Chapter 43: Earth Vein

During this period, every time Gao De went out to sell medicine, he would walk around Hogen City on the way.

One is to get familiar with Hogen City, and it can also be considered as relaxing and feeling the "otherworld" style.

The second is to understand local customs and even prices, deepening his understanding of this world.

It was precisely this action that made him discover that there were many people in the city who were obviously not local residents of Hogen City recently.

This made Gao De vigilant.

An inexplicable feeling of wind and rain coming arose in his heart.

In addition, there was an unexpected harvest that even Gao De himself did not expect.

In this world, books are a rare and expensive commodity.

In some larger cities, there will be libraries specifically for selling books.

In small cities, don't even think about it; only nobles, scholars, and wealthy merchants will have some privately collected books at home.

This is caused by the monopoly of knowledge by the class that holds power in this world.

After understanding this situation, Gao De had no idea of buying any books in Hogen City.

But he didn't expect to discover a small studio selling books in the slum area while walking around.

The owner of the studio is called Dairiqi, who was once a monk in the Bremen City monastery.

Most monasteries will have their own libraries for monks to study doctrine.

At the same time, they will also copy and sell books they collect to scholars and wealthy sponsors who need them.

Dairiqi was responsible for copying and making books when he was in the monastery.

Later, the monastery was closed because of high maintenance costs and exhausted funding sources, and it could no longer maintain operation.

This group of monks had to be dismissed and sent home.

When the monastery closed, the monks divided the things in the monastery, and everything that could be moved was moved away.

Dairiqi was already old, couldn't grab any good things, and could only pack some books collected by the monastery and return to his hometown, Hogen City.

He was already old, his physical strength couldn't keep up, he couldn't do any physical work, and even if he knew how to read, he couldn't find anyone willing to hire him to work because of his age.

But people always have to eat.

The old monk calculated and rented a small house in the slum area to open a small studio.

He made and copied books in the studio and sold them directly to customers, barely maintaining his old age life.

The books sold by this old monk were not very valuable, mainly religious texts.

Including religious etiquette guides, church doctrine manuals, church history books, and even church literature including hymns.

In addition, there were a few heroic epics reflecting heroes and historical events, as well as sparse chronicles, travelogues, and books on geography and humanities.

There were no books on knowledge or practical manuals at all.

Of course, even if there were, Gao De couldn't afford them.

Here, any book involving knowledge can have a price that reaches the sky.

The price of those "miscellaneous books" in the traditional sense would be much cheaper.

Of course, this cheapness is only relative.

Although the types and quantities of books are very small, they happen to be what Gao De needs.

He bought all the travelogues and books on geography and humanities, a total of four books, and it cost 2 gold coins.

This price is simply jaw-dropping—in the past life, there were many cases of taking down a pound of books for 50 yuan on "Cut One Knife."

Gao De felt heartache, but he still paid the money obediently, mainly following the customs of the place.

After returning to the herb garden with the books bought at a high price, Gao De couldn't wait to pick up a book called "Bremen Geography" and began to understand the world.

Speaking of which, I have to thank Master Seda.

If he hadn't been brought back to the herb garden and accepted as an apprentice, with Gao De's identity as a beggar, where would he have learned to read? On this side, after turning a few pages, Gao De showed an extremely unexpected expression on his face. "It's very different from what I thought?"

The entire Bremen region is located in the west of Saint Xi En Principality, and its vastness far exceeds Gao De's imagination.

Because the overall style of this world is too similar to medieval Europe, and Hogen City is indeed not big, and the productivity is extremely low in his view.

This made Gao De subconsciously treat Saint Xi En Principality as a small country of tens of thousands of square kilometers, at most one hundred thousand square kilometers.

From the point that the big city Bremen, which is most widely known to the people of Hogen City, is actually less than two hundred kilometers away from Hogen City, it can further corroborate his guess.

The result is that, in fact, the Bremen region alone is already more vast than the area of Saint Xi En Principality he imagined.

The entire Bremen region is more than four hundred kilometers long from east to west and eight hundred kilometers long from north to south, with a total area of more than three hundred thousand square kilometers! This is already the size of Guangdong + Fujian.

In addition, there are nine big rivers in the Bremen region.

Seven significant mountain ranges.

Mountains, forests, swamps, and lakes are scattered like stars.

This is just a western region of Saint Xi En Principality.

It is conceivable how large the area of Saint Xi En Principality is.

"With such a vast territory, with the technological level of this world, is there any way to manage it? Won't it be out of reach?"

Gao De's brain instinctively popped up this question, muttering: "This is not scientific!"

The next moment, he smiled shamefully, realizing that he was subconsciously using fixed thinking to think about problems.

Although the technological level of this world is not high, equivalent to medieval Europe, it possesses supernatural powers such as spells.

Why can supernatural power be called supernatural? Isn't it because of its unscientific nature? Shaking his head, Gao De turned the page and continued to read.

A piece of area with such a vast area in the Bremen region is actually very desolate.

Centered on Bremen City, it is surrounded by eight small cities including Hogen City, forming a development area of nearly ten thousand square kilometers.

The remaining three hundred thousand square kilometers are all undeveloped wilderness, full of fierce beasts and dangerous subterranean creatures.

Further down, Gao De finally learned a little bit of information about subterranean creatures.

Although he often heard the term subterranean creatures and often hung the term subterranean creatures on his lips, Gao De actually didn't have much cognition of subterranean creatures.

Seeing information related to subterranean creatures, he was like getting a treasure.

"After the plane intersection, earth veins occur frequently, the number is increasing day by day, subterranean creatures surge out, but the Bremen region has not had new earth veins for two hundred years; Jeros XII once praised Bremen as a blessed land..."

The description of subterranean creatures in the text is only this short sentence, and then it turned to other geographical introductions.

However, this short sentence contains enough information.

"Plane intersection, does this mean there is more than one plane in this world? Or is the plane here different from the plane in my cognition?"

"Earth veins occur frequently, subterranean creatures surge out" This sentence is very easy to understand; subterranean creatures come from earth veins, and earth veins are constantly being generated, and the number is constantly increasing.

The number of subterranean creatures should also be like this.

Sure enough, a world with supernatural power is absolutely incomparably complex and strange, containing countless secrets.

And that sentence "The Bremen region has not had new earth veins for two hundred years" indeed made Gao De feel slightly relieved in his heart.

Gao De had already witnessed the horror of subterranean creatures once in the herb garden.

Needless to say, the appearance of earth veins is a natural disaster for humans.

Once a natural disaster occurs, there are too many uncontrollable factors; how could he, a weak first-rank mage apprentice, not be affected? Gao De didn't want to see his current peaceful life broken.

He is still young, his strength is not enough, but he has infinite potential.

It is better to quietly "develop" and wait until he becomes much stronger.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 44 =====