In this era, every morning at dawn, the farmers would get up to work, the men would carry water and chop wood, and the women would feed the chickens and pigs.

Generally speaking, the time for breakfast is around nine o'clock in the morning, and after breakfast, the family will go to work in the fields.

The family would be busy in the field until two or three o'clock in the afternoon, when the woman would go home to cook, and the man would continue to work until the woman brought the food to eat, and would not call it a day until the sun went down.

Most of the land in East Zhuangzi was in the hands of the Yang family and the Bai family, and there were not many yeoman farmers in Zhuangzi who had their own arable land, and most of them were tenant farmers who rented the fields of two large households.

For tenants who have to hand over more than half of their output to landlords, it is very hard to earn food and clothing for themselves and their families all year round, all year round, and God has to fight for their own strength.

When it was time to eat, Chen Xian led the apprentices into the canteen.

The apprentices had to take out the meal tickets that Chen Xian issued to them yesterday, representing the first, second, and third class meals in order to get the corresponding meals.

Today's first-class meal is Hu cake with green vegetables and tofu stir-fried with fatty meat, and two large pieces of red and bright braised pork per person. The second-class rice is the same as the first-class rice except that there is no braised pork. The third-class rice is sauerkraut tofu with sorghum porridge.

Tofu is the most important source of protein for Chinese in this era, so Chen Xian requires that every meal, no matter how many dishes, is not allowed to be without tofu.

The apprentice who got the first- and second-class meal tickets suddenly smiled, and the one who got the third-class meal ticket suddenly collapsed.

As the saying goes, there is no comparison, there is no harm, if it is usual, for these young people who were born in tenants, it is also a happy thing to be able to eat sorghum porridge with sauerkraut and tofu with an open belly, but when they see others have meat and cakes, the sorghum porridge and sauerkraut in front of them suddenly become unacceptable.

Chen Xian also followed the apprentices to eat a first-class meal, and in the past two days, he has been striking iron and practicing martial arts, and he is also good at eating.

After eating, Chen Xian let the apprentices rest for half an hour, and then took them to the open space behind the courtyard, gave each of them a three-meter wooden pole, taught them the Zhongping gun style, and let the three of them start to practice poking around a wooden stake.

He held a stick and watched the boys practice their guns, correcting the boys' movements, and if anyone made a mistake three times in a row, he would unceremoniously hit him with a stick......

Watching the teenagers practice for an hour and complete 500 shots, Chen Xian gathered them together again, made them stand in four rows, and began to train them in formation.

Conducting formation queue training for a group of people who didn't even know left and right was like training a flock of ducks, and Chen Xian spent more than an hour not letting this group of people turn around according to his command.

In desperation, Chen Xian could only lure them with food, and he announced that if anyone could keep in mind the left and right tomorrow, he would give him a first-class meal ticket......

The team was dismissed, and it was already twelve o'clock in the afternoon.

After resting for half an hour, Chen Xian took the teenagers back to the factory building at the back of the courtyard.

After a day of natural cooling, the simmering furnace had been completely cooled down at this time, Chen Xian opened the furnace and sandwiched out the annealed pig iron and filled steel from it.

Chen Xian led the apprentices to burn the exhausted pig iron and filled steel red, and then divided it into about five catties of iron with chisels, similar in size and shape.

In the process of cutting and forging, Chen Xian found that the annealed pig iron had indeed become malleable iron, which made him breathe a sigh of relief.

Pig iron is malleable, depending on the carbon content and crystal structure in the pig iron on the one hand, and the sulfur content in the pig iron on the other.

Annealing can change the crystalline structure and slightly reduce the carbon content in pig iron, but it cannot change the sulfur content in pig iron, so not all pig iron can be malleable after annealing.

This batch of pig iron becomes malleable iron after annealing, indicating that the quality is good.

After the divided pig iron and steel filling blocks were naturally cooled, Chen Xian mixed them together and sent them all to the warehouse.

The next day, Chen Xian asked the apprentices to continue forging wrought iron, preparing raw materials, and practicing their skills at the same time.

He himself took out a piece of cut iron from the storeroom, called two apprentices to pull bellows for him, and began to forge the piece of pig iron.

Chen Xian intentionally or unintentionally told the apprentices that this piece of iron was filled with steel, but in fact, it was a piece of annealed pig iron.

This is the first firewall that Chen Xian has set up for his own technology.

If someone came to steal his craft and forged it with steel, he would not be able to forge a fine sword, because the carbon content of the steel was far inferior to that of pig iron, and if he used his pig iron processing process to fold and forge it multiple times to decarburize, he would lose too much carbon content and turn it directly into mature iron.

Chen Xian beat and welded the red-hot pig iron (after the iron was red, put it together and quickly beat it together, it could be welded together) on an iron bar to facilitate control, and began to fold and forge the pig iron.

After beating for a while, Chen Xian stopped his hand and looked at his arm with some confusion.

In the past few days of practicing martial arts with Wu Liang and them, Chen Xian has already found that his physical strength and strength seem to be much stronger than before the crossing.

Although Chen Xian often exercised before the crossing, he was only an amateur after all, and he generally insisted on heavy physical work such as wielding a hammer with one arm for five minutes at most, and he had to rest, otherwise his arm would be sore and unbearable.

But just now, he had been swinging the hammer for at least ten minutes in a row, and he still felt at ease.

"Is it the change brought about by the crossing?" Chen Xian couldn't help but think so.

However, this kind of thing is difficult to figure out, so he quickly put aside this doubt and brandished the hammer again.

It took three days for Chen Xian to fold and forge this piece of pig iron dozens of times.

On the fourth day, Chen Xian continued to compete with this piece of iron, he forged this piece of pig iron into a V-shape, and then inserted a wrought iron plate into the V-shaped shape of pig iron, after it was burned red, it was gently beaten, and the three layers of materials were combined into one.

Next, it is necessary to create the shape of the knife.

Three days later, the shape of the katana was completed, and anyone who had ever seen a katana would have wondered if they saw it, because it was straight, not the arc of the familiar katana.

If the traditional process is followed, the next step should be quenching.

But at this time, Chen Xian adopted a tricky process, he annealed the forged knife body, and then trimmed the annealed knife body with a file and whetstone, and polished the rough surface of the knife body due to forging.

This trick, which goes against the traditional craftsmanship of the katana, is intended to reduce the difficulty of the final grinding.