Jiang Zhi stayed at the Huo family's residence and talked for two days. Through the whereabouts of Miss Huo Er over the past three years, she roughly learned about the war situation outside and Nie Fantian's deeds.

Actually, there's nothing particularly surprising about it. It's just that the protagonist's team has repeatedly performed extraordinary feats, defeating monsters of higher levels time and time again, and has finally reached the current leading position.

Yes, it's a typical male-oriented novel with a fixed plot.

Jiang Zhi was not interested in Nie Fantian's bravery and his many adventures; she was only curious about Miss Huo's experiences.

It's quite simple. King Zhou's army, under the pretext of "purifying the emperor's territory," marched towards the capital. Wherever they passed, the imperial army either collapsed and fled or surrendered early on, leaving behind large areas of war-torn territory.

Miss Huo immediately led a caravan, carrying medicinal herbs, into these areas. Given the high risks, she naturally sold the herbs at high prices.

In the beginning, they also encountered many dangers, such as being double-crossed by local gangsters and robbed by bandits.

But after contacting Nie Fantian, the situation began to change.

They were all from Pingchuan County and fellow villagers. Huo Family Pharmacy provided the team with medicinal herbs and treatment, while Nie Fantian provided protection for Huo Family Pharmacy.

Taking advantage of favorable timing, location, and people, Nie Fantian quickly acquired many pharmacies and handed them over to the Huo family to manage.

Jiang Zhi was astonished. How could this be explained? Because of the conflict of protagonist's halo, she, as his aunt, always had to suppress him.

Nie Fantian must also feel uncomfortable, which is why he doesn't contact me directly.

With the male lead backing up the Huo family's pharmacy, Jiang Zhi's finances have improved significantly.

During the two days Jiang Zhi spent at the Huo family's house, Xu Errui was not idle either.

Because he wanted to make soap, he went to several oil mills in the county to collect oil residue and waste materials, especially cottonseed oil.

Traditional oil mills primarily extract tung oil, sesame oil, and rapeseed oil, with smaller quantities of tea seed oil, soybean oil, and cottonseed oil.

Although Bavaria County used to grow cotton, the yield was low due to technical and natural conditions, and cottonseed oil was not abundant.

However, Jiang Zhi has been improving cotton planting techniques for four years, and cotton production in Pingchuan County has increased slightly in the past year, with more people going to oil mills to press oil.

These cottonseed oils can also be used as cooking oil; an extra pound of oil can last for several months.

When Jiang Zhi learned that the people of Xujia Village also used cottonseed to extract oil for their own consumption, she became quite nervous and asked Tian Gui and the others to store the cottonseed safely.

If you are using cottonseed oil, you need to heat it to a high temperature until it smokes.

Previously, outdated pressing techniques could not remove the toxic substance gossypol from cottonseed oil. Long-term consumption of cottonseed oil could cause infertility and harm the body, but high temperatures can detoxify it.

Although these cottonseed oils are not edible, they are a good material for making soap.

As for making soap with lard... that's just wishful thinking. There aren't even enough people to eat, so how could anyone make soap to wash clothes?

The residue from oils like tung oil and cottonseed oil can be used to make soap, which is a form of waste utilization.

It's rapeseed oil pressing season now. Xu Errui visited all the oil mills in Pingchuan County and bought oil residue for a hundred or so coins. He collected several large vats of sticky oil residue alone.

The owners would take away the leftover oil cake residue; these things could be eaten or used as fertilizer.

But the remaining oil residue is usually not wanted; the oil mill said that Errui could go and get it again after a while.

Xujia Village was already a well-coordinated machine, and Jiang Zhi's departure and return did not cause any changes.

Knowing that Qin was doing well over there, Lianhua and her husband felt at ease and continued with their lives.

Stone Monkey is here to report on his pig-raising activities over the past few days.

Before the Lunar New Year, we said that each market would have one pig for the butcher to buy. The first batch of pigs has already been sold out, and now the second batch of piglets has entered the pen.

Saying that the Shi family has accumulated experience is a bit of an exaggeration; it refers to the various habits they've developed.

The four women of the Shi family spent their days either weeding in the fields or gathering firewood to cook pig feed. When the weather got hot, they made sure the pigsty was clean and the pig troughs were filled with water, and they also smoked out mosquitoes every day.

The two stone elders stopped making bricks and started counting money when they came back from working in the fields.

The stone monkey said that he would go to the county school in the future, which would cost a lot of money, and asked his family to save the money.

Knowing that the Shi family was raising pigs well, Jiang Zhi praised Shi Houzi and gave him a stack of paper and several brushes that she had bought from Jincheng Prefecture: "You should also use brushes to practice calligraphy. I will buy you more brushes when you run out of these."

Stone Monkey is a good student. He attends school in the village without needing to buy flowers or repair stones, and there are free stone slabs available. However, he still needs to prepare his own brushes, ink, paper, and inkstones to practice calligraphy.

Tian Xiaoquan had Tian Gui's help, and Xiaoman, his soon-to-be brother-in-law, also frequently bought things from the county town.

Since Shi's parents were unreliable, Jiang Zhi helped Shi Houzi buy some paper and pens.

Leaving aside village affairs, Jiang Zhi took the leftover oil back to Laoyun Cliff and began her busy soap production.

It's easy to talk about anything on paper, but doing it is a completely different story.

Fortunately, Jiang Zhi already knew how to make medicine, so it wasn't considered a career change. Thus, she and Chunfeng and Dazhu made soap on the mountain.

Making regular soap is simple: just liquefy animal or vegetable oils, then pour in lye water prepared with caustic soda and stir until saponified. After letting it sit for a while, it can be used. This is called cold soap.

Making soap from oily mud is much more complicated for Jiang Zhi.

First, heat an appropriate amount of water, then pour in the waste sludge and rosin and stir continuously. After the rosin and sludge have completely dissolved, add the prepared lye water for saponification.

Because it's waste sludge, it naturally contains a lot of impurities and is jet black in color. If you said it could be used to wash clothes, no one would dare to use it.

Therefore, in order to produce the finished product, a washing and salting-out process is also required.

Washing involves adding water to the saponified soap gel slowly and evenly until the soap gel no longer sticks to the spoon, the color changes from dark brown to light brown, and some small suspended particles of impurities appear.

Salting out involves adding a small amount of salt to further remove impurities and change the color. The soap gum needs to be kept boiling throughout the entire process.

Once the soap glue has clearly separated into layers, turn off the heat and let it stand at a temperature of about 80°C for 36 hours.

Finally, skim off the foam, take the middle part of the soap glue, let it dry, cut it into pieces to make soap, and discard the bottom dirty water.

It sounds easy, but it still took Jiang Zhi, Chunfeng, and Dazhu half a month of repeated experiments to succeed.

The first successful soap was light brown in color and contained black residue of various sizes.

Henan specialty cotton oil soap

Chunfeng had used discarded and defective soap to wash clothes before, and knew it was more convenient and easier to use than soap. So she was still very surprised to see soap cut into pieces this time.

Jiang Zhi was very satisfied with the results. In the future, when making soap, she could also extract glycerin from the soap solution for use in cosmetics.

There are no ideas yet as to other uses for glycerin.

Jiang Zhi is not a Western medicine manufacturer; she only knows the function of nitroglycerin tablets but does not understand the chemical process.

Jiang Zhi makes her own cottonseed oil soap, not for washing clothes, but for making pesticides; this is one of her sales channels.

Cottonseed oil contains gossypol, which is particularly effective against red spider mites and aphids in wheat fields.

Simply slice cottonseed oil soap, dissolve it in water to form a milky white liquid, and then spray it on the plants infested with pests. For best results, you can spray it directly on the pests.

Jiang Zhi had her own land, so she immediately put it to use by Tian Gui and Xu Gen.

Even without wheat fields, cotton fields are also high-risk areas for spider mites.

Without effective pesticides, Tian Gui and his colleagues could only use wood ash to spray insects.

In fact, regular soap can also be used to kill aphids and spider mites.