite.

“I've decided!” His spirits rose, and he could not suppress this idea: “The 180 acres of shrubs influenced by the thorns sprite worm's worm stalk will be completely dedicated to fast-growing wooden thorns!”

Ordinary fast-growing thorns, poisonous fast-growing, and wooden fast-growing thorns would either be transplanted to other places or cut down directly. They should not take up the influence of the thorns sprite worm's worm stalk.

Blackdragon went into gallop, taking Liszt back to the castle as fast as a gust of wind.

He wanted to immediately summon Isaiah, the newly appointed administrative officer, and redesign the underbrush with the thorns sprite worm's worm stalk. However, after his head cooled down from the gust of wind, a crucial issue came to his mind: “The thorns sprite worm is still acc.u.mulating power for evolution, and the chain mission is not over yet. The fast-growing thorns should have room for other variations.”

It would be very difficult to produce new variations if he were to cut down the ordinary fast-growing thorns.

“No, I can't cut down the ordinary fast-growing thorns. Ironwood can wait, I'm not in a hurry. Now the most important thing is to let the thorns sprite worm continue to develop and the fast-growing thorns continue to vary… Nevertheless, the name of the fast-growing wooden thorns has to be changed! Lets call it fast-growing iron thorns!”