radicalducati Chapter 453 Ore?
Chapter 453 Ore?
Nie Lingfeng squatted down and picked up a piece from that small pile.
The weight was heavier than he had expected. The fist-sized ore had a density nearly twice that of pure iron of the same volume. Its surface was so smooth it didn't look like a natural fracture, but rather as if it had been polished. The exposed interior at the cross-section was fine and uniform, with almost no visible pores or impurities. He held it up directly under the beam of his flashlight to examine it. In the oblique light, a very faint, silvery-gray texture with bluish-green hues appeared on the surface. The direction of these textures didn't resemble the lattice arrangement of natural rock crystals, but rather the folded marks left by repeated forging.
Nie Lingfeng scratched the edge of the ore with his fingernail, but no mark was left on the surface of his fingernail.
"It's been refined," he murmured. He didn't say this to anyone; it was just a soliloquy as he confirmed the fact. The purity of the ore was close to that of finished steel; the ratio of iron to carbon had been adjusted to an exceptionally precise range, and the internal molecular arrangement showed signs of human intervention—repeated heating, folding, forging, and tempering. It wasn't a natural ore, but a meticulously pre-treated blank for sword making.
The question is, who did it? And when did they do it?
Nie Lingfeng weighed the ore in his palm and then scanned his surroundings. He didn't find any more of the same type of ore in the dome space; the other piles of ore were just ordinary iron ore and slag, of varying quality. Only the small pile at his feet—about three fist-sized pieces of dark blue ore—was refined.
He put the first piece into his pocket, then rummaged through the pile of ore and picked out two more. When the three pieces of ore were in his pocket, the fabric on the side of his pocket was pressed into a heavy droop.
As he rose and headed towards the exit, the beam of his flashlight swept across the rock face to his right. He slowed down for a moment as he passed a section—there were some very shallow engravings on the rock surface there, not miners' numbers or markings, but finer, deeper, and more continuous lines. They looked like arcs drawn by someone's finger on wet, not-yet-fully-hardened mud. But the rock surface was too ancient; the edges of those arcs had been weathered and worn away to almost indistinguishable shapes, leaving only discontinuous, broken knots, like unconnected strokes of a rope.
He looked for two seconds, but didn't stop to investigate further. He continued walking towards the cave entrance.
As he stepped out of the mine, the sunlight slanted down from his right and above, making him squint. Chen Duo was still standing next to the wooden stake, her posture almost unchanged from before Nie Lingfeng went in. After seeing her come out, she released her thumb, which was pressing on her index finger joint, and let her fingers hang back at her side.
"What did you find inside?" she asked.
Nie Lingfeng took the three pieces of ore out of his pocket one by one and spread them out in his palm. Sunlight shone on the dark blue surface of the ore, making the silver-gray texture even more obvious, like fine ripples slowly moving inside the stone.
"There's something down there in this mine." He gathered the ore back into his hand. "Someone—perhaps a long time ago—refined some of the ore beneath this mountain. This isn't a naturally formed layer."
Chen Duo looked down at the ore in his palm and gently touched the surface of one of the pieces with the back of her fingers. She felt a temperature that was neither too hot nor too cold on her fingertips, like touching a stone that had been exposed to the sun but hadn't yet heated up.
"This ore contains Qi," she said. "Not strong, but very stable. It's a completely different kind of Qi from the sinister Qi in the town."
"Hmm." Nie Lingfeng carefully put the ore away. "It has an antagonistic effect. The fact that Liu San and the others were able to work for so long above the old stone slab at the bottom of the furnace and remain alert yesterday is very likely due to the residual energy emitted by this ore."
Liu San walked over from the side. He had already seen the glowing blue minerals in Nie Lingfeng's hand from a distance. As he got closer, his gaze lingered on those stones for a long time, as if he were trying to identify something he hadn't seen in a long time.
"This color..." he suddenly said, "I remember it."
"You've seen it?"
"The older generation of foremen at the factory said it," Liu San thought for a moment, rubbing the back of his neck. "They said that when they were digging the foundation for the factory, they unearthed a layer of bluestone slabs, and the broken stones underneath were this color. The foreman in charge of laying the foundation wanted to move these stones away, but an old gentleman surnamed Ye from town stopped him. That old gentleman said these stones couldn't be moved, or something bad would happen."
"Mr. Ye?"
"The only old scholar in town, he used to teach, then retired and stayed home reading and writing. He didn't go out much, but whenever someone encountered difficulties related to old customs, they would come to him." Liu San paused. "The night he had his accident—the night of the wedding banquet—he was sitting at the innermost table in the square, next to Zhao Xiaohu."
"How is he?"
"I don't know. It was too chaotic that night; no one had time to see where he went afterward. But I heard that the tea in Mr. Ye's teacup on his table didn't spill. Everyone else's tables were overturned, but his teacup remained standing perfectly still on his table."
Nie Lingfeng didn't reply immediately. He put the ore into his pocket, patted the outside of the pocket, and then turned and started walking down the mountain path.
"go back."
Back at the foundry, the others had already completed their patrols and searches. Zhang Chulan found half a barrel of diesel fuel and several intact iron spikes in a tool shed in the backyard, while Wang Zhenqiu cleaned up some scattered iron filings and debris in the foundry workshop and tidied up the workbench. Feng Baobao stood at the side door of the factory, her gaze fixed on the town, but her posture was relaxed, her katana leaning against the doorframe, as if she had already confirmed that there were no unusual movements within a considerable area.
Nie Lingfeng placed the three pieces of ore on the worktable. Wang Ye walked over, picked up one of them, and examined it carefully for a moment in the light from the skylight, his finger slowly tracing the fine silver-gray texture on the surface of the ore.
"Layer forging," he said, his tone carrying a hint of confirmed suspicion. "This texture can only be formed through repeated folding and forging. The density difference between each layer creates this wavy refraction. This isn't the ore's inherent structure; someone processed it when it was still iron."
"Who processed it?" Lu Linglong asked.
"I don't know," Wang Ye said, placing the ore back on the table. "But someone who can create this kind of texture must be an exceptional blacksmith. They must have decades of experience."
Nie Lingfeng laid the three pieces of ore side by side, using a piece of scrap iron underneath to prevent them from rolling. He looked at them for a moment, then looked up, his gaze sweeping over the layout of the factory equipment, finally settling on the cupola furnace.
"Let's melt down this ore and forge a sword."
All eyes turned to him simultaneously. Zhang Chulan was the first to react, his voice brimming with barely suppressed excitement: "You're going to use this stone to forge a sword? For whom?"
"Linglong." Nie Lingfeng glanced at where Lu Linglong was standing. "She needs a suitable weapon. Moreover, the Qi contained in this ore has a counteracting effect on the evil spirits in the town, making the weapon made from it more effective against the zombies than ordinary swords."
Lu Linglong straightened her shoulders slightly when he said her name. She stood by the window, light streaming in from behind her, outlining a thin, shimmering edge on her shoulders and hairline. She pursed her lips, then relaxed them, saying nothing more, simply shifting her gaze from the mineral to Nie Lingfeng's face and giving a very slight nod.
The preparations were divided into several groups. Zhang Chulan and Wang Zhenqiu were responsible for cleaning the furnace and air duct of the Sky-Piercing Furnace—the furnace had been shut down for several days, and a layer of dark brown slag had formed on the inner wall of the furnace. This slag had to be chipped off piece by piece with an iron pickaxe, and then the debris had to be swept away with a long-handled broom. Wang Ye took over the air duct and temperature control. He set up an extremely thin magical fire-igniting array at the bottom of the furnace, which did not require diesel or charcoal to fuel the fire. He could stabilize the furnace temperature within the range required for forging steel using his own Qi as a catalyst. Zhang Lingyu and Feng Baobao took turns standing guard at the highest point outside the factory to ensure that no one was disturbed during the sword forging process. Lu Lin arranged for the four survivors to stay in a small rest room with windows at the back of the factory and unpacked her first-aid kit to check the stock of medicines.