Of course, there are some locked wooden boxes for storage in the chief priest's house, and there are also many wooden boxes for small things, such as particularly precious imported steel needles. After use, they must be inserted into the linen head, wrapped in linen, and put away. Stored in small wooden box.
There were many wooden boxes like this, and Rurik subconsciously felt that such wooden boxes were perfect for making soap molds.
Anyway, there were many wooden boxes, and their use was approved by the high priest. If wooden boxes are not enough, a large number of unused bronze oil lamps are also good containers.
As long as it is a heat-resistant and leak-proof container, pour the fully stirred soap base liquid into the paste with a spoon, then place it next to the campfire and use the flame to accelerate the evaporation of the water. Maybe by sunrise tomorrow, the relatively dehydrated soap will be ready for normal use.
Finally, all the soap in the vat is poured, and all that remains is to wait for the changes brought about by time.
"Our work is over here." Rurik wiped the sweat from his forehead and sighed at his wit.
"Is it over?" Rumia asked.
"Yes, we can rest now. The soap and wooden box are placed next to the campfire. After dawn, the soap will harden and I can show it to my father. I will sleep here tonight."
What Rumia heard most clearly was that Rurik was going to spend the night in the priest's longhouse, just like he had done the past few days.
"Okay, I'll lay out the leather blanket for you."
"You go ahead and do it."
Rumia nodded and turned to leave without saying anything.
Rurik was still sitting cross-legged by the campfire, looking at the girl's back and couldn't help but think of a lot.
His eyelids were almost closed passively, and when he saw Rumia struggling to pull the rolled up blanket over, a feeling of distress filled Rurik's heart.
Two rugs were spread on the floor next to where the soap was being baked.
After all, Rumia is a servant. She has received a lot of favors, but she can still only make a bed on the floor in the chief priest's house every night.
After all, she is not a priest and cannot enjoy the treatment of a private room. She is just a guest here, and as her master, Rurik should prepare a separate servants' living room for her.
Or according to tradition, take her into your home and become a member of the family.
All Rurik can think about now is soap and the commercial value it contains.
Although he is someone who knows how to manufacture, Rurik also has business acumen compared to the primitive illiterate people in the tribe.
The original soap was just a test piece to gain approval from the fathers and priests. Only in this way can mass production be possible.
And the biggest problem restricting mass production is materials.
Do you still have to boil the oil yourself? It's not necessary. If the priests can be paid some money to do the work for them, the grease problem will be solved.
In addition there are the problems of containers and molds, which can also be solved by the priest.
Rurik knew that the lives and rituals of priests were in great need of financial resources. They, a small group of people, are not engaged in production and are completely dependent on the tribe's support.
The Ross tribe is actually a relatively loose tribe that relies entirely on blood relations. In a sense, it is equivalent to the "clan village community" in the East, but its degree of organization is far from that of the "clan village community".
Rurik lay flat on the animal skin blanket next to the campfire. His whole body was wrapped in soft fur, and he felt extremely comfortable.
He had already imagined the wonderful prospect of soap in his mind, but he didn't know how Rumia felt at this moment.
Can she...understand the benefits of soap or other new gadgets?
At this moment, the girl was sleeping right in front of him, and the two of them were sleeping head to head, surrounding the bonfire to keep warm.
"Rumia, are you already asleep?"
"No. I can't sleep."
"Why? You must be very tired."
"My arm hurts."
Her words attracted Rurik's attention: "I'm sorry, it must be because I made you keep stirring the stick."
"Please don't say that, I do."
Her attitude was quite positive. Why did Rurik feel so sad to hear this?
"Lumia."
"Um."
"You won't be grazing tomorrow."
"Why, isn't that the order you gave me?"
"Yes. I changed my mind. You can rest tomorrow. Just stay in this longhouse, or go look at those wooden boards, or improve your language learning at the priest's place. If there is anything else, I will personally order you."
Rumia was a little excited, but she still had other concerns: "But those deer?"
"The other priests will do it for you. I know that they are actually monitoring you, afraid that you will drive the deer away. You will never run away, right? You are very smart."
Rumia's heart tightened. She was a simple person, but now facing her master, she was willing to tell her innermost thoughts.
She huddled up in the fur, closing her eyes and trying to suppress her tears, and also tried to control her nasal sounds so that Rurik wouldn't notice that she was about to cry.
She reluctantly said: "I once wanted to run away, but now I don't think so. I stay, this is the best. I know you like me, my...my master."
Rumia, she is willing to respectfully call Rurik "herra", which is the word for "master" in the dialect of the Rus tribe in Old Norse, which actually also means leader.
When pronouncing this sound, you need to flick your tongue. Rumia actually masters the pronunciation of "rra" quite well.
Hearing her words, Rurik smiled secretly.
"Lumia."
"I am here."
"Don't call me herra from now on. You can call me by my first name, and I won't mind. Instead, I'll feel friendly. If you feel that lacks respect, just call me masta."
"Masta?" Rumia was curious. This was the first time she heard this word.
"Yes, masta means wise man. I know many things. If you are willing to follow me, I will give it to you. So when you grow up, you can become a wise person. In exchange, you must obey my orders. .”
"Okay masta!"
Rumia learned quickly, but she just didn’t know how Rurik invented such a strange word.
This word was indeed invented by Rurik. It is a simplification of the inherently thick word "master". It does not need to be articulated or ruffled, and it ends with a vowel, which makes it comfortable for you.
Rurik felt a little uncomfortable no matter what the pure master-servant relationship was, but if it turned into a teacher-apprentice relationship, the situation would be completely different.
In fact, it is pure self-deception. By changing the words of address, it seems that the relationship between the two has changed qualitatively, becoming a teacher and a student.
In fact, they are still pure masters and servants.
Objectively speaking, Rurik has absolute dominance over Rumia. This power is recognized by everyone in the tribe, and Rumia also feels that this is a natural thing.
Rumia thought about the words she had just learned. She shifted her attention. It seemed that her arms were no longer sore, and she fell asleep after a while...
The longhouse of the longhouse was very quiet, except for the coals in the bonfire that continued to burn and gradually extinguished, turning into a smoldering fire.
Deeply piled charcoal is the most difficult to burn. They burn very slowly and release heat for a very long time. The heat bakes the wooden boxes containing soap, and chemical changes are in progress.
The paste-like soap was dehydrating rapidly. What Rurik did was actually wrong. He checked the condition of the wooden box as soon as he woke up and noticed his mistake.
"Oops, I thought baking would speed up the dehydration. It seems like only the surface is dehydrated, but the inside is still soft and waxy!"
Many priests have woken up and are doing their own things, such as washing their faces to wake them up.
No one disturbed Rurik's sleep, and no one touched those "soupas" out of curiosity.
Rurik was awakened by the noise. He found that the baked soap had large cracks and a soft and waxy appearance inside.
But it's not a bad result.
He fiddled with a wooden box and pushed it over, then slapped the wooden board behind it hard, and the soap fell out.
"Huh? It looks pretty good. It's brown, just like the color of soap."
The end facing the campfire became quite hard and cracked, while the other parts were quite soft, and a large piece could be detached with just a little force.
How does this feel?
A finished piece of soap is held in the hand. Its shape is like a square brick, but it has two appearances.
One side was cracked and hard, as if it had been air-dried for a long time. The other side feels like it has been soaked in water. At this moment, it was the first time for Rurik to make soap by himself based only on theoretical knowledge, and he suddenly remembered those professional soap companies. They seemed to have an "air-drying" process.
It is a relatively long "natural aging" processing technology. Under the condition of natural ventilation, the entire soap bar is naturally and evenly dehydrated. In this case, haste makes waste.
But it has basically taken shape. The key to it at this stage is whether it is easy to use. Only by proving to others that the thing called soapa created by the leader's son is indeed effective will there be opportunities for subsequent improvements.
Rurik straightened his back and looked at the behavior of the priests. He was secretly pleased that they were already boiling snow water and wanted to wash their faces with warm water.
For Bona, the successor to the high priest, today is another ordinary day in a boring winter. Rurik wanted to come up with some novel gadgets, but he didn't know how useful it would be.
After all, when it comes to washing your face, it's enough to wet your face with water and wipe it clean with linen cloth. Isn't this clean enough? Does it need further cleaning?
Women always love beauty, and so do the priests of the tribe. They are willing to wear gemstones and amber as jewelry. For the sake of beauty, they will pierce their earlobes, wear gemstone pendants, or get tattoos on their skin.
Tattoos, many men and women in the tribe are not opposed to tattoos. Use a steel needle to pierce the skin and pound the toner into it. Countless small holes can form a painting. When the wound is completely healed, the skin will have more patterns.
Women do this too, but they don't realize that they can use pink and white to cover their freckles and make their cheeks rosy, or that applying red flower juice to their mouths will please men more.
They don't have mirrors, not even bronze mirrors. They can only understand their faces by squatting on the water at most, but how can the reflection of the water clearly show the freckles on their faces?
Simple washing and wiping cannot remove freckles at all, because they are the result of oxidation of the skin secreted by sebaceous glands. If you want to remove them, using soap to remove excess sebum is a good choice. What's worse is that compared to ordinary residents, priests have to boil a lot of animal oil due to their work, and the smoke from the oil really damages their faces.
Both men and women have freckles, and Rurik has become accustomed to the faces of the tribesmen. He felt that things were not that bad, because these guys, both men and women, would jump into wild ponds to wash away the dirt in the summer, and in the winter they would also get into the steam house or boil snow water to wipe themselves.
Compared to their distant Germanic relatives in the south, everyone in the Rus tribe loves to be clean.
This is a very good habit. If soap can be used in water baths or steam baths, it will definitely bring about a revolution in bathing, as well as a revolution in hygiene and health.
Rurik aimed at Bona, who was splashing water on her face, and walked out holding a large piece of soap.
"Bona! You can try this."
Suddenly, with her eyes closed, Bona heard the voice of a child. She suddenly opened her eyes and saw that it was the lovely Rurik, holding a ball of brown squares and looking at her with a smile.
"Ah! Rurik, did I really disturb your sleep? Is this thing in your hand..."
"That's it, it exists for washing your face. Bona, you must try it, I'm sure it will make your face cleaner than ever."
"real?"
What made Bona want to try was her curiosity and the child Rurik's bold words.
She first tentatively touched the so-called soapa, and then it turned into caressing. After a while, her wet hands were covered with tiny sticky foam.
"What's going on? Rurik."
"Hey, wash your hands quickly, you will feel incredible."
Bona did as she was told. She put her hands in the tub, stirred it casually and then took it out. She could clearly feel the extreme cleanliness of her hands. She could even hear a squeaking sound when she rubbed her hands. This was something she had never been able to do when washing her hands before. experiential.
Why, she finished her work yesterday, washed her hands and went to bed as usual. The so-called hand washing means trying your best to wash your hands that are full of oil after boiling oil. Of course, water alone cannot wash them clean. Even if they rub it everywhere, the large number of gaps in their hands can still lock some oil molecules, which makes her and other priests' hands always remain slightly greasy.
However, this annoying greasiness also has an advantage. Other residents are prone to dry and cracked hands, but the priests have never had it. This is inseparable from the protection of grease.
Rurik did not feel complacent because of a little success. He squatted down and placed the soap next to the tub, and directly encouraged Bona: "You can do another common sense. Take oil from other oil jars and smear the oil on your hands. Then rub my soapa, and when you see a lot of bubbles, put it in a basin and clean it. I'm sure that no matter how much oil you apply, it will still be very clean."
This prophecy completely exceeded Bona's cognition, and their actions also attracted the attention of other female priests. Rurik's heroic words were heard by others.
With everyone's instigation and curiosity, of course Bona had to do an experiment.
Someone hurriedly brought a jar of oil, and Bo Na bravely applied it to her hands. Someone else brought a basin of clean melted snow water.
"Is it true that she has recovered?" Bona finally asked.
"Of course, otherwise I would be sorry for my efforts yesterday."
"Then give it a try."
After that, Poona boldly put her hand into the basin, kneaded and stirred her hands in the water, and when she took her hand out of the basin again, everyone was shocked...
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Chapter 86 The Birth of a Bar of Soap
