Chapter 250: From Doraerlin Cunzi to Ice Flood Pass

The next morning, Zhao Ji continued to find Bodeer the blacksmith to forge a shield.

This time, Bodeer the blacksmith got up early, and living alone, he even made breakfast for himself and Jier in the house.

To tell the truth, the standard was really not good; it was salty, extremely salty.

Regarding this, Bodeer the blacksmith explained that this was necessary food for when one sweated while smithing. Because one had to exercise intensely while smithing, and on top of that, one was in contact with high-temperature metal, sweating profusely was bound to happen.

And once a person sweats, they lack salt; without salt, a person has no strength to smith. So he made this morning meal very salty, and Jier the warrior would understand once he got busy later.

Jier nodded perfunctorily at this.

Just like yesterday, Jier stepped on the bellows to stoke the fire, while also adding the scarce coal of Kendall County into the furnace. Bodeer the blacksmith suggested that when Jier added coal, he could mix in some charcoal; this way, he could reduce the amount of coal used while ensuring the temperature as much as possible.

Because Kendall County does not produce coal, the large amount of coal used by craftsmen is all transported by merchant guilds from neighboring counties.

Zhao Ji kept this information in mind; previously, when working for apprentices in the Craftsman District, no one had told him about this, and this was the first time he had learned of it.

It seems that although the iron products of Kendall City are high-value-added products, both the raw iron material and the coal that generates high temperatures are provided from the outside; it seems this is also a difficult, long-standing problem in the county.

First, light the furnace, then burn wood blocks to induce high temperatures, and then put in the coal.

After the coal temperature rose, Bodeer the blacksmith put the semi-finished metal shield from yesterday into the center of the furnace, letting half of the metal shield receive the scorching heat.

Jier kept stepping on the bellows, while Bodeer the blacksmith would occasionally poke the hottest part of the shield with an iron rod, waiting until he felt the iron rod could slightly pierce the softened metal shield.

Bodeer the blacksmith used iron tongs to clamp the metal shield out, stabilized it on his small anvil, and seized the time to swing his hammer and strike.

"Have you not thought about taking an apprentice in the village? Isn't it very tiring to do all this by yourself?" Jier watched boredly as Bodeer swung the hammer to strike the shield blank with force.

Bodeer the blacksmith smiled and explained the reason: "The people in the village won't do; they are too dull. The first generation of migrants who came from the Empire or other places were still okay, but the descendants who have lived here for two or three generations are no good."

"Why? I think the villagers are all quite alright; when we went to deal with the goblins before, they both followed orders and were very brave." Jier said while stepping on the bellows' pedal.

Shaking his head, Bodeer the blacksmith clanged away at the shield and explained: "Letting them farm or do other things is fine, but smithing won't work. On one hand, no one is willing to do it; who would do this? There are large tracts of uncultivated land around the village, and every household is constantly giving birth to children; as long as they are raised, they can go out to cultivate new farmland, and once ownerless land belongs to the developer, isn't that the main property that can be passed down for generations?"

"On the other hand, how much money can you make from smithing? I am a person from Kendall City; coming here to open a blacksmith shop was not my own wish. Jier the warrior might not know, but the ownership of the blacksmith shop actually belongs to the knight of the village; I only came from the city because the village house gave enough subsidies. After all, a village based on agriculture cannot be without a blacksmith who can repair iron farm tools; these are necessary tools for increasing production. When I first came, there were farmers who wanted their youngest sons to learn smithing, but after finding out there was no subsidized salary here, they no longer thought about letting their children come to learn."

"So that's how it is." Jier nodded to show he understood.

Bodeer the blacksmith seemed to have had many words bottled up in his heart for a long time; today, it was rare to have someone chat with him about it, so he opened the floodgates: "Actually, I rotate here with another blacksmith; the two of us rotate every half year, so it's actually okay."

"Then will I meet you in Kendall City later?"

"Of course! You are welcome to come to the blacksmith workshop later. If I am there, I will recommend the best things in the workshop to you. Haha, don't think about getting a discount from me; that is a privilege only the pastors of the God of Crafts have. If you purchase things in bulk, look for them; they will give you a discount."

Jier shrugged: "I am not familiar with them; I actually have some connection with the Agricultural God Church."

Bodeer the blacksmith said: "I heard about it; you previously received a reward from the Agricultural God Church because you eliminated a large number of those slime monsters that were harassing the farmers working in the fields. Pastor Nia mentioned this matter during a village gathering before."

"The priests of the church are indeed well-informed." Jier did not expect that the pastor stationed at the church in a remote village would also know about the events of two months ago.

Bodeer the blacksmith smiled: "Those who serve the gods actually know everything. It's just that they rarely express their views or voice them. The things that are truly expressed, I hear, are all decrees sent down by the gods. By the way, I have lived for so long and have never seen what a slime monster looks like; can you describe it? I have seen plenty of goblins these days; everyone in the village is no longer afraid of goblins now, even the children dare to take tree branches to strike the goblin skeletons that died in the square."

Sighing, Jier said in a low voice: "People should be on guard against monsters; what will happen if the goblin settlement comes back in the future?"

Afterwards, Bodeer the blacksmith clanged away at the shield, and Jier simply recounted the matter of him clearing out the slime monsters in the swamp before.

"Truly amazing! You can deal with so many goblins single-handedly; I completely believe you can handle hundreds of slime monsters by yourself." Bodeer the blacksmith put the repeatedly hammered metal shield into the furnace to heat it again.

Scratching his head, Jier was overjoyed; after all, being praised is a happy thing no matter when it happens.

Busy until the afternoon, the two of them didn't even manage to eat lunch, and only then was the shield completely forged.

The shield as a whole was a standard shield-shaped metal shield with a length of fifty centimeters; there were two metal grips on the back, one open and one closed.

The closed one was for the forearm to pass through, while the open one was for the left palm to grasp; the metal grip was opened, which also made it convenient to discard the shield when necessary.

The weight of the entire metal shield was unimaginably light; Zhao Ji could barely hook such a large shield with one little finger. The overall weight was even just over a jin.

Bodeer the blacksmith was quite fond of this type of metal; in the end, besides enough silver coins as payment, Jier also provided two small pieces of this metal as a symbol of friendly help.

According to Bodeer the blacksmith, he planned to forge these two pieces of metal into a light and thin dagger to be used as a family heirloom.

Although curious about what such a light, thin, and tough dagger would eventually look like, Bodeer the blacksmith indicated that he would carefully study the appropriate dagger style and would not start forging it recently. Moreover, in order to forge this shield for Jier, they had already used up all the coal in the blacksmith shop; this kind of metal is very difficult to forge under the temperature produced by charcoal.

The two of them later ate and drank heavily in the village tavern; this time, in the tavern, Jier told everyone about his investigation of the bloody dead cow incident in the cowshed outside Kendall City.

Because plowing oxen are important agricultural labor, the tavern guests, who were mostly farmers, listened to this story with fear and trepidation. To them, the death of an adult male plowing ox was even more terrifying than their own child dying of illness.

Jier cryptically indicated in the story that the monster causing the harm came from the Imperial Knight Order upstream of the Kendall River, but only a few of the drunken guests understood, their faces full of worry.

The people of Kendall County are basically landless farmers and bankrupt small handicraftsmen who migrated from the Empire; they basically could not survive in the Empire, which had serious social problems, so they left their homes and families to come to this wild, undeveloped new Kingdom.

Unexpectedly, they could not escape the radiation of the Empire's power here, and they still had to occasionally know that they were still shrouded under the lewd power of the Empire Army.

Jier himself had no opinion on the Empire Army; because of Knight Kela, he even had some good feelings for that Border Knight Order of the Empire, feeling that the quality of those knights was quite good.

As for the matter of the farm monster, although the source came from the negligence of a big shot in the Knight Order, in the end, no civilians were killed or injured.

He felt that such a thing was actually a good thing for him.

At least it allowed him to show his face in front of Knight Kela, laying a bit of a foundation for future transactions.

Although Zhao Ji's shield was said to be forged, it could only be said to be in a semi-finished state.

The shield face could not directly be the original appearance of the metal; Zhao Ji had Bodeer the blacksmith leave shallow grooves on the front of the shield where a wooden surface could be installed. This was to defend against and block possible arrows; if there was no wood covering the outer layer, firstly, the metal reflection would be too conspicuous, and secondly, when arrows hit the shield, the shield surface would definitely be scraped by the arrow tips, knocking off a small amount of metal while defending against the arrows.

At the same time, enough space was left on the back of the shield to install cork that could buffer and absorb impact force.

In addition, the shield's grip also needed to be wrapped with leather over the metal surface. This was a measure to prevent the hands from losing heat during the cold winter. Otherwise, he wouldn't dare to hold the metal grip with bare hands in winter; wouldn't that freeze his hands rotten?

Especially after a battle, if the palms sweated and then froze, wouldn't that freeze his hands onto the shield?

Of course, for the time being, one can use this semi-finished metal shield while wearing a full set of armor, as long as one is careful not to let the ice-cold shield give oneself frostbite.

Because this metal shield was still an unfinished product, Zhao Ji did not give it a name yet.

After saying goodbye to Bodeer the blacksmith, Zhao Ji replenished some supplies at the grocery store in the village and left Doraerlin Cunzi at dusk.

For him, as long as the moons in the sky were not all crescent moons, making it impossible to see the road clearly, he could travel at night. He had only simply used his legs to step on the bellows for these two days, not as tired as Bodeer the blacksmith said, and he had actually rested well for two days.

Therefore, he traveled through the night at this time, intending to walk along the dirt road until he felt tired.

High above Zhao Ji's head, the little sprite that had played in various places in the village for two days followed Zhao Ji silently, feeling somewhat reluctant to leave. It had played wildly for these two days, playing everywhere in the village where there were no people, bullying poultry and dogs, climbing high and low, and running around everywhere, not even having the time to play pranks on that annoying human.

It had climbed to the highest windmill near the village, had 'fought' the field mice stealing food in the village granary, occasionally ran into people's homes to steal human food, and scared timid human children at night. Only when it secretly sneaked into the Agricultural God Church in the village was it almost discovered by Pastor Nia, who seemed to have sensed something, and it hurriedly fled.

In the village, it discovered many goblin skulls; every time it saw those skulls, it felt as if it had seen those goblin faces in the long dream it had before.

Of course, it was the look of those goblins' faces before they were dried out.

It quite disliked those goblins, who were always asking it for this or that and never letting it have peace even in its sleep, but occasionally they were also some amusing entertainment to pass the time when it was bored in its dreams.

However, it had now discovered a new, interesting target: that Human who had stolen from and destroyed the elf's workplace; following this Human seemed like it would be more interesting.

Thinking of this, the little sprite sat on a Snail Shell, flew high in the air, and used sprite magic to track from afar the Human who had left the Cunzi overnight.

Right, what was that Human's name again?

It seemed to be, Jiaoji'er.

That's right, Jiaoji'er.

Hehe, Jiaoji'er.

In the southern part of Kendall County, located on the main road leading out of the county.

In a place where a river was wedged between two mountains, a checkpoint had been artificially constructed, named Bingxun Pass.

While called a checkpoint, in reality, on the land amidst the wooden walls of the checkpoint, a Cunzi composed of many small Merchants had sprung up over the last dozen years, following the busy trade of Kendall City.

Compared to other Villages in Kendall County that were primarily agricultural, this place would not change its busy, chaotic, and somewhat vibrant commercial transactions for any of the various annual farming tasks.

Some bold people dared to organize the transport of various specialties from Kendall City with just a few people and a few swords, selling them all the way to other nearby places by breaking through checkpoints and passing barriers.

The further the distance, the greater the profit!

After all, the various tools produced by many surrounding cities were not as good or as plentiful as those produced in Kendall City. Even the workshops in the Province Capital were the same; after all, the master Craftsmen in the Province Capital all served the various Noble lords, so why would they spend time and energy manufacturing even a single excellent tool for those people scratching a living from the dirt?

At the same time, various small Caravans also brought in various raw materials and products not produced in Kendall County from outside.

This checkpoint was both a defensive gateway for Kendall County and a central distribution hub for passing Caravans. Incoming Caravans only needed to transport their goods to this place to sell them, which not only saved time and energy but also reduced many customs duties and head taxes.

Kendall law stipulated that within the checkpoint, it was considered neither inside Kendall County nor outside Kendall County. Therefore, no various taxes were collected here from outsiders, nor were any taxes collected from the large Merchant Guilds of Kendall City.

So you might ask, isn't this just refusing free money?

In fact, when Kendall Craftsmen produced various items, they had already paid a tax to the lord of Kendall; at the same time, the large Merchant Guilds in the city had also paid taxes to the Government Office when purchasing large quantities of goods.

Therefore, the goods exported from Kendall had already had their taxes paid.

Furthermore, providing a trading venue for Caravans coming from the south and going to the north also drove various other incomes for this checkpoint Cunzi; not only was the money earned not a cent less, but it also encouraged the incoming Caravans that had sold their goods to spend more money here. Taverns, red houses, safe inns of various grades, and casinos were all present, crowding every inch of land within the checkpoint.

Even more, there was a trading firm opened by a great Noble relying on deep strength and financial resources, which not only provided various diverse and safe commercial services but was also a high-end place where the leaders of various Caravans often gathered and met.

Right in this place that did not diminish in prosperity even a bit due to wind or snow, Zhao Ji, draped in a wolf-fur Cloak and pushing a half-full Handcart, arrived here.

Taking a deep breath of the air that seemed to be mixed with all sorts of scents and odors, Zhao Ji rarely praised with satisfaction: "Heh, it has a bit of the flavor of the urban-rural fringe from my past life."