Manuel sighed, feeling both sorrowful and resentful, then dismissed the man and his attendants, leaving only Barbara with him in the room.
He then angrily slammed his fist on the table, "What a joke! How can the glorious Middle Ages not even solve a small mine shaft of a mere 100 meters deep?" Manuel felt his blood pressure immediately rise.
"What are you even saying? And 'meter,' what kind of unit is that?" Barbara watched Manuel's indignant expression, her eyelids twitching uncontrollably, wanting to speak but not knowing what to say.
After a long pause, she reminded him, a little awkwardly, "Ah, Manuel, '100' doesn't sound like something existing technology can handle, does it? And that 'meter' you mentioned, is it a unit from an Eastern country? How many Greek feet is it, specifically?"
"I almost forgot someone else was here," Manuel immediately felt awkward. "Wait, 'Greek foot'? My dear girl, how could the depth of such a mine shaft possibly be measured with such a small unit as 'foot'?"
Thinking this, he took a deep breath and replied very seriously, "No, no, no, I think the depth of such a mine shaft is not quite enough to be judged by 'Greek feet'; it should be judged by 'pule rong'."
"Then, how many pule rong?"
"Probably more than 3 pule rong."
"Then I think it's more practical for Christ to resurrect on the spot."
"..."
"..."
"It's okay, Barbara, you have to know that in this world, there are always more solutions than problems."
"A mine shaft of 3 pule rong, Holy Mother above, it's impossible to dig, no matter how you think about it, it's impossible to dig, right?" Then Barbara seemed to notice something, staring at him suspiciously, "Manuel, how do you know the mine shaft is 3 pule rong deep?"
"This is the guidance of the Holy Father," Manuel had already prepared this line of patter.
"I'm serious."
"Seven days and seven nights ago..."
"Excavating iron ore was something you proposed at the beginning of the month."
"I also forgot when it was, but anyway, that night, Archangel Michael entered my dream and told me about this, guiding me..." He put on the expression of a priest preaching, smiling warmly.
"My Little husband, this is truly a very good story, very suitable to be preached by the monastery to the poor as a miracle of the Holy Son," Barbara, unable to bear it any longer, interrupted Manuel's nonsense.
"I know you're in a hurry, but if the iron ore can't be dug out, I'm the one who's in more of a hurry, no matter how you think about it. Anyway, the specific explanation is very troublesome, involving a lot of, well, knowledge closer to natural history. But in short, although the process is quite troublesome and a bit unbelievable, I can confirm that there is indeed iron ore in the Panticapaeum area, at that depth," Manuel sighed, finally giving her this explanation.
To this, Barbara could only half-heartedly trust her Little husband and his inexplicable confidence. "So, Manuel, what do you plan to do now? We actually don't have the technology to dig iron ore 3 pule rong deep right now."
"First, one point is that the depth of the mine shaft is actually viewed from the perspective of the plain. If we excavate from a hilly area, then perhaps we can deduct the height of the hilly terrain."
"But Manuel, the hills in the Panticapaeum region are at most less than 1.6 pule rong," Barbara said, handing him a topographic map of the Panticapaeum region.
"That's true. Barbara, do you know how deep we can dig currently?"
"Do you really not know? Let me see, according to the content of this report, our current excavation technology can dig at most about 0.5 pule rong deep into the earth."
"That's enough," Manuel felt like he was about to collapse. He involuntarily leaned back, "Damn it, I can't just hand-make an excavator," he cursed inwardly.
"I'll just have to try this; I hope the glorious Middle Ages can have relatively pure raw materials." Thinking this, Manuel shook his head with considerable helplessness. After calling his attendants back, he had them summon Badars.
Soon, Badars was summoned, and upon learning that his Highness wanted to personally handle the mine shaft, he was greatly puzzled, "Your Highness, you don't need to go in person. Just let the person in charge of this matter order to continue digging, and it will be done."
"I..." Manuel was so angry he couldn't get a word out, so he just gave him a look to shut up, letting Badars understand: "Just do as I say."
"Yes, Your Highness, loyalty!" Seeing this, Badars quickly bowed and assented.
Subsequently, according to Manuel's arrangements, he would spend the next few days in a small, relatively spacious house outside a temporary palace, filled with various common or rare medicines of the time. He intended to try to formulate a reagent that could penetrate 100 meters of earth, specifically, explosives. At the same time, he requested that no one except guards and servants delivering food should approach the place.
"First, as written in this alchemy manual, distill saltpeter to get nitric acid, and distill pyrite or alum to get sulfuric acid," he muttered, flipping through an alchemy manual by Abu Musa Jabir Hayyan.
"Then, extract glycerin from animal fats. Ugh, I'll see if I can extract it from lard soap."
Thus, Manuel tirelessly prepared reagents in the small house, but unfortunately, due to the impurity of raw materials of this era, coupled with his half-baked chemical knowledge, all his attempts ended in failure.
"I wasn't a chemistry major in my last life, and I've pretty much forgotten what I learned in high school; it's truly infuriating. No, if I can't make it, my iron ore will be gone, my iron ore, iron ore, iron ore..." After the 70th failure, Manuel began to mumble somewhat incoherently, and it was already late on the third night. Even though he hadn't forgotten his knowledge from his previous life due to the "gift," the difficulty of practical application made it hard for him to quickly and accurately achieve results.
At this point, feeling quite dejected, he looked at the discarded chemicals piled on the table beside him and painfully kicked the table.
But this kick had an unexpected result: a violent sound erupted from the pile of waste chemicals, startling him badly, making his heart and lungs stop for a moment, and for an instant, he even felt a difficulty in breathing.
After this feeling of sudden death passed, he knew he had actually succeeded. Then, ignoring the throbbing pain in his head, he quickly repeated his previous mixing process.
"Mix and heat the liquids, then add an appropriate amount of glycerin at the right time, stir thoroughly to react, then cool and filter to obtain the finished product. This is the method for preparing nitroglycerin."
"It looks simple but is difficult to do, but preparing a few milliliters that can be used is enough," Manuel muttered, suddenly enlightened.
"Indeed, the path from experiment to practice is always full of various hardships. Next time, I'll just hand all these specific matters over to the naturalists and artisans under me."
On the fifth day of his stay in the small house, as a large hole was blown out of the east wall of the house, the already haggard Manuel finally smiled with satisfaction, somewhat maniacally, "Alright, nitroglycerin, preparation complete. Now it's time to put it into practical use."