Chapter 169 - 115: Development Always Takes Time

Guano is indeed usable for saltpeter production. React it with hydrochloric acid to turn the ammonium ions in the guano into ammonium salt, then pile it up like compost for curing, letting nitrifying bacteria convert the nitrogen in ammonium salts into nitrate under aerobic conditions. Add potash, and you’ll precipitate potassium nitrate—saltpeter. Harano already has hydrochloric acid on hand; the soy sauce workshop uses it all the time, so there’s no shortage. Potash is easy to obtain, too—he’s right by the sea. By repeatedly rinsing coarse salt using the leach salt flower technique, he can get potash. Or, in a more primitive way, he can slash-and-burn for huge amounts of wood ash, add brine to the ash solution, and get potash all the same. But this method of producing saltpeter is not just troublesome—it wastes most of the guano, costs a fortune, and just isn’t worth it. That’s why Harano only plans to publicly claim this is how he obtains saltpeter, in case the business becomes too profitable, attracting the wrong kind of attention and people looking to muscle in. This should buy him quite a bit of time. Even if someone gets envious, they’ll first try to find guano and make saltpeter themselves rather than just charge in to snatch his operation. Of course, this is just a bit of misdirection, and at the same time, he’ll stock up on some natural "fertilizer" for the future—in case there’s ever a food shortage, it might help, though it may not actually make a difference. But hey, a little insurance never hurts. For truly large-scale saltpeter production, he still relies on the processed bird droppings mixed in with the guano he hauls back. This stuff is even easier to use for saltpeter: same basic principle as with guano, but without the fussy conditions and no need for hydrochloric acid. Just build a few large filtration pools, throw in the processed bird manure and wood ash, add water, heat it up, then filter the liquid out. Add a bit of brine, let it cool naturally and crystallize, and you can scrape out raw saltpeter. This step needs to be repeated over and over, until no more raw saltpeter is produced. The leftovers aren’t waste—they make excellent natural fertilizer, ready for storage and future use. Finally, dissolve the raw saltpeter in water and boil it, filter out crystallized sodium chloride and other impurities, cool it again to get crystals, and you’ll end up with pretty high-quality saltpeter. If you think it’s still not pure enough, just repeat that step until the crystals meet your standards. Harano takes saltpeter extraction very seriously—it’s literally a matter of life and death for him. He’d prepared his "saltpeter workshop" ages ago. It’s a standalone structure right in his own house’s compound, not far from his private lab, and is the most tightly controlled place in all of Wanjin. Now that the "saltpeter workshop" is going into production, secrecy is even more critical. Harano picked out all the old folks from the original group of eighty-nine "old, weak, sick, and disabled" and put them in charge of making saltpeter. In this era, with an average age of only a bit over 29, anyone over 50 counts as old—but they still have some capacity for work. Once these people go in, they basically won’t be leaving anytime soon—most of them might die of old age in there. But honestly, these elders, who can’t say how long they have left anyway, don’t care. Saltpeter work isn’t too hard, but food, clothing, and shelter are excellent by the terrible standards of this period. It’s an ideal end-of-life position, considered living out your years in comfort. None of them give a damn about roaming around all day, and nobody’s complaining. In these times, just surviving is a struggle for commoners. Growing old and heading into the mountains to die is normal. Given there’s a job here with full bellies and no real danger, barely even tiring, only at the cost of a little freedom—hell, if he just opened applications, the place would be overrun by the next day. Young people might even fight for the jobs. So there’s no way anyone would have a problem with this arrangement. Of course, Harano isn’t some harsh taskmaster. He promised that as long as they work quietly and ensure stable production, there’ll be rewards. All credit goes to their families—promotions, bonuses, more land allotted—whatever’s appropriate, no problem. A catty of saltpeter fetches three kwan—a highly profitable business. He’s not about to be stingy over a little money. And if something goes wrong—say, he needs to evacuate in a hurry and, for secrecy’s sake, nobody inside can be left alive—well, that "hush money" is paid out in advance. His plan going forward is to use this system for any secretive, low-physical-labor jobs. Even hydrochloric acid production and similar tasks might be moved to the saltpeter workshop so he doesn’t wear himself out constantly. In a way, it’s a win-win. Neither side loses out. No issues inside the workshop, and outside, there’s a deep moat, guarded by the most loyal seasoned members of the Lang Faction, survivors of the Takeshige Manor battle. Of course, they can’t enter either; their job is just to make sure nobody goes in and nobody comes out. That’s it. Plus, they are formally part of Harano’s Inner Guard now, directly under Ah Qing’s command. Bottom line: however the state brought people into deep mountains to work on atomic bombs, that’s the level of seriousness he’s treating saltpeter production with. Just, his turf is too small—no deep mountains to hide in—so he built a little bunker inside his house, dug deep trenchwork, and locked people in there. Maybe it’s overkill, maybe it would be fine with looser controls, but this way he’s at ease. Once everything was ready, he locked himself in for a few days as well, together with these "old death warriors"—yeah, guess that’s what they are since he upgraded them from ordinary family members to "death warriors." Working firsthand with these old death warriors, he processed the first batch of bird guano soil, confirmed the process, calculated the output, and determined that with a little over 200 catties per stone of processed bird guano earth, he could get about 15 catties of high-quality saltpeter. This blew his expectations away. With traditional saltpeter field methods—mixing human and livestock manure—production is more like three to four catties per hundred catties. Turns out processed bird guano is even better: seven catties per hundred. Must be that processed bird guano has a higher nitrogen content—far higher than cow, horse, or human waste. Plus, he adds brine, providing more potassium, allowing more, better crystals. This is good news. On this last run, Ship No. 1 brought back over 350 stones of guano and processed bird manure. He’d previously told Yu Da to mix more dirt in, as much as possible. This single load is enough to meet Oda Nobunaga’s quota—three thousand catties of gunpowder only needs a little over two thousand catties of saltpeter. This shipment alone covers a whole year’s needs, and then some. Not bad. Saltpeter is finally sorted, putting his mind at rest—at least his turf is stable now; it won’t be half-built and then snatched. Plus, he’s not in a hurry to hand over the saltpeter to Oda Nobunaga; he originally promised results in half a year, delivery in a year. It’s barely been three months. No rush—at the half-year mark he’ll dish out a few hundred or a thousand catties to keep up appearances, and quietly sell the rest on the side, so he can organize a bigger fleet and haul back more raw materials in bulk. A nice snowball effect. Quests just need to be finished right on time—finish at the deadline, fill in the rest by year’s end. ...... Having figured all this out, Harano turned to setting up the gunpowder workshop, ready to slowly start making gunpowder to placate the two Yoriki Warriors sent by Oda Nobunaga—"No need to rush! I’m working hard to complete the assignment! It’s slow because saltpeter production is hard, and I’m still improving the process!" On the side, he stashed some saltpeter and had Ah Man smuggle it out for sale, boosting his cash flow even more. He also planned to use old connections to try buying a few better customs ships. As for the black gunpowder formula—there’s nothing secret about that. By the sixteenth century it was everywhere, even a street kid like Ah Man could slap some together. Nothing remarkable. The only thing not invented yet is granulated wet powder, so powder packed in bags easily separates and its ignition rate suffers, but that has nothing to do with him for now. He’ll stick to making classic black powder, even slightly lowering the saltpeter content because his saltpeter’s too pure. All these trivial bits, he just tossed to Endo Chiyoda. However many workers, whoever should be foreman, how to guarantee output—that’s all her call. He’ll just glance at the report and stamp his approval. As for other things he could do with enough saltpeter... With abundant saltpeter, nitric acid is no issue. Guano can also yield ammonium salt, so he could try making early ammonium nitrate explosives or TNT. But after grinding away in the business office for a while, he gave up on that for now—ammonium nitrate is an explosive, and with his current lab set-up, he’s more likely to blow off his hand. TNT needs toluene, which is tough to source in Owari—no large coal supply, can’t make coke, not enough coal tar. Large-scale TNT isn’t realistically feasible just yet. Nitroglycerin and the like is risky, too. He has no way to teach modern knowledge to others, can’t have someone else do it, so better forget it for now. Otherwise, one wrong step and he might blow himself to pieces and be a disgrace to all transmigrators. He dropped the dangerous explosives and thought about safer ones, like "a bag of powder and a bag of sugar—call me Big Ivan"—but sugar’s not easy to get, and there’s no need for large-scale blasting right now. So, those plans are shelved. Maybe in the future, if needed, he can try again. That leaves the Iron Cannon. Now that gunpowder’s in production, it’s time to make Iron Cannons for the troops. But the only trouble is sourcing raw materials; making Iron Cannons themselves is easy—they’re just matchlock guns after all, not technical. Also, these ancient weapons don’t need to be kept secret. Later he’ll just visit the blacksmith workshop a few times and teach the smiths—nothing major. As it is, he only has enough iron to make twenty-some Iron Cannons. If not for talent training and establishing a production system, he could do it all himself. Making Iron Cannons is actually easier than making bows, less hassle—even a monkey could do it. He spent ages in the business office, pulled out his territory’s resource "menu," went through it again, and confirmed he’s not short on any supplies—just manpower. If he wants to bring in a big group of people at once, he needs an army. And those future soldiers are all busy working in the workshops—they’re not ready to be selected yet, and there’s still not enough iron stockpiled for mass armament. Have to wait some more. Harano looked around and realized, after all this churning, he’d actually spun his wheels to the point that there’s nothing left to do but wait for manpower and resources to accumulate over time. Guess this is just an unavoidable part of the growth phase—some time always has to be spent accumulating.