BXBX NOVEL Chapter 22 - 22 This is Cheating!_1
Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Its umbrella-shaped cap, crystal clear in its totality, its stem was about the length of a finger, and half a finger in thickness. What was it?
“Mushrooms. Mushrooms are growing from the soil, but it’s damp and wet here, making it perfectly normal for mushrooms to grow. This should be a meat mushroom, with its flesh that tastes quite like meat. They’re in their juvenile stage now, but in a couple of days, they should grow bigger, possibly as thick as an arm.”
As expected of the God of Knowledge—there weren’t just a thousand, but hundreds of common types of fungi, and even more of the uncommon ones, yet Negris knew its type at first glance.
However, in all of that dialogue, Ange only picked out one word: “So, they’re edible?”
“Err, you can eat them, but who would eat mushrooms? They taste awful and have little nutritional value.” Negris added.
In an age where productivity was low, mushrooms were rarely eaten because they required a lot of oil and condiments to taste good. The Underground City didn’t even have an abundance of grain, let alone oil. If one were to extract oil from a bull-headed lady, they might get a few dozen kilos of beef tallow.
So, only hunters and herders who had plenty of animal fats would stew and eat mushrooms in a hearty soup.
“Oh, okay.” If they weren’t delicious and lacked nutritional value, there was no need to grow them. Ange was about to pluck the mushrooms when he suddenly heard a gasp from behind him, “Eh? Are these Holy Mushrooms?”
He turned back to find Lisa standing in a light, thin, black silk dress, looking surprised at the mushrooms.
This black, gauzy dress hugged her curvaceous figure tightly, making it difficult to relate her to the withered witch from the day before.
“What are Holy Mushrooms?” Ange inquired.
“They are these meat mushrooms that grew from being watered with Holy Water. While they are essentially meat mushrooms, they have some very magical effects, such as clearing up negative effects, toxins, plagues, curses, diseases, etc. As long as they’re not overly severe, they’re effective.” Lisa explained.
Having done with her explanation, she added with a slight smile, “The Church of Light plants a lot of these Holy Mushrooms. They dry them, grind them into powder, and distribute them to their priests and holy maidens to display miracles. When we cure a child of food poisoning, it easily earns the family’s gratitude and faith.”
Ange didn’t understand what she meant, but Negris was already shouting in anger, “So that’s it?! This is too disgraceful, too disgusting. They cheated! This is cheating! No wonder the Church of Light has been able to spread its message so effortlessly— they’ve been drugging people!”
However, Lisa couldn’t hear Negris’s words, only Ange’s. Lisa continued, “My Lord, if you could cultivate a large number of such Holy Mushrooms, turning them into medicine would likely be very popular. By then, they would all ardently long for your radiance.”
A saintess who cannot spread faith is worthless. The Former Light Saint desperately wished to dedicate her strength to Ange, to be shown mercy by her lord, and be bestowed with more strength.
“Can these be traded for grains and seeds?” Ange asked. He wasn’t interested in making people bask in his radiance, but if it was edible, if it could be traded for grains and seeds, then he wouldn’t mind having more cultivated.
“Grains? It is possible, but grain is a bulk commodity, and all three cities around here lack it. Even if they’re willing to trade, they won’t have much to offer. As for seeds, what they have, we have too. However, Ice City has a small teleportation array connected to the human world, so you can trade for unique seeds or valuable goods from the human world.” Lisa explained.
“A teleportation array? A World Transit Station?” Ange tilted his head. He had come to understand that the ‘World Transit Station’ they spoke of was just another name for the teleportation array—the place where Ange was teleported from, which could connect directly to one of the arches in the Resting Camp.
“No, no, it’s just a small teleportation array, so small it can’t even teleport a whole person. It can only teleport some valuable items, like Magic Crystal Ornaments.” Lisa made a gesture as she spoke. Based on her estimation, the teleportation array might only be seventy to eighty centimeters in diameter, thus it wasn’t feasible to teleport larger volumes.
“Demon Crystals? Do humans have Demon Crystals?” If Ange had ears, they would be standing upright by now. Wasn’t the reason he followed Aisike to the Underground City to find Demon Crystals? Demon Crystals could activate the teleportation pillars, so he could return to the Resting Camp.
Ange later asked Feilin if there were any Demon Crystals, but unfortunately, the Underground City didn’t have any. The few Demon Crystals Aisike owned were his previous exchanges from Ice City and were now depleted to the extent that they could no longer activate the teleportation array. Aisike depleted them shortly after returning.
“Yes, Ice City has a teleportation array for trading Demon Crystals with the human world, but we don’t have any goods to trade for so we get very little in return.” Lisa responded.
Ange pointed at the mushrooms and said, “Exchange these for Demon Crystals.”
If the Holy Mushrooms needed to be exchanged for the Demon Crystals, then they would need more of the mushrooms. As a result, Ange replaced all the stone planting racks with Holy Mushrooms. He had seen some that grew on decayed wood and roughly knew how they reproduce.
Therefore, once the first batch of Holy Mushrooms completely matured and began releasing spores, Ange used his Pollinating Skill to transfer the spores to the soil, and then spread the soil evenly over the furrows on the stone slabs.
Two weeks later, Ange harvested a full fifty kilograms of Holy Mushrooms.
Lisa looked somewhat dizzy, “This many? I’ve never seen so many Holy Mushrooms piled together. How did you grow them? When I was in the Church, it was already quite extraordinary if a parish could produce this many Holy Mushrooms in a year, but you did it all in just a few days?”
“I just grew it like this.” Ange revealed his cultivation method. Comparing it with Lisa’s, he discovered several differences.
First, they didn’t collect spores. Second, they didn’t adjust the soil and humidity. Third, they didn’t have as much Holy Water to water the crops.
The Church of Light didn’t regard it as a crop but as a divine blessing.
If a piece of land were to sprout Holy Mushrooms, they would cordon it off and have a priest pray there, then pour Holy Water over it and wait for it to grow naturally. Even the Holy Water was scarcely used because the priests who purified it were often busy.
If they were trying to get a bumper crop with that kind of method, it’d be strange if they succeeded.
Then how did Ange cultivate them? After he had collected the spores, he set up a series of control groups according to different light levels, moisture levels, humidity and temperature. For each of these controls, he even had a comparison for whether the Holy Water had been purified five or six times, and then he picked the combination that grew the fastest and most abundant.
Finally, he found out that soil that hadn’t been purified was actually better, as long as it was clean and contained a large amount of organic matter. Mushrooms watered with water that had been purified five times grew the best and the fastest.
Which type of organic matter was best? Dried moss was best. If the moss was fresh, it would rot and that wouldn’t work—it must be dried.
“Is that enough? To exchange for… ” Ange tried to recall that Aisike had used more than a dozen blue crystals back then, so he must exchange them for more than forty: “Forty crystals?”
“Yes, that’ll be enough. Hehe, fifty kilos of Holy Mushrooms, ground into at least ten kilos of powder. Going by the old prices of the Church of Light, one kilo of Holy Mushroom powder could be traded for twenty Demon Crystals. Of course, the church itself didn’t lack Demon Crystals and you couldn’t buy Holy Mushroom powder on the open market. Let me take five kilos over first, enough to trade for over a hundred Demon Crystals. Taking too many might actually decrease their value.”
At this point, Lisa seemed to remember something, and her face lit up with determination, “Seeing how I look now, the old witch in Ice City will probably kneel down and beg me to display your power.”