In a vacant area within the courtyard of the Qingque tribe, Heiwa was digging a hole.

Han Cheng was watering and mixing the soil dug out by Heiwa.

They are going to rebuild a kiln or a blacksmith furnace here.

The earthen kiln beside the small river outside the Qingque tribe is fine for firing pottery and tiles, but it is too big to use it for charcoal fire and forging iron.

Digging soil and mud, building vents... these tasks went smoothly and in less than half a day, a brand new small stove was ready.

There is a flame burning in the stove and the ventilation effect is very good.

I have to say, Heiwa’s skills in building these things are getting better and better.

Han Cheng walked to the stone slab and picked up a few lumps of mud to look at them. They were only half dry.

After thinking about it, I took out a dozen of them and placed them on the wall at the edge of the stove to roast them. This way they would dry quickly and I could start the experiment as soon as possible.

After a while, when the mud lumps are almost dry, put the charcoal that was burned earlier into the stove.

There were four lumps of mud placed on top of the charcoal.

The iron smelting experiment had just begun when Han Cheng discovered a problem.

The charcoal fire in the stove was not burning vigorously enough.

The solution is to get a small blower or bellows.

Han Cheng is no stranger to blowers. When he was a child, when the weather turned cold and there was no farming work, people from the village would come to make popcorn.

A simple stove was set up, a fire was lit inside, and a burnt black object that looked like a bomb was placed on top.

It contains corn or rice.

After burning on the fire for a while, the 'bomb' was taken off the fire, one end was put into a long pocket, and it was kicked hard. After a loud bang, hot popcorn was born...

Han Cheng’s favorite thing to do at that time was not to pick up popcorn that had bounced to the ground with other playmates, but to squat next to the stove and crank the blower, also known as "Wind Gurgle".

The structure of this thing is relatively simple. Its main function is to collect the wind generated by the rotation of the fan blades inside through a narrow air outlet and blow it into the stove.

People who see hope are full of energy.

Han Cheng couldn't create a complicated Wind Gulu, but a simple one was no problem.

Since there was no iron sheet to make the outer shell, people used clay to make a model, baked it dry, and then fired it into pottery.

Since there were no iron rods for the shaft and no iron sheets for the fan blades, wooden sticks and tree bark were used instead.

Use a stone knife to carve a cross on one end of a wooden stick, and then cross two pieces of bark, each ten centimeters long and four centimeters wide.

A two-centimeter notch is carved at each intersection so that they can be inserted into the cross of the tree sticks.

Tie it up with a thin rope and a rotating shaft with fan blades is ready.

Put it into the pottery shell, put a stone with small holes underneath, and rub it with your hands, and wind will come out through the seal.

Put a pre-made clay pot on the air outlet, and insert the other end into the air inlet of the stove. Rub it hard, and wind will flow into the stove along the clay tube, and the fire in the stove will immediately become much stronger.

Heiwa's eyes suddenly lit up.

After rubbing like this for a while, Han Cheng's hands hurt, so he found a hand drill, removed the drill rod, installed the shaft with fan blades, pressed back and forth a few times, and it became easy.

There is one thing I need to mention. Generally, wind goos are placed vertically, but the one made by Han Cheng is placed horizontally, so that it can be used with a hand drill to fan the air and ignite the fire.

“Huff, huff…”

Heiwa pressed the hand drill and watched the flame in the furnace rise and fall with his movements, his eyes shining.

It is very similar to the time when Han Cheng squatted beside the popcorn and shook the wind.

With Feng Gulu, burning these iron-containing mud lumps can be much faster.

In less than half an hour, the iron bacteria lumps in the stove turned red.

After burning for a while, it showed signs of melting and softening.

Seeing that the fire was almost ready, Han Cheng used two long wooden sticks to take it out of the furnace, placed it on a stone that had been prepared nearby, extinguished the fire on the two burning sticks, picked up another large wooden stick and started striking while the iron was hot.

“Bang, bang, bang!”

As he hammered, the red slag flashed away and rolled to the side.

Before long, the ball of iron bacteria turned from red to black.

Han Cheng beat the boy for a while but stopped when he found he couldn't beat him anymore.

At this point, the iron bacteria was no longer even half of what it was before.

I threw it into a ceramic basin beside and soaked it in water, then took it out and looked at it carefully in my hand. I found that this irregular object was far from being iron.

After thinking about it, Han Cheng found a stone and smashed the piece of iron, which could not even be considered a semi-finished product. After looking at it carefully for a while, Han Cheng found the small iron bead inside.

Looking at the eight small iron beads in his hand, the largest of which was no bigger than a mung bean, Han Cheng couldn't help but smile.

Iron!

This is iron!

It has been four years since he came to this era. Now that he finally sees traces of metal, how can Han Cheng not be excited? How can he not be excited?

Heiwa on the side looked at Han Cheng, whose mouth was grinning from ear to ear, and then looked at the small bumps in Han Cheng's hands. He really couldn't understand. These were just some unremarkable things, so why could the Son of God be so happy?

Can this little bit of stuff be used to make tools that are harder and more durable than stone?

But he soon started laughing too, not because he understood what was going on, but because he was just laughing along with the Son of God.

"Burn! Keep burning!"

Han Cheng put the small iron beads in his hand into a pottery jar with great care, and shouted excitedly as if he had been injected with chicken blood, and put more than a dozen mud lumps into the furnace at once...

From that day on, the newly built furnace in the Qingque tribe burned for five consecutive days before finally stopping temporarily.

“Clatter…”

“Clatter…”

Han Cheng held the jar, which was not too big but seemed a bit heavy, and shook it from time to time with an idiotic smile on his face.

This side is filled with iron beads of various sizes. They are the result of continuous labor over the past few days, weighing about two kilograms.

This is the scale accumulated after all the iron bacteria near the Qingque tribe were plundered.

With these iron beads, he became more confident about what happened next.

Now that we have iron beads of very high purity, all we need to do next is to heat and melt them to make iron blocks.

After thinking it over, Han Cheng decided to put a layer of charcoal in the stove first, and then put the iron beads in four clay bowls of different sizes and place them on the charcoal.

Then add a thick layer of carbon on top and start burning.

This crude method and tool consumes a lot of charcoal and time.

But now is obviously not the time to think about these things. We should be thankful that we can get the iron out. Why should we bother to think about the loss?