Industrial Cthulhu, starting from the island lord

Chapter 63 A Crazy World

Hughes was awakened by a knock on the door.

"My Lord! My Lord, are you here?"

Xius opened his eyes in confusion and was stunned for a while before he reacted. He immediately pulled back the quilt and stood up.

"Alexei? Come in and talk."

The door was immediately pushed open, and Alexi and Connor walked into the room together.

"My Lord, something happened!"

"What happened? Could it be the explosives workshop?"

Alexei's face suddenly became strange.

"Yes, but it's not just the dynamite workshop. Something happened at the soap workshop, too."

The corner of Zeus's eye twitched. Could it be that the dynamite workshop exploded and sent the soap workshop into the sky as well?
Then all the money he had worked so hard to start for the farming plan would be ruined.

Seeing Hughes's increasingly dark complexion, Alexei quickly spoke:
"It wasn't an explosion, but some other kind of accident. Uh, I'm not sure if it can be called an accident."

"Sit down first and talk slowly."

"Is such that."

Because the recruited craftsmen were not very reliable, Hughes finally decided to close the nitroglycerin workshop.

But none of this was explained in detail to the craftsmen; they only knew that the process they had practiced for a long time had been put on hold.

The craftsmen discussed it and decided that their skills were not up to standard. They wanted to make one last effort to prove their worth to the lord.

"Wait, why would they do that?"

"Because you gave too much money."

Considering the danger of preparing nitroglycerin, Hughes paid the craftsmen a very high salary, a full 5 rios a day.

Although they are just rehearsing the process now, he feels that this situation will not last for a few days - either they start production or they close down.

So Xius did not set a new salary specifically for these days' work.

The craftsmen who were paid inexplicably high salaries did not want to give up this seemingly simple job, so they gathered together.
"They got together and made nitroglycerin." Alexey looked strange.

"Don't they have the materials?"

"We didn't have the materials when we were rehearsing the process, but the workshop was closed, so I shipped them here. They were all sealed anyway, so it would be convenient to put them here if I needed them later."

"You know, we don't have enough people to arrange a vigil."

Xiu Si rubbed his forehead and said, "Alright, I'll recruit some soldiers for patrol soon. But it's a good thing to build it. I'll just warn them."

"No, sir." Alexey said with a strange look on his face, "What they made was not nitroglycerin, an explosive."

"It's not nitroglycerin?" Hughes was stunned, then frowned. "The process I provided is for producing sulfuric acid and nitric acid from sulfur ore. Did a problem with the catalyst cause the reaction to fail?"

"No, it's not a failure, it's a success."

Hughes looked at Alexi in confusion and asked, "Look at what you are talking about?"
"Instead of creating nitroglycerin, the explosive, they created nitroglycerin, the heart medicine!"

Now Hughes understood. He nodded and looked at Connor: "Do you still have the candy Nora gave you? Bring some over!"

It seems that he was exhausted and then contaminated, which made him a little confused.

Aren't nitroglycerin, the explosive, and nitroglycerin, the heart medicine, the same thing? They're both nitroglycerin!

"No, no, I'm not contaminated, and I'm not crazy. I'm normal! I'm sober!"

"So the world has gone crazy?"

"Come with me, I didn't dare bring that thing into the manor."

Although he didn't understand what his clerk was doing, he followed Alexi out of the house.

In an open space not far away, there was a pile of things, and several servants were guarding it.

Alexi walked over, picked up a bottle and handed it to Hughes.

Hughes picked up the bottle and carefully shook it from side to side. Inside was a slightly viscous liquid with a yellowish color. It didn't look particularly pure, but it was indeed what nitroglycerin should be.

He slowly pulled out the cork, placed the bottle not far away, fanned it gently with his hand and smelled the scent.

A strange fragrance.

There doesn't seem to be any problem. This should be nitroglycerin, right?
Hughes looked at Alexi with suspicion.

Alexei said nothing. He took the nitroglycerin, dripped some on the paper, picked up the hammer and smashed it down -

Nothing happened.

Hughes' eyes widened.

He took a little more and said a few words to the servant next to him. After a while, the servant brought a brazier.

A few people moved away and threw in the bottle of nitroglycerin.

The flame burned, but there was still no reaction.

Xius looked down at the bottle in his hand, hesitated for a moment, then took a little and dabbed it under his tongue.

A strange sweetness exploded in the mouth, followed by a burning sensation, which was not too serious because the amount was not large.

Waving his hand to tell Connor who was coming forward not to worry, Zeus felt it carefully.

After a while, he felt a throbbing pain in his forehead, which was a sign that his blood vessels were dilated by nitroglycerin, and it was also the effect of the heart disease medicine.

Hughes: “.”

Hughes: “???”

Hughes: “?!?!?!”

What do you mean, nitroglycerin that doesn't explode?
The thing that Nobel spent his whole life researching was developed so easily?

Damn, can all these craftsmen under me win the Nobel Prize?
Hughes was completely shocked. He looked at the bottle in his hand and felt that his worldview was impacted.

"Lord Hughes, that's it. I don't know what's going on."

Xiu Si was stunned for a while, then suddenly shuddered, and a bad idea came to his mind.

"You just said that there are problems with the soap workshop too?"

"Yes."

Alexi kicked the box at his feet. "In our soap-making workshop, we never tell the craftsmen what they are making."

“But we didn’t keep it secret, so some workshops knew it was for cleaning, while some didn’t. They knew it was made from olive oil through various cooking processes, so they guessed it was a food.”

"So, some workers ate it secretly."

"It shouldn't be a big deal if you eat soap, right? If it's not too much."

“Indeed, but I mean”

Alexei picked up two bars of soap from different boxes, handed them to Hughes, and then picked up two more bars himself.

"This is soap for cleaning, and this is soap for eating."

He put the two bars of soap into his mouth and began to chew.

Hughes also took a bite.

One piece was slippery and greasy and tasted disgusting.

A piece of it has a fresh fragrance and is very delicious, and tastes like a fruit cake.

"My Lord, I have inspected the entire workshop and I can guarantee that the preparation process of these two soaps is exactly the same."

The soap slipped from Hughes's hand and fell into the dirt.

(After sixty-three chapters of preparation, we’re finally here. After so much preparation, the worldview is finally unfolding!!)

(By the way, I'd like to ask for a follow-up reading, which means just turning to the page every day until it says "To be continued", thank you!)
(End of this chapter)