Taiheiki

Chapter 102 New Technology

"A thousand catties a day?" Huang Ping glanced at Wei Cong in surprise, confirming he wasn't talking nonsense. While the Han Dynasty's iron industry had indeed achieved significant development, its center was still in the north, in places like Bingzhou and Wancheng. Bingzhou, in particular, was known as the "Bingzhou Knife." In the Yangtze River basin, areas like Jiangling and Yuzhang, the scale and technological level of the iron industry were far lower than in the north. Wei Cong's claim of a daily output of a thousand catties seemed like pure fantasy to Huang Ping.

Wei Cong could see Huang Ping's suspicion, but he also knew that words alone were not enough to back up such matters, so it was better to let the facts speak for themselves. "One more thing. We already have four or five hundred people here. Once the furnaces start smelting iron, there won't be many spare men left to burn charcoal, build the reservoir, or collect iron sand. A lot of things will have to be purchased from outside. I've already invited a merchant named Zhu to come here, so keep a close eye on him!"

"Yes, sir!" Huang Ping lowered his head.

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As he walked out of the camp gate, Qian Wen instinctively lowered his head to avoid looking at the heads on the pillars beside the camp gate. This made him feel a deep chill and suffocation. He had killed people before, but this was the first time he had betrayed his comrades.

The craftsmen had been here for five or six days. They had stopped salvaging the black sand and gravel from the riverbed and had begun to build a dam leading to the sandbar by driving two rows of wooden stakes into the riverbed. They then dropped bamboo baskets filled with stones between them. Qian Wen was familiar with this; his village had similar practices. Whether it was raising fish or preparing the water mill for pounding rice, a dam had to be built first to store water. Materials were plentiful here. Not far from the camp lay a vast expanse of bamboo, and the riverbed was an endless supply of pebbles. With sufficient manpower, in just five or six days, the dam had taken shape. Then, a strange mud was poured into the dam, which quickly solidified, forming a single piece, smoothing the uneven surface.

After the dam was completed, Qian Wen watched as the craftsmen installed the pre-prepared waterwheel onto the pre-prepared waterway. As the gates opened, water flowed through the designated channel, hitting the blades of the waterwheel, and the wide wheel began to slowly rotate. Sparse cheers erupted from the onlookers. This device wasn't uncommon at the time; even in the more developed villages of the south, it was used for irrigation and rice pounding. The problem was that neither Wei Cong's soldiers nor the former captives were interested in cultivating land in such a remote place, so naturally, they weren't thrilled with the completion of the waterwheel.

The completion of the waterwheel was not the end. Wei Cong began to use more manpower on logging. Giant trees fell down with a rumble, and were then broken down into several sections on the spot and transported to the dry distillation charcoal kiln by the river. The dry distillation charcoal kiln, which never stopped working all day, was like an insatiable beast, swallowing tons of firewood and spitting out mountains of charcoal and a large amount of wood tar. Wei Cong ordered that this sticky liquid with a strange smell be collected and carefully preserved so that it could be used for corrosion prevention when building ships in the future.

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clang!clang!clang!
With a resounding bang, the red-hot wrought iron bar on the anvil, struck by the hydraulic hammer, sparked and shaped like soft clay, forming the shape Yuan Tian desired. All he had to do was use pliers to adjust the bar's position on the anvil during the rise of the hammer. In just a few breaths, the wrought iron bar transformed into an unsharpened ruler-shaped knife (also known as a shaving knife, a tool used by people in the Warring States, Qin and Han dynasties to remove typos from bamboo slips and also for self-defense, with almost every adult man carrying one at the time). He tossed the finished knife into a nearby bamboo basket and, picking up another wrought iron bar from the furnace, placed it on the anvil.

"Brother Yuan, it's time. Go get some water. I'll take over!" A loud voice came from the side, even the pounding of the hammers could not drown it out. Yuan Tian knew it was Master Liu who was replacing him, so he replied without turning his head, "Wait a minute, I'll finish this one!"

Master Liu responded, fiddled with the bamboo basket beside him, and picked up a piece. "Hey, Brother Yuan, your craftsmanship is really good. At first, I thought you were bragging when you said you were a blacksmith!"

"What do you mean!" Yuan Tian threw his last ruler-shaped knife into the bamboo basket and said with a smile, "I don't even have to use any strength to swing the hammer. Isn't this much easier?"

"I haven't seen you work yet, have I?" Master Liu said with a smile as he put on his gloves. "Just looking at you, you don't look like someone begging for food in a smoke-filled blacksmith shop. For example, your eyebrows are in good shape, unlike us!"

Yuan Tian was slightly stunned, then forced a smile and said, "Really? I didn't pay much attention to it!"

"It doesn't matter. Now that you have your skills, who can say you're not a blacksmith? Our wages are much higher than others, so many people are jealous!" Master Liu said with a smile while skillfully hammering the iron pieces with a forging hammer, "Enough talk, go out and have a drink first!"

Yuan Tian responded but did not leave. He casually picked up a ruler-shaped knife from the bamboo basket and played with it for a while. It was a wrought iron knife with a very soft edge. Although it could be used, it would become blunt after a while and would need to be sharpened. It would probably not be suitable for use in the army. "Old Liu, are you going to sell this knife after it's been sharpened?"

"How is that possible? There are still several steps to go through!" Master Liu said, "How else can we use such a soft blade?"

“Several steps?”

"Yes! It's in the next room at the back. Get out now!"

Yuan Tian responded and walked outside. The oncoming river breeze made him shiver. To his right, on the mound, a four-meter-tall iron smelting furnace had been erected. Next to it was another furnace, much shorter and made of bricks and stones. It looked a bit like a rural stove, only several times larger. Two craftsmen stood on it. The early spring weather was still chilly, but they were shirtless, wearing only calves, and were laboriously stirring something with sticks. Yuan Tian knew they were probably stirring wrought iron. After melting, pig iron flows out like water, requiring no stirring. However, once it becomes wrought iron, it becomes viscous, like thick honey. Only by stirring vigorously can it flow and become high-quality iron. Yuan Tian just didn't know how the other party had used such easy methods to melt so much pig iron into wrought iron. "Old Yuan, thank you for your hard work. Have a drink!"

Yuan Tian quickly took the bamboo cup offered to him and took a sip. It tasted slightly salty, like warm salt water. This was a mandatory order from Wei, and all blacksmiths and ironworkers had to quench their thirst with this warm salt water. No one knew what he was up to, but with so many people involved, it must have been a significant expense. He must have been quite wealthy.

Yuan Tian drank two cups of warm salt water and blew on the river breeze. He felt much better. Seeing no one around, he went to the flat ground outside the last process. Sure enough, there were piles of iron tools such as rulers, sickles, axes, and hoes. He picked up a ruler and saw that the surface of the blade was a beautiful light blue. He tested the blade and found it was much sharper and harder than the previous wrought iron knife. Yuan Tian tried a few more and found that they were all the same. He stood up and hesitated. "A steel knife that has been tempered a hundred times?"

A rhythmic horn blared from the door behind him, and Yuan Tian quickly dropped his knife back to where it had been and dodged. A moment later, the door opened, and the craftsman brought out two bamboo baskets, tossed them outside, and then went back in. Yuan Tian waited until the door closed, then walked over to the baskets and casually picked up two freshly crafted ruler knives from among them to examine. Sure enough, they were identical to the ones he had just examined: pale blue blades, sharp and hard edges, so sharp he couldn't even tell them apart.

"This is truly bizarre!" Yuan Tian muttered to himself. As a former blacksmith, he knew how time-consuming it was to repeatedly fold and forge a steel blade. Even with a hydraulic hammer, it would take a day or two to forge a decent ruler-shaped blade. There were over a hundred ruler-shaped blades in this bamboo basket alone, enough for dozens of people to work on for months. How could they just throw them away like this?

dong dong dong dong!

A rapid drumbeat echoed, and Yuan Tian hurriedly turned around, knowing it was time to unload the blast furnace. To prevent the ore from being carried away by the blast of air when the furnace mouth was opened and injuring anyone, everyone outside was required to drop their work and retreat to a safe distance. Yuan Tian took a few steps back, making sure he was in a safe area. With mixed feelings, he watched as workers used small carts to dump carts of ore, charcoal, limestone, and other ore into the furnace mouth.

If Yuan Tian hadn't been completely certain before, he was now completely certain that Wei Cong had ulterior motives. Before construction began, he'd roughly estimated the iron ore piled up on the small hillock by the river to be at least seven or eight thousand dan. Now, at most, only half of that was left. This much iron, if forged into weapons, would be enough to arm tens of thousands of people. More importantly, with such a large-scale project, he certainly wouldn't just use up the little ore he'd mined. Why would he produce so much ironware? To make it all into swords, sickles, hoes, axes? It would be practically impossible for everyone in Yuzhang County to use his ironware.

Unbeknownst to Yuan Tian, Wei Cong's already constructed ironworks were far more advanced than he had imagined. The entire ironworks consisted of two main components: a four-meter-tall blast furnace—driven by massive hydraulic bellows, its internal temperature could reach over 1200 degrees Celsius, effortlessly transforming iron sand ore into molten pig iron; and a Pudling furnace, a smelting method used during the early days of the British Industrial Revolution. This stirred and decarbonized the pig iron, transforming it into viscous wrought iron, with the two seamlessly connected. Once these wrought iron tools were made, they only needed a simple carburizing treatment (treatment in a specialized carburizing furnace significantly increases the number of carbon atoms in the surface of the wrought iron, transforming it into high-carbon steel and making it even harder). These tools could then be used directly to craft iron tools, weapons, and armor. If carburizing wasn't enough, the crucible method could be used to create even higher-quality steel weapons.

As for the hydraulic forging hammer, there is no need to mention it - without manpower, you can swing the heavy hammer tirelessly, hitting the red-hot iron pieces with sparks flying. In the past, weapons and tools that required a skilled blacksmith to swing the hammer for a long time to obtain, now only require an apprentice to put the parts to be processed on the anvil and let the forging hammer strike, and work efficiency has increased by more than ten times.

The iron smelting furnaces, operating day and night, were so efficient that the mountains of iron ore and charcoal piled high on the hill behind the blast furnaces were visibly decreasing in size. In the storage yard outside the ironworks, iron ingots, sickles, ring-handled knives, axes, hoes, iron forks, and iron pots were piled up like worthless garbage. Wei Cong had to assign some people to continue salvaging iron ore from the river and cutting wood for charcoal, lest the blast furnaces shut down due to insufficient raw materials, which would be a huge loss. Of course, the most important thing was to sell these products. After all, they were useless if left here, and would only rust. Even if they could be exchanged for a few pigs for meat, it would be fine!

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"Zhu An, I'll leave this matter to you!" Wei Cong pointed to the various ironware being loaded onto the ship. "Anything is fine, as long as it's needed here, slaves, food. Just don't bring back any money. I'm not short of money right now!"

"My dear, please rest assured!" Zhu An's original fear had long since vanished. He had witnessed Wei Cong create such a situation from a barren land in just a few months. Yuzhang was different from the north. High-quality ironware was in short supply. A decent portable ruler-shaped knife would cost at least 700 coins on the market. Although these goods were semi-finished products, without scabbards and handles, the steel and tempering were all top-notch. Wei Cong asked for only 250 coins. He could find a knifesmith to buy them, polish them, and add handles and scabbards, and they could be sold as top-quality goods. There were over 3,000 semi-finished ruler-shaped knives like this on the ship. He could easily make a lot of money by just wiping his hands among them.

"Huang Ping! Just go with Zhu An on this trip and help out!" Wei Cong said.

"Yes!" Huang Ping responded, and he bowed to Zhu An. "I'd appreciate your guidance this time, Brother Zhu!"

"I dare not, I dare not!" Zhu An hurriedly returned the greeting. In his opinion, with such a large batch of goods, it was only natural for Wei Cong to send a confidant to follow him. Otherwise, what would he do if he abducted the goods and ran away?
"Hurry and come back quickly, don't delay. If a reputable merchant can provide a deposit, it's fine. Just sell the goods!" Wei Cong clapped his hands lightly, "Otherwise, the yard will be almost full!"

"I'll remember that!" Zhu An replied with a wry smile. This was the first time in his life that he had met a workshop owner like Wei Cong who agreed to pay a deposit before doing business. However, this was not difficult to understand. Judging from the current shipment volume of the workshop, if he were in his place, he would also be willing to pay a deposit before shipping.

(End of this chapter)