Chapter 253

Iron ore, salt, plus coal?

Heavens!

This Reputation Marketplace, one upgrade, and the rewards are so plentiful!

The level five Reputation Marketplace actually unlocked these materials directly!

Iron ore!

This kind of thing, if he wanted to mine it, it would be time-consuming and laborious!

Lin Yang could only wait for it to be refreshed in his special items before!

But even if it refreshed, it would be limited by purchase quota!

This also caused Lin Yang, although he ruled a province and had 150,000 troops!

To have fewer than 40,000 wearing iron armor!

Don't look at this ratio as very low!

Among these 40,000 wearing iron armor, those relying on the refined iron armor Lin Yang forged accounted for more than 20,000!

From the sixth year of Zhongping to the current third year of Chuping!

In over three years, Lin Yang had only managed to produce 20,000 sets of iron armor!

And!

Except for the 4,000 Threaded Army and Zhao Yun's Iron Pagoda!

The iron armor of other soldiers was not heavy armor!

It was only the fish-scale armor of the Eastern Han Dynasty era!

There was no way!

Lin Yang truly couldn't produce that much refined iron!

Don't look at a heavy town in later generations having over 100,000 sets of iron armor!

The era was simply different!

And!

The 100,000 sets of iron armor of others were not produced in a single day, but accumulated over many years!

In ancient times, mining iron ore was definitely not an easy task!

It was precisely because of this that the iron ore production in the Eastern Han Dynasty era was truly not high!

"With this iron ore, my soldiers are about to enter the era of full-body armor!"

The armor rate of the Eastern Han Dynasty was less than 50%!

And only elite troops had iron armor!

Once he had full-body iron armor, what was there to fear in competing for the world!

"Iron ore is a good thing, and this coal is an even better thing!"

Moving his gaze away from the iron ore, Lin Yang looked at the second item, coal!

For Lin Yang, this coal was definitely a treasure!

Coal had actually been discovered as early as the Western Han Dynasty and used for refining iron ore!

But the difficulty of mining coal was high!

Wanting to detect the location of coal was also not an easy task!

From the Western Han Dynasty to the late Eastern Han Dynasty!

For several hundred years!

Coal had not been used on a large scale!

It wasn't until the Song Dynasty!

That coal was used on a large scale!

At that time, coal steel-making technology was brought to its peak!

Steel production increased rapidly!

This also created a legend!

That was, the armor rate of Song Dynasty soldiers was terrifyingly high!

Although the combat effectiveness of Song Dynasty soldiers was weak, the armor rate in the army exceeded 70%!

Some elite troops were even 100% armored!

And they wore heavy armor, iron armor!

It could also be said that they wore the thickest clothes and took the most poisonous beatings!

The reason for all this was that coal iron-making technology had reached its peak!

Large-scale use of coal for iron-making allowed the quality and quantity of iron to increase rapidly!

"Iron ore plus coal, as long as I stay low and don't act recklessly, with 150,000 armored troops, why worry about not sweeping the world!"

150,000 armored soldiers, what a scene that was!

Even if Yuan Benchu, Cao Mengde, and Yuan Gonglu were tied together now!

Lin Yang would not fear them at all!

In ancient warfare, having armor and not having armor were two different things in terms of combat effectiveness!

Having leather armor and having iron armor were also two different things in terms of combat effectiveness!

"Calm down, this iron-making takes time!"

Taking a deep breath, Lin Yang's heart, which had been excited for a long time, stabilized!

What was given this time was not refined iron that could be used directly!

What was given this time was raw iron ore!

This thing would take a long time to forge into armor!

However, fortunately, there was hope!

As long as he was given time!

He could continuously forge armor!

"It seems I have to return to Xuzhou City first!"

Glancing at the iron ore, coal, and that salt!

These three things all needed to be dealt with early!

Iron ore and coal needed to be provided to craftsmen in large quantities so they could speed up the iron-making progress!

Blacksmiths of the late Eastern Han Dynasty!

Used coal for iron-making!

However!

First, the amount of coal was small, and second, the craftsmanship was not very mature!

For example, the coke steel-making method of later generations had not yet appeared!

Now, if he wanted to forge steel!

There was only one way!

That was to forge it a hundred times to become steel!

This idiom, when applied to iron-making, was the literal meaning!

Take the forged refined iron and hammer it a hundred times!

Then it could become steel!

In history, Cao Mengde once gathered blacksmiths to forge refined steel weapons!

After the blacksmiths worked hard to hammer them, five steel swords were finally produced!

The most famous one was the one taken away by Zhao Yun!

It was called the Qinggang Sword!

The name sounded like a bronze sword, but it was forged from a hundred-refined steel!

It could cut through iron like mud!

It could be seen how difficult it was to forge a hundred-refined steel in this era!

And now Lin Yang had so much coal!

This meant!

Lin Yang's iron-making could take the first step from ironware to the category of steel! ===== CHAPTER 254 =====