The Talsas River surged southwest, flowing past Atoyac Lake where long sails left their shadows, all the way to its mouth on the Western Sea. Billowing black smoke rose day and night without rest from the workshops of the Black Rock Mountain Iron Mine. That row of newly built Iron Smelting Vertical Furnaces was like long whales, gulping down iron ore and Charcoal, then spitting out rolling streams of blazing, dark-red molten iron!
"Blessings of the Main God! Open the furnace!..."
To keep these Vertical Furnaces running, more than a thousand able-bodied men belonging to the mining district were stationed thirty li out from the iron mine, responsible for felling trees and burning Charcoal. They had already stripped an entire mountain bald. And every few months, high-quality Coal Stone from Leijin Town on the Northern Continent would be shipped in by the returning merchant fleets, ton by ton.
This coal from later Sonora, with low sulfur and low ash content, was high-quality Bituminous Coal and anthracite. When used for Iron Smelting, it did not make the iron stock obviously brittle the way the coal from the kingdom's Black Stone City and Tingambato mining district did, and it could replace costly Charcoal. It was just that with the kingdom's current carrying capacity and transport speed, the amount of this "northern Fire Stone" that could be brought in was still far too limited...
Of course, the newly promoted "Master Artisan," the blacksmith Otani whose main role was warrior, did not know the fundamental reason why iron stock became brittle. If the quality of the iron that came out of the furnace was too poor, he would simply order the craftsmen and apprentices under him to refill the furnace and smelt it again. And whenever the kingdom's Divine Inspiration Priests questioned him, he