"Do we have to wash our hands so often?" Eris suddenly asked from the side.
While the young girl enjoyed feeling clean, she also wasn't above stuffing fruit she just picked from a random bush into her mouth and sometimes found having to scrub her hands before she ate troublesome.
"Of course you do," Sasha, however, was having none of it. "Washing your hands before you eat is important in preventing you from becoming sick."
"But why is that?" Eris pouted, still not understanding.
This wasn't the first time the mother and daughter had this conversation, but Eris had never been fully convinced because the explanation Sasha gave her was always so vague, often amounting to a simple 'because I told you so'.
This time, however, things were different as a young voice from nearby casually said, "Because you might eat germs if you don't wash your hands properly, which is bad for you."
"Germs?"
3 women turned their attention to Lucas, wondering what he was talking about as none of them had heard this term before.
"En, germs. Parasites, bacteria, viruses," Lucas continued in a completely nonchalant tone as he lathered up a cloth and began scrubbing himself down, "They're like tiny little bugs, too small for the eye to see, that make you sick if too many bad ones get inside of you."
Everything Lucas said seemed like common sense to him, but to Eris, Sasha, and Helen, it came as quite a shock; however, Sasha soon recalled something she had learned many years ago and wore a contemplative expression.
When she was growing up, Sasha had always been told by her teachers and elders to wash her hands before she ate and after she went to the washroom, to boil water before drinking it, and to not just dump garbage and waste into the yard or onto the streets.
Doing any of these things supposedly caused sickness and epidemics to spread.
In the case of waste dumping and piled up garbage, there were many examples of towns and cities with very poor hygiene falling prey to plagues, while cleaner settlements were less prone to such disasters, so it wasn't hard to associate the two things together.
However, the need to wash hands and boil water had confused Sasha in her youth.
Like her daughter now, Sasha had wondered about why this was, so she had asked many questions back then. Unfortunately, none of the adults seemed to be able to satisfy her curiosity.
It wasn't until Sasha injured herself once and got a chance to speak with the best healer in the Balfour Family, Walter Thompson, a Peak-Rank Grade 0 Spirit Doctor Apprentice, that she finally got a more substantial answer.
Back then, Doctor Thompson had told her that centuries ago, a great sickness had been ravaging a remote part of the Rising Sun Empire, the most powerful nation on the Blue Sky Continent.
Apparently, despite the Empire's best efforts to curb the spread of the disease, they couldn't stop it. Even when drastic measures were taken, such as burning entire infected villages and all their inhabitants, the plague's torrent of destruction was barely slowed.
It wasn't until a certain very powerful and intelligent Spirit Doctor moved to personally oversee the situation that a clue was finally discovered. After many months of futile investigation, that Spirit Doctor supposedly noticed a faint, barely detectable Life Aura coming from many of the water sources the infected regions' people commonly drank from.
What's more, the places with the highest number of sick were also the ones where this Life Aura was strongest.
It didn't seem possible that such a faint Life Aura, which could only belong to incredibly weak creatures, could cause such wide-spread devastation. But, with nothing else to go on, the Spirit Doctor figured he had nothing to lose so he used his Cultivation Pressure to extinguish that Life Aura from the water supply of a certain village and then monitored what happened next.
Miraculously, after purging the Life Aura from the wells, the spread of the disease slowed dramatically in that village. Many who were seriously ill didn't recover and still perished when the disease ran its course, but those with milder cases and the uninfected soon began to recover.
The Spirit Doctor was amazed by this discovery and swiftly gave orders for all the water sources in the infected region to be cleansed. Naturally, he couldn't visit every town and village personally, but he quickly realized that, like most living things, whatever was generating this Life Aura could easily be killed with other methods.
Simply boiling infected water for a brief time was sufficient in most cases, with no need for powerful Cultivators to intervene.
After ensuring that the plague had been thoroughly dealt with, this Spirit Doctor was hailed as a hero and became one of the Imperial Family's exclusive physicians. His method for controlling the spread of disease by boiling water was also widely spread, but the story didn't end there.
As a man who dedicated his life to healing others, this Spirit Doctor wasn't satisfied with a vague understanding of what had happened and went on to further study the mysterious Life Aura he had discovered in the water.
Many years later, the same Spirit Doctor announced that there were, in fact, a large number of similar incidents where the presence of barely noticeable Life Auras had led to the emergence of illnesses and pandemics.
His research also showed that certain habits, such as thoroughly cooking food, boiling drinking water, and keep oneself and their surroundings relatively clean, greatly decreased the likelihood of disease and plague occurring.
With a proven record of success, and the prestige of being a member of the Rising Sun Empire's Imperial Court, kings and nobles all across the continent took this announcement very seriously and began implementing a variety of policies which aligned with this new knowledge.
Powerful Cultivators were mostly unaffected by these faint Life Auras and rarely fell ill in the first place, but mortals were very susceptible to sickness and diseases, with many times more people dying to such conditions than to war every year.
As such, it was of great interest for the ruling class to take action.
It wasn't that these mighty lords were all deeply concerned with the lives of ordinary peasants; in fact, it was far more likely that the exact opposite was true. There were kings and queens who truly looked out for the good of the common people, but they were rare exceptions, rather than the norm.
No, the reason that these influential individuals put in so much effort to reduce the spread of plague and disease was far more pragmatic.
Cultivators might serve as the measure of a nation's strength, but without enough commoners, who would plow the fields?
Who would labour in the mines?
Who would build houses and cities?
Who would clear forests and lay roads?
In short, millions of mortals were required to support a nation. Taking virtually free steps to reduce how many commoners died unnecessarily was simply the practical thing to do.
As for that Spirit Doctor, Sasha wasn't sure if he ever truly discovered what the disease-causing Life Auras really were, or if he was still researching that very thing to this day, but Lucas' explanation just now matched too closely with the story she had been told in her youth to ignore.
If what Lucas said is true, it could explain everything! Sasha was astounded by this newfound knowledge, and by the casualness with which it had been revealed to her.
"Is that really true?" Eris' voice suddenly interrupted Sasha's thoughts, bringing her back to reality just in time to see Lucas nodding calmly as he scrubbed his arms with a foamy cloth.
He must have learned this from his inherited memories, Sasha immediately concluded and hurriedly moved to say, "It's true, dear. The Spirit Doctors from the Empire have confirmed it."
This was, of course, a little white lie, but Sasha decided it was best to just play everything off this way to avoid Helen and her daughter from asking too many questions.
It wasn't yet time for others to learn about Lucas' special circumstances. What's more, Sasha was fairly convinced that what her little nephew was saying was true, so it didn't matter if she stretched the truth here a bit.
"My goodness! So, every time we drink unboiled water, we're actually drinking in many tiny bugs?" Helen gasped, a look of disgust appeared on her face as the mere thought of this was quite disturbing to her.
"En," Lucas nodded before looking up and smiling, "But don't worry! Boiling water gets rid of them, and washing with this Bathing Cream will remove them from your skin!"
"Wow! You're so smart, Lucas!" Eris cheered, and it was this honest praise that seemed to finally snap the young boy out of his stupor.
Seeing the look of fright appear on Lucas' face, as if he had just been caught telling a secret he wasn't supposed to, caused Sasha to not know whether to laugh or cry.
Electing to do neither, she simply reached over and ruffled his hair as she said meaningfully, "You certainly do know many things, Lucas! But perhaps you should think a little more before you speak, it's not good to tell so many shocking stories all at once."
"Uh… um… y-yes… Aunty Sasha… I-I'll remember," Lucas stuttered before lowering his head in embarrassment.
"Good boy," Sasha patted his shoulder before forcefully changing to subject, "By the way, we can't keep calling it 'Solid Bathing Cream', can we? Do you have a name in mind for this new product of yours, Lucas?"
The shift in topic was a bit abrupt, but Lucas knew it was also a lifeline which had been tossed to him, so he hurriedly nodded before shaking his head, "I think giving it a new name would be good as well, especially if we want to use it for things other than bathing, but as for what exactly to call it… I'll have to give it some more thought."
"Alright," Sasha nodded, straightening up, "There's no rush, so take your time and come up with a good name."
Nodding along, Lucas added 'finding a new name' to his to-do list.
…..
Over the next 10 days, as most of Redwood Town's residents were busy with the fall harvest, Lucas borrowed a scale and some weights from his father and ran multiple experiments to determine the best ratio of fat to Ash-Water for his homemade Bathing Cream.
Lucas also made a couple of trips to Farah's Butcher Shop to purchase more trimmings during this period. Thankfully, because it was approaching the year's end and many animals were either being hunted or slaughtered for the coming cold season, there was no lack of animal fat available.
That wasn't to say it was cheap, of course, with Lucas rapidly burning through all the money he had made from selling his Cleaning Solution these past few months.
Anna and Drake had offered to help pay for things, but Lucas insisted on using his own funds for now, saying that later, when it came time to really start production, it would surely require a much bigger investment.
Eventually, Lucas settled on a ratio of 1 part maximum concentration Ash-Water to 4 parts fat, which was a far cry from his initial 1 part Ash-Water to 2 parts fat success. He had found, through multiple attempts, that adding more fat resulted in a more solid block which felt gentler on his hands when washing them multiple times.
With a recipe now set, Lucas planned to make a large batch of his new solid Bathing Cream. His idea was to have both his family and the Newton's use this new cleaning product for the winter months to see how it performed, and if any issues with long-term use, storage, or preservation came up.
If everything went smoothly, Lucas figured he could start large-scale production in the spring.