Yinzhen comforted him, "Bear with it for now. The officials from the Imperial Household Department who are accompanying us have already sent people to buy ice everywhere. It should be better tomorrow."
There's probably still ice in the capital, but by the time we go back to get it, we'll likely be in Mongolia by then.
So the only option is to buy it.
Tong Cheng'er nodded weakly: "I hope so!"
The people of the Imperial Household Department are indeed capable. The fact that there wasn't enough ice for the entourage was indeed their dereliction of duty, so they inquired everywhere to buy ice.
The people from the Imperial Household Department were indeed useful; they managed to buy quite a bit of ice.
In the last few days, Tong Cheng'er's carriage will have two more ice basins.
Tong Cheng'er exclaimed, "I'm finally alive!"
Upon hearing this, Yinzhen nodded and said, "You've had a hard time these past few days."
Tong Cheng'er didn't say anything. It was very hot, but she didn't really feel that bad.
Because during her university years, she also did things like handing out flyers under the scorching sun of 35 or 36 degrees Celsius to get a part-time job.
That's real hard work.
The reason why people say "bitter" nowadays is probably because they have lived too well in recent years. They are pampered by their families, have everything they want, and are not cold in winter or hot in summer, so they are so spoiled.
Seeing that she didn't speak, Yinzhen asked, "What are you thinking about?"
Tong Cheng'er shook her head: "It's nothing, it's you who has worked hard."
Yinzhen shook his head. This wasn't the first time he had encountered something like this. When Empress Xiaoyiren lost her child, she was completely distraught and neglected him. At that time, he was young, so the Imperial Household Department looked down on him.
Less silver charcoal in winter, less ice in summer—Yinzhen experienced this firsthand.
Yinzhen: "This time it was my oversight. I should have had more ice brought over. There won't be a next time."
Tong Cheng'er nodded: "Actually, it's not surprising. This summer is exceptionally hot, and the Imperial Household Department probably didn't expect it either."
Yinzhen nodded: "That's true."
Tong Cheng'er suddenly remembered and asked him, "By the way, where do we get the ice we use these days?"
Yinzhen replied, "What's wrong with the ones I saved up over the winter?"
Tong Cheng'er asked curiously, "Why didn't you think of using saltpeter to make ice?"
She remembered her high school chemistry teacher saying that people in the Tang Dynasty had discovered that saltpeter could be used to make ice.
Yinzhen smiled and said, "Salt water can indeed make ice, but there is too little salt water available. It would be more convenient to store it directly in winter."
Tong Cheng'er asked in surprise, "Is there little saltpeter?"
Yinzhen nodded: "Young!"
This doesn't make sense. Tong Cheng'er remembered that she had a classmate from Xinjiang in college whose family owned mines. When he mentioned it, he pretended to be modest, saying, "What my family owns is nothing compared to the hundreds of millions of tons of mines in the entire Turpan region..."
She wrote it down at the time, and now she hears from Yinzhen that saltpeter is scarce.
Could it be that the mines in Turpan haven't been discovered yet?
The more Tong Cheng'er thought about it, the more convinced she became that this was indeed the case.
Tong Cheng'er said to Yinzhen, "There's something I don't know if it's true, but I think it's necessary to send someone to investigate."
Yinzhen asked, "What is it?"
"There should be hundreds of millions of tons of nitrate deposits in the Turpan region of Xinjiang."
At first, Yinzhen didn't understand when she said Xinjiang, but after a while, he realized that she was referring to the Western Regions.
“I understand what you’re saying, but it’s too early to talk about these things now. Xinjiang is still called the Western Regions and has not yet been fully incorporated into the Qing Dynasty’s territory.”
Tong Cheng'er was dumbfounded; she really didn't know this, as it was beyond the scope of a science student's knowledge.
She blushed and said, "Oh, is that so? Then never mind."
Yinzhen smiled and said, "How can we let it go! We still need to investigate. After all, the Western Regions will eventually return to the Qing Dynasty's territory. If there really is such a large saltpeter mine, perhaps Father Emperor can take back the Western Regions during his reign."
Yinzhen was telling the truth. After all, people have always perceived the Western Regions as a barren land with potential for profit, so there was naturally an incentive to reclaim it.
Tong Cheng'er nodded: "That's fine too."
A few days passed in the blink of an eye, and we arrived in Mongolia.
To be honest, Mongolia was somewhat different from what Tong Cheng'er had imagined.
Her impression of Mongolia comes mostly from tourism promotional videos, where the camera pans down, showing cattle and sheep everywhere on the green grasslands, and Mongolians dressed in traditional clothing, which makes people yearn for it.
In addition, there are Mongolian specialty foods.
But when Tong Cheng'er actually arrived in Mongolia, she realized that the promotional video was just that—a promotional video, and reality was reality.
The Mongolia she saw was three hundred years after the events of the TV series, a Mongolia seen across time, completely different from the Mongolia depicted on screen.
The green meadows were real, but there were no cattle or sheep to be seen everywhere.
They set up camp near a stream, surrounded by nothing but grassland.
Moreover, the grass didn't look like the kind of grass you could lie down on. It looked like it had been swept, but it wasn't particularly clean.
It was very different from the grassland I had imagined where I could lie down and watch the stars.
Tong Cheng'er felt an indescribable disappointment.
Tong Cheng'er asked Yinzhen, "Isn't it said that Mongolians rely on herding for a living? Why don't we see any cattle or sheep?"
Yinzhen laughed and said, "Of course you won't see cattle and sheep. To put it bluntly, cattle and sheep are livestock for eating. After they eat, they defecate everywhere. Such filthy things are naturally not allowed to appear in front of Father Emperor."
Looking at the traces of cattle and sheep on the grass, Yinzhen said, "This area is suitable for grazing. There should have been cattle and sheep here before. I guess they drove them away after receiving news that Father Emperor was coming."
That's why you don't see cattle or sheep.
Tong Cheng'er suddenly understood upon hearing this.
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