Chapter 63: A Mad World

Xius was awakened by a series of knocks on the door.

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

Xius opened his eyes in a daze, took a moment to collect his wits, and immediately pushed back the blanket to stand up.

"Alexei? Come in."

The door was pushed open instantly, and Alexei and Connor entered the room together.

"My Lord, something has happened!"

"What happened? It couldn't be the explosive workshop, could it?"

Alexei's expression immediately turned peculiar.

"Yes, but not just the explosive workshop. The soap workshop also... had some trouble."

The corner of Xius's eye twitched. It couldn't be that the explosive workshop blew up and sent the soap workshop flying into the sky along with it, could it?

Then his painstakingly initiated farming plan would be completely ruined.

Seeing Xius's increasingly darkening expression, Alexei quickly spoke up:

"No... it didn't explode. It's a different kind of accident... Uh, I'm not even sure if it can be called an accident..."

"Sit down first and tell me slowly."

"Well, it's like this..."

Because the hired craftsmen were rather unreliable, Xius had ultimately decided to shut down the nitroglycerin workshop.

However, he hadn't explained this in detail to the craftsmen. They only knew that the procedures they had been practicing for so long were suddenly shelved.

After discussing among themselves, the craftsmen concluded that their skills were simply not up to standard. They wanted to make one final effort to prove their worth to the lord.

"Wait, why would they do that?"

"Because... the pay you offered was too generous..."

Considering the inherent danger of preparing nitroglycerin, Xius had set the craftsmen's salary quite high—a full 5 leos a day.

Although they were only practicing the procedures at the time, he figured that state of affairs wouldn't last many days—either production would begin, or they would close down.

Therefore, Xius hadn't bothered to redefine a lower wage for those few days of work.

The craftsmen, receiving an inexplicably high salary, had no desire to give up this seemingly easy job, so they gathered together...

"They gathered together and actually made the nitroglycerin," Alexei said with a strange look.

"Didn't they lack the materials?"

"They indeed didn't have materials during the training drills, but when the workshop closed, I had all the materials transported over anyway, since they were sealed up and it would be convenient to use them later if needed."

"You know, we don't have enough manpower to arrange night watches..."

Xius rubbed his temples. "Fine. I'll dispatch some soldiers to patrol starting recently. But creating it successfully can still be considered a good thing; giving them a stern warning will suffice."

"No, My Lord..." Alexei's expression grew even more bizarre. "What they made is not the explosive nitroglycerin."

"Not nitroglycerin?" Xius paused, then frowned. "The procedure I provided used sulfur ore to prepare sulfuric and nitric acids. Did a problem with the catalyst cause the reaction to fail?"

"No, the preparation didn't fail. It succeeded."

Xius looked at Alexei in bewilderment. Do you even hear yourself?

"They didn't make the explosive nitroglycerin, but rather... the heart medication nitroglycerin!"

At this, Xius understood. He nodded and looked at Connor, "Are there any candies left from Nora? Bring some over!"

It seemed he was exhausted and perhaps contaminated by something, causing him to lose his clarity of mind.

Are explosive nitroglycerin and heart medication nitroglycerin not the exact same thing? They are both nitroglycerin!

"No, no, I'm not contaminated, nor am I crazy. I'm normal! I'm completely lucid!"

"Then has the world gone mad?"

"You should come with me, My Lord. I didn't dare bring that stuff into the manor."

Although he couldn't fathom what his chief clerk was up to, Xius still followed Alexei out of the house.

In a clearing not far away, a pile of items sat on the ground, guarded by a few servants.

Alexei walked up, picked up a bottle, and handed it to Xius.

Xius took the bottle and carefully shook it from side to side. Inside was a slightly viscous yellowish liquid.

Judging by its appearance, the purity wasn't exceptionally high, but it certainly looked the way nitroglycerin ought to look.

He slowly pulled out the cork, placed the bottle a short distance away, and gently fanned the air toward his nose to catch the scent.

A strange fragrance.

It seemed there was nothing wrong with it. Wasn't this supposed to be nitroglycerin?

Xius cast a skeptical look at Alexei.

Alexei said nothing. He took the nitroglycerin, dripped a small amount onto a piece of paper, and struck it fiercely with a hammer—

Not a sound or reaction of any kind.

Xius's eyes widened.

Alexei took a little more of the liquid, spoke a few words to a nearby servant, and before long, the servant returned with a brazier.

The group stepped back a bit and tossed the bottle containing the nitroglycerin into the fire.

The flames burned on, still without any reaction.

Xius lowered his gaze to look at the bottle in his hand. Hesitating for a moment, he dipped a fingertip into it and smeared a tiny amount under his tongue.

A strange sweetness burst in his mouth, immediately followed by a burning sensation. Because the amount was minuscule, it wasn't too severe.

He waved away Connor, who had stepped forward looking concerned, and quietly savored the effects.

After a moment, he felt a throbbing pain in his temples—a sign of blood vessels expanding due to nitroglycerin, which was precisely its effect as a heart medication.

Xius: "..."

Xius: "???"

Xius: "??!?!"

What on earth does this mean? Nitroglycerin that doesn't explode?

Something Nobel spent a lifetime researching was just tossed together this easily?

What the hell, could the craftsmen under his command win a Nobel Prize?

Xius was thoroughly shocked. Staring at the bottle in his hand, he felt his worldview take a violent blow.

"My Lord... that's how it is... I have no idea what is actually going on..."

Xius stood stunned for a while, then suddenly shivered as an ominous thought surfaced in his mind.

"You mentioned earlier that there was also a problem at the soap workshop?"

"Yes..."

Alexei kicked a wooden crate at his feet. "We never told the craftsmen at the soap workshop what the things they were making actually were."

"But we didn't take extreme security measures either, so a few of them figured out it was something used for cleaning, while others didn't. They only knew it was made by boiling olive oil with various ingredients, and thus guessed it must be food."

"So... some workers secretly ate it."

"Eating soap shouldn't cause too much trouble, right? As long as it wasn't much."

"Indeed, but what I mean is..."

Alexei picked up two bars of soap from different crates, handed them to Xius, and picked up two more for himself.

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

He shoved both bars of soap into his mouth and began chewing.

Xius also took a bite of each.

One was slick, greasy, and revolting in taste.

The other... carried a delicate fragrance, tasted exceptionally good, and had the texture of a fruit pastry.

"My Lord, I inspected the entire workshop. I can guarantee that the preparation processes for both types of soap are identical."

The soap slipped from Xius's hand and dropped into the dirt.