Live Streaming: Great Adventure in the Wilderness

Chapter 502: Chapter 499: Boss Fang Really Stands Tall and Firm

Survival in the Banna Rainforest, Day Seventeen.

After hammering away for an entire day beside the furnace, the original iron mass had completely been drawn out into a lengthy strip. Two stone hammers had been broken in the process.

Choosing to make Hundred-refined Steel was a race against time. From yesterday, Bi Fang had been working until late at night, and he would wake up before dawn to warm up the furnace and melt the iron.

He got less than six hours of sleep each day, which was probably good news for the global audience. They no longer had to worry about live streaming time differences. As long as they turned on their phones, they could almost always see Bi Fang either hammering iron or hunting.

Survival in the rainforest, Day Eighteen.

Perhaps it could no longer be called survival. From the day Bi Fang decided to smelt iron, it had become a way of life rather than mere survival.

In the still dark early morning, Bi Fang, like a skilled blacksmith, skillfully got up, washed, and finally fired up the furnace.

He continuously fed charcoal into the fierce fire, which meant Bi Fang had to smelt at least a kiln’s worth of charcoal every day to meet his needs.

The high heat of the furnace blackened his whole body, and Bi Fang, sweating like rain, gripped the glowing red-hot iron bar and hammered away relentlessly.

By noon, the long iron bar was forcefully bent and folded once more.

How many times he had folded and hammered, Bi Fang himself had lost count, just vaguely remembering a number and feeling like his arms were about to break off.

He continued to heat the iron bar in the furnace.

After drinking a few sips of water to rehydrate, Bi Fang stepped aside to wash his face, revealing his wheat-colored skin and gasping for breath.

“How does that saying go again? ‘Laziness is the source of productivity advancements.’ Although it’s a joke, I think there’s a lot of truth in it.”

During his breaks, Bi Fang chose to chat to keep the live streaming audience engaged.

With strong educational content, a fair number of people were willing to stay and listen.

After all, the knowledgeable Bi Fang teaching online was indeed attractive.

Curiosity, too, is a desire.

“We use charcoal as fuel to smelt iron ore into a spongy solid mass in the furnace. This solid mass, when cooled down, is actually called bloom iron. This was likely our method about two thousand five hundred years ago.”

“Bloom iron has low carbon content, a soft texture, and lots of impurities; it is the wrought iron that humans learned to make in the early days. Using bloom iron as raw material, it’s heated in a carbon fire to absorb carbon and increase its carbon content. Then, through hammering which removes impurities and allows it to absorb more carbon, steel is obtained.”

“This type of steel is called ‘bloom steel after carburization.’ But the quality of this steel is still not good enough, with great difficulty in controlling the extent of carbon absorption, the uniformity of distribution, and the degree of impurity removal during the smelting process, and it’s also extremely low in production efficiency.”

This type of steel is certainly unqualified, no matter what tools it might be used to make.

“In order to improve the quality of the steel, during the middle of the Western Han Dynasty, craftsmen invented ‘Hundred-refined Steel.’ This is what we’re doing now, repeatedly heating, folding, and hammering the bloom iron to make the steel structure compact and even, reduce impurities, and thus improve the steel’s quality.”

What Bi Fang was continually doing was just that, endlessly hammering the bloom iron he had smelted.

At this point, the iron was neither raw nor fully processed and could be described as neither raw nor ripe.

Bi Fang referred to it as, the binary nature of raw and ripe iron!

“Haha, just kidding,” Bi Fang scratched his head.

“As the demand for Hundred-refined Steel grew, but the production efficiency of its raw material, bloom iron, was very low and required ‘annealing’ after smelting to obtain, the development of Hundred-refined Steel faced limitations.

The most critical issue was, it’s too exhausting. A single piece of Hundred-refined Steel required a craftsman to hammer it over a hundred times before it took shape, hence the name ‘Hundred-refined.’ However, back then, people’s nutrition couldn’t keep up, and when weapons were needed for war, it was possible for the craftsmen to work themselves to death.”

“To break through these limitations, craftsmen invented a new technique for steel-making from pig iron, called ‘stirring steel,’ which I also mentioned a few days ago. This is one of those milestones.”

“In the ‘stirring steel’ process, pig iron is heated to a liquid or semi-liquid state and stirred in the melting furnace. By using a bellows or sprinkling in ore powder and other methods that utilize the oxygen in the air to oxidize silicon, manganese, and carbon, the carbon content can be reduced to obtain steel. Stirring steel was named because of the constant stirring during the smelting process, similar to stir-frying food.”

China started ‘stirring steel’ more than 1600 years before the technique began in the United Kingdom in Europe.

After chatting casually with the audience for a while, Bi Fang doused his head with the remaining water, moved in front of the blast furnace, removed the furnace lid, and continued hammering.

Hundred-refined, Hundred-refined, without a hundred times, how could it ever be sufficient.

After doing the math, Bi Fang realized he had hammered for nearly three days and was still short of fifty-five times, far from enough. This was even when the material was softer in the early stages; the further into the process, the harder it became to forge.

With just over three days left, he had to work even harder.

“Damn, no wonder it could kill the craftsmen, I’m nearly dead myself.”

Banna, Day Nineteen.

Today, Bi Fang went all out, forging for over thirteen hours and folding the steel twenty-one times, bringing the total to seventy-six times.

The iron by now was far from as soft as it was at the beginning, becoming tougher, making it even harder to hammer. This forced Bi Fang to find better stone hammers, and he even had to coat their surface with rubber and a layer of wood planks to prevent them from breaking due to low toughness.

This was good news.

It meant the quality of the iron in Bi Fang’s hand had improved, and it had started to become steel.

It is worth mentioning that a water monitor wandered over to the furnace at night but was hit by a piece of glowing charcoal, burning a black scar on its body.

Since then, it never dared to approach the blast furnace again.

Survival in the Banna Rainforest, Day Twenty.

In one full day, Bi Fang only managed to fold the steel bar fifteen times, bringing the total to ninety-one times. Each strike sent a wave of discomfort through his muscles.

That night, Bi Fang lay in bed, his right arm sore and swollen, forcing him to soak it entirely in cold water.

Over those days, millions of viewers accompanied Bi Fang in the live stream, watching the iron that was originally larger than a fist turn into a bar, bent and folded over and over.

The volume shrank more and more. Up to now, the steel bar was already a full size smaller than at the beginning; if hammered out and polished, everyone believed that it would make a decent dagger.

[Maybe just give it up, seems too hard anyway.]

[Isn’t the iron enough already?]

“[If I had to hammer for a day, no, half a day, I’d be dead]”

“[Old Fang is really a man, he sticks to his word. I feel like I’m steel now.]”

“[I won’t watch the Broken Sword Competition without you]”

Bi Fang smiled, a truly happy smile.

“If the iron in my hand hadn’t gotten harder and harder, I might have really given up. It would mean there were too many impurities in it, and the chances of becoming steel were very low. But it didn’t happen, so I had to do my best.”

Steel is made through thousands of hammering and numerous refinements!

Without countless hammering and tempering, both workability and usability are subpar!

This was not only steelmaking but also self-improvement. Only by doing it to the extreme, to the point where it can no longer be folded, would it be the answer Bi Fang submits.

His perfect answer from within.

Thinking of this, Bi Fang suddenly rose from the bed, droplets of water trickling down his slightly swollen arm, wrapping vines around his palm again, and he grabbed what must have been the umpteenth stone hammer, stepping outside once more.

Tomorrow night, six days from now, he would have to leave this place, so he had to finish forging by tonight, leaving enough time to polish the steel tomorrow.

Light the furnace, smelt the iron!

Day twenty-one in the Banna Rainforest survival challenge, also the last day.

At this time, it was still dark, and the audience hadn’t slept either. They stayed up all night with Bi Fang, watching the red-hot iron bars fold in the darkness, sparks flying, shedding black iron scales.

At dawn, with the last strike of the hammer, the stones shattered once again, falling to the ground.

Bi Fang felt stars in his vision, the sleepless night reaching the peak of his exhaustion. He had no doubt he could fall asleep instantly if given a soft bed right now.

“How many times is that now?”

“[101! 101 times, Master Fang!]”

“[It’s Hundred-refined Steel now, it really is Hundred-refined Steel]”

“[Has the grinding started yet?]”

Bi Fang shook his head, heated the iron bar again, and turned to fetch another stone hammer from inside.

He had said he would hammer until he could hammer no more.

At dawn, the sunlight slanted through the tall trees, falling on Bi Fang.

He hadn’t bothered to apply insect repellent mud for several days now. The high temperatures here kept even the mosquitoes at bay.

A Water Monitor crawled out of its cave, flicking its tail. The limited intelligence of cold-blooded animals didn’t allow it to ponder complex problems, yet the sight of someone staying up all night still deeply astounded it.

This creature was terrifying.

A full five days’ worth of time.

Bi Fang’s skin had changed, turning a healthy wheat color. Every hair on his body glistened with gold in the morning sun, sweat streaming down the crevices of his muscles.

The continuous labor had quickly depleted the salt in Bi Fang’s body, and he would not have had enough replenishment from just the blood of animals if it weren’t for salt.

The sound of metal clashing rang out again, sparking another burst of fiery splinters.

One hundred and two times.@@novelbin@@

Continue heating.

One hundred and three times.

Bi Fang ate breakfast, saving time by only eating the boneless parts of large fish or the belly of fish with bones, giving the rest to the Water Monitor.

Perhaps the wild Water Monitor had never imagined it would get to eat cooked food in its lifetime.

The giant hammer fell once again, a huge rebound traveling up his arm, causing Bi Fang to involuntarily drop the hammer.

In the forest, the clear, resonant sound of metal vibrating lingered for a long time.

This time, the orange steel bar resting on the stone slab showed no reaction at all.

Bi Fang collapsed to the ground, his vision darkening in waves, as cold sweat broke out in layers.

It was very difficult, incredibly difficult.

Nothing felt real anymore.

After more than five days of hammering, working for over twelve hours each day and getting less than six hours of sleep, he had finally forged a piece of quality steel!

“[Is this… steel?]”

Looking at the iron bar now standing on the stone plate, no, it should be called a steel bar now, everyone felt a sense of awe.

“[Am I really on Earth?]”

“[So, did Master Fang actually smelt a piece of… steel in the wilderness?]”

In the arena, the audience stuttered, exchanging looks as if to confirm what they had just seen.

But the expressions of utter shock on each person’s face told them all.

Yes.

This is.

Steel!