After several months of balanced diet, the girl's body gradually softened from "abnormally big and strong", and her arms, legs and feet became thinner than before.
It’s just that the skeleton hasn’t been improved yet, the shoulders are relatively broad and still look strong.
"Are you leaving again, Heath?"
"It should be quick this time." Hitzfeld stood up to comfort her, "Don't worry, it's in Sara... Fellington and Kain are next to each other, and it probably won't take more than four days to go back and forth."
Ashley... Only then did she remember that this was also one of her concerns.
She promised to take good care of Ashley. Although Ashley's life is well taken care of now, but... some things, such as teaching reading and math, are always taught by her far better than other teachers.
Because Ashley is closer to her and is more willing to listen to her than others.
But this time Ashley's performance surprised her a little.
"Then I will wait for you to come back." said the girl.
Then he pumped his fist and said, "Come on Heath! You have to be the best detective!"
After thanking and comforting the girl, assigning her homework for today, bringing Xia Yibing a coat and watching her go out, and then kicking out Lu Hill who kept trying to sell her foot massage, Hitzfeld finally had some private space.
She first put on an apron, took a rag and mop, and cleaned the living room for the new guest. After washing her hands, she went straight back to her room and went to the bookshelf to start looking for a book.
Because she vaguely remembered... words like Fellington and Enling Road, as if she had seen them somewhere.
"Industrial Pollution", this is definitely not it.
"Fishing Techniques Guide", this is definitely not it.
Strange, it should be these few books...
Just then, Hitzfeld's eyes ran across the spine of a book and saw a row of letters on the dark cover.
"Candy Factory".
She hesitated.
This book gave her a "seemingly" feeling, but its title was a bit too inappropriate.
Have I seen this thing?
He picked it up directly, opened the cover and glanced at it, then Hitzfeld understood.
She had indeed seen it.
But I didn't read it seriously, I just flipped through it casually and threw it back.
The reason, of course, was that she felt the book was meaningless because it was actually a biography - it was about the famous Earl of Candy.
The Earl of Candy, Nicholas Brendel, opened up new industries and developed them under the trend of industrial development, adding the label of "the birthplace of the candy dream factory" to the regional business card of Farrington.
By the way, this guy is Ethan's idol. Ethan revealed it during their first few meetings. He always likes to collect Candy Earl's dress-up cards in private. These cards can only be obtained by purchasing Candy Dream Factory products.
I didn’t expect that the second time I came across the word Fellington was because I was going there to investigate a case…
Shaking his head, Hitzfeld decided to read the book carefully again.
She didn't know much about the people and customs of Farrington.
And for a detective, you can never be too prepared.
Chapter 7 Great Inventions
Most of Sara's eastern border is coastline.
Wayne Port is located in the upper middle part of this line. To the south of Wayne is Blackwood City, to the north is Amiloon, and to the west is Kain. The straight-line distance to Kain is the shortest among them.
However, because of the Kacha Mountains in the middle, the railway line has to take a detour, so it takes the longest time to reach Kain City, nearly four days.
Fellington is further west of Kain. Its situation is very similar to that of Balvik. It is also a new settlement formed because of mineral resources.
In 1862, Farrington was just a small village close to the mountains. The discovery of coal mines and other mining resources quickly made it a popular place to make money. Many miners built houses on the spot and relied on traveling merchants twice a month to make a living.
This is definitely not going to work in the long run. Fortunately, the mineral resources in the Farrington area are really rich. More and more mining companies are pouring in, which invisibly attracts more traders.
Businessmen are always good at seizing opportunities to make money. Ferrington's qualitative change came from a traveling theater troupe called Silver Horse.
After another performance, the troupe's owner, Jones Filmore, accidentally saw his own lead singer having an affair with a miner. He was furious and ordered a strict investigation into the social relationships between team members and the locals.
The final result surprised him - excluding him, the Silver Horse Theater had a total of 142 employees, including 36 men, and the remaining 106 were young girls. 99 of these girls had ambiguous relationships with the miners in Farrington.
After a brief moment of surprise, Jones-Firmer realized that such a huge demand could not be suppressed at all, and he began to think about where this demand came from.
First, analyze the membership structure of the troupe.
Because of the nature of the work - women's performances are always more popular - female employees make up the majority of the troupe's employees. But it is unrealistic to ask these delicate girls who study opera lines and dress up every day to travel long distances with suitcases, so except for a few extremely outstanding male actors, most of the male employees in the troupe are coolies.
These people don't look good, but they are definitely top-notch workers. Every time the Silver Horse Troupe sets out, they need these people to help move goods, carry bags, lead horses and drive carriages. Without them, it will be impossible.
Of course, also because the jobs they do are relatively menial, it is difficult for them to get special treatment from girls.
Most of the actresses in mobile troupes are dreamy girls who are eager to become famous, but due to their background, they lack strong professional qualities and can only be neither high-end nor low-end. They live in various mobile troupes, supporting themselves with their pure talent, and longing to meet a man like the one in the opera story one day to take them home.
In this regard, the miners in Fellington certainly did not quite meet their selection criteria, but they were too rich.
There are too many mines in Fellington. A large number of mining companies are concentrated in the villages and towns. Without deliberately interfering with competition, each company can make a lot of money. Even if they leak a little bit of oil, it will be a benefit that ordinary people can hardly imagine, so the miners here are very rich.
Not only do they have money, but they can't spend it - because there are very few consumer items in the town, the traveling merchant teams only come here three times a month on average. Even if they greatly increase the prices of daily necessities such as water, oil, salt, clothing and shoes, the miners can still keep a lot of money.
They had the money but no way to spend it. Moreover, the capable miners were all in good health and had a lot of energy with nowhere to vent during the off-work period... So naturally, they fell in love with the girls from the mobile theater troupe.
Jones-Fillmer understood the reasons behind these things, and after a period of observation and careful consideration, he made a decision: he wanted to expand the troupe's business.
Whenever the troupe came to a new city, he would recruit and contact some girls who were gradually giving up on their dreams, getting older, and eager to start a family.
At the same time, he set up a branch of the troupe in Farrington, which was actually an underground consultation point to collect personal information of local miners.
As long as the miners paid money, they could meet the next group of girls who came with the mobile troupe through introductions. Over time, a transportation line and business chain was established around Wellington, and the earliest couples were already having children.
They simply settled down in Farrington and settled down there permanently.
Then, as more and more people learned from the Silver Horse Troupe to explore business opportunities, the local population also grew rapidly, gradually developing into what it is today.
"It's completely different from Balvik..."
After reading this description of Fellington's early history, Hitzfeld could not help but shake his head and sigh.
What Barvik discovered at that time was a gold mine.
It is true that the value of gold mines is higher than that of other mines, but on the one hand, the reserves are bound to be less than that of other mines, and on the other hand, order has not been established in Barvik, and various disputes and vendettas are too frequent.
Merchants are profit-driven, but they also have a lifeline. There are certainly caravans willing to go to Barvik, but don't expect any mobile theater troupes to go there.
Without traveling troupes, there would be no women.
Without women to mate with the locals and reproduce, the local population would not be able to grow steadily.
So in the end, without the gold mine bonus, Barvik became a ruined village, while Fellington developed rapidly and eventually transformed into a small city.
Of course, this business is very shameful, it is a gray industry chain. Hitzfeld can imagine that in the process of Ferrington developing this business, there will be countless girls in miserable situations.
It is even possible that they are already doing some not-so-decent jobs.
To put it bluntly, she's a prostitute.
But this is what society needs.
One group's demand for certain things happens to coincide with the needs of another group. Generally speaking, this industrial chain has helped Wellington develop its economy and maintain public security and stability in the surrounding areas, and that's enough.
Hitzfeld didn't want to worry about the more minor disputes, and that wasn't her main purpose for reading the book.
Read on… After development, Fellington’s main means of making money relied heavily on primitive industries.
They do not have the ability to perform fine forging, and at best they can only roughly smelt some ore and sell it directly.
This is why some Wayne people look down on the people of Fellington. At that time, Fellington... the surrounding environment was really bad, and it was said that "the air was full of the strange smell of coal."
It was in these circumstances that Nicholas Brendel was born in Farrington in 1874.
He has shown a craze for sweets since he was a child, which is different from the "gluttony" of ordinary children.
Because the enthusiasm of ordinary children is mostly selfish, Nicholas Brand sprinkled the stolen candy into the holy water of the church because he wanted to let the little wanderers who had never eaten candy also taste the sweetness.
As expected, he was hung up and beaten by his father. It was the priests and nuns in the church who interceded for him and indirectly saved his life.
Nicholas's father was an alcoholic, and his mother ran away early because of her husband's alcoholism and gambling. It can be said that he lived in a very poor family.
But this did not stop his passion for life.
He finished high school with the help of church relief. At the age of 21, he suddenly had an idea: since sugar on the market is very expensive and many poor people cannot afford it, why don’t I look for a new kind of sugar?
He shared this idea with his friends and everyone laughed.
In fact, his idea is not wrong, but the problem is that it is difficult to do.
Sucrose and honey - these are the two major sources of sugar available. Due to production and transportation reasons, they are not cheap. Even sucrose, which is easy to store and relatively affordable, is consumed less by ordinary people.
Nicholas decided to invent a new kind of sugar, which sounded like a fantasy to others.
Unless he can create something out of nothing, it's just daydreaming.
Nicholas did not give up in the face of these people's cold and hot ridicule.
He spent a lot of energy reading books and traveling around the area, constantly looking for sources of sugar that might have been overlooked.
He failed.
All experimental results of observing crops did not meet his expectations.
But he unexpectedly discovered... there is a Solanaceae plant with an extremely colorful appearance, and the fruits it produces are not as poisonous as rumored.
“He invented ketchup?”
Hitzfeld was stunned by the hand-drawn picture of the so-called "Solanaceae plants".
Isn’t this just a tomato…isn’t this just a tomato?
But if you put it that way, it can indeed be called a great invention...
Chapter 8 The New King's Gift
Tomato actually had a history of being misunderstood in her previous life.
The reason is... In the early old times, most European nobles used metal tableware such as silver and tin. When the tomato juice comes into contact with the tableware, the toxins in the tomato will be released, and long-term consumption will cause poisoning.
This led to the nobility and the church believing that tomatoes were a poisonous fruit, but because the fruit was so gorgeous in appearance, people would still pick it as an ornamental even though they knew it was poisonous.
At that time, it was also nicknamed the Love Apple. According to a legend, a painter could not resist the temptation of the "Love Apple" and ate it for a long time - he was even ready to sacrifice himself, but because he ate it directly with his hands, he was naturally fine.
Later, the rumors that tomatoes were poisonous were gradually dispelled, and the European people were finally happy to welcome a dessert that was a dad-level dessert for them: ketchup.
In fact, ketchup really deserves this evaluation. It is so delicious. Not only Europeans and Americans like it, but also many Asians like it.
So the rise of Nicholas Brende is only natural.
He was very smart and knew that he could not keep the secret of ketchup by himself, so he directly presented this idea and the ketchup formula he had developed to the royal family of Sara.
The royal family was very happy and appointed Nicholas as the inventor and spokesperson of ketchup, providing him with start-up capital and connections. It can be said that the candy dream factory that is now spread all over the country was established.
But the royal family did not expect that the profits from ketchup would be so staggering. When they realized this, they directly gave Nicholas a nominal title of count and began to publicize his great achievements in an attempt to package him in order to prevent the ketchup recipe from spreading abroad and stop them from monopolizing the huge profits.
In fact, it is impossible to monopolize it, because this thing really has no technical content. But it can indeed delay it a little, which is enough for the royal family.
If things continue to develop in this way, Nicholas will be described as the "Count of Tomato" rather than the "Count of Candy". The reason why people call him by the latter nickname is still due to his passion for desserts.
During his tenure, Candy Dream Factory invented more than 3000 different desserts, including more than 1300 kinds of candies and countless breads and pastries.
This man devoted almost all his life's energy to desserts, and even did not get married for this. He died of overwork in the dessert laboratory at the age of 47, and he did not even have an adopted son.
After reading this, there is actually no need to read this book.
Because the following part is about the development history of Candy Dream Factory after Nicholas' death, in Hitzfeld's opinion, the wisest decision made by these people was to register Nicholas's image as a trademark.
...which were the pictures of characters that Ethan liked to collect the most.
This is quite true, because he has long been a great hero to all the children.
Purchase candy gift packs at every store in Candy Dream Factory. Each gift pack contains twenty candies of different flavors and a small card.
You have no idea what flavor these candies will taste like until you unwrap them and put them in your mouth. Likewise - you have no idea what Nicholas Brende will be wearing until you unwrap the cards.
Hitzfeld wasn't sure—she thought she'd heard Zafira say that Ethan was collecting "sexy bunny pajama sets."
She looked at the extremely majestic appearance of Earl Candy himself on the page, and thought of the image of him wearing "sexy bunny pajamas", and she shuddered uncontrollably.
