Chapter 308 (1/2)

Inside the black forest, there came another earth-shaking noise. Flames along with countless rubble and iron slags were splashing everywhere.

Sui Xiong jumped into the river nearby and sighed as he heard the sizzling of the hot rubble and iron slags coming into contact with the cold water.

“So many times I’ve failed!”

He looked at the explosion site. The ground was in complete chaos. The scattered stone mud mixed with iron peat and iron slags was the result of his “iron-making blast furnace.”

“What on earth is wrong with it?”

After so many failures, even an art student could sense that something was wrong. Sui Xiong dared to bet on his morality that his iron-making blast furnace technology must have some fatal defects or maybe there were some mistakes in the key link. But he thought it over and over again and still didn’t know where the mistakes were.

Iron ore reacted with coal at high temperatures, reducing the combined iron to iron atoms—he remembered that from high school chemistry.

Although Sui Xiong was an art student, he was also formally admitted to a university. The oxidation-reduction reaction was a key point in high school chemistry. How could he forget it all?

But… Why did it go wrong?

Iron ore, coal, and high temperatures—he had them all. And in order to make them react fully, he specifically blended the iron ore and coal evenly. He practically ground and mixed them together.

But why did it end up burning and exploding? What was the problem?

Sui Xiong was not an ignorant man nor did he make the iron without any preparations. Before he started, he also went to the blacksmith’s shop to inquire about and observe iron-making technology.

The iron-making technology in this world was roughly like this: Mix mud and straw to build a furnace with an elliptical barrel and a short chimney; there would be two air intakes and one iron slag outlet under the furnace. Then the iron ore and charcoal were stacked layer by layer and ignited slowly. At the same time, they were also added in slowly layer by layer.

This was a very slow process that would produce a lot of useless iron slags. It took a long time to fill the iron blocks with holes. Then these iron blocks were burned and slowly forged in a forging furnace. Finally, the bubbles and impurities of these iron blocks were removed, and the actual iron was obtained after that.

Generally speaking, this method was inefficient and cost a lot of manpower and material resources. So the iron price in this world was very expensive; even goods made of iron were also very expensive.

In fact, bronze was still widely used in many parts of the world.

Of course, there was also a solution to such a problem in this magical world—that was the magic furnace.

Magic could produce amazing heat that could burn the iron ore. By adding reducing agents to it, the molten iron could be obtained smoothly, and then pig iron could be obtained. Next, by adding carbon into it to re-forge, the wrought iron could be obtained, and finally, steel could be obtained by mixing the pig iron and wrought iron.

This method of iron-making was very efficient, and the quality of the iron produced was also very good, but it would cost too much money.

The cost of a magic furnace was staggeringly high, and several magicians were also needed to assist in the operation. In addition, more precious magic crystals would be consumed. Once a furnace was opened, hundreds of gold coins would be thrown away regardless of success or failure.

As a result, the price of steel was still very high while its output was very low.

The Church of the Goddess of Wealth once calculated that under the existing conditions, the iron-making method with the lowest cost was that of a high-level magician using “plane travel” magic to search for pure iron veins on the earth plane…

Sui Xiong also learned that the dwarfs inherited a special spell which could raise the temperature of magma. This high temperature could melt the iron ore, and then the molten iron was extracted from it directly by using a secret magic technique.

The ingot iron obtained by this method was known as “dwarven steel” or “lava ingot.” It was the most advanced steel among all the known steels.

The output of this kind of steel was also the lowest.

Firstly, it was very hard to find good lava, and even if the proper lava was found, there were few masters who could cast the special spells. Even for most dwarfs, this spell was only an ancient legend, and no one has ever seen it.

If there weren’t any dwarven steel products in the world, many people would have doubted whether it was just a legend or not.

Sui Xiong’s plan was to develop low-cost and efficient iron-making technology. In his impression, even in the backwards areas of the earth, steel was absolutely not rare. Weren’t third world countries using machetes?

Of course, Sui Xiong certainly didn’t know that all these machetes were actually “made in China.”

But developing such technology wasn’t easy!

Sui Xiong sighed deeply, flew out of the river and then reinvented his magic to build the blast furnace.

“The explosion was due to poor ventilation. I should increase ventilation…”

Obviously, this experiment had to be continued.

This experiment may have a great impact on the future development of the world, but Sui Xiong who was presiding over this experiment was actually only a battle avatar. His noumenon remained in the “sanctuary” of the kingdom of God.