Chapter 899: The Iron Smelting Speed of Huaxia

With the conditions promised to this point, Xuanyuan was already very excited and hurriedly asked, "How many can there be, and how many people can it equip?"

Everyone is clear on the quality of Huaxia's Weapon, and a good weapon is enough to give you a greater advantage when facing a larger number of enemies than yourself, which is why Xuanyuan was so excited.

Baifeng did not dare to boast, as these things were not so easily obtained in Huaxia; some that were retired previously had already been equipped to the Western Development Group, and there really were not many left now, plus with the need to expand recruitment for new soldiers this year, weapons were already in short supply.

The speed of crafting was also not fast; to ensure the quality of their work, the Blacksmiths worked in pairs, and in the end, they would stamp their name seals to prove these were their finished products, which also served as evidence for accountability if the quality was substandard or failed to pass.

The Crossbow, however, was an assembly line operation, with each person making one part and then assembling them together at the end, but the speed was not very fast either; the Ministry of Works was currently working desperately to catch up, at least to have stock during wartime.

As for the Arrow, there was no worry; it was not that an arrow must have an arrowhead to be used. In the absence of protection, as long as the arrow shaft was hard enough, it could still cause damage after being hardened by fire. The only problem was that without the weight of an arrowhead, it would drift.

However, one only needed to add feathers to the back of the arrow shaft, and the production speed could be extremely fast; it did not even require a specialized Carpenter, as those women could produce them after a little training, and as long as there were enough materials, producing several thousand a day was not a problem.

The lethality might be insufficient, the range might not be enough, and the accuracy might be lacking, but under the suppression of quantity, these problems would no longer be problems.

But under the current circumstances, Baifeng could only say quite conservatively, "We in Huaxia are also relatively short of them for the time being, but within one hundred days, I can gather enough weapons to equip one hundred people, and by next year, I can guarantee five hundred. You know very well how slow these weapons are to make; this is already my limit."

"Moreover, I think that with a tribe as large as the Shennong Clan, we certainly won't be able to conquer them this year, and we will definitely continue to attack next year. How is this sincerity of mine?"

Xuanyuan did not complain that it was too little, but was instead shocked by the information revealed in Baifeng's words: Huaxia could produce weapons for at least five hundred people in a single year—how much Iron would that take alone?

Iron could be seen everywhere in Huaxia now, and various Iron tools had already entered every household, yet they still had the capacity to increase such a large number of Iron weapons every year. Just how great had Huaxia's Iron production become?

The Xuanyuan Tribe had started smelting copper generations ago, and even now, he had begun large-scale copper smelting, with most of the copper prioritized for crafting weapons. Even so, he could barely scrape together weapons for four thousand people, yet this was the accumulation of how many years for the Xuanyuan Tribe? Now he still traded for dozens of weapons from the Jiuli every year, but it still could not keep up with Huaxia's progress.

The reason Huaxia could smelt Iron so quickly started from the source; from the beginning of mining, they had already used Explosive, making the extraction of ore much simpler. The road from the mine to Huaxia was not paved, but it was already very wide and hard, allowing ox carts to pass freely.

The amount of ore that could be delivered to Huaxia City every day was a huge number, not to mention that Huaxia used coal for smelting instead of wood, providing more heat and allowing the temperature to rise higher. The Xuanyuan Tribe only used dry firewood, not even Charcoal, so the efficiency was naturally low.

Although they had discovered that the Drum was useful and had begun to try using human power to blow air, compared to the large-scale blowers pulled by oxen in Huaxia, the effect was far inferior. Moreover, Huaxia used blast furnaces; although they were completely different from the blast furnaces of later generations, the amount of Iron Ore that could be smelted at the same time compared to a small furnace was a world of difference.

It was even the case that some Iron Ingot had already rusted, but the Blacksmiths had not yet had time to use them; there were a large number of Iron Ingot piled up in the warehouse, but the smelter never stopped working, as no one would ever complain about having too much Iron Ingot in storage.

Furthermore, having enough Iron Ingot allowed more apprentices to practice and learn without fear of having nothing to personally feel and experience, and without fear of waste; only in this way could Huaxia cultivate more talent, and Huaxia could enter a virtuous cycle.

Baifeng also thought that with their current scale, that one Iron Mine would probably not be exhausted even if they dug for another few hundred years. Baifeng was also lucky enough, because in some cases, Iron Ore was a companion mineral to Coal Mine, so on much of the coal, one could also see many small golden particles, which might be iron sulfide.

In the future, Huaxia City might no longer be suitable as a capital or political center, because heavy industry also meant pollution, but their scale was too small now to have almost any impact on the current, extremely primitive Nature.

If the slag was dumped in a place further away, the Nature there would gradually recover in the future, and the industrial wastewater produced would be well within the self-purification capacity of the Dahe. However, the scale might grow larger in the future, and at the very least, the living environment of the entire Huaxia City would deteriorate, and the air quality would certainly show a clear difference from other places.

Plus, Huaxia City was too close to the other two tribes; unless Huaxia could annex those adjacent lands and widen its own borders, having the capital right next to someone else's country was not a wise choice at all.

In the future, there was a high probability that Baifeng would choose to move the capital. Baifeng did not know if he was the protagonist, but what was certain was that Xuanyuan was the mandate of Heaven. If he competed with him, even if his military force was strong and the country was wealthy, what if he was hit with the Great Meteor Summoning Technique?

Therefore, Baifeng had always thought about expanding his influence to the west, and further west; this was entirely his own consideration. Places that would be deserts in the future might have many oases now. Even if it was not for tourism, Baifeng believed that he could bypass that area according to his memory and advance toward the true Western Regions; to the south, there might even be land where Rice could be harvested three times a year.

There was no need for Baifeng to take the risk of competing with Xuanyuan, who was of the same origin and the same race as him. It would be better to turn those wild lands into territory for people of his own lineage; when some great monarch in the future wanted to unify the world, there would naturally be a reasonable justification.

If the descendants of Chiyou could be called the common people, then it would be no problem for the region he ruled to be called the people of Baifeng.