Chapter 749 Supreme Emperor
Daming Palace.
Li Yuan looked at the small piece of unremarkable spice in the crystal clear glass bottle, "Is this ambergris?"
"Are there really dragons in this world?"
Qin Lang has never seen a dragon, but has only seen pictures of various dragons. He cannot say that there were no dragons before, but at least he has not seen them now, or that the dragons that the ancients said may really be dinosaurs. It's like the Tang people called the crocodile in the south as the pig dragon.
The Tang court officially conferred the Dragon King of the Four Seas. In the past, there were more Dragon Gods of the Five Emperors in the Central Plains. Then Buddhism and Taoism were combined, and the Dragon God became the Dragon King. The court directly officially conferred the Dragon King of the Four Seas and the Dragon King of the East China Sea. The Dragon King of the South Sea is the King of Guangli, the Dragon King of the West Sea is the King of Guangrun, and the Dragon King of the North Sea is the King of Guangze.
Among the Dragon Kings of the Four Seas, the East China Sea has the highest status, followed by the South China Sea. Because the West Sea and the North Sea are far away from the barbarians, they only perform the ceremony of watching sacrifices at two o'clock, and their status is much lower.
The Dragon King of the East China Sea is worshiped in Dengzhou by the imperial court at four o'clock every year, and temples are built in ports such as Mizhou and Mingzhou. The Dragon King of the South China Sea sacrificed in Guangzhou and built temples in Jiaozhou, Qinzhou, etc., dividing their territory and territorial waters.
Sacrifice at four o'clock to pray for good weather and smooth sailing on the sea.
The emperors of Li Tang did not wear dragon robes yet, but there are many things with dragons in the palace, but Li Yuan has never seen a dragon.
Qin Lang smiled slightly. Not long ago, there was a large-scale earthquake in Longyou. Many mountains were cracked and collapsed, and many people suffered casualties. Fortunately, the imperial court provided timely relief. Afterwards, someone discovered that many huge keels were actually exposed in several mountains that were shaken apart.
Someone also reported that it was a giant snake bone. Qin Lang had read the report given to him by Liu Jiu, the governor of the town, and there was a drawing on it. He can say with certainty that it is a dinosaur fossil, which is very precious.
But for many common people, this is the keel.
A lot of people robbed it, and merchants bought it at a high price. Some people wanted to dig it back to the town house to ward off evil spirits, and some thought it was the bone of a dragon, which could be used as a magic medicine. They were brought back, and some broken pieces were disposed of on the spot.
"I heard that Saburo has a lot of research on ancient beasts. Do you think it's a giant dragon?"
Qin Lang only bought oracle bones and studied oracle bones.
"Saint, according to my observations, those huge bones belong to the subspecies of the ancient dragon, a variant of the dragon, mixed with the blood of the dragon, but not a pure-blooded dragon. Dragons have nine sons, each of which is different, but the blood of the dragon is still higher. The nine sons continue to reproduce, and in the end many descendants have only a few bloodlines, and this shape only retains part of the characteristics of the dragon."
Li Yuan firmly believed in this nonsense, thinking that Qin Lang could even recognize the mysterious ancient bone scripts and pre-Qin scripts, so he was definitely an expert.
And he just saw a pair of dinosaur bones yesterday, it was one of the keels transported back to Chang'an by Zhen Fusi, and the emperor sent it to the Taiye Pool in the Daming Palace for preservation. What Qin Lang said makes sense.
"Perhaps it is hard to find dragons on land, even the dragon descendants. Maybe there are still dragons in the sea, as this dragon saliva is a proof."
Qin Lang ruthlessly broke Li Yuan's fantasy.
"Actually, fishermen at sea have already discovered the secret of ambergris. This kind of ambergris is actually produced by a huge whale in the sea. This whale is called a sperm whale. This giant sea monster can weigh up to 100,000 catties and has a length of It is more than six feet tall. It is shaped like a fish, but it breathes with lungs, and it is viviparous."
"Its cubs are more than one foot long when they are born, with big heads and small tails, like frogs and tadpoles. They inhabit deep seas with a water depth of more than three hundred feet, and they like to live in groups. There are often several male whales, dozens of female whales and calf whales in a group. , there are also large flocks of two to three hundred. They float and sleep on the water surface, and they sleep for several hours. They like to eat deep-sea squid, and their favorite food is a giant gun that weighs four to five hundred catties and is three to four feet long. Squid, also known as king squid."
"This kind of squid is extremely ferocious, and sometimes even kills sperm whales. After the king squid is preyed on by sperm whales, its tough jaws and teeth are not easy to digest, and it is easy to accumulate in the sperm whale. The intestines of the sperm whale are stimulated to secrete a The waxy substance protects the intestinal tract, and after a long time, it is easy to form a piece of ambergris, which is finally spit out by the whale. The spit out ambergris floats in the sea and is saponified by the sea salt and alkali for a long time, and slowly becomes ambergris. Saliva."
"When the ambergris was first spit out, it was black, and slowly soaked into gray, and finally turned white. The white ambergris was soaked in the sea for more than a hundred years, and the impurities in it were completely floated out, reaching the final peak. Great quality."
"The ambergris taken directly from the sperm whale's physical strength is of no value."
Li Yuan is like listening to a myth.
A sperm whale weighing 100,000 catties breathes with its lungs, and a king squid weighing 500 catties?
Of course, Li Yuan has also eaten whale meat, and he often eats squid, but he has never seen or eaten a 100,000-jin sperm whale, and the king squid he eats is at most a few catties.
It is unimaginable that in the deep ocean of hundreds of feet, a giant tadpole-like sperm whale that is nearly ten feet long and weighs 100,000 jin, and a five-six-foot-long, weighing five to six hundred jin, has countless giant long tails. The intense scene of the tentacle king squid fighting.
What a big scene.
The Supreme Emperor took out the piece of ambergris from the glass bottle, it was as light as nothing, and it didn't smell much.
"This sperm whale was actually born with lungs and breathed. Maybe it was also one of the descendants of the dragon. It escaped from the land to the sea, so it was preserved."
"Sanlang, you really know a lot, even these things."
"Actually, I just like to read some miscellaneous books, and I like to collect all kinds of rumors and so on. I just heard them."
"It seems that this piece of ambergris is not easy to come by. I heard that it is very expensive. Such a piece of ambergris must cost tens of thousands of sticks, right?"
"Returning to the saint, Guan Guogong wanted to buy this piece of incense before, and asked for 200,000 guan, but the merchant didn't sell it, and the minister spent 300,000 guan to save face before he bought it."
Three hundred thousand guan, this is not ordinary expensive, it is so expensive.
Bai Duluxiang, which Yang Shidao likes, only costs hundreds of thousands of dollars for one tael, and this directly costs hundreds of thousands.
"The etiquette is too heavy." Li Yuan said.
"Your Majesty is serious, this is a little filial piety from the minister to His Majesty."
For the common people, the seven things of the founding of the country, firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar and tea.
For the nobles, life is not bothered by trivial matters, they are very elegant, the so-called four kinds of elegant things, also called the four kinds of nosy things, are burning incense, ordering tea, hanging pictures, and arranging flowers.
Among them, burning incense ranks first.
In the life of nobles, incense is far above tea, and it is everywhere in life. Clothes should be incensed, body should be incensed, and incense should be worn, meeting guests and friends should be incensed, and even incense can be used as medicine and food.
Ordinary people get up, break a willow branch, chew and brush their teeth, and if possible, get some better salt to clean it, and then the noble family will not be so simple and perfunctory.
They have a special tooth incense. First, they use willow branches, locust tree branches, and mulberry branches to decoct the paste, and then add **** juice and spices to make tooth incense. Ginger can strengthen teeth, willow branches can refresh, and then spices help. Of course, the breath is fresh and the mouth is full of fragrance.
For high-grade tooth incense, the spices used are extremely expensive. For example, the tooth incense currently used in Qin Lang's residence is one and a half ounces of agarwood, five liang of white sandalwood, one liang of styrax, one liang of Jiaxiang, half liang of borneol, and half liang of musk. , the right piece of incense is finely crushed, smashed into powder, and made into fragrant pills. This is actually the Tang Dynasty version of chewing gum, but it is actually more expensive than gold of equal weight.
Such things are just consumables.
In the diet that the nobles like, expensive spices are also used everywhere, such as dry papaya soup, add white sandalwood and agarwood, wet papaya soup, use white sandalwood, agarwood and musk, and ebony soup, add borneol .
Add agarwood to wrap wontons, musk to make cakes, and sandalwood to make drinks...
Pepper must be added to boiled lamb, and benzoin must be added to barbecue.
The nobles of the Tang Dynasty were simply walking spices. They smoked and ate all kinds of spices all day long. I have to say, it was really amazing.
Even the tea leaves are specially spiced waxed tea, which is also a kind of sliced tea. High-end tea leaves are selected, and then mixed with borneol, musk and other precious spices. The finally made waxed tea has a layer of wax on the surface.
Ambergris has a strange fragrance when it burns, but in terms of fragrance, it is far inferior to Baidujixiang and Agarwood, but the most amazing thing about ambergris is its fragrance-fixing effect. When making incense, it is not a single fragrance. type, which can ensure a longer-lasting and more stable fragrance.
Qin's perfume produced by the Qin family is actually a combination of fragrances in essence, which is completely different from traditional fragrances. It depends on the volatilization of alcohol, so a good fixative is needed to ensure that the refined essence and toilet water are more stable. Therefore, the most high-end In perfumes, ambergris is used.
However, less materials are used, but after adding it, the effect of the perfume is greatly increased.
It cost 300,000 guan to give Li Yuan such a piece. Of course, it would not cost so much to buy it for Qin Lang, just like Yang Shidao’s Bai Duluxiang, which cost 200 guan for one or two. The taels only cost 80,000 yuan, and the lower-quality Heiduluxiang only cost 30,000 yuan and 1 tael, which doubled and a half times in Yang Shidao's hands.
Both Baidulu and Heiduluxiang are produced in Zhenla, and they are both produced by the Duluxiang incense tree. When the fragrant tree matures, it will naturally secrete milk fat, and the natural mature milk will be white and crystal clear, which is Baiduluxiang. After using up the natural flow of white beetle incense, bake it around the tree with a fire in summer, so that it will continue to secrete resin, but this kind of artificially baked resin will melt in summer and solidify again in winter, which is not as good as summer. Rong's Baidulu fragrance is naturally far worse.
There is also agarwood, which is divided into thirteen grades, which are the resinous fragrance secreted by the agarwood tree. The old tree of agarwood is cut down after it does not produce resin. It also has a strong fragrance. It is used to build houses and make furniture. .
Qin Lang took out another sealed glass bottle, which contained a bottle of thin red silk.
"Turmeric?"
"It is indeed turmeric. It can promote blood circulation and remove stasis, dispel stagnation and relieve knots. It can also treat women's amenorrhea and postpartum abdominal pain. If you are worried and depressed, and your breath is lingering, eating it can make you happy!" Qin Lang said with a smile. , this tulip is not the kind of flower of later generations, but saffron of later generations. It is also a kind of spice not produced in the Central Plains, and it is also a rare and precious medicinal material.
The place of origin is Persia. Even in later generations, it is sold by gram. The good ones start at 100 yuan. As for the top-level ones, they are hard to come by.
And nowadays, the price is more expensive.
"It's ambergris and turmeric again. Tell me, what's your request?" Li Yuan was quite straightforward.
(end of this chapter)