Book Synopsis
Book Tags
Donation Rankings
Comment
0 Comments
You May Also Like
墨書 Inktalez
Just as a few people were happily smashing away, a shadow appeared beside Liu Guanfeng and his companions. The sudden appearance of the shadow did not frighten Liu Guanfeng and the others at all, as they had grown accustomed to it. Ever since they met Little Black, he would suddenly pop up every couple of days to scare the kids. At first, Liu Guanfeng and the others were indeed startled.
There was even one time when Little Black jumped out, and Liu Guanfeng instinctively threw a punch at him, but he was rebounded by Little Black's tough skin. Instead, Liu Guanfeng ended up sitting on the ground. After a few times, Liu Guanfeng and his friends gradually got used to Little Black's pranks. The reason was simple: apart from their group and the Four Sacred Beasts, Little Black was the only other presence in the Four Sacred Valleys.
In the Four Sacred Valleys, there had never been any magical beasts above the third tier. The only time they saw a second-tier Flame Wild Chicken was deep in the forest when Liu Guanfeng and his friends were slacking off; after all, the aura of a Divine Knight was something ordinary magical beasts could not withstand.
After Little Black jumped out, he saw Liu Guanfeng and his companions smashing ore and asked, "Junior Brother, what are you all doing?"
Liu Guanfeng replied with a bitter face, "Little Senior Brother, can't you see we're smashing ore? After we finish smashing it, we put it in the furnace to make Pig Iron ingots so that Xuanwu Master can teach us real blacksmithing techniques."
"Can you still play with me today?"
Liu Guanfeng shook his head. "Little Senior Brother, it's probably not going to happen today. Do you see all this ore? Xuanwu Master told us we have to smash it all into Iron Ingots within three days. Otherwise, we'll be punished to mine for another two weeks."
"You guys are so unfortunate. Well then, just keep working. I have nothing to do anyway, so I'll just supervise you. I was planning to go bully the little rabbits inside earlier, but before I could get there, they all burrowed into their holes and wouldn't come out no matter what. It's really boring."
Liu Guanfeng's face twitched: "Good Little Guy, wanting to bully a Ninth-Stage Beast is one thing; expecting them not to hide is just unreasonable."
At that moment, Little Black lay on the ground with his round eyes fixed on Liu Guanfeng and his friends. As he stared at them, those round eyes seemed to disappear, followed by a thunderous sound coming from Little Black's mouth.
Liu Guanfeng glanced at Little Black: "Wow, this Little Guy can sleep through our 'bang bang' sounds while smashing ore; that's really impressive."
Liu Guanfeng and his companions continued to strike the ore in rhythm with Little Black's snoring. Although it was just early spring, they were all bare-chested at this point; their clothes had long been torn by flying debris and looked rather unappealing. Fortunately, they all had the foundation of Iron Skin Soup, so the flying stones posed no harm to them.
Liu Guanfeng and the Five People worked until nearly six-thirty before finally finishing up. Looking back at the ore beside him made Liu Guanfeng feel like crying; there still stood a small mountain of ore in front of him. Liu Guanfeng stomped his feet in frustration: "What did we even accomplish this afternoon? It seems like we haven't reduced any ore at all!"
In reality, Liu Guanfeng and his friends were unaware that during these two weeks of mining, every night Little Black had quietly sneaked into the mine to help them dig. As a Ninth Tier magical beast, his mining skills far surpassed those of these young boys; although Liu Guanfeng and his friends could only transport about fifteen hundred to two thousand pounds of ore each day.
However, thanks to Little Black's assistance, the amount of ore extracted increased to around twenty-five hundred to four thousand pounds—almost doubling their output. That’s why Liu Guanfeng felt that they seemed to have mined quite a lot of ore while making almost no progress after an entire afternoon of effort.
Looking at the mountain of ore, Liu Guanfeng shook his head: "It seems dinner tomorrow will have to wait until late at night; otherwise, we won't be able to complete Xuanwu's assigned tasks."
The next morning, as usual, they practiced the Earthly Destruction Hammer Technique and the Heavenly Gang Spear Technique. After lunch, Liu Guanfeng led Bao Rui and Copper Bull to go smash some ore. Iron Bull, feeling puzzled, asked, "Third Brother, we just had lunch. Are we really going to smash ore without even taking a break?"
Liu Guanfeng glanced back at the few attendants beside him and noticed that they seemed to be confused by his actions. He sighed and said, "Did you not notice anything when we finished smashing ore yesterday?"
Iron Bull shook his head vigorously.
"When we finished smashing ore yesterday, I looked back and realized that we didn't even complete one-third of the work in the entire afternoon. It seemed like we only managed to finish one-fifth at most."
"Third Brother, wait a moment," Iron Bull interrupted Liu Guanfeng.
"What is it now?"
"It’s not that, Third Brother. I didn’t understand what you meant by one-third and one-fifth. What do those terms mean?" Iron Bull looked completely bewildered.
Liu Guanfeng slapped his forehead: Oh no, I forgot that the math here isn't that advanced yet. They can't even do multiplication, so how could they understand fractions? I'm really confused; I need to be more careful with my words in the future.
Liu Guanfeng cleared his throat: "One-third means dividing a pile of things into three equal parts, and one part becomes one-third. One-fifth is similar to one-third. In other words, according to Master Xuanwu's requirements, we should have smashed one-third of the iron ore yesterday, but we only completed one-fifth." After saying this, Liu Guanfeng paused for a moment to let the four boys grasp the difference between one-third and one-fifth.
The first to react was Bao Rui; after thinking for a moment, he understood the size difference between the two fractions. Next was Dai; although he was younger than Copper Bull and Iron Bull, being a merchant's child made him more sensitive to numbers. As for Copper Bull and Iron Bull, they were still counting on their fingers.
Liu Guanfeng awkwardly cleared his throat: "You two can calculate later. Just know that our proficiency in smashing ore yesterday was far from meeting the standard." Hearing this from Liu Guanfeng, the two brothers tucked their hands back into their pockets and pretended nothing was wrong.
Seeing the two brothers acting like clowns, Liu Guanfeng felt speechless: "So today we must go smash ore early and return later to ensure we meet Master Xuanwu's requirements within three days. I don't want to dig for ore again." At the mention of digging for ore, Iron Bull and Copper Bull shivered.
"Third Brother, why are you still talking? Let's hurry up; otherwise, we'll run out of time," Iron Bull seemed to finally react. Liu Guanfeng playfully kicked Iron Bull's backside and scolded him with a laugh:
"Isn't it because you asked me why I wanted to come so early?"
Iron Bull scratched his head: "Hehe, I forgot. Let's hurry up then."
Thus, Liu Guanfeng led Bao Rui, Copper Bull, and the other two towards the deep pool.
Upon arriving at the deep pool and seeing the mountain of iron ore piled beside them, Liu Guanfeng and the others felt a chill in their hearts. There was just too much!
Without further ado, just like the arrangement on the first day, Daila, Bellows, and a few others began to mine the ore. Today's progress was much better than yesterday because after a day of adaptation, the Five Boys had already gotten used to using the heavy hammers in their hands. Although they were still a bit heavy, it no longer hindered Liu Guanfeng and the others from mining. Moreover, through the practice of mining, Liu Guanfeng found that he could always hit the spot he aimed for when using the hammer.
As a result, Liu Guanfeng's speed in mining was faster than that of the other boys. Although mining was tough and exhausting, the boys worked energetically, even Iron Bull, who had complained at the beginning, had quieted down under the pressure of Xuanwu's vine.
When Iron Bull was hit by the vine, Liu Guanfeng turned to look at him and said, "I told you, Iron Bull, complaining won't reduce the amount of ore. So just keep your mouth shut and work harder."
Xuanwu nodded in agreement with Liu Guanfeng's words, while Iron Bull could only tightly close his mouth. Even though they had medicinal baths provided by Vermilion Bird Master every night, being struck by that vine was indeed uncomfortable.
Thus, Iron Bull picked up his hammer again and started mining. This time he had no objections; at most, he would strike his sore arms a few times when he got tired. As a result, the Five Boys improved their mining speed significantly. Since Dai's strength was the least among them, his mining speed was also the slowest, so Liu Guanfeng arranged for Daila and Bellows to have the longest working time.
Liu Guanfeng also made systematic arrangements for their tasks: Liu Guanfeng, Copper Bull, and Iron Bull were responsible for breaking large chunks of ore, while Bao Rui's task was to select relatively larger pieces from what Liu Guanfeng and the others had broken for secondary processing. Since those ores had already been crushed once, many of them showed cracks, making it much easier for Bao Rui during secondary processing.
The division of labor among them significantly increased their mining efficiency. By around seven o'clock in the evening, Liu Guanfeng looked around and nodded in satisfaction. Compared to the situation when they arrived in the morning, they had already crushed at least two-thirds of the ore; it seemed there would be no problem completing it tomorrow.
The next day unfolded as Liu Guanfeng had anticipated. By around five o'clock in the evening, Liu Guanfeng and the Five Boys had completely crushed all the ores they had collected over two weeks with Little Black and put them into the Furnace. The only thing left for them to do was wait for their last batch of Pig Iron ingots to be produced; then their task would be complete.
At this moment, Liu Guanfeng took over Dai's work and squatted beside the Furnace, using all his remaining strength to start operating the Bellows. "Whoosh whoosh," he instructed Copper Bull to add coal into the furnace. It was their first time seeing this black stone that burned; in Knight's Great 6's Blacksmith Shop, they usually used wood and added something called Kerosene to enhance the fire's duration and temperature.
With Liu Guanfeng giving it his all, the fire in the furnace blazed vigorously. After a while, a wave of intense heat radiated from it. The molten iron slowly flowed out of the Furnace and into molds; thus, their last batch of Pig Iron ingots was completed.
Please click for more support; I ask for collections and flowers; I seek votes... I pray for blessings from heaven... I hope God looks after me a bit more.
Comment 0 Comment Count