As soon as Amber's voice trailed off, Gwen turned his head and stared straight at her. The half-elf thief felt goosebumps all over her body. "You … What do you mean by that look …"
Gwen's gaze was as if he was looking at an alien creature. "How do you know a Druil?"
"Why can't I know a Druil?" Amber put her hands on her waist and said righteously. "I'm more or less a half-elf. All the Druil factions in the world originated from the elves. Haven't you heard?"
If it were any other sharp-eared person who said this, it would have been fine, but when it came from the Shame of the Elves, it was not convincing at all. Gawain looked up and down at Miss Thief, who still had a righteous look on her face. After a long while, he finally said, "Is it the kind of understanding where you're hated because you've stolen from someone before, and you're being hunted all over the world?"
"You're insulting my character, I'm telling you!" Amber suddenly jumped up in anger. "How can I be found out when I'm stealing!"
Gwen was speechless.
He felt that there was something wrong with the angle of her rebuttal.
But even though he questioned her verbally, looking at Amber's confident manner, it seemed that she really did know a Druil. She even introduced him like a salesperson. "Let me tell you, the guy I know is not only a Druil, but also a scholarly Druil. He knows a little bit about everything. His Druil faction is the 'Heart of the Forest'. They're especially good at dealing with animals and plants. They're absolutely reliable …"
Gawain finally believed Amber's story, but he did not ask how Amber and the mysterious druid knew each other, nor did he ask about the druid's name and background. It would be impolite to ask such questions now. After listening to Amber's sales pitch, he only asked two questions. "Can you still contact him now? If you can, how long will it take you to bring him here? "
"It's easy to contact him. Although the world says that the Druil lives in seclusion and is hard to find, I know that guy's range of activity is very fixed. He's in the southern region. As for how long it will take to bring him here …"
Amber said while giving Gwen a meaningful look. "When I go to find him, I can use Shadow Sprint. But when I come back, I'm afraid I can only travel by foot. How fast we can travel depends on the means of transportation. Transportation, you understand?"
Gwen immediately understood what she meant. With a wave of his hand, he took out a few copper coins and stuffed it into her hand. "Buy a pair of new shoes."
Amber glared. "… How can you do that! And no matter what, you have to give me some money as as a deposit? Even if it's someone you know, you still have to pay the hiring fee! "
"Why didn't you say so earlier?" Gwen was just joking with Amber. After all, it was funny to see the girl jumping up and down. But after the joke, he still had to take it seriously. He took out some gold and silver strips that were pressed to the same size from another pocket. "Take it. Get this done. The rest is yours."
Hu Po immediately beamed with joy as he received the shiny treasures.
Because the work required for the coinage was not yet ready, the "Cecil Coinage" was still a concept. So Gwen temporarily asked the craftsmen to make some gold and silver pieces from the treasury into gold and silver pieces for trading with the outside world.
This practice was not unusual in this world. Precious metals were used as direct trading chips, and the commercial system was still very primitive in the Middle Ages. Gold and silver itself was a currency when it reached a certain degree of purity. Most of the time, gold and silver coins were made into coins for ease of carrying, inspection and statistics. But the merchants also accepted the direct trading of gold and silver. It was just that this kind of transaction had an additional process of checking the purity and weighing. So when they directly used gold and silver to buy goods, the price would be slightly higher.
Of course, this was also under the premise that the nobles' "currency credibility" was still sufficient. If one day the nobles mixed impurities in their gold and silver coins to the extent that they could hurt the merchants, then the non-official gold and silver pieces would in turn surpass the currency issued by the royal family and the dukes and become the mainstream transaction currency. If you used gold and silver coins to buy things, the price would be higher.
This was also why the emblem of the God of Commerce was a balance, and at the two ends of the balance were a pair of iron scissors and an eye. The iron scissors and the balance were both things that the merchants carried with them. The former was used to cut the gold and silver pieces, while the latter was used to weigh them. And the eye was a must for a good merchant to be able to see the purity of gold and silver.
In fact, if Gwen did not have a bit of obsessive-compulsive disorder and insisted on making exquisite and distinctive gold and silver coins, he could have used a simpler and crude way to "coin" — casting gold and silver into round rods, then directly cutting them into thin slices and stamping them with Cecil's emblem with a steel seal. In 536 Ansu, the Duke of the Western Region used this method in order to save time and effort and reduce the cost of paying the craftsmen. That year, the Western Region gold and silver coins were also jokingly called "the miser's money" — because the law of the Western Region at that time stipulated that all merchants entering the Western Region had to exchange one-third of their currency for Western Region gold and silver coins, and when passing through any checkpoint, they had to use these inferior gold and silver coins to settle accounts.
The currency and economy of this world were just that magical.
Amber left happily. The half-elf lady almost floated away in front of everyone's eyes, which made Heti deeply worried. "She wouldn't run away with the gold and silver, would she?"
"Absconding with the money?" Gwen muttered, and then deeply believed that the disgrace of the elves might really do such a thing …
Forget it, at this time, I'd better believe in her a little — there's no other hope anyway.
Could there be a second person in the whole camp who claimed to know Druil?
After Amber left, Gwen pulled his attention back to the reclamation project in front of him.
The old farmer, Norris, had been waiting quietly with his head lowered. He did not shake his body or look around like a pauper, nor did he speak rashly, as if he had been waiting for Gawain to ask him a question.
"Are there any problems with this land?" Gwen asked. "As long as there's a possibility of a problem, it's best to say it as soon as possible."
"If I have to say, it's that the terrain is a little higher than the river bank, so it's difficult to direct the water from the canal. We have to dig a canal or a well upstream," Norris replied. "But there's also an advantage. If there's a rainstorm or something like that that causes the Whitewater River to rise, we don't have to worry about the farmland being flooded."
Diverting water … If there was a pump or a similar raising machine, it could be easily solved, or use the "special technology" of this world to find a water elemental mage to water the land. But obviously, the second option was not reliable. After the camp was on the right track, Heti would only have more and more things to do, and she would not have the opportunity to come over and be a human-powered water pump, and hire an official mage to water the land … Even the Violet Kingdom in the north and the Elves in the south could not do such a luxurious thing. Besides, even if the money from Cecil's family fell from the sky, how many mages would be willing to come to the fields to do such a "dirty work for the lowly"?
They would rather take less money and go to the castles of the king and the great nobles to set off fireworks for banquets, so as to please the pale ladies and noble ladies who had taken too many magic potions.
So Gwen immediately dismissed the idea of finding a mage to be a human-powered water pump, and instead thought of a solution from a mechanical point of view. Of course, according to the general rules of this world, the nobles' way of solving this problem was to find more serfs to do the work. But for Gwen, wasting manpower on this kind of thing was too extravagant.
At this time, an ancient but effective machine appeared in Gwen's mind. "Have you heard of something called a water wheel?"
Heti, Norris, and Knight Philip were stunned.
Sure enough, no one had heard of such a thing.
Gwen looked at Heti. "Do you have a pen and paper?"
After getting the pen and paper, Gwen began to sketch a simple sketch. It was a very tall wheel-like thing, supported by spokes. The outer edge of the 'wheel' was fixed neatly arranged slanted cylinders and wooden planks, and on one side of the 'wheel' was a drawing of an extended water trough.
Due to the limited time, he could only draw a part of the structure of the water wheel, and it was only a sketch. But this simple but magical machine had an amazingly simple principle, and it only needed a little explanation. "This thing is a water wheel. The river flows from below, hitting the wooden planks, causing the water wheel to rotate. Then the water wheel will bring the cylinders filled with water to the top, and the water will be poured into the trough. This process continues, and the water will be lifted up. As for how high the water can be lifted, it depends on how big the water wheel is, as long as the material can support it. "
Saying that, he added, "Of course, this is only a sketch, and the principle is very simple. On this basis, there can be more models …"
Heti had no time to talk at this moment. She was completely attracted by this simple and incredible thing.
With simple reasoning, she could see that this machine was absolutely useful. However, before seeing this sketch, she really never thought that there would be such a thing in the world.
It did not need manpower, nor did it require the participation of any extraordinary power. It could work day and night, and it could complete the work that required many serfs to complete. And what drove it was the power of nature.
She suddenly felt the "beauty" of this simple machine, a word that had nothing to do with the crude and primitive structure.
However, Gwen still sighed. "It's a pity that there is no bamboo here. Otherwise, it would be much easier to make …"
Heti did not hear clearly for a moment. "Huh? What did you just say? "
"No, nothing." Gwen waved his hand. "About this machine, do you have any ideas?"
Heti was just about to say that it was a genius design when she saw Norris pick up a pen and draw on a piece of blank paper. The old farmer sketched and said, "If we build it directly by the Whitewater River, it will be very affected by the river water. It can't be used during the dry season. If we can draw another canal next to it, during the dry season …"
Noticing the sudden silence around him, Norris finally reacted and threw the pen away in fear. His entire body trembled as he retreated. "Master, I was only …"
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
