Roland nodded, witches who had awakened to their power were previously only ordinary people, and in cases where the people already knew the witches before their awakening and had deep contact with and understanding of them, their impression would be hard to change only by the unilateral rhetoric of the church.
“You seem to know a lot about the power of witches. Only with one sentence, you were able to guess that I had more than one witch.”
“Honestly, because of the relationship with my childhood friend and partner, I became interested in witches. I had even thought myself about the possibility to host those strange women.”
Margaret smiled, “Unfortunately, King’s City is completely differently than Border Town, in the end, I had to give up on that idea because the risk was too big. Seeing that Lightning had directly moved into your arms, it seems that she is very close to you, plus she’s a witch… So, I thought that you could be the same as me, someone, who doesn’t hate the witches. As a Lord, hiding a few witches shouldn’t be a difficult task for you, especially here in the borderland. But you still have to be very careful, if you are found by the Church, it would be hard for you to save them.”
Speaking of it, until now Nightingale still did not find any sign that the other had lied. With this, she had already rejected the possibility of Margaret informing the Church. Roland also finally came to a conclusion in his heart, so with a slightly apologetic tone he said: “It seems that I was indeed a bit oversensitive, I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, Your Highness, after all, it was also for Lightning and the safety of the other women…” Margaret waved dismissively with her hand, “Au contraire, if you didn’t care, then you would truly be an irresponsible person.”
“Are you familiar with Thunder?” Roland asked. “Your love for Lightning is much greater than the concern of ordinary people for the heroic children.”
In the face of such a question, Margery hesitated for a moment. Roland had said, if she didn’t want to answer a question, she should just act as he had never asked, but she eventually slowly started to speak: “To tell you the truth, later when I left the fishing village, I joined one of the expeditions of Sir Thunder, together with them I explored the sea for a long time. As a young and new team member, Sir Thunder and his wife took extra care of me. On the day that Lighting was born, I was also there.
“She was born on board?”
“Yes, during a storm. Outside of the cabin, the thunder rolled and lightning continually lit up the sky. However, shortly after her birth, Sir Thunder’s wife died because of a sepsis infection, and I… acted as her half-mother. But I couldn’t give her any breast milk, I used to chew wheat porridge and mixed it together with fish eggs and flour, slowly feeding it to her. “Margaret’s voice has become very gentle. “Although Sir Thunder was incomparable sad, he still had to command the flotilla, without him as the backbone, the crew would quickly collapse after only a few months. During that time, I just stayed in the cabin, watching over how Lightning slowly grew. Until Sir Thunder found the Shadow Islands. After the discovery we returned to the Crescent Moon Bay, and the expedition was over. Not much later I left the Fjord and settled down in the Kingdom of Graycastle.”
“So that was what it was,” Roland lamented in his heart, no wonder that when she heard the name of Thunder, her reaction would be so strong. As for why Margaret had decided not to continue to follow Thunder on his adventures, he could roughly guess one or two reasons. Even so, it seemed to be the beginning of a love story, it didn’t mean that the ending would be one, one had hoped for.
Such a coincidence, to meet again after crossing many rivers and walking along windy mountain roads… Now that they had already such a close relationship, wasn’t it possible to get an even bigger discount for buying and selling? He coughed twice, “Ms. Margaret since we can be counted as acquaintances, about that deal.”
“Your Highness, that just won’t do,” Margaret laughed. “A deal is a deal. This is the businessman’s eternal principle.”
Chapter 153 Alchemy (Part 1)
Kyle Sichi walked into the Alchemy Workshop.
“Head Instructor,” when the apprentices saw him enter they immediately bowed.
He waved his hand, “You may carry on.”
The apprentice squatted down again, once again busying themselves with their work.
The outermost part of the workshop was the cleaning and sorting room; it was here that all of the gathered materials from all over the Kingdom of Graycastle was cleaned, sorted, filtered and ground down. The design of the cleaning and sorting room was very ingenious, laid within the stone floor were two rills with water flowing in them which were also parallel to each other. The area in the middle was the path, while the outermost sides of the room were used as cleansing area, and were accessible by wooden bridges.
At first glance, the long and narrow washroom was divided by the two streams into three sections. The light would fall into the room through windows on both sides, shining on the stone floor and streams, sending strips of lights through the long room. The overlap between light and dark resembled the strip of a snake.
Nearly one hundred apprentices leaned against the walls, dealing with the materials assigned to them. If the impurities could be easily cleaned and were lighter than the water, it could be directly thrown into the stream. If it was heavier than water, they would be put into a basket, to be brought out of the washing room and then discarded. The effect of cleaning with running water was several times more effective than cleaning in a cask of stagnant water.
The apprentice had to study here for three to five years. Only when their proficiency in the sorting and cleaning of all kinds of materials were good enough and the corresponding knowledge was known by them, did they get the opportunity to be selected as a disciple under an instructor, and in so doing moving on to the next room.
Kyle marched through the washing room, stepping into the core area of the Alchemy Workshop, the refining room.
When he opened the door, his line of sight suddenly opened to a wide panorama, twelve giant wooden pillars, all of which came out of the Concealing Forest and were delivered by ship, propping up this extremely spacious room. Within the surrounding stone walls, there were many windows, and even the roof was included in the construction and had many windows connected to the patio, making the room very bright.
In the center of the refining room, there were arranged six wide wooden tables. The tables were filled with all kinds of alchemical utensils: round bottomed flasks, glasses, scales, mortars, furnaces, crucibles… Each instructor was responsible for the management and use of one table, and Kyle, as Redwater City’s Head Instructor, naturally had the longest and widest table to himself, with most of the utensils placed on it.
The room was always full of clutter and in disorder, just like the alchemy process in general. Mixing all kinds of raw materials together then heating, carbonizing, watering or burning them. The results were ever changing, and simply fascinating.
In case you were able to find a clear path to follow within all these changes and disorders, it would become written down, turning it into one of the extremely rare alchemy formulas. As long as you were able to create a unique formula, you could be called an alchemist. So far, Kyle has had written down more than a dozen alchemy formulas, and he believed that each of them had been directly sent to him by God and that alchemy could be developing to such a level, that it would even be possible to separate the origin, making it possible to transmute everything.
“Chavez, how far are you with your Snow Powder imitation?” He asked.
Hearing his name, a twenty-year-old young man came over, shaking his head. “These wretched alchemists of King’s City definitely still add other raw materials into it. Until now the powder is too fine that it can’t even be extracted and used for anything useful.”