The row of Uchiha elites in gray fireproof suits heard the order.
They stepped forward in unison.
Their thick-soled leather boots struck the hard, dry earth, kicking up a small cloud of dust.
They lined up in front of the refractory clay kiln.
They raised their hands at the same time, their fingers flying.
Their hand seals were perfectly synchronized, their knuckles rubbing together with a faint sound of skin against skin.
"Fire Style: Great Fireball Technique!"
More than a dozen of them drew a deep breath at once.
Their chests swelled like inflated bladders, and their cheeks pulled taut.
More than a dozen thick streams of orange-red flame poured from between their lips, behind the wet towels covering their mouths.
The pillars of fire converged in midair, twisting into an enormous fire dragon.
It plunged into the air intake at the bottom of the kiln.
Boom!
A muffled explosion rumbled inside the furnace.
Tongues of flame leaped from the exhaust vents above, scorching the outer layer of refractory clay black.
A wave of heat slammed into everyone's faces like an invisible wall.
The two Anbu standing closest hurried back two steps, the fine hairs on the backs of their hands singed yellow and curled.
Inside the kiln, a mound of iron ore was engulfed in flames.
The fire roared.
The dozen-plus Uchiha elites strained to keep their Chakra flowing.
Sweat evaporated the instant it emerged on their foreheads. Their wet towels quickly dried, thin wisps of blue smoke rising from the edges.
The ore inside the furnace began to change color.
It went from dark black to dark red, then slowly took on a hint of dazzling bright orange.
Impurities began to flake off the surface of the rocks, and fragments fell onto the grate below.
But that was as far as it went.
Shu Shiraishi stood five meters away.
His hands were in his pants pockets. He narrowed his eyes and stared at the kiln's outlet.
Nothing happened.
Not a single drop of molten iron flowed out.
"Stop."
Shu Shiraishi spoke quietly, but his words were clear over the roar of the fire.
The dozen-plus pillars of fire cut off instantly.
The elites bent over, bracing their hands on their knees as they gasped for breath.
A young Uchiha pulled off his scorched, dry towel. He retched twice, a long string of white foam spilling from the corner of his mouth.
His legs gave out, and he landed on his butt in the scorching hot dirt.
Shu Shiraishi walked up to the air intake.
The heat blasting toward him made the hem of his short-sleeved shirt flutter slightly.
He glanced inside the furnace.
"No good." Shu Shiraishi frowned.
He turned to look at the panting Uchiha.
"The temperature's stuck at around 1,200 degrees."
"The machine-tool blueprints I gave Orochimaru call for special alloy steel."
"That little fire of yours. What are you doing, roasting sweet potatoes?"
A Jonin leading the group raised his head.
His face was covered in black soot from the fire. The Forehead Protector on his brow was hot enough to burn a hand.
"Lord Hokage... this is already the Great Fireball's maximum temperature," the Jonin explained between breaths. "Ordinary Fire Style can only melt pig iron at most. Special steel..."
Shu Shiraishi didn't listen to his nonsense.
He strode straight into the line of Uchiha.
His gaze scraped over their tired faces like a blade.
He stopped in front of a middle-aged man.
The man was in his thirties, with a deep old sword scar on his right cheek.
It was Uchiha Tai, a battle-hardened member of the clan's older generation who never stood out.
He had been breathing fire just now too, but his breathing was much steadier than that of the people beside him.
Shu Shiraishi looked at him.
"Uchiha Tai."
Tai lowered his head, avoiding his gaze.
His hands were behind his back, his thumbs unconsciously rubbing hard at the hem of his clothes.
"Yes, my lord."
"Open your eyes," Shu Shiraishi said.
Tai stiffened.
He slowly raised his head. His eyes were an ordinary Three-Tomoe Sharingan, their red somewhat dull.
"Lord Hokage, my Chakra is almost depleted too."
Shu Shiraishi sneered.
He suddenly reached out and grabbed Tai by the collar of his gray fireproof suit.
With one arm, he lifted the man, who weighed over a hundred jin, clean off his feet.
Crack.
Tai's back slammed into an empty wooden ore cart behind him.
Its wheels protested with a harsh creak as it rolled back half a foot.
"Why are you playing dumb?"
Shu Shiraishi leaned close, staring intently at Tai's Three-Tomoe Sharingan.
"During the First Shinobi World War, you and your squad were surrounded on the Kirigakure battlefield. All your teammates died, and you came back alone."
"After a shock like that, those eyes of yours should have changed long ago."
Tai's breathing became erratic.
He grabbed Shu Shiraishi's arm with both hands, trying to pry it loose.
But he found that the other man's forearm was like a cast steel bar, utterly immovable.
"I don't know what you're talking about..." Tai gritted his teeth.
"Mangekyō Sharingan."
Shu Shiraishi enunciated the words.
The Uchiha elites around them all froze.
Even the Jonin leading them turned in shock to look at Tai.
The Mangekyō. It was a power that, according to legend, only Madara Uchiha had ever awakened.
"Keeping those eyes hidden. Saving them for the New Year?"
Shu Shiraishi raised his other hand and pressed his thumb against Tai's right eyelid.
He gradually increased the pressure.
Tai's eyeball felt the intense pressure.
"I'll count to three. If you don't activate your eyes, I'll gouge this one out."
Shu Shiraishi's tone was calm.
"And throw it in the furnace to burn as coal."
"One."
Tai's body began to shake violently, the back of his head knocking against the cart.
"Two."
Shu Shiraishi's thumbnail dug into the flesh around his eye socket.
A thin line of blood welled up.
Tai broke down.
Under Shu Shiraishi's utterly unreasonable violent coercion, any trump card was a joke.
"I'll do it!"
Tai roared, his voice hoarse with despair.
Shu Shiraishi let go and stepped back half a pace.
Tai slid down the wooden cart and sat on the ground, gasping for breath.
He covered his right eye, a fine sheen of cold sweat seeping between his fingers.
Three seconds passed.
Tai lowered his hand and abruptly opened his eyes wide.
The three tomoe spun wildly, joining head to tail.
They finally settled into the shape of three overlapping black darts.
A cold, twisted surge of Chakra erupted from his body.
The aura was deathly still, overpowering the scorching heat from the kiln.
"So you did have it." Shu Shiraishi clapped his hands.
He pointed at the kiln, whose temperature was beginning to drop.
"Use that black fire of yours to light the furnace."
Tai clenched his teeth, two hard knots bulging in his cheeks.
Every use of the Mangekyō's power came with agonizing pain. It would also make him go blind.
It was the trump card he kept to save his life.
Now he had to use it to fire a boiler.
But Shu Shiraishi's boot was half an inch from his foot, speckled with bloody mud.
He didn't dare disobey.
Tai used the cart shaft to pull himself up and walked to the air intake.
He drew a deep breath, and his right eye flew wide open.
The veins around his eye stood out like worms.
"Amaterasu!"
Tai let out a low roar.
His right eye instantly filled with bloodshot veins.
A thick drop of black blood slid from the corner of his eye, ran over his old scar, and dripped onto the collar of his fireproof suit.
He grunted in pain, clamping his left hand over half his face as he fell to one knee.
At the center of the furnace, three meters ahead of him,
the air warped without warning.
A mass of black flame appeared out of nowhere in the very center of the iron ore pile.
Not a trace of heat escaped from the fire.
But it was shockingly black, like an abyss capable of swallowing light.
The moment the black fire touched the dark red ore, it spread.
Sizzle-
A piercing burning sound erupted inside the furnace.
This time, it wasn't ordinary heating. It was complete physical destruction.
The iron ore that had lost only a few flakes after being burned by the Great Fireball for so long
couldn't last even three seconds under Amaterasu's flames.
The rocks vaporized outright.
The iron was forcibly extracted by the terrifying heat, turning into scalding liquid.
The temperature inside the furnace exceeded its limit within seconds.
Boom!
The refractory clay on the outside of the kiln began to give way under the heat. Cracks rapidly widened.
Dazzling white light shot through the cracks, bathing the entire work site in a ghastly pallor.
"This..."
The Jonin in charge sucked in a breath.
His scalp tingled as he looked at the undying black fire.
If it burned a person, not even a fragment of bone would remain.
Shu Shiraishi watched the reaction inside the furnace.
He nodded in satisfaction.
"The heat's high enough."
He turned to the other Uchiha elites, who were standing there dumbfounded.
"What are you staring at? Get to work."
Shu Shiraishi kicked the sheet-metal cart full of coke beside him, sending it rolling half a meter.
"Stop the Fire Style. Switch to Wind Release and feed air in from the side."
"Add coal. Control the area Amaterasu burns."
The ninjas of Konoha's most noble bloodline snapped out of their daze.
They hurriedly grabbed cast-iron shovels.
Shovelful by shovelful, they fed chunks of black coal into the furnace.
Several Uchiha who could use Wind Release stood at the air intake on the side.
They formed Hand Seals and carefully used their Chakra to control the air pressure inside the furnace, keeping Amaterasu from burning through it.
Uchiha Tai clutched his bleeding right eye, kneeling on the ground and panting.
He had been reduced to a premium, human-shaped matchstick.
Whenever the furnace temperature dropped and the molten steel thickened, he had to get up and glare at it.
The entire Uchiha Clan, before this blast furnace,
had turned into a line of unfeeling boiler-firing machines.
Half an hour later.
The blinding white light gradually gave way to a dark red.
At the outlet beneath the earthen kiln,
the heavy firebrick blocking the opening was smashed away with a hammer.
"Whoosh."
A stream of orange-red molten steel, bright enough to look yellow, surged out like a rolling fire dragon.
It poured along a refractory-clay trough dug in advance.
The heat was overpowering. Even the air rippled like water.
The molten steel flowed into a massive rectangular mold, hissing as it went.
Blue flames flickered across its surface.
The Water Release ninja beside the cooling pool immediately formed Hand Seals.
"Water Release: Water Formation Wall!"
Cold water poured over the outside of the mold.
A huge cloud of white steam shot into the sky, obscuring half the factory grounds from view.
Ten minutes later.
The steam dissipated, and the mold's casing was forcibly removed.
A solid prefabricated reinforced-steel slab, ten meters long and more than half a meter thick,
had taken perfect shape, still glowing dark red with residual heat.
Its surface was smooth and even, gleaming with the cold light of steel, without a single bubble or impurity.
Shu Shiraishi walked up to the steel slab.
His boot soles stepped on the earth beside it, baked hard by the heat.
He looked at the piece of special steel, which weighed more than ten tons.
"The steel's been smelted."
Shu Shiraishi's brows knitted together, forming deep furrows between them.
He raised his head.
He glanced at a set of wooden pulley supports that had just been erected nearby.
Several thick hemp ropes hung from the pulleys. Against the steel slab weighing more than ten tons, they looked pitiful, like cotton threads that would snap at a tug.
"It'll take too long to pull it onto the foundation with an ordinary pulley system."
Shu Shiraishi turned his head, his gaze sweeping across the chaotic construction site.
"Where's Akimichi Chōza?"
Shu Shiraishi's voice pierced through the lingering steam and the clamor of hammering iron.
"Get over here!"