No one in the workshop made a sound. Gento stood there with the hammer still raised in the air, his chest heaving.
Sweat dripped down his chin, landed on the hot forging platform, and was gone in an instant.
"Three furnaces." He finally spoke, his voice too hoarse to be his own, "Three furnaces of iron, and not a single thing was produced."
He threw the hammer to the ground.
"This is not iron."
"This is iron." Hiraga said, "It's just that it's much more reasonable than the iron you made before."
On the ninth day, something happened.
Gento didn't come early in the morning. The clan said that the clan leader stayed in the ancestral hall all night.
At ten o'clock in the morning, the first qualified product came out.
The person typed out is Tatekura Kazuma, the eldest son of Gento. He is nineteen years old and was promoted to Chunin the year before last.
He hammered thirty-eight times, without raising his head to look at the piece of steel during the whole process - he held the hammer in one hand, and the gauge and pyrometer were spread out in the other hand, his eyes only moving back and forth between the reading and the point where the hammer dropped.
Hiraga attached the instrument and waited for three seconds.
"No cracks. Hardness is fifty-nine point two." He raised his head, "Qualified."
There was dead silence in the workshop, and then there was an explosion.
"It's done! Kazuma It's done!"
"It's really done?!"
"Hurry, go call the clan leader!"
Gento was half-dragged in.
He stood in front of the forging platform and looked at the dusty steel plate in his son's hand. The surface of the plate was so flat and reflective that there was not a trace of ripples or a single rune.
Ugly. Ugly. Compared with the things he had been working on all his life, this board was as ugly as a scrap picked up from a construction site.
But it's qualified.
"How did you fight?" Gento asked.
Kazuma lowered his head and said in a low voice, "Dad, I... I didn't hit according to feeling."
"Speak clearly."
"I just... just followed what was written on the paper. It said start hammering at 1100, so I waited until the pyrometer jumped to 1100. It said stop hammering at 850, and I stopped at 860. It said the hammer surface should be flat, so I ground the hammer head flat."
He raised the hammer in his hand.
It was a new hammer. The hammer head was square and the hammer surface was as flat as a mirror. It was completely different from the rounded ancestral hammer Gento.
Gento looked at the new hammer for a long time.
"When did you sharpen it?"
"... The fourth night." Kazuma buried his head even lower, "Dad, I'm afraid you'll hit me."
Gento raised his hand.
Everyone shrank.
The hand fell on his son's shoulder and patted him twice.
"Give me the paper."
From the ninth to the thirteenth day, Tatekura Gento did not return home.
He nailed the schedule to the pillar directly opposite the forging platform. Every time he forged a piece, he made a mark on the wall next to it.
On the first day, all eleven courses were lost.
The next day, there were fourteen. Thirteen were discarded and one was "marginally qualified".
On the third day, Jiudao. He was no longer in a hurry to start hammering, but spent most of the day grinding his ancestral eight-pound hammer into a flat surface bit by bit.
His hands were shaking while grinding.
The five scratches were still on the handle. He didn't want to polish them off.
On the fourth day, Six Paths. passed four items.
On the morning of the fifth day, three items were all passed.
On the fourteenth day, two Wood Release brackets were erected in the workshop yard.
Hiraga hangs up the last alloy plate that Gento produced in the past five days.
More than one hundred and twenty craftsmen gathered in a circle, but no one spoke.
"Clan leader, which one should you try?" Kazuma asked.
"Heavy hammer." Gento said.
Someone brought the heaviest hammer in the workshop, weighing twenty-four pounds, and usually four people carried it.
Gento took it over.
alone.
He steadied his horse and raised the hammer above his head.
Thirty-six years ago, when he swung this hammer for the first time, his father was holding it beside him. His father said that whether the hammer is heavy or not does not depend on the weight, but on whether you have confidence in it.
"Boom--!"
The first hammer.
The board swung on the stand for a moment and then swayed back.
"Boom--!"
The second hammer.
"Boom--!"
The third hammer.
By the eighteenth hammer, Gento's arms were already trembling, and his entire pants were soaked with sweat.
He stopped, slammed the hammer on the ground, breathed heavily, and walked over.
The gray alloy plate hangs there quietly.
There is a shallow mark on the surface.
One way.
It was exactly the same as the mark left on the board where he smashed eighteen hammers in front of the Hokage building.
Gento stretched out his hand, put his finger on the seal, and touched it back and forth three times.
Then he turned around and faced the people in the yard. His voice was trembling and hoarse, and he suddenly laughed:
"Hahaha, it's done!"
"This is what I did!!"
"I've also made it possible to ride a horse--!!"
One hundred and twenty-six people fell into dead silence at first, and then roared. Hammers, pliers, and iron bars all hit the ground, making the ground buzz. Several old craftsmen squatted down with their heads in their hands, and their shoulders twitched.
Hiraga stood outside the crowd, took off his glasses and wiped them.
"... The minister is right." He whispered, "He said these people don't need to be persuaded, they just need to do it with their own hands, and they will never let it go."
Evening.
When Senju Chen came, half of the people in the workshop had already dispersed, and the rest were still surrounding the board and were reluctant to leave.
Gento sat shirtless on the threshold, holding his polished ancestral hammer in his arms.
When he saw Senju Chen, he didn't stand up, he just raised his head.
"Lord Chen."
"Uncle Gento." Senju Chen sat down next to him and handed over a bottle of wine.
Gento took it, raised his head and drank half of it.
"I lost." He wiped his mouth, "I lost cleanly."
"You didn't lose."
"I made three furnaces of scrap iron, but my son made it in one."
"What you have saved for thirty-six years, you can polish the hammer on the fifth day." Senju Chen said, "If it were anyone else, he would either polish it for ten years or not polish it for the rest of his life."
Gento was stunned.
"Gento Patriarch, our Joint Factory has the position of factory director. In the future, the forging standards, acceptance standards, and worker assessment standards for all standard equipment will be determined by this position."
"I hope you will be the director of this factory."
Gento's hand stopped on the wine bottle.
"... Me? I only learned what one thousand five hundred and sixty degrees is in the past half month."
"That's why it has to be you." Senju Chen stood up and dusted himself off, "The person sitting in this position can't just understand technology. He also has to understand what it's like to be woken up by advanced technology."
"I know that many old masters have left in the past two days, but I hope that the clan leader can persuade them again. Because I know that making weapons requires not only advanced craftsmanship, but experienced experience is also an indispensable part."
Gento lowered his head, looked at his hands covered with burn scars and calluses, and thought of the alloy steel plate he punched today.
The excitement of success made him feel like he had regained the feeling of making a weapon for the first time when he was an apprentice.
After Tatekura Gento thought for a long time, he raised his head and looked at Senju Chen.
"Okay, Minister Chen don't worry, I will bring those people back to you tomorrow. If they don't come back, I will tie them back for you."
"Haha, it's not enough to be tied up, Gento patriarch, everything is for Konoha!" Senju Chen smiled and raised the bottle to Tatekura Gento.
Tatekura Gento also laughed, "Minister Chen is right, everything is for Konoha!!!"