Chapter 1472: A New Product

Baifeng received the news in a more timely manner because the pigeons from Hun had flown back. He learned that the losses were not significant, which was the best news; however, the letter also contained bad news: the pigeons of the Western Development Group were now completely unusable.

Fortunately, Baifeng had already prepared for this. Since those pigeons had lived in the Western Development Group for so long and were still willing to recognize Huaxia, it shouldn't have been the case in theory, so although it was bad news, Baifeng accepted it calmly.

Since that was the case, why not raise more pigeons in the Western Development Group? Those pigeons raised in the Western Development Group from a young age would naturally only recognize the Western Development Group. In that way, if the Western Development Group's pigeons were brought to Huaxia, couldn't two-way communication be conducted?

If one thinks about a bad thing from a different perspective, it can actually be a good thing. As long as they communicate via carriages and horses once a year or so and bring some pigeons over, timely communication between each other can be achieved. Xiao Town and Suiren City can both be handled in the same way.

As for Lema City and Weicheng, they are optional, as the distance is relatively close, and communication as well as the transport of personnel and supplies are very convenient.

On the contrary, raising pigeons is a troublesome matter if one wants to raise them in large quantities. Huaxia has moved the places where pigeons are raised quite far away, but they still cannot avoid being affected. The droppings are a minor problem; the pigeons themselves also need to eat grain. Feeding them normally is naturally fine, as they have their share of the grain used from the Huaxia National Treasury.

However, when they need to be released to find food on their own, they inevitably eat the common people's grain and wreak havoc in the fields. The public naturally has complaints, and they are easily killed indiscriminately by the Bird Catching Team.

Therefore, when harvesting grain, the pigeons must be locked up, which is also very troublesome. For the other two cities, since they are close enough, there is no need to raise these things.

The Xuanyuan Tribe is completely impossible; it is impossible to raise pigeons in the Embassy, right? Raising dozens at once is already quite troublesome. To have a long-term, continuous cycle, at least a hundred are needed. The Xuanyuan Tribe itself may have already started secretly catching wild pigeons to raise.

Although Huaxia sells pigeons to the Xuanyuan Tribe, Huaxia is not that stupid to give them both males and females; naturally, they are all males or all females. They cannot distinguish them, and they have all been put to use.

The price was high. When the few remaining pigeons were used for breeding, they found there was no movement. The pigeons laid eggs, but the eggs just wouldn't hatch into pigeons. This made the people in the Xuanyuan Tribe responsible for raising pigeons very depressed, and there had been no progress.

Xuanyuan also knew the importance of good breeding stock and specifically had the wild pigeons caught separated from the pigeons bought from Huaxia, so as not to affect the Huaxia pigeons. This completely led to the Huaxia pigeons having no possibility of continuing to breed.

Fortunately, the asking price was high enough; several transactions had already earned back a lot. After all, the matter of the pigeons certainly could not be hidden. The pigeons bought by the Xuanyuan Tribe all flew to Huaxia in the end, and Huaxia also kept its word; the letters and pigeons received would all be sent to the Xuanyuan Tribe.

As for fearing that Huaxia would peek? There was no way; they were under someone else's control, so Xuanyuan was also urgently wanting to cultivate his own flock of pigeons.

Just as Baifeng was waiting for the army he sent out to report back with subsequent news, people from the Ministry of Works brought a piece of news first: they had found a very strange mineral in the south, and they still didn't understand what it was.

The Ministry of Works had been tirelessly on the road exploring for minerals because Huaxia needed minerals, all kinds of minerals. Huaxia's current iron ore could not be considered rich ore. Baifeng wanted that kind of iron ore that sounded like metal when struck. In this era, nothing had been developed yet, so the probability of finding that kind of open-pit mine should be relatively high.

Therefore, there were specialized exploration teams specifically searching for ore on the land around Huaxia. If there was none nearby, they would go further away to find it. Finding the Magnetite Mine was also their credit. Although it was tiring, bitter, and extremely dangerous, as long as they found one, they would not have to worry in the future; they would have a surname and Nobility.

If they did not return within a year, Huaxia would consider them dead and directly confer posthumous honors according to the sacrifice. Their children could all receive compensation, and the eldest son would inherit the Nobility and surname.

However, to prevent people from taking risks and giving up their lives for Nobility, this kind of Nobility was always the lowest Baron, making them think that committing suicide like that was not worth it, and it was better to try hard to find something more suitable.

This time, they were in a place further south, which was also nominally Huaxia's territory, but it was very, very far away, already reaching the Qinba Mountains. It took more than ten days to walk from Huaxia City. Going out and coming back—if there was a discovery, they would return relatively quickly; if there was no discovery, they might return later.

They found a stone with a special color there; it was yellow, and some were white, coexisting together. It was impossible to determine if they were the same thing, and it tasted bitter.

As long as the color was special, it could basically be determined to be some kind of useful thing. They naturally had to carry back as much as possible and then experiment to see what it actually was.

The means by which Huaxia could refine minerals currently only included two: fire and water. If fire had no reaction, then try with water. If neither had a reaction, they could try making glaze; they would always find its useful purpose.

What was brought back this time was first ground and then burned with fire, but after burning, it was just pure ash, with nothing at all.

They poured the ash on the ground to air it out and searched carefully, but did not find any product. Then they could only go to experiment with other things first; after all, not producing a product was the norm. It might be that the content was not enough, or it had no use itself.

The ash that had been aired for a long time was taken to be levigated with water and purified, wanting to see if there could be any changes and what could be produced from the ashes.

It was just levigation; the water was always useless and was splashed away. In the end, they did not find anything in the ash either.

However, after a day, they found that in the small puddle where the water had been splashed, many particles like salt had appeared. Putting them in their mouths, that astringent taste was even purer and more obvious.

This made them instantly understand that the main product in this mineral should be like salt or like Saltpeter, which needed to be filtered, condensed, and purified.

It was just that for now, this thing was neither salt nor Saltpeter; it was definitely some new product, so they came to find Baifeng at the first opportunity, wanting to confirm what this actually was.