"Greetings, Miss Stella!"
"Greetings, Miss Stella!"
Everyone quickly came to their senses and instinctively parted to make way for Stella, bowing as they offered their greetings.
Stella held her head slightly high and walked through the crowd with graceful, measured steps, her posture straight. As she went, she gave the people on either side a slight nod in acknowledgment.
Lina followed behind with a proud little air. She was the one who had just called out.
"Greetings, Miss Stella!" Thomas knew the earl's daughter, of course, and immediately stepped forward to bow deeply.
"Mm. Your perfume smells lovely. I'd like to buy some!" Stella finally spoke for the first time.
"It would be my honor, Miss Stella!" Thomas was overjoyed. He had thought the day's business was going to be a disaster, but instead, the earl's daughter had shown up. "Miss Stella, how many bottles would you like? I'll fetch them for you right away!"
"My lady intends to buy all of them. Steward Thomas, how much is each bottle?" As soon as Thomas finished speaking, Lina stepped forward. Naturally, as Stella's personal maid, she was the one who handled the purchase.
"Ah! All of them?" Thomas was dumbfounded.
"What's wrong, Steward Thomas? Are you not selling them?" Lina asked in confusion.
"Well... Miss Stella, Lord Nalant instructed me before we left that each person could buy only one bottle..." Thomas answered cautiously. He saw Lina's eyes widen, a hint of anger rising in them, and quickly changed his tune. "But Miss Stella is surely an exception! How about I sell you seven bottles first?"
Thomas felt a little uneasy. If Miss Stella refused, he didn't know whether his lord would punish him when he returned. After all, his lord had said they were to use this opportunity to promote the perfume and prepare for the next batch.
"Thomas, this is Miss Stella..." Lina was still a little annoyed, and reproached him for not knowing what was good for him.
But Stella stopped her before she could finish. She smiled and nodded. "That's fine."
"How much is each bottle?" Stella asked softly herself.
"Fifty silver coins per bottle, Miss Stella!"
"Fifty silver coins? Isn't that too cheap?" Stella's blue eyes blinked in surprise. Then, in an unmistakably firm voice, she said, "Perfume this lovely shouldn't be so cheap. Lina, give Steward Thomas seven gold coins!"
Stella wasn't foolish. When she saw the cheap bottles holding the perfume, she immediately guessed why it was being sold so cheaply. She turned to Lina and gave her the order.
Lina looked at her lady in disbelief, but under Stella's gaze, she finally took out seven gold coins obediently.
After handing the coins to Thomas, Lina took the seven bottles of perfume, and the mistress and maid left the crowd.
"Thank you, Miss Stella!" Holding the seven gold coins, Thomas called out his thanks to Stella with great respect as she departed.
"Everyone..." After Stella left, Thomas turned to the crowd.
But before he could finish, the crowd erupted.
"I want a bottle! Here's a gold coin!"
"Me too! Here's a gold coin..."
"I..."
Thomas was soon swallowed up by the crowd. Fortunately, Quick and the others had stayed by the table, so the perfume wasn't knocked over or snatched away...
"Seventeen gold coins! Miss Stella really is a kind-hearted lady!" Thomas sighed as he gazed at the golden coins in his hand.
Stella's gesture had doubled the perfume's price, and in an instant, it had been snapped up.
With Miss Stella's influence behind it, Thomas was sure that the next time he came to Tulip City to sell perfume, Storm Territory's Dragon Brand Jasmine would be even more popular than it had been this time.
Nalant still had no idea that his self-assured belief that "good wine needs no bush" had nearly left the perfume unsold, bruising the nobles' pride. In the end, the Flower of Tulip, who might one day help him cut decades off his struggle, had saved the day.
At that moment, a wagon piled high with sugarcane was slowly rolling into the castle.
"My lord, what should we do next?" Vivian and Sherry looked at their lord with eager anticipation.
"Mm. We'll juice it. Use the stone roller the masons just made to crush all the sugarcane and collect the juice." Nalant held a piece of sugarcane in his hand and chomped on it without a care for appearances as he answered the two beautiful young women.
"Oh, and before that, we need to wash the sugarcane clean!"
Six days had passed since the convoy set out, and some of the faster-growing sugarcane had already ripened.
While the masons were building the stone outhouse, Nalant had also ordered them to build a large stone roller beside the castle's front courtyard, along with a long row of stoves.
That's right—a whole row of stoves.
The stove was at least twelve meters long, with room for eight large pots on top.
Nalant had built it based on the rustic method for making brown sugar that he had seen as a child in his previous life.
When he was little, he had spent summer vacations at his grandmother's house. There was a rural brown sugar workshop nearby. To sneak sugarcane, he and a group of bored friends would always hang around the workshop, so he had seen the process of making brown sugar with his own eyes.
The name "sugar boiling" said it all. Once you had the raw materials, it wasn't difficult.
First, you needed to extract the juice by crushing the sugarcane after washing it and cutting off both ends.
Once the juice had been extracted, you poured it into the first large pot and boiled it, stirring constantly so the sugarcane juice heated evenly.
When it was nearly done, you ladled it into the second pot beside it and continued boiling.
After it had boiled for a while longer, you ladled it into the third pot.
As you repeated the process, the sugarcane juice grew thicker with each successive pot.
By the time it reached the eighth and final pot, the juice would have turned into syrup. Then you could ladle it into wooden containers to cool.
Once the syrup had cooled completely, you'd have sweet, smooth brown sugar.
Don't doubt it. Making brown sugar wasn't especially technical.
As Nalant began giving instructions, Vivian and the guards immediately got to work.
They washed the sugarcane and took it to be crushed. Under the pressure of the stone roller, the juice flowed along a groove and into a wooden barrel.
Once the sugarcane had been juiced, Nalant ordered the guards to light the fires and start boiling it.
Each guard tended two large pots, standing by the stove with a long ladle as tall as they were and constantly stirring the juice.
"My lord, there's less and less sugarcane juice! Isn't this such a waste?" Sherry had already eaten two whole stalks of sugarcane. Seeing the amount of juice in the pots dwindle as it boiled, she felt a little distressed.
When her lord had said he was going to make something called brown sugar, a food as delicious as honey, Sherry had been very excited.
But now she thought it would be better to just eat the sugarcane. It was very sweet, after all, and wouldn't go to waste.
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