A red magic crystal shone with a charming brilliance, and Sun Licheng struggled in his heart for a long time, but finally took it back.

It is a fire-based hedron that can be used as fuel and can emit extremely high temperatures, which is enough to make steel. However, according to the knowledge bestowed by the magma god, this colored magic crystal can be used as the core of high-level magic items, and it is very valuable. Burn it like coal, even if Sun Licheng really wanted to get metal tools, he was still reluctant to waste them at will.

"It seems that we can only start with bronze. ”

Sun Licheng said with regret.

As the earliest metal used by human beings, bronze's biggest feature is that it has a low melting point, and the hardness of fine bronze exceeds that of ordinary iron. The biggest disadvantage of copper is that the reserves are not as large as iron, and the cost is relatively high. With the advent of harder carbon steel, bronzes were expelled from the main tool stage.

Metal smelting is definitely a complex project, at least it will take up a lot of Sun Licheng's time, and he needs to store a large amount of food in advance. Fortunately, Sun Licheng has a treasure trove of holes.

He found many vines in the woods, cut them with broken jade, split them into filaments, and kneaded them into ropes. Then, bury a stout stump next to that exit of the waterfall, tie the rope and hang it into the hole for easy access and access.

Inside the pits, battles take place all the time, and a large number of animals die tragically. Although most of them were eaten by their opponents, many were casually thrown aside, and these were Sun Licheng's ready-made foods.

In the tunnel, there are many fish in the dark river. These fish are huge in size and very fat. Although they are ferocious, they have almost zero resistance to food. After a short period of research, Sun Licheng arranged a small mechanism on the shore and threw a piece of meat from a fierce beast, and captured a lot. This kind of fish is snow-white, and eating one can replenish a lot of physical strength, which is a rare delicacy. According to the color of their bodies, Sun Licheng called this fish snow fish, which is the same as the cod on the earth.

After a few days of hard work, Sun Licheng got a large number of animal carcasses out of the cave and caught a lot of snow fish.

In order to store these things, he found a soft place on a hillside, dug a cave as his storage room, and put all the fruits of his hunting in it.

After solving the logistical problem, Sun Licheng began to refine bronze. He made a list of his plans of action: first, to make coke, second, to find copper, third, to build blast furnaces, and fourth, to smelt bronze.

Sun Licheng has seen how to burn charcoal on TV. According to his memory, he first used a chopper to cut down a number of thick branches from the woods, and used broken jade to make wooden sticks, and then piled them up regularly into a tower. After doing this, pick a batch of soil from the creek and paste it around the firewood pile, leaving a large air outlet at the top and a small air outlet at the bottom. When the soil is almost dry, the whole pyre is lit from above. When the branches in the pyre were burned red, all the air vents below were sealed with earth, and the upper air outlets were covered with a cover made of earth. After the fire is completely extinguished, the crust shell is cracked open and the charcoal is burned.

In this way, the process of burning charcoal is very simple, and the quality of the charcoal made is also good, the only drawback is that it is not environmentally friendly. But in the depths of the mountains, some charcoal is burned, and the damage to nature is almost negligible.

During this time of charcoal burning, Sun Licheng used clay to make some molds for making copper water, including knives, hammers, awls, and even a hand saw.

To say that the metal deposits here are really very rich.

Because the dosage is very low, Sun Licheng does not need to find a large vein. It wasn't long before he spotted some colored stones in the soil on a mountainside.

Sun Licheng smashed the shell of a stone, revealing the blue-green crystals inside, which were malachite. The main component of malachite is basic copper carbonate, which is one of the oldest jade raw materials of mankind.

Sun Licheng knew that where there was malachite, there must be copper mines around it. There is malachite here, then there must be copper. After a round of searching, Sun Licheng found azurite and some colorful copper ore. It was an open-pit ore vein, and he picked up a lot of colorful ore. He couldn't help but feel a little lucky, fortunately it was an open-pit copper mine, and if it was a very deep vein, it would take a long time just to dig a shaft.

Pure copper is very soft, and tin must be added to form an alloy to be able to be tempered into bronze. Tin ore is generally found in granite areas, and it is also likely to be found in quartz ore. This mountain range has a large area of granite, and there is a lot of quartz, and a part of the tunnel is densely covered with quartz crystals. Sun Licheng knew that some tin mines were associated with copper mines, so he carefully searched this place with a fluke mentality.

"Blessed by the magma god. ”

Sun Licheng held up a small piece of brown crystal and watched it carefully in the sun. It is a piece of tin ore, brown with a hint of grayish black, shining with a metallic sheen in the sunlight.

The magma god warned Sun Licheng to stay away from this tunnel, which was too dangerous. The so-called people die for money, birds die for food, and in the face of countless treasures, Sun Licheng took the advice of the magma god as the wind in his ears. At least for now, the greater the risk, the greater the gain. Without this tunnel, Sun Licheng would have had a hard time finding tools for mining, and now he is wielding a beast's shoulder blade to dig. The hardness of this bone is very large, and the front side is also very similar to a shovel, and after a few shovels, a large piece of ore is dug out. And around Sun Licheng, all kinds of ores have been piled up into a small mountain.

With charcoal, copper ore and tin ore, Sun Licheng began to prepare smelting tools.

Smelting bronze requires at least a small shaft furnace. And to make a furnace for smelting metal, refractory bricks and crucibles are indispensable.

No matter how simple it is, industrialization is also a system project. With the powerful golden finger of flame and earth sense, Sun Licheng dared to hope to be able to run into the Bronze Age. Thinking about the books in which the protagonists have nothing and can make steel and iron out of thin air, he feels that he has disgraced the traversers.

Sun Licheng already has a wealth of experience in firing pottery. To fire refractory bricks and smelting crucibles, cinders are used.

Sun Licheng spent a lot of time looking for coal mines. The hard work paid off, or his luck exploded, and three days later he found a small coal field far away.

Coal was found, and the firing of pottery became easier. After burning, the cinder and clay are mixed together to make the shape of bricks, and then fired to make refractory bricks. The quality of these refractory bricks is certainly not comparable to the industrial refractory bricks produced in modern times, but Sun Licheng felt that it was enough to smelt bronze.

Bronze has a very low melting point, so there is no need for a particularly good crucible. He made a clay pot with a thick wall according to the idea of refractory bricks, and this clay pot had a lower outlet, which was blocked by a thick pottery shard to facilitate the outflow of the bronze solution.

In order to allow the shaft furnace to reach the temperature of smelting metal, Sun Licheng also made a large leather tiger out of wood and fur, ready to be put at the mouth of the furnace for air blowing.

During the production of these things, Sun Licheng also found a salt spring. Although the purity of the salt around the spring water was not good this time, Sun Licheng decided to make do with it for the time being, after all, it was more important to be able to refine bronze.

With refractory bricks, the furnace he made for smelting metal reached a height of almost two meters, and an internal diameter of almost one meter, which could generate very high temperatures. He made a stone platform out of refractory bricks and clay inside, and placed the clay pot with the lower outlet on it, and placed a very thick clay pot under the exit. In this way, the molten metal solution flows down the outlet into the pot.

Because of the poor level of craftsmanship, the leather tiger made by Sun Licheng is a bit big, if it weren't for his extraordinary strength now, he wouldn't be able to operate this guy at all. He fixed the tiger and the air inlet of the stove and made a fire door, which could be opened to blow air into it to accelerate the burning.

In the first furnace, Sun Licheng smelted copper ore. Sun Licheng made a good stove, and he also had the power of flames, which could accelerate burning. The copper ore was quickly burned, and some black slag-like lumps of copper were obtained from the clay pots. Sun Licheng did not expect that there would be so many impurities in the copper ore, and the clay pot was discarded after one use.

With his experience, he re-fired many of these pots for later use, and then began smelting tin ore. The melting point of tin is very low, and Sun Licheng easily got a rough tin block.

With the original copper and tin, he can now fire bronze. He put the coarse pieces of copper and tin into a newly made clay pot and began to light a fire. After the wind of the leather tiger and Sun Licheng's own flame power, the two pieces of metal quickly melted, and Sun Licheng used a long demonic beast bone prepared to go down to the clay pot through the stirring port reserved by the stove to stir the solution.

This is very hard with the bones of the monster, and there is nothing unusual in the high temperature, and it is very resistant to burning. Because he was not afraid of the flames, Sun Licheng stood naked and waved his bones at the top of the stove to stir.

Slowly, a lot of black things disappeared, this was the impurities in the crucible were burned clean, he opened the pottery shard at the exit of the crucible, and the reddish bronze liquid flowed down the groove into the prepared mold.

Because he was afraid that the impurities in the coal would pollute the ore, Sun Licheng used fired charcoal to smelt, so the impact on bronze was very small.

After several experiments, Sun Licheng finally obtained the most primitive bronze tool, a very rough bronze knife.

"This idiot, who has been tossing for so long and using a lot of spells, has made such a useless thing. ”

In the depths of Sun Licheng's mind, the magma god fragment looked angry, and he scolded very much into the play.

The Lord of the Stars understands the magma god very well, which is just like the earth words in Sun Licheng's mind: "I was wearing a suit, picked up a knife and fork and waited to eat a French meal, but I was served a plate of shredded pork with Beijing sauce." How can it not make people angry.

Fortunately, the Lord of the Stars was much calmer, and he hurriedly comforted: "Wait, maybe there will be a good show in the future." What do earthlings call this a burden? Oh, yes, it's called baggage. ”