Chapter 319 (1/2)

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio  Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

“The mage thing is not worth mentioning.” The short young man was Palin. With his excellent hearing, he could even hear whispers.

“Being a scholar is the thing that I am most proud of, but forget the ‘outstanding’ part. I am not qualified enough,” he said, after turning his head with a smile.

Reif was taken aback, both astonished by Palin’s identity and by his amazing hearing. He hurriedly saluted but did not know how to greet him.

“No restrictions,” Palin said, smiling. “You are visiting here? Please continue. I have something to talk about with Uncle Wrought Iron.”

After that, he took Wrought Iron into the study room next to him, and they talked about something in detail.

This time, Palin came to visit for two things: The first one was naturally to invite Wrought Iron to the Void Mask Land to attend the retirement ceremony.

Palin’s uncle, Old Soth, had passed away a few years ago. Only two people were still alive among the partners who had ventured and done business with Old Soth in the past—Wrought Iron and Rhyme. The former one was a dwarf with an average life expectancy was about 150 years old; the latter one was a suburb fairy with an average life expectancy of around 180 years old.

Now, Wrought Iron was almost 70 years old, and that was equivalent to the early 30’s of mankind. He was still in the prime of his life. After attending the funeral of his old friend, he had come to Gold-Panning Town and had become a blacksmith.

Rhythm’s race was rather strange; his rate of aging was similar to that of human beings. However, they could still live quite a long time after getting old. He was already gray-haired and basically lost his ability to work in his sixties. Currently, he was living in the Void Mask Land, working as a librarian in Palin’s library.

When Palin had been an accountant in Uncle Soth’s trade caravan, he had a good relationship with Uncle Wrought Iron. Therefore, when Palin had an event this time, he personally came to invite Wrought Iron, both as a show of respect for the elder and to help for Uncle Wrought Iron keep up his appearances in Gold-Panning Town.

In his current status, personal invitations to his house were enough to dispel many people’s greed for Uncle Wrought Iron’s blacksmith shop, thus avoiding a lot of unnecessary troubles.

The second reason for Palin’s visit was to learn more about the principles of the “magic furnace” and to inquire about the skills of smelting ores from the dwarven forging technique.

During this time, Sui Xiong’s blast furnace experiment had not been going well, and he had failed countless times. After pondering carefully, Sui Xiong thought that he might have a lack of some theories, so he planned to make up the basic skills first.

The easiest way to make up the basics had been to ask Morani. However, Sui Xiong thought that this was his own business. It wouldn’t be worthwhile to trouble others for that. After thinking again and again, he finally went to find Palin.

Palin had stayed in the library almost all these years, going out only a few times. He could be simply called an experienced nerd. Sui Xiong believed that after studying hard for so many years, Palin must have accumulated a lot of knowledge. Moreover, nerds seemed to have technical talents. Sui Xiong had had a college classmate whose game skills were average, but his technical skill had been very good. He had made a keyboard with many function keys, and he had no rivals in the whole department. Maybe Palin was like this.

It turned out that although Palin was a nerd, he was not a technical nerd. He had known very little about metal smelting technology. He only knew what minerals could be extracted, and he could recognize some common or precious ores at most.

However, Palin’s brain was much more flexible than Sui Xiong’s. When he had learned that Sui Xiong’s experiments had been unsuccessful, he had suggested that Sui Xiong copy several common furnaces and study them slowly.

Sui Xiong thought about it and then followed it.

However, after a period of research, Sui Xiong still had had no clue.

He had been able to copy those furnaces without any differences and expand them to amazing scales. However, it couldn’t solve the problems inherent in the furnaces; either the cost had been too high, or the efficiency had been too low, all without promotion values.