Chapter 123 - Crystal Horn Worms

-This chapter was sponsored by Cedric (from Canada) and Jere (from a place called Uusimaa, which I had never heard of before. You learn something new everyday). Thanks!!!

Zhao found that preparing a place to extract oil wasn't as simple as he thought. It wasn't just installing an oil press, there were also other different steps to take.

First, he needed a place to wash the oil fruits. You must get the oil fruits clean, otherwise the peeled fruits would only produce crude oil, affecting its overall quality. Second, keeping the oil press running required manpower, and in this case he would instead use his undead. And third, he needed to prepare a container, like a barrel or a metal drum. After all, they couldn't just allow the oil to drip on the ground.

The amount of oil he was planning to make was not a small number, so he would need to to prepare a lot of these containers. However, Zhao simply didn't have any carpenters to make the casks for the barrels, nor did he have the money to buy the metal drums because the price was too high.

Thus, without enough money, Zhao didn't know what to do. Even if he wanted to hurry their development, it would be impossible.

Now Zhao's only recourse was to wait until after they get their oil presses, then he would look around Casa city to see how much barrels cost, and then buy some.

Although he currently had funding problems, that didn't stop him from organizing the large rooms to get ready for the arrival of the oil presses.

After ordering the slaves to clean the rooms, Zhao and Meirin left the castle to go to the underground lake. Although there were no fish in the lake, probably because of the toxins from the creatures of the carrion swamp, that didn't rule out that there wasn't a powerful water spirit beast. If they started raising scaleless fish in the lake, that would be the same as feeding that spirit beast, so for extra insurance, Zhao decided to bring Meirin to the lake to determine that there were absolutely no spirit beasts.

Meg and Green were also following along. If they did find a strong water spirit beast in the underground lake, then their help might be needed to deal with it.

Although they had previously checked the lake, this time they were going to be more careful.

Fortunately, there seemed to be no water spirit beasts in the lake. It appeared that the toxins from the undead spirit beasts were too strong, now there was no life in the underground lake.

However, Zhao still worried, so he sent one of his undead down there to check out the lake himself. Soon he received news from his undead. It had found an inlet that was blocked. This inlet was supposed to be a hole dug by the dwarves so that a source of water could flow in to fill this underground lake, but now something was blocking it. He had to see it for himself, so Zhao opened up a screen, allowing him to see what his undead was seeing.

Looking around underwater, he found some kind of coral-like thing.

Zhao was surprised by this. He didn't understand why something like coral would be in this lake. He remembered that this stuff would generally be found in the sea, so why was it in this place?

Unfortunately, the inlet was too far away to see it clearly, so Zhao directed the undead to get closer to it. Meirin was also watching the screen along with Zhao, and when the undead got close enough, they saw how huge the inlet was. It was ten meters high and twenty meters wide, and it was completely blocked by this false coral-like thing, which looked like it was made from blue crystals. It was very beautiful.

When Meirin saw it, she understood. "It turns out to be crystal horn worms. Only this thing could fool my search and survive in this place."

Zhao looked puzzled. "Grandma Meirin, what are crystal horn worms?"

Meirin smiled. "Crystal horn worms are very special aquatic organisms. Individually, they are so small that magical detection simply can not find them. No one knows how they can survive in water, all they know is that they secrete some kind of magic crystal. These crystals are so hard that it would be difficult for fifth level warriors to cut it with a sword. As for these insects themselves, they have no attack power, yet they can survive in any water environment up to a certain depth. Also, they're not afraid of poison. There are some alchemists that would try to collect these insects to make antidotes."

When he heard what Meirin said, Zhao thought that not only did these crystal horn worms evolve to survive in any water environment, they were also unafraid of poison. No wonder they were still alive in this underground lake.

Looking at this coral blocking any water from escaping, Zhao couldn't help but nod his head. "This is good. It'll save us a lot of trouble when he put in some fish."

Meirin smiled. "Not only that, but these crystals secreted by the crystal horn worms also have other uses. Aristocratic families generally like this stuff because of how beautiful they are, and when you place them in a room, they can usually prevent magical poison attacks. Even if someone wanted to poison you, this crystal has a feature that could warn you if there are any toxins within a five meter range. A lot of noble clans will pay a high price for these crystals. We have so many in this lake that if Master wants to sell them, we can make a lot of money."

"Well, let them stay in the lake for now. It's not like they can run away," Zhao said.

Meirin gave no opinion about the matter. That was because she knew there was an advantage of keeping the crystal horn worms in the lake. If they were to add in some fish, the fish would rarely get sick and would have a high survival rate. But there was no need to tell Zhao this because he had the space, which would already give the fish a one hundred percent survival rate.

Since Zhao decided to not dig out these crystals, this was also good. After all, they were planning to raise fish at a large scale, which would have been impossible in Zhao's space. Only this lake would be able to fit all of them.

Once they were done, Zhao felt relieved because now he knew they could start raising scaleless fish without any trouble.

Back at the castle, Zhao and Green looked over several of the large warehouses where they were going to install the oil presses. Seeing as they were all clean and ready, it was time to return to Stony Mountain.

For the next three days, Zhao had been waiting in the manor for Laura to send someone to pick up the magic radishes. In this time, he was able to grow and harvest nine batches of radishes and two batches of oil fruits.

In addition, Zhao now had one thousand mature rabbits and seven thousand rabbit cubs. As for the scaled wildebeests, he stored them away because he was now focusing on only raising the blue-eyed rabbits. That was because the meat from these wildebeests were rough and tasteless. They were only good as pack animals.

Also in this three day period, Zhao had made some good progress with the land transformation in the valley of Iron Mountain. Someday, he might send some slaves there to build a small village so that they could be relatively independent.

Translator Notes: This chapter is to make up for the one I missed on Monday, 5/30

Translator Notes #2: I know that worms technically aren't insects, but that's just what this chapter says.

Translator Notes #3: The author finally explained something in this chapter. Whenever there's an outbreak of undead spirit beasts, they would poison the land and the water, yet when Zhao first came to the Black Waste, the water was clean while the land was still toxic. I'm guessing that these crystal horn worms would eventually purify the water after each outbreak.

Translator Notes #4: From now on, I'm just going to assume that ever since he opened the ranch, Zhao has been able to store living animals in his spatial barn (unlike before, when he could only store robotic objects). That's the only explanation for why he has more than a thousand animals.