"Not bad. It's already starting to take shape."
Lin Hao stood before several blast furnaces still under construction and spoke with considerable feeling.
Even the simplest, most basic steelmaking blast furnaces took years to build with Great Qi's environment and materials.
Nearby, work was also proceeding on the construction and planning of a cement plant and a basic chemical plant, the design of reaction vessels, and so on.
Although many projects were proceeding simultaneously, sometimes a bottleneck in one stage would cause problems in numerous others.
Instead, the early steam engines had entered use first, thanks to the workshops and the skills of the masters from Sword-Forging Manor.
Mechanized forging and stamping had already begun greatly reducing repetitive manual labor while raising the limits of what could be achieved.
"We've now discovered a high-grade iron deposit overseas. Preliminary surveys suggest it'll last us a very, very long time. Its iron content exceeds sixty percent. It's practically iron rust with a little dust mixed in."
Professor Shi, who was accompanying Lin Hao on his inspection of the industrial park's construction, also spoke with some feeling.
"Once the cement plant is up and running, it'll speed up construction of the steelworks. Although they're all still on the smallest scale, once they succeed, their steel output will be nothing small workshops can match. Then, with reaction vessels made using ceramics and other materials, the basic chemical plant can take shape too..."
Professor Shi explained some of their plans.
"Once the most basic chemical and steel industries emerge, we'll truly have a chance to mass-produce weapons instead of relying entirely on handcrafting as we do now."
University Town was still working hard on smokeless powder.
But the limitations of the workshop model remained. Their current stockpile could not even sustain the expenditure of a