LSLFBW: Chapter 140 Part 1

Before smelting iron, Qi Bai needed to make a blower.

Two thin wooden boards were crossed in the middle to form a four-bladed fan. A twig was added to the blades as a support, and straw rope was wrapped around the top of the support. Then it could be turned like a hand drill.

This time, instead of placing dry grass at the bottom of the support to ignite it, the fan blades on the rod were used to create airflow.

“Okay, now we need to make a mound of dirt to cover the fan blades.”

Lu Guo looked at the shape of the fan blades and thought for a moment before saying, “Can we use some fired pottery?”

Qi Bai asked, “Do you have any that are the right size?”

Lu Guo replied, “I have a few broken pottery pieces with holes in the bottom. I’ll go get them and show them to you.” Then she got up and went to the nearby storeroom.

Soon, Lu Guo returned carrying a large pottery pot. She placed the pot on the ground. Inside it were two smaller pottery jars.

Just as Lu Guo had said, these earthenware pots and jars were all intact. Unfortunately, they all had leaky bottoms. Such pots and jars were actually unusable for cooking or storing food. Lu Guo originally planned to smash them and use them as raw materials to mix into pottery blanks. Then Qi Bai arrived before she could process them.

Qi Bai’s eyes lit up and he pointed to the pot. “This is good.”

The blower device Qi Bai made required pulling a support rod by hand, so this pot with a small leak in the bottom was perfect.

He dug a small pit in the ground according to the size of the pot, placed the fan blades in the middle, covered the pot and pressed the soil around the pot tightly, leaving the support rod exposed. Finally, he only needed to chisel a small hole in the side of the pot as an air vent.

As a result, the air blown by the fan blades was trapped inside the pot and could only blow out through the vent, greatly increasing the wind power.

Qi Bai didn’t waste the other two broken pottery jars either. He placed the smaller one at the vent as a ventilation duct to connect the pot to the stove.

Niu Xi squatted on the ground and placed his hand on the air vent. “There really is wind. This is interesting. What do we do now?”

Qi Bai pointed to the stones in the rattan basket. “Let’s break these stones into smaller pieces first.”

“Oh, you’re all here.” Quan Nan stood at the door with a small animal skin bag, delighted at the sight of the three of them gathered together.

Niu Xi asked happily, “Are you going to break stones too?”

Quan Nan took yarn out of the animal skin bag and shook it. “No, I still need to knit. I can’t get my hands dirty.”

Combing wool and spinning it into yarn was relatively easy, but knitting sweaters was a more delicate task that not everyone could master quickly.

In particular, the beastmen were all very strong. It was fine for other work but when knitting sweaters, it was easy for the stitches to be tight and loose if they didn’t control their strength well. Some people even broke the yarn directly.

“I’m so clumsy, I can never knit well,” Quan Nan said somewhat sullenly.

Niu Xi winked at Qi Bai before turning to Quan Nan. “Did the horned beastmen finish training so early today?”

Quan Nan sat down on the kang, straightened her body and held the bamboo needles upright. “How do you know? You can’t see the square from here?”

Niu Xi grinned. “Is it even a question? Lang Ji and Hu Qiao must’ve gone inside the house. That is why you rushed out.”

Quan Nan raised her chin but didn’t say anything to refute it. Then her shoulders slumped again. “I don’t want to see him. Lang JI didn’t become my mate and he will definitely laugh at me.”

Qi Bai’s ears twitched.

Huh? This ‘he’ was a bit subtle.

Could it be that the person Quan Nan was avoiding now wasn’t Lang Ji, who rejected her, but Hu Qiao, whom she thought would laugh at her?

Logically speaking, shouldn’t Quan Nan be focused on Lang Ji at this time?

Lang Ji might’ve rejected Quan Nan but he hadn’t found a mate this year either. The mating season had passed. Winter was so long that there were still endless possibilities.

Qi Bai cast a gossipy glance at Niu Xi, wondering why he hadn’t been told this story.

To his surprise, Niu Xi slapped his thigh and exclaimed indignantly, “That’s right! You can’t let Hu Qiao laugh at you. I saw him secretly watching you yesterday!”

“So I ran out quickly.” Quan Nan nodded earnestly before adding, “I didn’t give him a chance to talk to me.”

“Well done!”

Qi Bai’s mouth dropped open as he thought, ‘Oh my god, seeing Niu Xi wink at me, I thought Niu Xi was a smart person. It turns out that these two are a classic case of the second-last student teaching the last-place student a lesson. One dared to teach and the other dared to learn.’

No wonder why Niu Xi was still single.

“Pfft.” Lu Guo couldn’t help laughing.

Niu Xi couldn’t understand why Lu Guo was laughing. He instead curiously asked, “Lu Guo, aren’t you going to find a new mate?”

Lu Guo smiled and shook her head. “Lu Xia is still young. I only have her as a child for now. I’m afraid I won’t be able to raise another one. I’ll wait until I’ve saved up more food before considering having another child.”

Niu Xi scratched his head awkwardly. “I eat too much. If I was to have a child now, I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to raise them. I’ll also wait until I’ve saved up more food before considering having one.”

Qi Bai smiled. One person was full, so the whole family wasn’t hungry. Niu Xi’s thinking was quite advanced.

As they talked, the stones in the rattan basket were almost completely smashed.

Qi Bai built a small round stove with bricks next to the vent of the earthenware pot. He added dry firewood to the bottom, lit the firewood and pulled the support rod of the earthenware pot. The wind blew out from the vent, and the flames inside the stove instantly leaped high.

Everyone inside was startled by the fire.

Quan Nan quickly shielded the yarn in front of her, exclaiming in shock, “Fire! The fire is alive!”

“The Beast God above.”

Qi Bai hurriedly said, “Don’t be afraid. It isn’t that the fire has come alive. I used the wind to make it bigger.”

Niu Xi moved his hands away from his eyes. He saw that the flames in the stove were indeed growing larger and smaller with Qi Bai’s movements, so he lowered his hands with lingering fear.

For the beastmen, fire was a gift from the Beast God, a mysterious and precious existence.

Qi Bai had taught everyone to make a hand-cranked drill, making it easy for the tribe to start a fire, but the sudden change in the flames still instinctively filled them with fear.

Lu Guo gently touched the earthenware pot on the ground. “So that is what it is used for.”

Qi Bai nodded. “Using wind to blow the fire makes it hotter. Only such fire can burn stone.”

Niu Xi suddenly realized. “No wonder the stone pots we usually use for cooking don’t get burned. It is because there is no wind.”

Of course, the reason the stone pots weren’t burned wasn’t just due to temperature. Still, Qi Bai didn’t refute Niu Xi. It was good that he had such thoughts. The exact principle wasn’t so important.

They scattered the crushed stones on the firewood and the group took turns pulling the straw rope on the support pole. They added new firewood the moment the firewood burned out.

They repeated this for nearly two hours. Then Qi Bai stopped adding firewood to the stove. After the flames died down, he used a stick to sweep away the ashes.

Niu Xi poked the stones with a stick. “I don’t see any changes.”

Lu Guo was much more decisive. She smashed the stone she had just taken out with a stone hammer and spiderweb-like cracks instantly appeared on it. She nodded and said to Qi Bai, “You’re right. The stone has indeed become brittle.”

Niu Xi brushed aside the broken stones with a frown. “I still don’t see any iron.”

Qi Bai waited for the stone to cool down a bit. Then he held it in his hand and examined it carefully for a long time, his mind racing. He tried to let his memory take over to find the correct answer.

He temporarily discarded the differences between metals on the Beastman Continent and on Earth, focusing only on his meagre high school chemistry knowledge.

First, pure iron didn’t exist in nature because it turned into various iron oxides in the air. The most common characteristic of this was rust. Therefore, the stones they had were most likely hematite containing iron oxide.

So how was iron oxide reduced to iron/

Reduction…

Qi Bai paused before saying, “That’s right, high-temperature reduction.”

He needed to use carbon, specifically charcoal, as fuel instead of the more complex firewood. The furnace temperature also might not be high enough. All of this needed improvement.

Lu Guo and Niu Xi exchanged looks, both seeing the confusion in each other’s eyes. What temperature? What furnace? Neither of them understood. However, seeing Qi Bai’s increasingly bright eyes, they knew he could solve all these problems.

Quan Nan sat on the kang, watching the three of them burn the fire for so long only to produce stones in the end. She had no idea what they were trying to do.

The good news was that she had successfully made a long piece of clothing today. She felt that she was slowly finding a way to knit.

It was already dark. After working all afternoon, they were all starving.

Qi Bai hadn’t expected to produce iron in just one afternoon. This would definitely take some time.

They decided to leave the stones in the charcoal fire as it was and continue their research tomorrow.

Qi Bai walked to the alley entrance and saw smoke billowing from his own chimney. It seemed Lang Ze had returned.

Lang Ze had indeed returned early. Training had ended early today and Lang Ze hadn’t been idle. First, he went home to smash the stone jar. Then he fetched water from the waterfall before feeding Chuan Chuan and the ducks.

Once it grew dark, Lang Ze put the food and water into the earthenware pot and heated the firewall and kang. He hadn’t even entered his house all afternoon, busying himself at Qi Bai’s house.

Qi Bai lifted the animal skin curtain and a wave of warmth and the aroma of food greeted him.

Qi Bai suddenly felt like he had a snail girl hiding in his house.

He looked up at the tall man in front of him. Okay, this snail girl was a bit too tall.

Lang Ze reached out and rubbed Qi Bai’s head, his voice filled with laughter. “How did you get so dirty?”

Qi Bai and the other two had spent the afternoon fiddling with stones and firewood. He knew that he was quite a mess.

Nevertheless, Qi Bai wasn’t embarrassed. He grabbed Lang Ze’s animal skin coat and planted a quick kiss on Lang Ze’s cheek. He wasn’t just content with that and rubbed his face against Lang Ze’s for a while. He successfully got grass ash all over Lang Ze’s face.

Qi Bai looked at his masterpiece with satisfaction, silently admiring it. ‘So beautiful. He looks good even with his face all messed up.’

Qi Bai was quite happy with this playful act.

Qi Bai didn’t feel anything amiss when he was pulled back into Lang Ze’s arms.

He tilted his head slightly, letting Lang Ze cover his lips again.

What they both thought would be a brief, intimate kiss unknowingly spiraled out of control.

This was until their breathing became heavy. Their bodies were pressed together and they could feel each other’s obvious changes.

Lang Ze took a slight step back. He enjoyed being close to Qi Bai, but he knew Qi Bai’s limits and knew he couldn’t continue.

A few physiological tears welled up in Qi Bai’s eyes. He cleared his throat and said, “Let me wash my hands. They are filthy.”

“Okay,” Lang Ze replied before turning away. He scooped hot water from the earthenware pot with a bamboo tube, added some cold water from the water jar and pushed the basin in front of Qi Bai.

Qi Bai squatted down and slowly washed his hands and face until he caught his breath. Then he stood up and helped Lang Ze serve dinner.