Volume 8: The Sword Points to the Far East Chapter 250 Knights Raising Pigs
When the last darkness before dawn comes, street shops selling breakfast will open for business one after another. When the sky gets light and early workers appear on the streets, these shops will become lively one after another.
Crouching at the entrance of an alley, Revenge Moon looked curiously at a delicatessen diagonally opposite.
This breakfast shop was the first to open and the first to become bustling. There was a long queue of people outside the store, and it was still growing.
"Whose six fried dough sticks are they?" The master chef, wearing an apron and sleeves and standing behind the oil pan, nimbly scoops the fried dough sticks out of the pan with two long wooden sticks in his hands and quickly puts them into a paper bag made of the cheapest bark paper.
"Mine, mine!" A laborer next to him who had brought a can of hot soy milk quickly reached out to take it.
"Why isn't it my turn yet? I have thirteen sticks." The person queuing in front of the oil pan said dissatisfiedly.
"Right away." The chef pulled another bark paper bag from the table next to him and quickly stuffed the dough sticks into it. "One bag won't hold all the dough. How about two bags?"
"Five sticks in a pack, and the rest in another pack," the customer quickly reminded.
Two customers can almost finish a pot of fried dough sticks, so those in the back can only wait for the next pot.
"Hurry up, Master, we have to go to work."
"We are busy right now. It will be ready soon. Those who want soy milk should line up at the side first." The chef responded while busying himself, and urged his colleague who was sweating as he cut the kneaded dough into strips, "Hurry up, are you ready?"
"Okay, okay." The dough-kneading master cut half of the dough strips on the chopping board, put down the kitchen knife, picked up two dough strips with both hands, twisted them into a strand, and neatly stacked them on the end closest to the oil pan.
The master frying dough sticks quickly picked up the twisted dough strips, slid them along the edge of the oil pan into the pan, and began to flip them flexibly with the long wooden stick in his other hand...
The knight's job was tight and the workload was heavy. Those who came early to buy breakfast were all workers from District 3. They bought their own portion and also had to bring some for their coworkers. Each person had to order at least five portions. The skilled human chef was busy but still could not meet the needs of the customers. The number of workers crowded in front of the store was increasing. Anyway, out of curiosity, Revenge Moon wanted to go over to see what the fried dough sticks were, but he gave up after estimating the density of the crowd...
The Gourmet Hunter's Travels records many cooking methods for fried foods, which are quite popular among readers because they are filling and not easy to spoil. For example, Revenge Moon often asked his skeleton servant Ai to fry his favorite scallion pancakes for him. Although fine flour is hard to come by and consumes a lot of oil, the fried pancakes can be kept for a few days if they are wrapped in oil paper.
However, this technique of frying finger-thick noodles into fluffy, crispy golden sticks as long as an arm was not recorded in the Gourmet Hunter's Travels, which made Vengeance Moon feel a little dissatisfied with the Snow Wolf Tribe for keeping it secret...
Well, Xiao Yun is not Master Wang Gang who is dedicated to teaching people how to run a restaurant, so of course he can't take care of every detail...
Revenge Moon walked away regretfully and headed towards another breakfast shop with relatively fewer customers. Even from a distance, he could smell an extremely tempting aroma.
There aren't that many people gathering in front of this store, but business is n't bad either. It's not as popular as the one next door, simply because the breakfast they sell is more expensive. This is a mid-range delicatessen that mainly sells meat. Its main product is braised pig's trotters with the fat removed.
The fat is removed and the pork elbow meat, which has been stewed overnight in marinade, is cut into chunks or slices. A small package costs ten copper coins and weighs about three taels (there is broth in the meat). You can buy a pancake in the store to eat with the meat, take it to the noodle shop next door as a side dish, or take it away.
The fat that was removed was not wasted and was sold at three copper coins per bag (which also weighed about three taels).
The Moon of Revenge stood nearby and observed how others ate the food after purchasing it. He then took out ten copper coins and bought a portion of braised pork elbow. He then took out two copper coins and bought a palm-sized thick pancake baked in an oven (earth kiln-type oven) in the store.
The waiter helped him cut the pancake, stuffed half of the meat in it, and gave him a spoonful of broth. He also asked Revenge Moon, "Sir, do you want it spicy?"
Revenge Moon immediately shook his head. He didn't eat spicy food and even when eating cold rabbit, he only ate the less spicy copycat version.
The waiter smiled and added some tomato juice for him: "If one pancake is not enough to fill you up, take the remaining meat to the noodle shop next door and order some vegetarian noodles. It will also be delicious with our pig's trotter meat."
Revenge Moon was not used to the clerk's enthusiasm, so he took the pancake and walked away.
After a while, he came back and caught the clerk who had much less work than the dough sticks shop chef: "How come this pork is so delicious?! It's even better than beef? What did you put in it?!"
The dress of Revenge Moon is different from that of ordinary workers, but this store has also received many guests from Valentine City and even nobles from other places. It is not the first time that curious guests have asked questions like this. The clerk smiled and said, "Of course we have a secret recipe. The broth is shipped from the Snow Wolf Tribe across the Inland Sea by sea! The pork we use is also different. It is not the dirty pork raised by farmers, but the pigs raised in the pig farm run by Knight Robins. They are clean and delicious. Even a nobleman would not find fault with them."
Vengeance Moon: “???”
Knights raising pigs?! Why does this sound so weird!
The clerk added proudly: "The pork we eat in the Knights' Territory is all raised by Knight Robins!"
Moon of Vengeance: "..."
Well... Isaac certainly doesn't have the time to raise pigs himself in the United States. He just copied the experience of the Fire Tribe and set up a pig farm out of the development needs of the Knight Territory and the need for meat to supplement the consumption of workers engaged in heavy physical labor (due to the limitations of preservation technology, fresh meat cannot be transported from the grassland when the weather is hot).
There was a shortage of people everywhere on the grassland. As long as Valentine could provide three meals a day and pay wages, he could hire as many workers as he wanted. He could be self-sufficient in building materials and pig feed by growing a few dozen acres of alfalfa. He could also hire locals to pick acorns, catch freshwater crabs (only the size of a thumb) that no one would eat, and catch earthworms and grasshoppers, etc., dry them, grind them into powder, and feed the pigs at a very low price.
The biggest difficulty in running a pig farm is that Isaac has to catch Alex and castrate the piglets himself...
Magicians are probably the most curious and active group in the world, and the Vengeance Moon Mansion is no exception. He immediately turned around and went to other stores to try the pork in this knight's territory one by one to see if it was really that magical...
After a round of tasting, Revenge Moon discovered that the clerk at the braised pork elbow shop was not bragging. No matter whether it was a vermicelli shop, meat pie shop, skewer shop or barbecue shop, as long as the products sold contained pork, the meat did not have the fishy smell that he imagined.
Pork is the cheapest meat, selling for around twenty copper coins per pound. The most common mutton is 50% more expensive than it. Not to mention beef, one pound of beef can cost as much as four or five pounds of pork.
Why is pork (compared to beef and mutton) so cheap? The reason is that pork really doesn't taste good... The animals are not castrated and the blood is not drained cleanly when they are slaughtered, so the taste is simply terrible, only slightly better than wild boar meat (wild boar meat is dry and smelly).
Basically, if it weren’t for the aroma wafting from the braised pork elbow shop, Revenge Moon would never have considered buying pork!
“It’s the same pork, why is there such a big difference?”
Out of curiosity, Revenge Moon was no longer in a hurry to meet Sean. Instead, he asked passers-by and headed towards the famous local "Robins Pig Farm".
About half an hour later, Revenge Moon, who had opened the subspace barrier to hide his body and sneaked into the pig farm openly, stood in the pig farm building the size of a warehouse, staring at the pig cages that looked like small honeycomb cells.
Modern people on Earth pursue original food ingredients and are keen on spending a lot of money to eat free-range pigs. This kind of calm attitude that grew up in an era of material surplus is definitely not possessed by the people of this world - no matter whether the meat is chewy enough or whether the breeding method is green, environmentally friendly and original, the feed conversion rate and meat yield rate are the hard facts!
In short, let the pigs roam freely in the mountains after eating, how can they gain fat?
So no matter it is a pig farm on the grassland or a pig farm led by the knights, the goal is to make the pigs grow meat without moving - each pig is locked in a small, honeycomb-like compartment, and except for cleaning the pigsty, the pigs are never let out to move around, so that the pigs can only eat and sleep and accumulate fat as much as possible!
In the warehouse-sized, well-ventilated pig farm, the densely packed small cells were filled with fat pigs, all lying on the cement floor that had been washed very clean and was no worse than the floor of an ordinary family's living room, snoring soundly. The scene was so spectacular...
The local pigs in Valentine were domesticated from wild boars just like those on the grassland. However, the grassland only started to domesticate wild boars after Xiao Yun came, while the human kingdom has been domesticating them for thousands of years. Domestic pigs have all degenerated into fat heads, big ears, short legs and big bellies. Of course, they are still black pigs, not white pigs.
Xiao Yun specially had someone transport a batch of prairie pigs to crossbreed Isaac with local pigs. The hybrid pigs retained the fat head and big ears of the local pigs, and were also a circle larger in size than pure local pigs. An eight-month-old pig was the same size as a local pig, and the thick black hair inherited from the prairie pigs also became softer and sparser. The boars were castrated at one month old, and the sows were fed until sexual maturity before mating and giving birth.
The Moon of Revenge wandered around the pig breeding house with a look of surprise on her face, and curiously watched the workers letting the pigs out in batches to exercise and clean the pig sty. She found that the workers did not discard the feces cleaned out of the pig sty at will, but solemnly pushed it into a covered shed with a wheelbarrow for storage.
Pinching his nose, he approached the shed where the "fragrance spread ten miles away" and found neatly dug tunnels inside. There were workers wearing masks handling pig manure - the newly pushed in pig manure was mixed with chopped grass leaves and spread into the pit, and they used a shovel to carefully stir it evenly.
Moon of Vengeance: "..."
If it weren't for the serious attitude of these workers towards work, he would have doubted whether these people had a problem with their brains - how could they still play around at such an age?!
What was even more difficult for Revenge Moon to understand was that when he regretted his strong curiosity and was about to leave the shed, a man in casual clothes, with a tough temperament and who did not look like an ordinary person at all, walked in.
The man, who had the temperament of a "superior", walked towards the big pit covered with thatch with an indifferent look on his face, squatted down, lifted the straw cover with his hands, and checked the dark and indescribable contents inside.
"Is this batch ready?" The man looked at the workers who were working with pitchforks and shovels.
"It's fermented and fully fermented." One of the workers stopped "playing with shit" and said, holding a pitchfork, "We turned it out and aired it out a few days ago. This time we were very careful not to let it overheat and burn."
The man nodded: "People from Plantation No. 2 will come over to shovel away the land later. You should leave some people behind to support them."
"OK."
The man stood up and walked out, not forgetting to instruct: "Just shovel out the two pits for the people in Plantation No. 2. No need to give more. Leave the rest to Plantation No. 3."
Vengeance Moon, who was eavesdropping openly in the warp barrier: "..."
So, the products of this kind of "playing around" are still in short supply, right?!
The worker laughed and said, "Don't worry, Master Robbins. With your words, we will never allow Plantation No. 2 to do any more shoveling."
Vengeance Moon looked at the man in civilian clothes in horror... Isaac Robbins? The master of the Knights' Territory? !
Isaac also laughed: "Remember what you said, don't let the people from Plantation No. 3 come and accuse you of discriminating against others."
"No, no!" Several workers said at the same time. A young farmer who was sweating and shoveling dirt said, "The people from Plantation No. 3 didn't come to shovel last time. They didn't think this stuff was useful for planting. Later, when they saw that Plantations No. 1 and No. 2 were growing particularly vigorously, they blamed us for not reminding them. We are not so idle that we can deliver the goods to their doorsteps and persuade them to use it. You can't really blame us for this."
The product of "playing with shit" can make crops grow more vigorously——? ?
The Moon of Revenge was stunned, and suddenly thought of the rich vegetables, staple foods and supplementary foods that could be seen everywhere in the food stores in the Knights' Territory.
Valentine is a relatively new city, which has only been expanded for more than 30 years. There are not many towns in the radiation area (small agricultural production population), and most of the food needs to be imported from outside, which leads to a high cost of living in Valentine. Although Vengeance Moon has never been to Valentine, he is not completely ignorant of this second largest port city in the Federation.
The Knights Territory is a subordinate fiefdom of Valentine, but the food sold here is not as expensive as that of Valentine. If you are frugal, you can have a full meal with two or three copper coins. In other words, the Knights Territory must be able to achieve partial self-sufficiency in food in order to be able to offer such affordable prices to the public. (Even if the staple food sweet potato flour and wheat flour can be purchased from the grassland, the cost of living will not be reduced if vegetables and meat cannot be self-sufficient)
The Moon of Vengeance could not help but look deeply at the local lord.
Vengeance Moon, who was over 200 years old, had never seen a civilian speaking to the lord like this. What surprised him, but was also expected, was that Knight Isaac Robbins didn't seem to care about this attitude at all. He smiled, waved his hand, and walked out...
Revenge Moon stared at Isaac's back for two seconds, then followed him without hesitation.
If he was only interested in Sean who made a "special request" before, now he is also interested in Robbins, the knight.
The pig farm built downstream of the living area consists of a dozen very crude large houses (sheds). The empty space in the middle is used to dry feed. The smell of live pigs, feed, pig manure, and an inexplicable smell that Revenge Moon cannot identify but only feels very strange and unpleasant (actually the smell of disinfectant) are mixed together. Although the workers try very hard to maintain above-basic hygiene, it still makes people feel uncomfortable.
Even Revenge Moon, who was not very particular about life and could be said to be rather casual, found it difficult to accept this not-so-"decent" environment. Isaac, who had some young master problems, was naturally no exception. Coming out of the composting shed, he walked directly to the upwind side, stood on the stone steps above the ground, and looked in the direction of the living area of the Knights.
The pig farm is only 800 meters away from the Knights' District 2. You can see the streets of District 2 and the battle field that is larger than a theater. In the distance, you can even hear faint voices coming from around the battle field.
After waiting for a while, two tall men wearing knight half-armor dragged a reluctant little man and "escorted" him from the direction of the stadium in Area 2...
"The troupe's performance is about to begin, and you ask me to castrate a pig at this time!" The dejected Alex jumped up and down and acted like a spoiled child when he saw Isaac.
"These little boars are a few days old now. It's relatively cool these two days, so we should castrate them quickly to save trouble." Isaac smiled and comforted them, and his hands did not slow down at all... He pulled Alex away.
"Can't you castrate the pig at night? Do you still have a conscience when you ask me to castrate the pig so early in the morning?" Ali struggled with an aggrieved look on his face.
"Who is it that has been disappearing at night these days?" Wayne, the younger brother of the knight brothers, would not tolerate Alex, so he interjected rudely.
"I have something to do..."
"What could be more important than the pork supply for the entire knighthood?" Edward, the older brother of the knight brothers, pretended to be curious.
Ali turned around and glared at the two bad brothers...
Edward, who always seemed to be a good guy, seemed to secretly hate Alex for delaying their brothers from watching the troupe's performance. He added with a pure face, "Speaking of which, I heard a strange rumor these two days. It was said that someone was secretly betting on the outcome and number of goals in the match between His Royal Highness Prince Maurice's team and the Flame Department Badminton Team. It was said that the bet amount can only be settled in gold coins--"
"Is there such a thing?" Isaac turned back in surprise.
"There is such a thing?!" Ali went from angry to shocked in seconds.
That's right, the former's surprise was very natural, and the surprise lasted for no more than a second, while the latter was shocked for several seconds, and it was obviously fake at first glance...
Edward laughed and did not expose her. He continued , "I also said it was unlikely. If you want to gamble on football, we have an open betting platform. We accept both copper and silver coins. It is fair and reliable. How can private betting have the same credibility as us?"
Isaac didn't think too much about it and nodded as a matter of course: "Of course, most of the gambling scams are run by private individuals. Edward, is there a scam team that came to our knights? Have you investigated it?"
Alex: “…”
Edward glanced at Alex intentionally or unintentionally, and said with a smile: "Of course I have investigated. It seems that... a few civilians heard it from others. So far, no one has been found to be openly collecting gambling money."
Alex's eyes were fixed on Edward.
"That's good. We are so short of manpower right now, so the less work the better." Isaac did not doubt him. He turned around and continued to drag Alex towards the pigsty where the piglets lived.
Isaac withdrew his gaze, and Edward met Ali's naked gaze openly, and... secretly made a gesture, raising three fingers.
The meaning is very clear, we want a share of the "illegal" gambling money you collected.
Feeling guilty, Alex widened his eyes, waved his drooping arms, and raised a finger.
Edward shook his head silently, retracted a finger, and his eyes became sharp.
Alex gritted his teeth and nodded.
Isaac kept mumbling to himself for a long time. He happened to turn around and found Edward smiling brightly. He said jokingly, "I thought you would be unhappy that I didn't let you join in the performance. Why, Edward, are you not interested in the new play?"
"Of course not, I just don't like watching plays in overly noisy places. It's great to have an illusionist on stage to create the scene, but there are too many audience members, and even if one person coughs lightly, people won't be able to hear the lines clearly." Edward's response was very steady, without any guilt at all.
Isaac really had no doubts at all, and continued to pull Alex forward: "That's true, I also like the stage performances with the help of illusionists, but it's a pity that the cost of hiring an illusionist is very high, so I can only endure it normally."
"It would be great if we could have one of our own who could become an illusionist. That would reduce the cost of the performance." Edward took two quick steps and walked side by side with Isaac. "I've thought about this before. Why don't we support a few illusionist apprentices..."
Alex was obediently dragged away by Isaac. When Isaac listened attentively, he looked at Edward deeply...
Revenge Moon, who was watching the whole process: "..."
Vengeance Moon silently cast his gaze towards the older brother among the knight brothers. To be honest, if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, it would be hard to believe that this guy with thick eyebrows and big eyes actually had a lot of evil in his mind...
After following these people into a pigsty for about ten minutes, Revenge Moon ran out with a look of pain on his face, covering his face.
No wonder the little guy looked so reluctant. Few people can stand having the testicles of a piglet removed!
Knight Isaac Robbins, who raises pigs, lets his men "play with shit", and even removes the piglets' testicles, has completely become the epitome of "weird" in the eyes of Revenge Moon!
If he wasn't a dark magician himself, he would have wanted to roar out loud - what kind of witchcraft is this!
When he was about to run back to the living area of Zone 2, Revenge Moon's pace slowed down.
“Is it possible that keeping pigs in small cages, feeding them and cutting off their testicles is the secret to making pork delicious?”
Revenge Moon summarized his findings from the "visit" and could only come to a conclusion that was quite incredible to him: "...Not allowing the pigs to move and locking them up to grow meat will make them fatter, and keeping the pigsty clean will make the pigs healthy. This is understandable, but why do we have to remove their testicles?!"
Although Isaac was "fooled" by his men right under the nose of Vengeance Moon, Vengeance Moon did not think that Knight Robins was not a qualified lord - in fact, a lord with a tolerant and generous spirit is often more capable of accomplishing things than a lord who is domineering but makes his subordinates silent.
The reason is very simple. The former can only tolerate mediocre and incompetent flatterers under his command, while the latter can attract talented people to follow him.
It is obvious which side is better to actually manage the territory, the mediocre waste or the flawed talents in a worse environment. (It is impossible for a domineering lord/CEO to have a group of top elite subordinates with full loyalty in any world!)
Such a lord would certainly not do meaningless things. Vengeful Moon slowed down and carefully recalled what he saw in the pig farm.
The feed stored in the warehouse is alfalfa that has been cut into sections after drying. He has also seen the dozens of acres of alfalfa fields outside the pig farm. Obviously, it is specially grown to feed pigs.
There are a lot of freshwater crabs, earthworms, and acorns drying in the open space in the pig farm. There is also a stone mill in the corner, which is probably used to dry them and grind them into powder to feed the pigs.
"The farms of the great nobles cannot raise pigs any more carefully. In other words, castrating the young boars and removing their testicles must have the effect of improving the quality of the pork."
There was a gleam in the eyes of Revenge Moon. The travel notes of "Elf Ranger" also spent a lot of space to describe the breeding techniques of poultry and livestock, but he remembered very clearly that there was no mention of castration of pigs!
Uh… Actually, Xiao Yun had written about castrating pigs, but the Bards Association forcibly cut out the relevant paragraphs because they didn’t want to cause too much controversy…
"But how can the things in that greenhouse make the crops more vigorous?"
Vengeance Moon was very confused about this, it was beyond his common sense. If he was not a black magician, he might have thought that this knight leader was secretly playing some mysterious black magic...
"Perhaps, I need to go and take a look at their plantation?" This thought came to Revenge Moon, and he subconsciously turned his head.
Then he heard a thunderous applause.
Revenge Moon paused and subconsciously looked in the direction where the noise came from - a strange oval-shaped building that was at least three times larger than the Robbins Theater in Area 1.
The stadium has no roof and is open-air, but the spectator seats are built high and surrounded by a circle, so you can't see what's going on inside when you stand outside.
There is no charge for admission to watch games and performances on Warball Day. The windows of the entrance ticket office are locked, but the gate is open for visitors to enter and exit freely.
The Moon of Vengeance curiously moved closer, walked in, climbed the stairs and went up to the auditorium; after seeing the packed auditorium filled with tens of thousands of people, as well as the stage scene projected by the illusionist in the middle of the venue, the Moon of Vengeance was shocked.
