The spring river ran warm. A batch of twin-hulled transport skiffs set out from Purple Grass City's harbor, laden with Pumpkins, Sweet Potatoes, and Corn. They sped swiftly downstream, heading for the lowest reaches of the Talsas Long River, toward the Great River's mouth four hundred li away. Once they reached the small town at the estuary, the fleet would unload its grain, load up boat after boat with crude iron farming implements and tools, then row—and even haul by towline—back upstream to Purple Grass City.
On their many previous round trips, they had only been able to bring back less than half a boatload of Ironware. But this time, the Ironware brought from the Black Rock Mountain iron mine fifty li to the west was extraordinarily abundant! And they also encountered another Water Fleet, bringing back over a thousand mine slaves from the Purple Grass Legion on its expedition to the Mixtec coast!
The sea surged with waves, and the ironworks at Black Rock Mountain also belched thick black smoke. In the eyes of the local South Tecos tribes, this already famous thunder-and-lightning God Mountain was looking more and more like the lair of gods and monsters. This lair devoured countless mine slaves and Charcoal, then spat out countless black, hard chunks of iron material, gushing with a power that would transform tribes and villages.
A full thousand Kingdom Warriors guarded this place, and together with the mine slaves who dug ore underground and the Laborers who felled trees and burned charcoal, there were six or seven thousand people here. All of them performed heavy physical labor, and the local tribes' grain supply was limited, so a batch still had to be shipped over from Purple Grass City every month.
And when the thick black smoke faded, in the