If you want to forge iron, the most important thing is to have a fire-assisting tool. The ancients often used bellows or bellows to allow the fire in the furnace to get more oxygen and increase its flame temperature. What I want to do now is to imitate the ancients and make a bellows, and then build a blast furnace.

A blast furnace is easy to make. If you have water, soil and stones, you can follow the old method and mix cement, lay stones and build a temporary one. Since I'm not going to smelt it into molten iron, a slightly higher temperature will do to preserve more oxygen and temperature. The difficulty lies in making the bellows.

Now that Song Yingchun is not here, there is no way for her to make one for me, so I can only make do and go outside near the horse trough and find a wooden feeding trough, which is made of five wooden boards. I washed it first and put it out to dry. I measured it and it was about three palms long and one and a half palms wide. After writing down the data, I drew the design on the ground.

All the bellows need are two air inlets at the front and back, which can be set on the sides. It also requires a wooden shaft to serve as the wind tongue, a rod for pushing and pulling, and two holes for placing the rod. This requires some skill to make. Finally, make a wind nozzle on the rear board and you're done.

Now that the rough design has been worked out, the next step is to make all the parts and put them together.

The iron saw was gone, but I found a serrated knife used for eating steak in the mountains, so I used it as a saw. All I needed to make was a movable board, so I went upstairs and dismantled some unneeded bed boards. I first split a section with an axe, and when it was almost the same size, I used the knife to cut back and forth to make the perimeter of the board as flat as possible.

Try to put it in the trough and move it around a few times. If it is too big, saw it a little more to adjust it. It will soon fit. Drill two holes on the side of the wooden trough and then find two pull rods to connect the movable board. Use the mortise and tenon technique taught by Yingchun, so that when I push and pull, I can fully move the pushing and pulling board back and forth in the trough. The pushing and pulling board is shorter than the height of the trough, and a wooden board is placed on top. The width of the wooden board is smaller than the width of the trough to form an air duct.

Next, a hole is made on the side of the trough to make two air inlets, one of which is in the same direction as the hole of the push-pull wooden rod. Next, a board with the same length and width as the top of the trough is made from the wooden boards dismantled from the **, and it is fixed with mortise and tenon technology to form a whole.

Finally, I chiseled a hole on the back side of it to serve as the air nozzle. In this way, when I push and pull the movable rod, the movable plate inside moves back and forth, so that the air is sucked into the bellows. When pushing and pulling back and forth, the air in the box will form pressure during the movement, allowing the air in the box to go along the reserved air duct and directly flow into the air nozzle and out.

In this way, a simple bellows is completed.

The next step was to use mud to build a slightly higher stove. This process did not take much time. After that, I chopped some firewood and put it into the stove to burn it vigorously. After it was basically a charcoal fire, I placed the broken hanging pot in the charcoal pile under the blast furnace, and then asked Yunwen to help push and pull the bellows and aim the air nozzle at the fire outlet.

I used an axe to split the remaining part of the wooden bed board, and tried to clamp it, and found that it could indeed be used as long chopsticks. I also dug a hole in the ground and poured well water in a bucket into the hole.

Before long, the iron pot in the blast furnace was already red hot. I used "long chopsticks" to pick it out and placed it on the stone grinding table. I used the back of the axe to hit it, and then soaked it in the water in the pit, making the water crackle and emit hot steam. After hitting it, the gap was smaller, but the shape had been deformed a lot.

As long as it can be used, the appearance does not matter. One time is obviously not enough. After several cycles of high-temperature forging, hammering and cooling, the opening of the stainless steel outdoor hanging pot was finally sealed. However, the bottom is no longer flat, it is a bit crooked, and the sides are also concave. It is a bit ugly, but it does not affect the use. I tried pouring water into it several times, and it does not leak.

All this effort took nearly half a day, and by the time the pot was finished, the sun had already set.

"If Sister Yingchun were here, she would say that you are a special forces soldier on the surface, but you also work part-time as a blacksmith behind the scenes." Yunwen said with a smile.

"Really? I'm afraid I can't praise my blacksmithing skills. Look at the pot I smashed. If it were in the civilized world, I'm afraid even the junk collector wouldn't want it." I said.

Yunwen laughed even more happily and continued, "I still want it. Scrap iron is 60 cents a pound."

This time, we both burst out laughing, but after laughing we were silent for a moment. I knew what she was thinking, and she knew what I was thinking. Those two annoying Song sisters, I actually missed them a little when they were not around.

With such companionship day and night, and through so many ups and downs together, we are like family members, but how can we forget and leave at will? I feel more attached to you, but I don't know if Song Yingchun and Song Bailu share the same thoughts with me.

"It's okay, we will have a chance to meet again. Once we prepare the food for the march, we will set out as soon as possible to find the supreme treasure, so that we can meet sooner." I said.

She nodded and forced a smile.

Afterwards, Yunwen applied medicine on the horse's legs with some herbs she had picked. The horse seemed to be very happy to have food to eat, and just stayed near the trough, strolling around by itself at most. It didn't show any anxiety, nor did it particularly resist us, and was very friendly to Yunwen.

It seems that these animals also recognize people. Yunwen is beautiful and kind-hearted, so these animals can always get along well with her and do not reject her. I have heard before that people have aura. Cruel and evil people are often violent, and dogs will bark when they see them. On the contrary, kind-hearted people tend to have good aura, and people like Yunwen can easily win the trust of animals.

Although I don't quite believe in these theories, now that I see Yunwen's relationship with the fox and the horse is the same, my ideas have changed a little.

The horse's right front leg was limping and had a big cut on it. The leg is the most sensitive part of the horse, and I was afraid that Yunwen would be kicked, but later I felt that I was worrying too much. When Yunwen was applying the herbal medicine, Sanfu looked at her with great concern and licked Yunwen's arms and face from time to time.

After dealing with the horse, the wild wheat was washed and put into a clean stainless steel hanging pot, which was then placed in a high-temperature blast furnace used for iron smelting. While it was still warm, it was used as an oven to bake it. After the wild oats were dried by the dry heat, they were taken out and a rack was propped up with wooden poles on the ground outside. The hanging pot was placed on it, a fire was lit on the ground, and water was poured into the dehydrated wild oats to boil.

Not long after, we had oatmeal porridge to drink. I had just washed the iron spoon, so Yunwen and I drank it, one sip at a time. It supplemented some fiber and also promoted the effect of tonic.

Just drinking porridge was a bit monotonous, so the bird eggs cooked in the military pot were taken out, peeled and eaten, which made the military pot a lot cleaner. Afterwards, Yunwen also washed some raspberries to eat with it. This meal was both filling and satisfied some of her appetite.

Although this meal was a bit makeshift, it was generally much better than the perfunctory meal of two peaches last night.

After dinner, Yunwen planned to wash the pot, so I went to fetch some water. However, after taking two steps, I saw Yunwen suddenly coughing, holding her chest, and feeling very uncomfortable.

I was confused. Was it because I had just eaten and the feeling of fullness exposed my damaged stomach and intestines, or was it a relapse of the black ball virus?

Alas, it would be great if Bai Lu was here now.