Lord Harland.

Workers queued up and climbed up to the charging port, put the selected iron ore and charcoal into the steel-making furnace, lit the fire and started making iron.

Dawn Continent Iron Smelting has developed a unique technology tree.

Alchemy includes steelmaking technology, and the refining of many special steel products requires the help of magic.

Sophia has seen alchemy blowers and special catalytic reduction products in Makholm Kingdom.

The alchemy blower can provide energy through magic crystals, and the ventilation effect is very good, which can be compared with large electric blowers.

However, the price of the Alchemy Blower is very high, and Grant Kingdom does not even sell it.

If you want to buy such large alchemical items, you can only order them from countries with developed magic such as Markholm.

Buying the alchemy blower from Markholm costs tens of thousands of gold coins.

Without the alchemical blower, the vents had to be replaced with large bellows.

The bellows manufacturing technology is very simple. Richard found two carpenters and after a brief description, the carpenters made a qualified bellows.

There was no shortage of wood in the territory, and large bellows were quickly manufactured.

The three of them worked together to pull the large bellows, and gusts of air entered the steelmaking furnace.

The original smelting process, coupled with the fact that the temperature of charcoal burning is not enough, the quality of the smelted pig iron is mediocre.

Not only is the texture loose, but there are also large and small holes on the surface.

But the interest of the workers is very high.

After all, without using magic alchemy technology, several tons of pig iron can be smelted in one furnace. This efficiency has never been seen in the Dawn Continent.

In the ordinary iron-making furnaces in Chenxi Continent, the pig iron that is usually smelted is not only of average quality, but also very light in weight. A furnace can only smelt about tens of catties of pig iron.

This kind of iron-making furnace is a clay furnace over one meter high.

After the pig iron is smelted, the iron-smelting worker hands the pig iron to the blacksmith and enters the next round of the process.

Continuously beating, forging, tempering, and quenching in coolant, it became a qualified steel material.

This kind of steel is very expensive. According to the normal price in peacetime, one kilogram is about twenty copper coins.

If it enters a wartime state, the price of iron materials may increase several times.

Of course, the price of steel will fluctuate with the quality. The better the quality, the higher the price of steel, and the lower the quality, the lower the price.

The worst quality freshly baked pig iron is about six copper coins per kilogram.

Working as part-time workers in the market, each person can earn about four copper coins a day.

A day's labor can be exchanged for less than one kilogram of the worst pig iron.

Purchasing a long knife weighing a little more than two kilograms costs more than three silver coins and requires an ordinary person to work for a month without eating or drinking.

In fact, ordinary people need to support their families, and it usually takes half a year to a year to save enough money to buy a knife.

A set of full-body armor weighs more than kilograms, and the material cost is about two gold coins.

It also needs to consume a lot of charcoal and labor to make iron armor.

Blacksmiths who can make iron armor are excellent talents wherever they go, and their wages are higher than those of the soldiers of the main army.

A piece of iron armor often costs more than ten gold coins in the market.

Ordinary families struggle for ten years, but they may not be able to save enough to buy a piece of armor.

In addition to blast furnace ironmaking, Li Cha also knows a crucible steelmaking technology.

But Richard didn't know what proportion of graphite clay was mixed into the crucible. In addition, manufacturing high-temperature refractory crucibles is also a prerequisite technology for crucible steelmaking.

Richard didn't know the technical details, so he could only tell Thomas, the director of the steelmaking plant, to study this technology.

Thomas successfully cast the big iron pot and became the head of the blacksmith team.

His blacksmithing skills are not the best among many blacksmiths, but this person is very smart and likes to specialize in smelting technology. He successfully forged an iron pot and received a reward from Li Cha, standing out from many blacksmiths.

The steelmaking plant is divided into four workshops: mining, refining, steelmaking, and forging.

There are currently more than 600 male and female workers. In addition, there are more than 500 elderly people and children living in the steel plant barracks, all of whom are family members of steel workers.

After these people entered the Harland territory, they also became indentured servants and needed to work for the lord for five years before they could be freed.

After the steel plant is put into operation, it can open the furnace four times a month and produce about eight tons of steel a month.

Eight tons of steel production per month seems ridiculous. In the past, a village-run steel factory in a major steel province could have a production capacity of several million tons.

However, the monthly output of eight tons of steel in the Harland Territory is already the lord with the largest steel output in the Gerda Province.

Only a few big nobles produced more steel than Richard. The number of people invested by the great nobles in the steel industry is at least more than 10,000.

The efficiency of the iron and steel plant in the territory is already about ten times that of other lords.

Eight tons of steel, one and a half tons for the territory's own use, mainly used to make farm tools, weapons and equipment.

If there is a surplus of roughly produced steel products, a shop can be opened in Heihe Fort to sell them.

Two and a half tons are used to make weapons, equip new squadrons, and increase the coverage of armor.

With the increase in the number of blacksmiths, the annual output of iron armor in Harland Territory has reached the level of eighty iron armor.

Richard is going to sell the remaining four tons of steel.

Four tons of steel, according to the market price, is about 222 gold coins.

Even if a large amount of steel from the Harland Territory is put into the market, causing certain market fluctuations and reducing the price of steel by 200%, Richard can earn gold coins every month.

Over the course of a year, he added gold coins in cash, and also saved the cost of buying steel.

Coupled with the income from city brick orders every month, the development of the territory finally formed a positive cycle.

By August, Li Cha had already started to repay the debt he owed.

After the Harland family was granted a territory and William became a hereditary baron, he has owed a debt of eight thousand gold coins in recent years.

In the first year of buying slaves, he owed 4,000 yuan to run the territory. In the next two years, he needed to borrow money to survive. With some interest added, the debt has doubled to eight thousand gold coins.

The first thing to pay back was the loan shark owed by William.

These usurious loans have an annual interest rate of 20%, and with the annual interest compounding, the loan will approximately double in three years.

Being able to lend usury in Heihebao, so that people like William dare not default on their arrears, there must be a big shot behind him.

The Harland family cannot afford to offend such a big shot.

With the income from the territory, Li Cha had the bottom line in his mind, and immediately withdrew cash to repay the usury loan.

As for the money borrowed from Uncle Soros and Mrs. Ola's elder brother Rand, he can only repay part of it first, and pay it off slowly in two installments.

The Haaland family is now a relatively important noble in Geda Province, controlling three territories and a population of more than 17,000.

There are five squadrons of soldiers in the territory, and their strength has exceeded that of most baron families.

Having such noble relatives is very beneficial to the development of in-laws.

Rand does business in Fort Black River and Fort Wright, so he won't be easily bullied.Uncle Soros can also make military exploits through the channel of Harland's territory, without worrying about people's embezzlement.

Although we owe money to relatives, everyone can accept it for the time being.