Lord: Stripped of My Inheritance from the Start-Chapter 207 - 206: Progress

"My Lord, please come take a look!"

The next morning, Master Dan enthusiastically invited Ronin to the expanded Ironwood Workshop to see the loom he had been tinkering with recently.

Following the blueprints provided by Ronin, and with Master Dan’s many improvements, Ronin could already see the prototype of a treadle loom.

"Congratulations, Dan. This loom is already about fifty or sixty percent there."

He sat on the stool in front of the loom and tried pressing the treadles a couple of times. He recalled the process of weaving, feeling the feedback from the machine before him.

"The frame seems about right, but the rotation feels a bit stiff when I press the treadles continuously. The treadle mechanism isn’t smooth enough. It needs to be carefully polished to optimize the drive mechanism."

"Also, have you tested it yet?" Ronin asked, fiddling with the bamboo reed.

Dan shook his head, looking a bit constrained. "My Lord, this loom was only fully assembled two days ago. I haven’t tried a proper run yet."

Master Dan was, after all, a well-known artisan in Wushan Territory. Now, facing an inspection from his Lord, he was acting like a student whose homework was being checked by a teacher.

It wasn’t that he feared Ronin’s authority; rather, he cared deeply about the results of his own work.

"You could ask Leia to help test it."

Ronin suggested, "But before you do, this loom still needs many improvements."

He began giving suggestions for the machine. For instance, the bamboo reed was too sparse. Gauze required a standard of eight hundred dents, but the one Dan made probably didn’t even have three hundred and needed a major overhaul. Additionally, there were issues with the heddles, and accompanying tools for the loom like bobbins, weft pirns, and shuttles still needed to be made.

Ronin went through all the problems he could think of. He particularly stressed that he hoped to have a working loom ready by this year’s silkworm cocoon harvest, which put immense pressure on Master Dan.

Ronin, however, was optimistic about it. ’After all, pressure creates motivation.’

It was only February now, and there were still six months until the cocoon harvest. With Master Dan’s skills, it was still possible for him to finish the modifications.

After inspecting the loom, Ronin also checked on the production status of the Ironwood Equipment.

With William recruiting apprentices and the carpenters from Swamp Town being sent over one after another, the number of people involved in production had reached over twenty!

The production capacity for armor like Ironwood Shields and Ironwood Armor had increased dramatically. Completing the order for Wushan Castle’s First Knight Squad before April would be no problem at all.

In fact, according to William’s estimates, there would likely even be a surplus.

Ronin promised to provide ample food, telling them to go full throttle and produce as much as they could. He also had them research the possibility of creating Ironwood Arrows.

Currently, Ridder and Macken were training new Infantry, Archers, and Cavalry. He estimated they would have the equivalent of two Knight Squads by the first half of the year.

Setting aside whether they had enough Professional Knights for now, the number of troops in the three aforementioned categories alone would reach over two hundred, and they would all need to be outfitted with armor and weapons.

After inspecting the Ironwood Workshop, Ronin turned his attention to Carlos’s blacksmithy and Jim’s pottery workshop.

The last time he left, Ronin had given Jim a task: fire bricks and modify the kiln to increase its internal temperature.

Carlos learned of this, and realizing that smelting molten iron also required high temperatures, the Blacksmith, Potter, and Masons joined forces. They used the yellow earth from Mountain Forest Town to fire a batch of bricks, then used those bricks to build a blast furnace for smelting iron and a kiln for firing Porcelain. The results were unexpectedly good.

First, Jim’s workshop was now able to fire white Porcelain. Although the success rate was less than thirty percent, it was a good start.

To reward their efforts and achievements, Ronin awarded one Gold Coin to Jim and five Silver Coins to his apprentices.

At the same time, he assigned them their next task—

to improve their control over the kiln’s temperature to increase the success rate of firing Porcelain, while also collecting various colored ores to create different colored glazes and attempting to paint patterns on the greenware to produce patterned Porcelain.

Although successfully firing Porcelain was already more than half the battle, creating exquisite, unique, valuable, and varied finished products would require much more experimentation.

With this successful firing, he could consider moving Jim and his team to settle in Grey Soil Village, since the Kaolin deposit was over there.

Processing the clay and firing it in Grey Soil Village would save an untold amount of effort compared to transporting the raw materials back to Mountain Forest Town.

Meanwhile, Carlos had already built the blast furnace for smelting iron according to the blueprints Ronin had drawn.

However, although the blast furnace looked the part, the iron smelting process was still lacking. They could occasionally get a little molten iron, but most of the time the iron chunks they threw in didn’t melt, and no molten iron flowed out.

Ronin watched from all angles as Carlos and his apprentices fed materials into the blast furnace, worked the bellows, and smelted the iron. The process seemed correct, there was nothing wrong with the furnace itself, and the fuel they used was high-quality charcoal, which could produce higher temperatures than ordinary wood.

After a comprehensive analysis, Ronin concluded the problem was likely the bellows.

Although the blast furnace wasn’t very large, the accompanying bellows were still a bit too small.

Even with the apprentices pumping them with all their might, the volume of air forced in with each pump was very limited. Without sufficient oxygen entering from the bottom of the blast furnace, it couldn’t generate a temperature high enough to melt iron.

This problem, however, was easy to solve.

Ronin told Carlos to contact William the Carpenter and have him assign one or two apprentices to build two larger bellows based on the current design.

If replacing the bellows worked, then Ronin would have mastered the ability to produce molten iron. Later, he could mass-produce cast farming tools, further advancing the agricultural technology of Wubei Territory.

Although pig iron couldn’t be used to make weapons, if he could add the "steel-frying" skill, the method for obtaining steel would become much simpler.

The only unfortunate thing was that no iron ore deposits had been discovered in Wubei Territory. He would probably have to buy iron ore from outside sources in the future.

While observing the iron smelting, Ronin also wondered, ’Could I use Magic to modify the furnace?’

’For example, by creating a Fire Magic Array Map inside the blast furnace and using a Demon Core or a Magic Crystal Stone to generate high temperatures to melt the iron ore.’

But after some thought, Ronin decided not to pursue the idea further.

First, he didn’t know how to create such a Magic Array Map.

Second, the cost of using either a Demon Core or a Magic Crystal Stone as a power source was extremely high.

A fully charged Magic Crystal Stone cost hundreds of Gold Coins. Using it to smelt iron would be a pure waste of money, needlessly increasing production costs.

In comparison, using wood as fuel, while a bit more troublesome to gather and process, was far more economical than using Demon Cores or Magic Crystal Stones.

After spending two days, Ronin had gotten a solid grasp of the various situations in Mountain Forest Town. Everything was developing in a positive direction.

After setting the direction for the territory’s development, he dedicated his own time to Cultivation and creating Third and Fourth Level Spell Scrolls.

「Time flew by, and in the blink of an eye, it was March.」

During this time, Wilson and his assistant traveled between the various domains under the escort of several cavalry squads.

Thanks to their active supervision, spring planting was proceeding in an orderly manner in Mountain Forest Town, Swamp Town, and other areas.

Land preparation, seed treatment, sowing, fertilizing, irrigation—every part of the process had been improved.

Although there was still significant room for improvement, it was already a huge step up from the primitive sowing methods of the past. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

With the popularization and standardization of field management practices, Ronin was confident that as long as there were no unexpected natural disasters, this year’s grain harvest in Wubei Territory would certainly be better than in previous years.

"My Lord, Knight Rogner wishes to see you," Gallon, the male servant, reported respectfully from outside the study.

’Has the grain arrived?’

Ronin put down his pen. On the paper, he had sketched the design of a `hengdao`-style saber.

"Show him in."