Three Kingdoms: A Million Soldiers Grown from the Fields

Chapter 62 Frozen Ice (Please read 4k words)

"Mother! Sister, your son is back!"

The small mountain village was bustling with activity.

Two oxcarts drove in, bringing back a large quantity of grain, supplies, and cloth.

Each young man returning from Taoyuan had already taken his belongings before the oxcart entered the village, preferring to carry them on his shoulders and in his hands back to his own home.

Shi Tou ran into his family's small courtyard and saw his mother and younger sister hanging clothes out to dry.

Several chicks were roaming freely in the yard, pecking at the gravel around their little sister's feet.

"Stone is back!" Stone's mother turned her head, her face full of surprise.

My younger sister was the same; her two pigtails swayed back and forth, making her look exceptionally happy.

"You're back. Your son is unfilial; I haven't been by your side to fulfill my filial duty for several months."

Stone ran to his mother's side, put down the things, and kowtowed three times.

"Oh, my son is very filial, you can't say that." His mother lovingly helped the stone up and carefully examined the changes in it.

He patted the dirt off his knees and forehead, saying with a mix of relief and heartache, "Good, you've grown stronger and darker. My son has suffered a lot out there."

"Brother." His sister also tugged at Shi Tou's large hand with heartache.

The latter grinned and patted her head.

“It’s not hard on you, Mother. Xian’er treats us so well. We have meat and plenty of oil every day. He’s definitely doing better than Father in the army, haha.”

Stone scratched his head smugly.

His mother didn't say much, but the pity in her eyes deepened.

Her own husband is a soldier; doesn't she understand what such preferential treatment means?

She was buying her life, but she didn't point it out. For someone from such a poor family, having a way to sell their life was already far better than most people.

She could only keep murmuring, "My son has suffered so much."

Seeing that his mother was about to cry, Shi Tou quickly held up a few feet of floral cloth wrapped around his head and presented it to her as if to show off his achievement.

“Mother, look, this is the finest floral fabric. I bought it all at the farm. You and Qingmei will each have a new dress made.”

"And this too." He stuffed the floral cloth into his mother's arms, then picked up two square packages from the ground: "Mother, look, five catties of lard and five catties of pork belly. This meat is so fragrant. I'll cook you a meal today. This is a recipe that Xian-ge taught me step by step. I guarantee it will be delicious."

He then stuffed the meat and lard into his mother's arms.

"This is a bushel of millet. There must be no surplus grain at home, so I bought a bushel of it. It's all top-quality new rice. We never used to be able to afford to eat this. We must have a meal like this today."

As he spoke, he looked at his younger sister and said, "When we raise Qingmei to be plump and fair-skinned, matchmakers will definitely be knocking down our doorstep, hahaha."

"Brother is so mean." Upon hearing that she was to be married off, Qingmei's face immediately flushed red, and she stomped on her brother's foot.

Stone didn't give way either, chasing after his sister and stomping on her instead.

Seeing her children playing around, Stone's mother smiled. She quietly held the things her son had stuffed into her arms and watched the two mischievous siblings.

Similar scenes can be found throughout the small mountain village.

They were all young men who had been away from home for several months, and their sense of pride in bringing things back to support their families was indescribable.

This is the feedback that comes with responsibility, an ultimate sense of spiritual satisfaction.

Laughter echoed through the small mountain village until dusk.

Two oxcarts were parked in Huwa's yard. The young men had already moved their belongings, but there were still more than half a cartload of supplies left.

After eating, Tiger Cub said a few words to his mother and then left the house for the yard.

Beep beep beep——!
A sharp whistle rang out from his small courtyard, and soon about twenty young men gathered at his house.

Tiger Cub pointed at the contents of the oxcart: "Let's go, distribute them to everyone, and be sure to do everything Brother Xian asked us to do!"

"promise!"

The chorus of agreement drew attention. Tiger Cub's mother looked at her son from the threshold of the house. He was so familiar, yet just now he seemed so strange to her.

The other young men are the same; they are all children who grew up in the village, and now they have all changed a lot.

The young men carried the remaining supplies from the oxcart on their shoulders and in their hands.

They went from house to house, delivering more than a kilogram of salt and lard to the elderly and widowed villagers.

This was a task assigned by Xian Ge'er, and they did it with exceptional care. They would not only personally hand over the items to the villagers, but also chat with them briefly to see if they had any difficulties at home, so as to make a record of it.

The small mountain village was small, and more than twenty young men distributed all the items to each household in less than half an hour.

The rest, Huwa and Shitou, were sent to their respective homes in the village and Tong Yuan's home on a small hill outside the village.

Looking at the spirited young men from his village, the elder villager proudly said to his son, who was the village head, "See what I told you? The young men in our village are all doing well now! I'll take good care of Xianwa!"

The village elder chuckled awkwardly, then nodded as he looked at the things that had been brought into the house, saying, "Grandpa is right."

That's true. This year, the speed of land reclamation and sowing in the village is several times that of previous years, all thanks to the help of people sent from Taoyuan.

Moreover, Xianwazi's reputation is now very strong in Changshan. His grandfather has never made a mistake in judging people, and thanks to this, this small mountain village was among the first to be vaccinated by doctors.

I heard that doctors throughout Changshan are now traveling around the countryside, inoculating and treating smallpox. In the past, there were two or three outbreaks of disease every year, but this year, more than six months into the year, we haven't heard of any.

Zhang Xian of Taoyuan deserves the title of a sage from Changshan.

On the hill.

Shi Tou respectfully moved all the items into Tong Yuan's storeroom.

He didn't dare to breathe loudly. Who was this person?
Ah Yun, Ah Lan, and even their own brother Xian'er's master, I heard that those hands are so strong that a horse could run on one's arm.

"Teacher Tong, everything has been moved. Here is a letter from Brother Xian."

After moving everything, Shi Tou carefully approached Tong Yuan, who was resting with his eyes closed, and presented him with a piece of silk.

"Hmm." Tong Yuan opened his eyes slightly, reached out and took it: "You can go by yourself. You don't feel very comfortable around the old man."

"Hey, yes, Master Tong, please don't take offense," Stone chuckled, then turned and left.

After Shi Tou left, Tong Yuan opened the silk scroll and glanced at it. After reading it, he couldn't help but laugh and curse, "Heh, this brat is trying to use this old man as a strong laborer."

“But Peach Blossom Spring…” He put away the silk, looked up at the sky for a long time, and exhaled a breath of stale air: “Perhaps we should go and take a look.”
-
Peach Blossom Spring.

At dusk, long queues formed in Taoyuan.

Each of Zhao Yun, Xiahou Lan, Huang Zhong, Han Ji, and Zhang Xian had a long queue in front of them.

They're dividing up the meat.

A family would receive five catties of meat, which would all be pork belly or fatty meat with a high fat content.

It took a whole morning and half an afternoon for the 26 black pigs in Taoyuan to be slaughtered and butchered.

Then it was time to wait for everyone to finish their work and then distribute the meat.

Laughter and cheerful voices filled the Peach Blossom Spring as children chased each other, occasionally punctuated by the scolding of adults.

Standing beside Zhang Xian, the newly arrived Han Ji was speechless for a moment, looking at the scenery of Taoyuan, which was different from other places.

He frequently glanced at his lord beside him, seemingly lost in thought.

"Sir, Li Liu's family, number twenty-three, Dingzi District."

The people queuing for meat stepped forward respectfully and gave their house numbers. Han Ji skillfully drew a horizontal line under a house in Mudu, then took a strip of meat tied with straw rope from the basket behind him and handed it over. "Here you go."

"Hey." Li Liuxi smiled and took the meat. The five-pound weight was heavy, and the white fat looked especially tempting.

He then walked away, and another person stepped forward from behind: "Sir, Twenty-four, T1 section."

The residential areas in Taoyuan are now divided into zones.

Arranged using the Heavenly Stems (甲乙丙丁).

Several hundred households is no small number; it's several times larger than an ordinary village.

If this weren't Zhang Xian's private property, the Zhen Ding County government would have no shortage of officials like village chiefs and pavilion heads stationed there.

The meat was divided very quickly among four or five people, and in less than half an hour, all the residents of Taoyuan had received their meat.

Each household received five jin (a unit of weight), resulting in a total of over 2,100 jin of meat being distributed, which was more than 100 jin more than the distribution per person per jin.

But that's alright; in fact, it makes things fairer.

Otherwise, if some families have two or three members, or some families have five or six members, distributing the pound to each person would actually cause more problems.

It is a common sense principle that we should not worry about scarcity but about inequality.

Nowadays, such a distribution only benefits a very small number of families, and such families are a minority in Taoyuan.

After distributing the meat, Zhang Xian and the others cleared the table, and today, Taoyuan was destined to be filled with the smoke of cooking fires.

On the way to the main hall, Han Ji followed behind Zhang Xian.

"My lord, there are still more than three thousand catties of meat left here. I am worried that it will spoil."

Huang Zhong, Zhao Yun, and Xiahou Lan, who were standing to one side, also glanced sideways. They were the three of them who were slaughtering the pig today, and they knew best how much meat there would be.

Zhang Xian nodded: "No need to worry, I have already made preparations."

“You will know once you go back to the cellar.”

As he spoke, he led his men toward the cellar near the warehouse.

As soon as the group opened the cellar door, a blast of icy wind rushed out.

Upon going down to take a look, they saw that the cellar, which was completely covered with hay, was piled with blocks of ice, and the meat was already frozen solid by the ice.

Han Ji looked at Huang Zhong in surprise and asked, "Hansheng, was this ice harvested in winter?"

Huang Zhong was even more surprised. He asked Zhao Yun, "Ah Yun, where did all this ice come from?"

When Huang Zhong asked him this, Zhao Yun looked puzzled: "I don't know? Alan, did you do this?"

Xiahou Lan shrugged as he saw three pairs of eyes looking at him. "How would I know? There's no Peach Blossom Spring in winter. Hey, you guys, why don't you just ask Brother Xian?"

"Brother Xian!" Xiahou Lan looked at Zhang Xian.

"Hahaha." Zhang Xian, amused by Zhao Yun and the others, waved his hand and laughed: "Hahaha, it's just water turning into ice, nothing special, nothing special."

"What does it mean for water to turn into ice?" Han Ji immediately became interested, and the others were also very interested.

"Come on, I'll show you. These are things I was going to teach you. I just remembered them myself."

With that, he led the four men away from the cellar.

In the warehouse, Zhang Xian took out some purified Glauber's salt, which was originally intended to treat toothache and constipation.

He found this while compiling the medicines stored in the pharmacy; it must have been a donation brought by a physician who came to Taoyuan.

After he discovered this, he sent someone to Zhengding to make purchases. What they found was astonishing: there was a considerable amount of Glauber's salt in Zhengding.

Moreover, the price was only 200 coins per catty, and he had purchased over a thousand catties but still hadn't finished purchasing the reserve of mirabilite in Zhending County.

With Glauber's salt in hand, he naturally thought of making ice. Making ice in the summer is a good business opportunity. However, Glauber's salt has a weak heat absorption capacity, so he simply took matters into his own hands and purified it himself.

That's how we got the purified nitrate we have now.

Amid the puzzled looks of the four men, he took a ceramic basin and a copper basin, and then crushed the saltpeter into powder.

The copper basin was very expensive to make. He carefully filled the two basins with water and then placed the copper basin in the earthenware basin.

Sprinkle in saltpeter powder, about the same amount as water.

Zhao Yu and the others were confused, but Han Ji's eyes lit up.

He asked Zhang Xian, "My lord, water is a common substance, and a copper basin is used to hold it. So, the key to making ice, as you say, must be saltpeter?"

"Indeed." Zhang Xian looked at Han Ji with some surprise, not expecting him to react so quickly.

"Why?"

Han Ji stared intently at the ceramic basin and the bronze basin, his brow furrowed in thought.

About seven or eight minutes later, as night approached, the temperature dropped, and the water in the ceramic basin gradually condensed into frost in Han Ji's astonished gaze.

He touched the side of the basin; it was icy cold to the touch.

"It's really frozen."

But why?

He still didn't understand.

Zhang Xian smiled and said, "If you want to understand why saltpeter freezes, then you'll have a lot to think about. But if you want me to answer your question, then I can only say..."

"Salt water tastes bitter and salty, and is extremely cold in nature. It is the essence of Taiyin. Water is inherently moist and downward-flowing. When it encounters this extremely cold substance, the Yin energy suddenly gathers and the Yang fire retreats. Therefore, water turns into ice when it gets cold."

Do you understand?

Han Ji shook his head: "I don't understand."

Zhang Xian was speechless: "Then don't overthink it. You just need to know that saltpeter can absorb heat. Sometimes, thinking too much can easily destroy your spirit."

"My lord, you are right."

After thinking it over and over again, Han Ji still couldn't figure out the key point, so he simply stopped thinking about it.

As for the other three, they didn't even think about it; they simply watched the water in the ceramic basin gradually freeze into ice and came to the answer.

So it turns out that you can freeze water just by throwing saltpeter into it. How simple!
"From now on, we won't have to fear the scorching heat of summer," Zhao Yun said with a grin.

Huang Zhong nodded: "That makes sense. If we bring some saltpeter on the march, it can boost morale."

"Xian-ge'er, is this ice edible?" Xiahou Lan asked.

Zhang Xian: "Ice in a copper basin is edible, but ice in a ceramic basin is poisonous."

They all nodded.

"My lord, how do you dissolve the ice in that pottery basin?" Han Ji asked.

Zhang Xian: "Water can be repeatedly poured in to freeze the ice, but some saltpeter needs to be added. If it does not freeze, the ice water in the earthenware basin should be dried in the shade. What remains after the water is removed is still saltpeter."

"Is there any damage?"

"Of course there is, but if it's handled well, you can still keep six ounces of saltpeter from a pound of it."

“Yes, I understand,” Han Ji nodded in reply.

(End of this chapter)