You were made to farm, and now you're the emperor of an empire?

Chapter 108 Autumn Tiger
This land has been mined for coal, but the true potential of coal has not yet been recognized.

The iron smelting technology used was bloomery iron.

The furnace is very low.

Firewood and charcoal are lit in a furnace, and iron ore is placed on top of the charcoal for smelting. The impurities in the iron ore are dissolved, and after all the slag flows out, what is obtained is honeycomb-shaped sponge iron.

To extract the sponge iron, the furnace shell must be knocked off—similar to disposable chopsticks, which are used and then thrown away, and a new pair of chopsticks must be made for each meal.

Iron production was naturally low under such conditions.

Because of the high demand for iron, blacksmiths had to improve their iron-smelting methods.

They built permanent iron smelting furnaces with stones and lined the inside with mud to achieve a similar effect to a smelting furnace. After each iron smelting, they only needed to replace the mud to make up the furnace chamber.

But production still couldn't get high.

So don't be surprised that iron ingots are so expensive.

Legend has it that the glorious human empire of hundreds of years ago possessed extremely advanced iron smelting technology, but that technology was lost due to the empire's destruction.

Roman knew that it was common for barbarism to triumph over civilization.

No matter how advanced and powerful that past empire was, it doesn't change the fact that this era is backward.

A skilled charcoal burner can produce 20 to 30 kilograms of charcoal per day.

500 jin of charcoal and 500 jin of iron ore can be smelted into about 50 jin of sponge iron.

This 50-pound sponge iron requires another 25 pounds of charcoal to calcine.

Use a wooden or stone hammer to forge and remove impurities from a stone or piece of wood.

Finally, the iron was forged into long strips, cut into pieces, and sold—that is, 1 gold coin could be exchanged for 30 to 50 jin of iron ingots.

Iron smelting is extremely difficult.

But the military cannot do without the demand for steel.

We can only buy iron now.

Many noble territories only produced agricultural output.

Hundreds or even thousands of tons of grain need to be transported out to maintain steel consumption and military expenses.

Compared to steel, salt is slightly less valuable.

Roman couldn't put all the labor force in Sgard into the salt mine—even though it could feed the entire town and make him a fortune.

However, the huge output will impact market prices, causing ripple effects that can spread across the entire land.

The nobles behind other salt-producing areas will not stand idly by.

If things get too big, they can gather an army and send them over in two months at most.

Roman didn't care about those idiots' opinions.

The biggest reason he didn't expand production was the lack of manpower, and sales were also a problem—those small merchants couldn't take away hundreds of thousands of kilograms of salt.

What he wanted wasn't for them to come at him, but for him to go out and punch them twice!

We must bring down the price of salt!
Damn it!
If you dare to sell to me for the exorbitant price of one copper coin again, I'll slaughter you all!

I'm sharpening my knife right now!

……

Roman needed this material to fire refractory bricks.

In the current era, refractory brick formula is equivalent to cutting-edge technology.

But this was also a necessary condition for building blast furnaces and coking ovens, and he also had those 100 laborers dig coal.

There are now three roads built in Sige Town: the salt road, the railway road, and the coal road.

Roman planned to build a coal and iron processing plant at the intersection of the coal mine and the railway. Coal would be transported from the coal mine, and iron ore from the iron mine, which would then be processed into wrought iron and sent to the blacksmith's workshop. This way, no construction workers would be needed to assist in the construction of either of these facilities.

As the saying goes, everyone has their own expertise, and Roman wanted to personally train a group of ironworkers.

……

After 9 days.

The paving team's work is finished.

In recent days, they have bypassed lakes and mountains, extending the dirt road to the iron mine, although the road conditions are terrible and a round trip takes two or three days.

But after hearing the news, Roman's tense nerves relaxed.

He even burst into laughter, disregarding his image.

Because he knew that nothing could threaten or hinder his development anymore.

Steel has great strategic significance, but its disadvantage is that iron ore mines are far away, requiring the relocation of people to settle down.

It's autumn now.

But the temperature, which had been gradually dropping, rose again, and the weather became increasingly hot.

During the hottest part of summer, the perceived temperature is only around 40 degrees Celsius, dropping to 30 degrees Celsius by the end of summer. Now, as if in a final burst of energy, the perceived temperature has soared past 50 degrees Celsius.

The air was dry and unusually hot, with the earth scorched by the blazing sun in the afternoon.

Even Roman was finding it hard to withstand the temperature, which could burn his skin.

The people of Wandong call this phenomenon "the harbinger of winter nights." After the short and warm summer ends, the northern lands will enter a long and boundless winter night.
The Sinnoh people call it "Embers of the Demon," because in church texts, a demon enslaved forty-two demons would destroy the world at the end of summer. But the gods joined forces to kill that terrifying demon beforehand, and their embers constitute this unusually hot natural phenomenon.

The Arctic pirates, on the other hand, called it "Twilight of the Summers," believing that all the gods had perished in the last summer of the ancient era. Consequently, the church disliked them intensely and repeatedly made things difficult for them, while the Arctic pirates were happy to use their battle axes to split open the priests' skulls.

Roman originally intended to have dozens of wooden houses built at the mining site—to settle down first, and not to think about brick houses for the time being.

But he heard that dozens of laborers collapsed on the paving road due to heatstroke, and more than a dozen of them could not be saved, even the unlimited supply of herbal tea could not save their lives.

Roman always puts himself in others' shoes, and even he found it difficult to adapt to the scorching heat, in addition to the fact that preparations for the iron ore mining work were already underway.

It's time to take a break.

So he recalled all the laborers to escape the summer heat and gave them a three-day holiday.

Their work efficiency surprised even Roman.

He naturally treated these hardworking and diligent people very well, and unusually refrained from calling them fools. He also had Jimmy collect a few gold coins as compensation from the estate and give them to the families of the farmers who had died of fever while paving the road.

The other group that died were the slaves.

Some slaves were in poor physical condition and should have been classified as sick and weak to do simple work.

But they were still young and physically fit, and Roman needed a lot of manpower.

So they were put into road-paving teams. The slaves were sometimes too weak to work, either collapsing on the road or falling asleep in the sweltering heat of an afternoon.

Roman arranged for the deceased to be given a proper burial, preparing a vast cemetery for them and inscribing their names and causes of death on the tombstones.

He did not want anyone who gave their life for him to end up forgotten.

He secretly promoted and fueled the movement, and this behavior quickly spread throughout the entire town of Sig.

Whether slaves or indigenous people, they all felt a unique shock from the depths of their souls from this kind of humanistic care.

They were originally weeds, not worthy of being named, and should only be hastily buried, but now they can be honored with monuments and their stories will be passed down to future generations.

They were restless and wanted to do something, but didn't know what to do.

Their once muddled and aimless existence was undoubtedly touched, leaving an imprint of something on them.

(End of this chapter)