Seeing that everyone was finally feeling a little uncomfortable, Song Xuan smiled mischievously, but this was not without reason. Although the surrounding environment was good, there was no water source yet.
The initial refining will definitely consume a lot of water, so I can only aggrieve everyone. If it succeeds, I can search this area later to see if there is a suitable water source.
He pulled two people over, and together with him, he began to fully crush the rock ore that everyone had smashed down. The more crushed it was, the better it could be dissolved in the water.
At this time, the huge stone came into play. Song Xuan and the two of them carried the mined salt ore there, picked up the ax and carefully smashed it, and then slowly ground it into powder.
Although the efficiency is not high, good things are not difficult to do, it is just mechanical repetition. At this time, Song Xuan was a little missed the stone mill he had seen before.
My job seems to be similar to that of a stone mill, which is to grind fine particles into powder. If possible, I would make some stone mills later to grind the stones.
Although the wear and tear may be greater, the efficiency will definitely be greatly increased, and it will also be easier. There are many large animals in the tribe. Not to mention the two cows, Uncle Deer and his family can pull him up. .
Working with animal power is definitely much easier than using people.
But this is just a beautiful imagination. At this moment, I still have to use a stone ax to smash it bit by bit.
But the efficiency of the three people was relatively fast. After more than an hour of smashing, they had a full pot. Song Xuan felt that this amount was almost enough for a test.
Pour out half of the ore powder, then take everyone's kettles over, pour everyone's water into the pot, and then stir thoroughly with your hands.
There were no lakes or rivers around, so they still used the water they brought themselves. Only then did everyone understand why the envoy had not allowed him to drink water. It turned out that it had a more important purpose.
Compared with refining the salt inside, it is not unacceptable for me and others to suffer a little torture.
After stirring for a while, Song Xuan still felt that it was not enough, so the two of them raised the fire and stirred while heating. Of course, they must not use their hands at this time. Song Xuan found a big wooden stick and kept stirring in the pot. Wait until the water in the pot is almost boiling, then take it away from the flame.
After leaving the flame for heating, Song Xuan stopped, in order to allow the stone powder inside to settle to the bottom.
Although he knew there was salt in it, Song Xuan didn't know how much of the half pot of water could be extracted at one time, so he took advantage of this time to process the remaining half of the salt ore in the same way.
Otherwise, if not much water comes out of a pot of water, the feeling will not be shocking enough. Song Xuan also dipped his finger in some water and tasted it. The salty taste was quite strong.
After the water was clear, Song Xuan and Shi Lin picked up the pot and carefully poured out the surface water. Before it reached the turbid lower layer, Song Xuan stopped in time. This was also the first time to refine salt ore. , so you still have to ensure the quality. Although there is a lot of salt in the remaining water, it’s better not to use it.
This cycle was repeated twice to ensure that there were basically no impurities in the water. Of course, this could still be seen on the surface. At least when Song Xuan tasted it, the water still had a strong bitter taste.
The next step was filtering, and Song Xuan also took out the equipment he had prepared, a huge bamboo tube.
Both ends of the bamboo tube are wrapped with Song Xuan's clothes. The things in the tribe are not so breathable now, and the mesh holes are so small that they can't be seen.
However, these two pieces of fabric are not much left. Although the clothes are still there, they have been scratched and filled with large and small holes. It is not easy to pick out a few areas with no holes at all. easy.
From now on, I can only think of other ways. Song Xuan also has a general idea. He can use animal hair as the first filter. Although it may not be that easy to use, it is still better than the materials that can usually be found here. .
The next layer of fabric is a section of washed sand. This sand is carefully selected from the river, and after repeated scrubbing, it is very clean.
Further down are some pieces of clothing used as barriers, and then there is charcoal that occupies half of the length of the entire bamboo tube. This is also the thing with the strongest adsorption power that Song Xuan can think of. These charcoals are not used for normal burning. The wood used for firewood was bamboo. Song Xuan seemed to remember that the adsorption power of bamboo charcoal seemed to be a little stronger than ordinary charcoal.
Although the improvement may not be too obvious, there are only so many things that can be used in the tribe, and anything better can make the final salt extracted cleaner.
The speed of this filtration was much slower. Song Xuan poured it in little by little using a eating bowl, and each bowl of water was filtered several times.
After all this tossing, only one pot of water was left out of the two original pots. Although there was not much left, after repeated filtration, the taste was indeed much better, at least it didn’t taste very bad. It's painful, and it has reached a relatively acceptable range.
Song Xuan didn't believe it and filtered it twice with a bamboo tube, but it seemed that the improvement was not big, so he had to give up. It seems that this is the limit of the simple device he made. The remaining impurities must be chemically filtered. way is possible.
But what makes Song Xuan feel a little strange is that the salt traded by the Wuyu tribe seems to be cleaner than the salt he has refined through so many processes.
"Do they have a better way to refine it?"
Although he was a little curious, he didn't think much about it at this time. Song Xuan raised the pot to the fire for the final step. He used high fire to cook it to evaporate all the water in the pot, and the last thing left was the salt.
It takes a lot of time to boil a pot full of water, so the five pots everyone carried on their backs come into play at this time. The water in one pot is poured into the five pots to cook together. The speed is naturally faster. There will be a lot of them soon.
Looking at the boiling water, Song Xuan also put some in a bowl. As the water in the bowl gradually evaporated, a thin layer of white crystals was left at the bottom of the bowl.
But at this time, the bowl was very hot. Song Xuan did not dare to try it easily. He could only wait for it to cool down a little before tasting the taste. However, this move attracted all the people who mined the ore and looked at the bowl. The salt on the bottom made everyone look very surprised.
"Is this salt?"
"That should be it. It looks similar to the ones in the tribe!"
"It seems to be a little whiter!..."
After the bowl cooled down a little, he touched it lightly with his hand and found that it was no longer hot. Song Xuan was impatient and quickly dipped his slightly wet fingers into it.
Then he put it in his mouth, closed his eyes and tasted it. The salty taste in his mouth showed that the refining was quite successful, but Song Xuan could always taste a bitter taste, although he didn't lick the stone. It's so astringent, but it has always been there, but at least it has reached a point where it is acceptable. It should be feasible to eat this salt with other things.
There may be a little more bitterness than the original, but the impact is actually not that big.
Seeing Song Xuan tightly closing his eyes, raising the corners of his mouth for a while, and frowning for a while, the people around him also had their hearts in their throats.
Finally, Shi Meng, who couldn't help it anymore, came over and asked:
"Angel, is it salt? How does it look like?"
It was only then that Song Xuan came to his senses and handed the bowl that was no longer very hot to Shi Meng, indicating that they could try it themselves. However, there was only a very shallow layer on the bottom of the bowl. It was definitely impossible for so many people to taste it. , it just depends on whose hands are faster.
When the bowl was handed to Shi Yu's hand, it had been scraped clean inside, and he could only look at Shi Meng and others who had the same expression as Song Xuan just now.
Everyone didn’t think too much, so they quickly opened their eyes and excitedly said to the people next to them:
"Well, it's salt!"
"How is it eating?"
"Better than the ones in the tribe!"
As for the sentence that it is better than the one in the tribe, this sentence is purely Shi Meng's personal feeling. Although the one made by Song Xuan is more delicate, the taste is still a little worse than that of the Wuyu tribe.
It's almost the same as what was traded in the Wolf Tribe.
Seeing that the salt was indeed refined, everyone was staring at the five cauldrons in front of them with burning eyes, hoping that the water inside would evaporate quickly.
Song Xuan stopped urging everyone to throw rocks. Anyway, he would be too busy if he hit too many rocks. It would be better to let everyone witness this moment of great significance to Teng She.
Firewood is something that the tribe never needs to worry about, and it is the same here. After leaving the valley, there is a dense forest. There is no shortage of wood in it, so the entire firepower is always maintained at maximum.
The shallow one-fifth pot of water had reached the bottom after boiling for half an hour. Song Xuan also asked everyone to reduce the firepower at this time to prevent the salt from being burned too much at once. Seeing that there was still water in the pot, The boiling white liquid made everyone very excited.
At this time, you can see that most of the salt has come out, but there is still a layer of water at the bottom of the pot. As this layer of water evaporates, the salt finally reveals its true face.
When it was in the bowl, it looked relatively white, but now it is probably more abundant, and the salt still has a slight cyan color in it.
Of course, it is not easy to get that kind of snow-white salt in this era. Even if it is obtained from the Black Feather Tribe, it is a bit yellowish, which is probably different from collecting salt mines.
But fortunately, the color is very light, and it is not so obvious if you spread it out a little.
With excitement, Song Xuan asked Shi Meng and the others to scrape off the salt from the other pots. Originally, there was only four fingers of water, so there was only a very thin layer of salt at the bottom of the pot.
After gathering the salt from several pots together, it only filled half the bowl, which was three or four taels. Although the efficiency was not high, Song Xuan did not seem too disappointed. After all, it was precipitated from the stone. Yes, this amount is pretty good.
Just the salt boiled in this pot of water is enough to feed the more than 100 people in the tribe for a day or two.
