In addition to the space, the valley in Iron Mountain could also be used as a rear base.
The land there was very stable, and was surrounded by cliffs that could block the wind. Plus, finding water wasn't very difficult. It was very convenient, and was suitable for human habitation.
Zhao believed that in the future he would have more and more people. As long as he had the strength, he could build a small duchy in the Black Waste. Naturally, the people who ca here would want to establish and live in their own villages.
Of course, right now Zhao didn't have the strength to do that. The village he was planning to build in the valley was going to be a prototype to see what issues needed improving. This would help him build bigger villages later.
But the land improvent in the valley had not been completed yet. It was not the ti to establish a village. For now, it was just an idea.
Three days quickly passed. They were just waiting for Laura to send the oil presses, then Green could go to Casa city.
At noon on the third day, people from the Markey clan arrived at the foot of Stony Mountain. This ti Laura didn't co with them. Green ca forward with five carriages full of magic radishes in exchange for the oil presses that Laura's people had brought.
In addition to the five oil presses, Green was also given two hundred gold coins and a book. This book was an encyclopedia of animals and plants on the Continent that was written by a refining pharmacist. It was Laura's gift to Zhao.
Last ti they t, Zhao said that he was researching plants and he was preparing to open a ranch. Laura didn't want to lose this opportunity, so she bought him a book, to solidify her alliance with Zhao.
These kinds of books were rare on the Continent. Whenever a refining pharmacist wrote a book, it would often take him twenty years. He would collect a lot of plants and animals on the Continent, then he would visit a lot of other refining pharmacists and alchemists and learn from them, and then he would research it all. And finally, he would write the book.
Because this book wasn't about magic, not many of it were published. Generally, only refining pharmacists or alchemists would read it.
As well as the magic radishes, Zhao was also giving Laura one hundred and ten fire fish. This was Zhao's gift to her.
The oil presses were exchanged for the magic radishes. It was a good thing that the five carriages were able to hold the five oil presses, allowing Green to pull them up the mountain. Once he was up there, Green didn't unload the carriages, and instead Zhao brought them into the space.
Beyond Zhao's expectations, there was also a manual telling you how to arrange the oil presses. He felt very puzzled by this because he understood the situation of the Ark Continent. That is to say, their science was mostly focused on things like mixing drugs in alchemy. They weren't exactly a civilization that had a lot of machine technology. Yet the design of the oil press was very precise.
The oil presses went directly to the Iron Mountain castle where they were packed into the warehouses.
They were very well designed. The oil presses were three ters high, with a drum container at the top where you would feed in the oil fruits, a disc in the middle with long poles sticking out that could be pulled by spirit beasts, and a pipe at the bottom which would be the outlet for the oil.
It all looked simple, but with a machine that had the size of twenty square ters overall, it wasn't exactly small. Good thing it could be dismantled into several parts, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to fit inside the carriages.
Zhao saw how high the feed container was off the ground. If you wanted to feed it with oil fruits, there were only two ways. The first way was to form boards into a slope shape to give the feed container a better opening to catch whatever you put in. The other way was to use a conveyor belt.
The conveyor belt thod was the easier way. You just load the belt with oil fruits and they would automatically go through the opening of the container. The oil press didn't have a conveyor belt design, so Zhao feared that there was no such thing on the Continent.
The board thod was what was widely used on the Continent. People would just dig a pit in the ground and then they would put the oil press in that pit, so then the feed container would be closer to the ground. Any oil that was extracted would be brought up in barrels. Zhao didn't want to use this thod because it wasn't an easy task to dig around here. The ground in the castle was all made up of stone.
Zhao still wanted to use the conveyor belt thod because it wouldn't be difficult to do. It just needed so renovations. Fortunately, the whole press was made of tal, so to change it they just needed so tal parts.
But the next question was where would Zhao get a blacksmith? If he really wanted a conveyor belt, he would need a blacksmith to do the job, and his skills couldn’t be too weak.
Zhao wanted to ask Green if he knew. In the Continent, there were a lot of machines built by blacksmiths, and so of them were powered by magic crystals. But since the oil press was just a simple machine that squeezed out fruit oil, it wasn't worthy of using magic crystals as a power source because it wasn't worth the money. So simple machines like the oil press were generally designed to be powered by water, wind, or animals.
Since there was no way to build the conveyor belt, they could only use the board thod. They didn't lack any boards, but Green still needed to go buy so barrels.
Green was aware of their situation, so he imdiately set off to Casa city, while Zhao got so boards from the castle. They were also getting ready to wash the oil fruits. Fortunately, water was conveniently nearby, just outside the castle. Zhao told Ann to build a stone basin where water would keep flowing in, allowing them to wash the little hairs off the oil fruits. These little hairs, which could also beco food for the fish, would flow out into the moat.
Once the oil fruits were washed, they would be transported back inside the castle, ready to be pressed.
Zhao calculated that to work the press, including cleaning the oil fruits, he would need a minimum of four people. Since there were five oil presses, twenty people were needed.
Zhao had no lack of manpower, but he didn't want any of the slaves to do the work. That was because he wanted the oil presses to keep running twenty-four hours a day, which would require at least three shifts. If he were to use the slaves, that would an he would have to use sixty people in order to maintain normal operations. But since Zhao only had one hundred slaves, a reduction of sixty of them just to run the oil press was clearly impossible. So he decided to use his undead to run the oil press.
Twenty people were needed to feed the oil fruits to the oil press, but he also needed so animal power to pull the poles to extract the oil. Zhao was thinking of using the scaled wildebeests.
Zhao wanted to use the scaled wildebeests because his undead were not suitable for the pulling part of this job. Their driving force wasn't the sa since so of his undead, like Alien, were a different size and shape to so of his other undead, like the rat-like undead. There was no way for them to do the pulling on the oil press in a stable way.
As for his scaled wildebeests, although they weren't much, they were good enough for the job. Zhao's intention was to turn them into undead, and thus the problem was solved.
Now everything was almost ready. They just had to wait for Green to co back to buy the rest of the things they needed.
Starting a pressing factory wasn't a trivial matter. As long as they could make so oil, they would have another source of inco, which for the Buda clan was really important.
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