Lord of the Desert

Chapter 369 Blood and Bones
In the winter of the 29th year of Zhenghe, Hong Fan did not return home.

Seeing him busy every day, time also started running.

In the blink of an eye, the end of the year is approaching.

Longqiu Town is a little-known place.

There are no fireworks, no iron flowers, and no public attention on New Year’s Eve here.

Only like-minded people join hands and raise their glasses, taking a sip of strong liquor, which warms the throat to the stomach.

On the last night of the 29th year of Zhenghe, Hong Fan spent the night in meditation as usual.

In a blink of an eye, five days later, heavy snow fell.

Hong Fan met with Duan Tiannan early in the morning and continued to introduce the theory of "phase transfer" armor, using sand grains to demonstrate how to use large-scale position changes of microscopic particles to absorb impact force, transfer kinetic energy, and finally dissipate it as heat in the form of fluid damping fluctuations.

At lunch, he received a letter from Qian Hong from Xijing.

The letter said that a new batch of flintlock rifles had been tested in actual combat in Onuma and achieved impressive results.

Attached to the letter was a table showing Kai Ming Bank's current flintlock production capacity, including the hours and costs required to manufacture each component.

Twenty swords were produced per month, each sword earning three taels of silver.

The former is limited by manpower, and the latter is due to the fact that warriors have much higher salaries than ordinary people on the one hand, and the materials of the gun barrel and bolt on the other hand.

Even in Xijing, where metallurgy is well developed, the cost of steel for gun barrels that has been refined more than five times is still thirty times more than pig iron.

After reading the entire letter, Hong Fan did not immediately draft a reply, but took out another piece of paper from the drawer.

This post is filled with dense handwriting.

The first half is about the steelmaking knowledge he recalled and sorted out - Bessemer converter, Siemens open hearth furnace, Thomas converter, electric arc furnace, and even LD pure oxygen steelmaking, etc. - the old parts still have some hand-drawn sketches, and the advanced ones only have basic concepts.

The second half is the test results of multiple current versions.

Hong Fan was already very familiar with Dahua's smelting technology.

Pig iron is liquid cast iron obtained by smelting ore. It has high carbon and impurity content and is brittle and easy to break.

Wrought iron is made by decarburizing pig iron through processes such as "frying" and "steaming". It is soft and forgeable, but impurities other than carbon are not reduced, so it needs to be heated and forged repeatedly to remove impurities and carburize before it can become steel.

Hong Fan had seen the Cui family's basic steel-pouring method of "forging and carburizing" through a repetitive cycle in Jinhai, and later the craftsmen of the royal court who defected to the Baisheng Army showed him more advanced methods.

Place wrought iron in the furnace, hang a pig iron plate at the furnace mouth, raise the furnace temperature to over 1,200 degrees, and then turn the wrought iron over when the pig iron plate is melted to spread the molten iron evenly, completing the carburizing and oxidation processes at the same time, greatly saving the number of forging times.

But this is essentially still the steel pouring method.

The steel produced by this method is not of uniform quality, has a long cycle and low output, and wastes a lot of manpower and fuel.

Hong Fan was quite puzzled by this.

It is clear that the maker has discovered that the properties of iron are based on its carbon content - very high carbon content is pig iron, very low carbon content is wrought iron, and steel is somewhere in between.

But this did not lead to a qualitative change in steelmaking technology.

Because the warrior class monopolizes knowledge and resources, and they look down on steel - those in the Hunran realm can easily cut through fine steel, and those in the Xiantian realm even dislike black iron because it is weak. As for the first and second grade magic weapons, they are no longer in the scope of mass production and require more precious and rare materials.

Hong Fan can only do it himself.

For the entire winter, apart from exchanging martial arts theories with Duan Tiannan and improving his killing methods, he spent the rest of his time dealing with steel.

On the same day, at 15:15 pm.

Feng Qing knocked on the door and came in, shaking off the misty snow from his cloak.

"Sir, everything is ready."

White air came out of his mouth and he bowed to show his respect.

Hong Fan stopped writing, closed the door, said nothing, and followed Feng Qing into the town.

The snow is still falling.

The desolate and scattered white color squeezed the universe apart, stretched upwards to the mountains, and pressed down on the beams and tiles.

The houses that usually stand tall have to crouch down.

Hong Fan raised his chin and looked out.

He couldn't see Yisan Lake across the town. Only Zuolan Mountain, with its back to the sun, left an icy blue outline.

The test was conducted at the weapons camp of the Baisheng Army outside the town.

This was originally the shop of the old blacksmith in Longqiu Town, and was later expanded many times.

After taking Duanli City, Hong Fan went to talk to Qiu Yuankui, and got a brick house there.

This house had only one small window. The snow on the roof was half melted, and the icicles on the eaves were twice as long as those elsewhere.

Hong Fan pushed the door open and his exposed skin began to itch due to the drastic changes in temperature.

My vision suddenly darkened, and my pupils adjusted after a moment.

The area is more spacious than it looks from the outside. An iron beam is erected in the middle, and a steel converter with a columnar body and a conical top is suspended below. The outer edge of the furnace has a diameter of one meter and is taller than a person.

This stove alone is extremely expensive.

There were already more than a dozen people waiting in the room. All of them had strong muscles and a solid foundation of cultivation. Most of them were officers who had followed Hong Fan to fight during the battle of Duanli City.

Ancient ideas are combined with new ones.

Everyone knows that steel is far superior to iron.

But he had only seen fine steel swords in his life but had never seen fine steel farm tools. So when he heard that Hong Fan wanted to refine cheap fine steel, he would come to help every time, even if it took up his time for martial arts practice.

"The 32nd test, please excuse me."

Hong Fan ordered.

Everyone moved.

In the ironmaking room next door, two shirtless men opened the blast furnace and released the molten iron that had been prepared earlier, and poured it into a large barrel to the designated mark.

The third person comes forward to confirm and mixes in a certain amount of quicklime slagging agent, and the fourth and fifth persons mix and stir.

"It's ready."

they shouted.

Gu Yixin nodded and lifted the barrel with one arm - after all, this was an early test and there was no very complete mechanical transfer structure in place.

He walked through the brick house, climbed up the iron ladder to the converter mouth, and poured the molten iron into a golden red waterfall.

One and a half tons at a time, worth two hundred and seventy taels of silver.

Hong Fan held the steel frame with his hands, and the flame force slowly extended, confirming that the temperature inside the furnace was 1,200 degrees Celsius.

At this time, the lime dissolves very slowly, forming a low-calcium oxide ferromanganese silicate slag.

"Blow the wind."

He took a deep breath and gestured.

Nearby, an officer in the Hunran realm who practiced Xiaoyaoyin was driving the airflow in a certain direction.

The air enters along the steel pipe and is blown into the molten iron through six groups of slender dolomite sintering air inlets at the bottom of the converter.

Everyone waits with bated breath.

Chemical reactions begin one after another.

Iron is the dominant component in molten iron, so the oxygen that comes in during smelting first combines with iron to form ferrous oxide, releasing a large amount of heat at the same time.

The temperature quickly climbed to 1,300 degrees.

The manganese and silicon in the molten iron become mobilized, stealing oxygen from the ferrous oxide and oxidizing.

As the temperature rises, they become more active and react directly with oxygen to form silicon dioxide and manganese oxide.

Brown smoke escaped from the furnace.

More heat was released, raising the furnace temperature to 1,500 degrees Celsius.

This is a temperature that humans in this world cannot reach by burning fuel. At this time, carbon finally becomes active, quickly reducing iron oxide to iron, and then combines with oxygen to release carbon dioxide.

One thousand six hundred times.

The intensity of the reaction reached its peak, and the converter mouth erupted like a volcano, spewing out pure golden furnace gas and sparks.

The brick house was brightly lit.

There was the sound of gurgling water coming from behind the tiles.

The ice outside the window kept breaking and smashing into the corners of the house.

Hong Fan endured the soreness in his eyes and stared at the furnace mouth, observing the color and brightness of the flame, sweat appearing and drying on his face.

He is waiting.

Wait for iron sulfide and phosphorus to precipitate into slag-like calcium sulfide and calcium phosphate under the action of quicklime, thereby removing the hot brittleness and cold brittleness of the finished steel.

The fire roars, embraces, purifies.

A quarter of an hour later, the erupting furnace gas gradually became pure and clear.

"The heat is here."

Hong Fan said, his voice dry and low.

The people whose souls were taken away by iron and fire came back to their senses.

They focused their attention and saw the firelight solidified on Hong Fan's face, making him look as majestic as a diamond.

"Order."

Feng Qing responded hoarsely, and used all his divine power to pull down the iron chain that was tied to the bottom of the converter via the pulley.

The steel furnace tilted and the refined molten steel slowly poured out.

Everyone was grabbed by the neck, watching the liquid gradually condense into shape, dimming the dazzling golden red.

"Mr. Hong, I'm taking action."

Said a skilled warrior named Niu Gengsheng, who once served as a blacksmith's apprentice.

Hong Fan nodded.

Niu Gengsheng stepped forward, picked up an ingot with steel pliers, and forged it vigorously with a hammer.

The ingot was hit, leaving a shallow mark on the surface that extended slightly in all directions.

People were stunned and rubbed their eyes, making sure they saw the hardness and flexibility under the hammer.

They gritted their teeth, asked for permission with their eyes, and after getting permission, they drew their swords and chopped until they were sure beyond all doubt.

"It worked, this time it worked! It's really steel!"

"Two quarters of an hour! It would have taken us five or ten days to pour out the refined steel, but we only used two quarters of an hour, and we poured out three thousand kilograms at a time!"

"And we didn't use any carbon or coal. It was the iron that obeyed the Star Lord's orders and refined itself in the furnace!"

The shouting was chaotic and sincere.

The eyes of the crowd were also purified in the incandescent heat, and they looked at the man by the stove as if they were looking at a god.

Hong Fan didn't care about all this.

"That's not all..."

He muttered, his brain boiling like a river filled with molten iron, and inspiration splashing like sparks from a hammer hitting anvil.

"For the 32 hot metal batches, we started the furnace early before the carbon was completely removed and produced steel directly."

"In the future, we can remove all the carbon first, and then add a certain amount of carbon or other metals back, so that we can mass-produce alloy steel..."

Hong Fan exhaled from his cracked lips, and his fingertips unconsciously scratched the itchy spot on his cheek, dropping fine flakes of skin and salt.

“The craft isn’t finished yet!”

He raised his voice a little.

“This furnace is too small, we will make it bigger later;

If you can't rely on warriors to intake air, you can replace it with a hydraulic bellows, or you can try using a steam engine to blow air. You can produce one furnace in ten minutes, which is enough to produce more than ten tons of molten steel at a time!

The furnace shell should be designed with multiple layers, and a better heat-resistant insulation layer should be used on the inner surface to prevent the steel body from being corroded..."

Hong Fan became more and more anxious as he spoke. Suddenly, his vision went dark and his brain turned white, and the only sound in his ears was the beating of his heart like a drum.

He suppressed his vomiting, patted Fengqing on the shoulder, and walked out of the house alone.

The snow is still falling.

The pure white ice moth flew onto Hong Fan's face, steaming into warm mist with a hissing sound.

But endless heat was gushing out from his heart, so that the world could not freeze his flesh and blood.

For the entire winter, Hong Fan was like a hermit crab carrying its shell.

This time he stretched with his hands on his hips for the first time in a long time, and saw the continuous bungalows in Longqiu Town, the misty smoke from cooking fires, and the black peak of Zuolan Mountain rising high and sharp as a blade, piercing the heart of the bloody sun.

The sound of footsteps on the snow came from behind.

"It's only been a few months, and everything from the idea to the equipment is new, and you've actually done it!"

Gu Yixin exclaimed, standing behind him.

"No, this is just the beginning."

Hong Fan shook his head.

His mind burned like fire, and words came out without cooling.

“The agricultural era has its own gentleness and tranquility.”

“But the stubborn diseases of the old times can only be cured through innovation.”

"Brother Gu, I have seen that a new era requires new blood and bones:

The blood was black, coal and oil, burning brightly in countless huge hearts;

The bones are silver, made of steel and alloy, turning into tracks, locomotives, piles on rocks and tendons in concrete..."

He spoke excitedly, one sentence after another, and only stopped when he noticed that Gu Yixin was stunned.

"sorry."

Hong Fan's throat rolled and there was nothing in his mouth to swallow, so he pressed his hands into the knee-deep snow, waited for the snow to cool, and then covered his burning temples with his hands.

"I shouldn't say those useless things."

He said this to himself, and then made a solemn promise.

“Brother Gu, wait and see;
Ten years, no, only five years;

I will reduce the price of steel in Liangzhou to one tenth of its current level!"

PS: The iron prices in the article are based on the Ming Dynasty, 0.9 jin of pig iron cost 16.6 taels, wrought iron cost 20 taels, armor steel cost 30 taels, gun barrel steel cost 300 taels, and fine sword steel cost taels.

Also, let me talk about the update.

This time, I updated 40,000 words, and I still have 15,000 words to publish. They will be published after the third volume is finished, probably in the first half of June.

My illness relapsed at the end of November last year. I had several ups and downs during that period. I finally wrote a chapter in early March and thought I was in much better condition. However, a few days after I picked up the pen, my condition started to deteriorate again. It was not until late April that I finally had the strength to do so.

Therefore, the third volume could not be completed as planned at the end of May.

Fortunately, the recent condition has been quite good.

I hope everything goes well for me in my future coding.

I wish you all the best too.

(End of this chapter)