Cthulhu Gonfalon

“This is the best news I’ve heard today!” Sui Xiong exclaimed. Knowing that the drought was about to end, Sui Xiong could not help laughing as he said, “I’ve been really exhausted for the past half a year!”

“Honestly, everyone was really surprised that you actually made it this far!” Javier said. “More than one evil god has placed bets, gambling on whether you will burn yourself out or whether you would give up. No one really bet that you would persevere all the way and successfully make it to the end. Not a single one.”

Sui Xiong smiled. Suddenly, he froze for a moment before asking, “Not even you?”

Javier turned his head and appeared to be looking at the view outside the window. He even gave a very sincere compliment, “Ah, I just discovered a beautiful bed of flowers outside this conference hall!”

Sui Xiong sighed. He was at a loss for words.

“If it was anyone else, I wouldn’t be the least bothered. But even if you have no confidence in me… aren’t we friends? On account of our friendship, you should have helped me maintain my impressive image, right?”

Javier gave a dry laugh but made no explanation.

In fact, there was no need for any explanation. Sui Xiong understood what was going through his mind.

A friendship was a friendship. A gamble was a gamble. Javier was not optimistic about Sui Xiong being able to hold out till the end, so no matter what, he would never bet on this.

It was not known how long this great drought would last. If it were to go on for another eight to ten years, who would be able to hold on till the end of it?

But Sui Xiong knew that he could actually really persist all the way.

For the past half a year, he did not just hold on so purposelessly. While ensuring that there was water supply for humans, he had also been experimenting on how he could increase the efficiency of the seawater desalination technology.

Though the various experiments he carried out, his technique was also improving constantly. Now, he had progressed from the original set of technique to form a whole new technology—just like how a teacher would show something to the class during experimental class, he was now spraying seawater into mist. Then using the method of heating the mist, he attempted to separate the salt from water in the seawater.

This separation method was very efficient. Other than being able to obtain boiling hot water vapor, he could also get the coarse salt that was basically dry. He would then collect the coarse salt and ship it over to the Republic of Northwest. A group of magicians and craftsmen, led by Palin, were studying the coarse salt. They were trying to figure out how they could purify this salt into fine edible salt.

In the southern part of this world, there were also salt fields where seawater was dried up for the purpose of obtaining salt. Naturally, the kind of salt obtained would be just like this kind of coarse salt that Sui Xiong made. Generally speaking, this was the kind of coarse salt that the people ate. It had a clear bitter taste and should not be consumed excessively.

People who were financially sound could afford to eat fine salt that had been purified by magic. They would obtain concentrated seawater from the salt fields as the raw ingredient, then use magic to remove the impurities in the seawater. Thereafter, they would dry up the seawater to finally obtain the fine salt. It was very similar to the fine salt found on Earth, whether in shape or taste. The only difference was that words like “all-natural” or the green logo would not be found on the package.

Regrettably, using magic to purify salt water involved a very high cost. So this sort of fine salt was quite costly. Even households who were slightly better off might not be able to afford to use such fine salt, not to mention the poor people. To be able to enjoy salt of this grade, one would at least have to be a merchant, aristocrat or an adventurer who was doing pretty well.

Of course, in Void City, there were many dishes that used such fine salt. But what Sui Xiong wanted to do was to take this opportunity to research on ways to produce inexpensive fine salt that even the commoners could afford to use.

This was a relatively difficult issue to address. Palin and company had been working hard on studying it, but up till now, they still could not come up with a good solution.

If magic could be used, then things would in fact, be very easy. But once the use of magic was involved, then this thing was never going to be cheap. And if magic was completely eliminated, many things could not be made. Everything would be extremely troublesome.

Sui Xiong did not know when they would be able to reap some results. But he was in no hurry.

Carrying out scientific research was originally a very long process, and it required a great deal of time, energy and wealth. Which research powerhouse on Earth did not rely on a large group of scientific workers, a huge amount of money, as well as an extremely long time to accumulate and gain some results? A genius would be able to achieve all of the above, but something like that would only happen in comics.

Sui Xiong had stored most of the coarse salt in his God Kingdom. So now, there was a high mountain found in his God Kingdom—this was a high mountain formed from the accumulation of coarse salt.

The amazing thing was that there was so much less water and so much more salt in the sea, but the sea level did not seem visibly lower. The taste of the seawater did not become any more bland than before. It was truly very difficult to understand something like that.

“Don’t you all find this strange?” Sui Xiong asked. He described what he discovered and said, “Though we all know that the edge of the Main Plane is connected to other worlds, how could the flow of water be completely unrestricted? Then why is it that no one could directly set sail and travel to other worlds?”

The gods looked at each other and could not help wondering.

“Yes… Why?” Javier asked too. He frowned, then said, “This is something so obvious. Why have I never thought about it?”

“It doesn’t make sense… I was supposed to be fearless, liked to wander and travel, climbed the highest mountains, killed the most ferocious beasts… but why have I not thought about setting sail and travel to the end of the sea to see what it was like?” said Yorgaardman. Naturally, it would only be him who was capable of such a comment.

Wenner pondered for a moment, then his eyes narrowed. He said, “I’m afraid… our thoughts have all been influenced.”

“What?”

“How about this? Let’s do an experiment,” Wenner said. He carved a few lines on the table of the conference hall as record details of this matter. Then, he covered the carvings.

“Auscar, cover this again with your Divine Power to ensure that not a single one of us can see it,” he said. “Then we’ll wait for a few days and see if we can still remember this.”

After a few days, Sui Xiong mentioned that “a few lines were carved on the table as s record for an incident.” Then he asked everyone whether they could remember what was written.

The gods frowned and looked at one another.

“Is there anything like this? Why don’t I have any impression of it at all?”

“Yes, me neither.”

“Seems like, it seems like there’s really something like that! But… the memory of it is so vague… Auscar, are you sure this was a few days ago, and not decades ago?”

“Something’s not right! Given our minds, even if it’s something that happened decades ago, we should be able to remember it clearly! There’s no way we would forget about it!”

“You’re right! It’s impossible for us to even forget about something that happened hundreds of years ago, let alone decades ago!”

The gods’ faces gradually changed as they began to show heavy expressions.

Under everyone’s watchful eyes, the sullen-faced Sui Xiong lifted the lid that covered the few lines.

At the sight of those few lines, everyone was suddenly enlightened and recalled this experiment that they had originally done together.

Then they started to worry.

It was absolutely impossible for an ordinary person to be able to make nearly 20 gods, including four great Divine Powers, lose their impression of a certain event at the same time. Among all the gods, there was only one who could possibly achieve something like this!

The Master of Order!