Release That Witch

It had been four days since the witches and the First Army departed. According to the plan, they should arrive at the Silver City suburb the following afternoon.     

Since they were equipped with Honey's carrier pigeons, Iron Axe, Anna, and Nightingale sent Roland letters every day. Though they were not as fast as mobile phones, they were not slower than newspaper messengers. If there were more carrier pigeons, with birds flying between them all the time, maybe they could achieve the effect of texting.     

With Nightingale away, the chief knight had taken over the task of defending the castle. Roland was puzzled to see that Carter had been especially cheerful these days; it seemed that he had encountered something pleasing. Was being Roland's personal bodyguard the cause of this extra cheerfulness?     

Roland shook his head and focused on the report from Karl Van Bate, the Minister of Construction.     

Over the past month, with the assistance of the witches from Sleeping Island, they had made amazing progress on the construction projects in Border Town.     

The first was the successful completion of the steel bridge across Redwater River. Compared with traditional stone and wooden bridges, the steel bridge was much easier to construct. The main body of the bridge was prefabricated, and then it was hoisted and assembled into place. Two floating islands raised by Lotus in the river course further simplified the difficulty in erecting the bridge, shortening the construction of the main bridge astonishingly into a month.     

By modern standards, this bridge was short and narrow, with a simple structure and low load capacity, making it a project that was purely a waste of materials. However, in this era it could be regarded as a magnificent bridge. It had a total length of 100 meters. The surface of the bridge was flat and wide enough for two carriages to move side by side. The bottom of the bridge was high enough for the inland river ships to pass through, something impossible for any of the heavy stone bridges.     

Secondly, Lotus's new city wall had also been completed. This purely mud-built city wall had increased the size of the town twice over. If he built a city on the basis of the town in the future, the original town would be the virtual "Inner City". However, Roland preferred to use "First Ring" and "Second Ring" to describe it. Perhaps one day in the future, this place could be expanded into a mega-city with seven rings, and officially named the "Imperial Capital".     

Finally, as for the construction of the Kingdom Main Street, some parts of the foot of the Impassable Mountain Range had been flattened by Lotus, greatly reducing the construction time. Now the roads could go straight through.     

"Your Highness, what's your next construction project for Lotus?" Karl asked after reporting the progress.     

It could be seen that he was in extreme admiration of her ability to transform the terrain. He nearly proposed to recruit her in the Ministry of Construction and appoint her as the deputy minister.     

"Well..." Roland was also considering it. He had three major renovation projects to be implemented in the following days.     

The first would be the estuary project. They would look for a low opening in the southern mountain ridge and then level out the terrain to build paths to the shallow beach. This could only be achieved by using Lotus's ability. Once completed, the Western Region would own a seaward harbor.     

The second was residential expansion. Although City Hall had invested a lot of manpower and financial resources to speed up the construction of residential districts, nearly 3,000 people might still be without the warmth of brick houses come winter. The simple shelters and wooden sheds they had at present, could not keep warm. He would need a number of cave dwellings with thick walls and heated brick beds to solve the problem.     

The last project was the construction of a shipyard. To produce shallow water gunboats, he had to build a spacious shipyard first. It could not affect the shipping on Redwater River. Roland planned to lower the riverbank on the west side of the town to form a dry dock. Then he could install a lifting valve at the side of the river to control water intake and runoff. It would be a large project with huge earthwork, which would also require Lotus's ability.     

After considering for a moment, he finally decided to give priority to residential expansion. Since they had brought the refugees from the Eastern Region to Border Town, they were responsible for their basic life necessities. If they froze or starved to death, it would not only be a major loss but would also lower people's sense of belonging to this place.     

"So where should this temporary residential area be located?" Karl asked.     

"Locate it in currently the serf shack district." Roland glanced at the map. "It's far from the defense line of the city walls. They'll also be sheltered from the wind by the Impassable Mountain Range."     

After the minister of construction left, he was about to take a nap in his chair when Kyle Sichi came in.     

"Your Highness, the large-scale acid-making process you required has been successfully developed."     

His words were a great relief to Roland's tiredness. He stood up from the desk in surprise. "Really? Take me to see it."     

They came to the laboratory at Redwater River. Several gray tanks and a furnace had been built next to the Fifth Laboratory. Each tank was as high as two men and had a pipeline connected to its top. The tanks had a smooth shape, clearly Anna's work.     

"My respects to you, Your Highness." A young man bowed to Roland.     

"You're Chavez?" Roland knew that Kyle had brought some apprentices and a distinguished alchemist from Redwater City, but this was his first time meeting this young man.     

"You actually remember my name," Chavez said in surprise.     

"Sir Kyle has mentioned you on many occasions." Roland patted his shoulder in encouragement. "Nice work." Then he looked to the chief alchemist and asked, "How is acid produced here?"     

Kyle laughed while touching his beard. "It was developed successfully, because I deducted the chemical equations completely from the 'Elementary Chemistry'. Look at that furnace. The purified sulfur will burn in the furnace, and the resulting gas will go into the lead tank after further heating."     

"Are all these devices made of lead?"     

"That's right. Only lead can withstand acid corrosion." Kyle nodded. "The lead pipeline at the top of the tank keeps sprinkling down nitro-sulphuric acid. Meeting hot sulfur dioxide, the nitric acid will decompose to nitrogen oxide, which will react with water and sulfur dioxide to generate the sulfuric acid solution. The solution will flow out of the hole at the bottom of the tank. The ingenious part of the reaction is that nitrogen oxide only acts as an oxygen carrier, but it won't be consumed. In this way, the need for nitric acid is very small. Once the reaction starts, it can go on working forever!"     

"How's its output?" Roland patted the lead tank excitedly. Large-scale acid production was a prerequisite for the mass production of smokeless gunpowder. If this problem had been solved, he could produce the ammunition for the new-generation flintlocks and cannon.     

"This is the fourth device I've tested. Its daily output is equal to a week's output from the laboratory. We use a dry distillation method for a week," the chief alchemist proudly said, "It isn't large because I just made it for testing. If I can use larger lead tanks, the output can be further improved."     

"That's really good news." Roland laughed. "When Miss Anna returns, you can immediately start building a larger-scale acid plant. In case the lead isn't enough, you can use iron instead. Miss Soraya's coating can make iron containers withstand acid corrosion."     

Kyle nodded, but his next words made the prince's smile fade away.     

"The large-scale acid-making process has succeeded, and all five laboratories are filled with apprentices. Your Highness, would you please award the 'Intermediate Chemist' to me as you promised?"