Perhaps the Red Fire Ant and the Divine Envoy King's Legion currently have their own advantages and disadvantages in the management of the subordinate ant clans, but for now, the protagonist is not ready to change the current system.

At present, the four subordinate ant clans of the Divine Envoy King Legion have gradually formed a scale, and they have also been designated by the protagonist to have their own leaders, such as the leader male ant of the paving ant is the descendant of the Floating Leaf King "Floating Leaf II", the leader male ant of the hunting sickle ant is the descendant of the kite "Kite II", the leader male ant of the belly ant is named "Careful", and the leader male ant of the leaf-cutting ant is named "Okura".

Rushing to change the way of management is like a revolution in a well-functioning country, and it is easy to bring chaos.

And the current management method does not show obvious drawbacks, and the protagonist decides to operate as usual first and not make changes.

- I'm the dividing line -

After inspecting the four subordinate ant clans one by one, the protagonist rushes to the smelting blast furnace area near the southern periphery of the main city.

Today, if nothing else, the first iron will be produced in the blast furnace, an event of great significance, and the protagonist must be present in person.

Before the beginning of winter, the Divine Envoy King Legion had already obtained all the hematite ore in the inventory of the red fire ants through trading, and spent a lot of money to hire thousands of belly ants to transport the ore outside [Xinyang City] in batches, and then the big-headed ants transported it back to the warehouse in the city.

Although the winter started early this year, all of them arrived because hematite was the most priority cargo. On the contrary, the follow-up other goods were stranded, and it is estimated that they will not be delivered until after the beginning of spring, but fortunately, these goods are not urgently needed.

After getting the first batch of hematite ore and the blast furnace had been built, the Divine Envoy Legion carried out the first experimental ironmaking.

The Divine Envoy King's Legion had only experience in smelting copper before, and had never smelted iron. What's even more troublesome is that the ants who were in charge of copper refining before the Divine Envoy King Legion have gone to the swamp and can't come back. The protagonist has to train a new batch of ironworker ants to do the job

The protagonist also reorganizes the scientific research team by the way, and all members are composed of their own Shengong ant descendants, who are named "Little Secretary III" by the leader, although there is no direct connection between her genes and Little Secretary, and the name is more for a kind of inheritance.

Turning back to ironmaking, the ironworker ants newly trained by the protagonist, although they received and learned the protagonist's information packet, still lacked practical experience, which led to problems in the first ironmaking experiment, and there was an accident at one point, killing and injuring several ants.

In the end, the first iron-making experiment failed, which was also predictable, but the reason for this was not due to operational errors.

After the protagonist waits for the blast furnace to cool down, he drills in to inspect it, and finds that the hematite is still solid in the ashes on the ground, but there are some traces of melting on the surface.

This is a sign that the furnace temperature is too low, and this problem has occasionally occurred in the past when smelting copper.

There are many ways to increase the furnace temperature, such as raising the blast furnace to hold more fuel, thickening the furnace wall to enhance insulation, improving fuel, increasing ventilation, increasing accelerants, etc.

Since it is difficult to improve the blast furnace now, the protagonist can only think of a way from the fuel and ventilation.

The fuel in the blast furnace for the first time was some flame-resistant hardwood, which was used in copper smelting.

Copper only needs to melt at 1,000 degrees, while iron needs 1,500 degrees, and it is clear that this hardwood fuel is not enough to melt iron ore.

The protagonist decides to switch to charcoal as fuel, which can provide more heat and is not difficult to fire, and can be used to burn charcoal with an iron-making blast furnace.

Fortunately, it had not snowed yet, so the ants collected a large number of dry branches in the woods, carried them back to their nests, and cut them into small pieces with gravel knives for storage.

By the time the first charcoal is burned, the snow has covered the ground, and the protagonist estimates that the wood stored before is not enough to burn enough charcoal to smelt all the iron ore.

But now that he can't go out, the protagonist can only use the existing wood to make iron, how much can be smelted, and the rest of the spring will be said.

This time, most of the blast furnace cavity is filled with charcoal, and only a few iron ores are filled between the charcoal, so the charcoal consumption is much greater than that of iron ore.

The protagonist has arrived at the blast furnace, and waves of heat have swept in, and the walls next to it are all scorched and dry, unlike the rest of the lair.

Near the mouth of the blast furnace, there are only a few worker ants agitating the blower, which is made by the protagonist and the scientific research team, made of kneaded insect leather, and extends forward through small wooden pipes, the last part of which is a copper pipe with mud, directly connected to the blast furnace.

The copper pipes used here are heated and made by using some copper utensils brought from the homeland, which also consumes a lot of manpower and material resources.

The extra wind that the blower can provide has increased the furnace temperature, which is located several meters away from the blast furnace mouth, but it is still too hot for ants to stay for long periods of time.

Ants who go to work at the blower have to smear their whole body with water droplets before going to work, and they can only stay for half a minute before they can quickly escape, and they must constantly change the team members to ensure the normal progress of the blower.

Maybe next year a blower should be developed for water or wind power, the protagonist thinks so.

At this time, it was already half a day before the ignition of the iron-making blast furnace, and the blast furnace mouth was completely sealed by mud, and the color of the fire inside could not be seen clearly. Based on the experience of copper smelting, as well as the lessons learned from the previous failure of the first iron-smelting, the protagonist estimates that the iron ore inside should be almost melted.

So the protagonist orders the furnace to be opened, and the ants first use the long wooden pole to push the pottery trough and mold that have been prepared long ago to the low-lying designated position in front of the blast furnace mouth.

Then dozens of soldiers worked together to pierce the mud seal with a long stick tied to the pointed gravel.

The scorching red molten iron instantly pierced the pitch-black ground, causing all the ants to subconsciously raise their forelimbs to block one eye.

The molten iron mixed with the iron slag is flowing down the channel to the mold, and some worker ants and soldiers work together to pull the iron slag with a long wooden stick covered with mud, otherwise if the cast tools and weapons contain too many impurities, it will greatly reduce the performance.

The molten iron gushes out, marking the success of the iron smelting, and the rest of the process is similar to casting bronze, and the protagonist no longer stays, but quickly retreats to a cool place.

The protagonist is excited, he knows what success in ironmaking means.

Not only was the Legion of the Divine Envoy King able to maintain metal technology, but it also moved from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, which meant a greater development of productivity and combat effectiveness.

In the protagonist's imagination, an invincible army armed with steel jaws and covered with steel armor is destroying the Destroyer and counterattacking towards his homeland!