Completion of the State-Run Ironworks
The confrontation between the Sichuan Dang Family and the Qingcheng Sect, which had seemed to be racing toward an extreme, gradually appeared to cool as time went by.
There was no immediate outbreak of swordplay. After the Dang Clan sent a letter of protest to the Martial Alliance, word spread that the Alliance itself would dispatch a mediator.
Amid that strangely ominous yet peaceful atmosphere, time in Sichuan flowed onward. And within that stretch of days, the State-run Ironworks began to take on its proper form.
Construction had to continue regardless, so the Dang Family's laborers threw everything they had into finishing the State-run ironworks on schedule.
The site had been chosen downstream along the Min River, which cut straight through Seongdo. The Min was a famous tributary of the Yangtze, and the stretch where the ironworks rose was a broad riverside where the two rivers met.
"Whoa… it's huge."
The workers who had gathered after completion to take up their posts stared in open admiration.
"This used to be nothing but pure sand—land you couldn't even farm. How'd they pack it so solid and raise buildings on it?"
A laborer who had also worked as a day hand during construction answered with unmistakable pride.
"They dug the ground, then drove in those steel bars the Sichuan Dang Family makes—planted them like rice seedlings. Between them they packed gravel so the water drains clean. On top of that they laid blue stone, and finally they covered everything with bricks made from set cement. It was a hell of a lot of work. I did that part myself!"
"Makes sense. With that kind of foundation the ground's solid and you don't have to worry about drainage."
"True enough. We're upstream here, so flooding isn't a real fear. That much is plenty to feel safe."
"Still, though—watching it happen felt like seeing the immortal arts out of some old legend."
The sight of worthless sand turned into solid ground, then crowned with buildings the size of government halls, was enough to stun them and fill their chests with a swelling pride all at once.
"What do the kids call this these days? I overheard my son saying something…"
"The Dang Family did it again!"
"That's it—Sichuan's pride, the great Sichuan Dang Family pulled it off once more!"
A middle-aged man who had been listening quietly snorted a laugh.
"Come on, you lot. Getting this worked up just because the buildings went up? You don't even know how amazing these buildings actually are."
"Oh, if it isn't the crew boss!"
"How amazing are they, then?"
"The Flawless Steel this State-run Ironworks produces in a single day—five thousand gwan!"
"F-five thousand gwan?"
The staggering figure left every mouth hanging open. The crew boss grinned as if the feat were his own personal achievement.
"Heh-heh! Impressive, right?"
"That… that'd outstrip every single ironworks in the whole of Sichuan Province put together…"
"Isn't that several times the iron production of an entire province?"
"Exactly! The Young Master really is something else!"
Henry Cort's puddling furnace had first been used at the Pontypool works, but the first ironworks in history to adopt it on a true industrial scale was Britain's Carron Ironworks. Contemporary records put Carron's daily pig-iron output at nearly twenty tons.
By contrast, the daily pig-iron—Flawless Steel—output of the Sichuan Provincial Administration's State-run Ironworks designed by Hwiyeom was five thousand gwan. At roughly 3.75 kilograms per gwan, that came to 18.75 tons. Slightly less than Carron, yet when one remembered that Carron was a modern facility of the mid-eighteenth century, the figure was absurd.
For reference, the entire traditional crucible-steel production of Sichuan Province was estimated at only five to ten tons a day. A single State-run Ironworks had simply crushed the province's entire ironmaking capacity.
"How is that even possible?"
"If I knew that, I'd be a living sage."
"Well, our crew boss isn't that great a man."
"What was that, you little—want to die?"
While the workers laughed and celebrated the ironworks' completion, Hwiyeom was receiving the exact same question from the Provincial Governor.
"Five thousand gwan of Flawless Steel a day! How in the world is that possible?"
The Provincial Governor, having received Hwiyeom's report, stared with eyes wide as saucers.
"Economies of scale, the river that makes them possible, and coal," Hwiyeom answered with a smile. "I'll explain while I show you the site myself."
"Excellent! Let's go."
In high spirits, the Provincial Governor set out on an inspection tour of the State-run Ironworks with Hwiyeom. The sudden visit of such exalted personages threw the works into a state of emergency—which meant voices grew louder, movements sharper, and everyone worked harder than usual.
"Open the furnace gate!"
"Open the gate!!"
At the crew boss's shout, a man waved a red flag and bellowed the order. A dozen men seized the ropes and heaved; the pulley system lifted a great iron door the size of a castle gate. From within, molten pig iron the color of lava poured out with a roaring gush, racing down prepared channels.
From this point the process diverged from the method used to produce Flawless Steel in the original puddling furnaces. At the Sichuan Dang Family works the pig iron was poured into molds and cooled. Even in that state it was already stronger than traditional crucible pig iron—a high-carbon steel, Flawless Steel—yet they hammered it further to strengthen it still more.
Hwiyeom, however, had taken one more step when he designed the State-run works.
Once you've scaled it this large, you cut manpower-dependent processes wherever you can. Follow the original.
He introduced the grooved rolling mill—a piece of equipment the Sichuan Dang Family had wanted to try but could never attempt for lack of foundation, trained craftsmen, and, above all, the ability to draw on a large river. Only when Henry Cort's puddling furnace was combined with this rolling mill did the system become complete.
—Hisssssss…!!!
The pig iron flowing from the furnace did not drop into molds. Instead it ran down multi-branched casting channels. Thin sheets of water drawn from the Min River continuously flowed across those channels; the scorching iron poured over them. Meeting the superheated metal, the water flashed into steam and created a vapor-cushion effect that lifted the iron and let it skim across the surface.
The Provincial Governor's eyes went round.
"The molten iron is flowing on top of water?"
"The river water is running very thin and very fast over those channels. When the hot iron suddenly covers it, a thin film of steam forms. As the iron races across that film and cools, it becomes a flat plate of perfectly uniform thickness."
"How did you ever think of such a thing?"
"When you cook, if you drip water onto an oiled iron plate, the oil spatters but the water beads up and rolls around like jade marbles. I took the idea from that."
Hwiyeom chose not to add, It wasn't me—it was the clever fellows of the past. The Provincial Governor gazed at him as though he were a once-in-a-generation genius and nodded.
"This is truly investigating things to attain knowledge! If you prepared for the great examinations and became an official, you would become a man of extraordinary stature…!"
"I must lead the Sichuan Dang Family."
"Mmm. A pity."
The Provincial Governor smacked his lips with genuine regret.
The pig iron, buoyed lightly by the pressure of evaporating steam, slid swiftly downward and received its first cooling. The result was long, broad plates of iron. These plates left the primary cooling section and passed between steel rollers and rolling presses.
"Heavens! How do those enormous iron cylinders turn by themselves?"
"They are powered by the many waterwheels we installed on the Min River."
"Mmm! You didn't use the river merely for cooling—you've thriftily harnessed its strength for the entire manufacturing process!"
"Haha…"
"Gasp! What is that? A giant hammer falling to strike the iron plate!"
"A rolling mill. It too is lifted and dropped by waterwheel power. It's simply a water-mill pestle made enormous."
"Yes, yes. And that behind it—blades?"
"Depending on need, a cutting mill can slice it like knife-cut noodles into reinforcing bars, or simply shear it into plates at intervals. The principle is the same as the rolling mill—only the hammer has been replaced by blades. Finally, unlike the first stage, the plates pass through a secondary cooling process where a great volume of water pours down… Ah, here they come."
"Ohh…!"
The finished plates rolled onward on rollers. Suddenly a side sluice gate opened and a mass of river water cascaded over the glowing iron like a flood.
—Pssssssshhhh!!!
With a tremendous roar, white steam billowed up and the whole interior of the ironworks turned sweltering. The Provincial Governor could only gasp in awe.
"Ingenious devices driven by water power, the use of water's properties to make plates of uniform thickness, the method of cooling the iron—so that was why you said mass production of iron required vast amounts of water!"
"The large reverberatory furnace I designed can produce huge quantities of pig iron at once, but to run it properly you need two things."
"I understand. Massive quantities of coal to raise the furnace temperature, and an environment that can supply the huge volume of water needed both to cool the pig iron and to drive those great machines. That is why you deliberately chose the riverside even though it meant the extra work of packing the ground."
"That isn't all. To move heavy iron stock in bulk, nothing is more convenient than river transport—especially here in the Central Plains."
Before the railway age, goods preferred waterways over roads. In China particularly, inland navigation along the Yellow River and the Yangtze was several times better developed than overland haulage.
"Load finished iron onto merchant ships right here on the Min, and you can ride the Yangtze straight through Chongqing and Wuhan all the way to Nanjing. From Nanjing you can use the Grand Canal inland toward Beijing—though there is the nuisance of transferring cargo to land for part of the way—or you can exit all the way to Shanghai and then sail north along the coast up to Beijing."
"So the steel made in this place can travel the inland waterways and be sold throughout the entire Central Plains. Superb!"
"Making iron at an inland works, then carting it back to a riverside, loading and unloading—those steps take a great deal of effort. Iron is heavy, and effort means money and time. But the iron produced here simply sits in the warehouse until a transport ship docks right beside the factory. The whole process shrinks dramatically. Truly remarkable!"
Hearing the grand design Hwiyeom had drawn, the Provincial Governor slapped his knee. In truth every detail had already been written in the original proposal, but the delighted Governor failed to notice the faintly pitying glance Hwiyeom cast him.
I'm grateful they trust me, but between Father and the Provincial Governor… one of these days they're going to get burned badly…
Well, whether the Provincial Governor got swindled somewhere else was none of Hwiyeom's concern. He put on his business smile and rubbed his palms together.
"And so, as contracted, the State-run Ironworks is complete. Are you satisfied, Great-Grandfather?"
"Satisfied? I could not be more so! If it were up to me I'd build several more of these along the river!"
"Hahaha, that would be unrealistic. There simply aren't enough workers."
"True enough. Well, fine. With this we shall secure an enormous amount of tax revenue!"
"Please put it toward the development of Sichuan. And the promises you made to this humble grandson…"
"Ah, of course. The right to select half the laborers who work at the State-run Ironworks, the exclusive supply of foodstuffs for their meals, and one-tenth of the ironworks' profits. I shall keep them all faithfully."
"Thank you."
Having obtained everything he wanted, Hwiyeom grinned.
The State-run Ironworks construction had been a massive undertaking. Hwiyeom had thrown not only craftsmen but even the direct-line martial artists of the Sichuan Dang Family into the project without stinting. The overwhelming support of the clan, and the firm backing of Dang Un-sang, had made it possible; even so the total construction period had stretched to a full year. Considering that each martial artist was the equivalent of a piece of heavy machinery, the speed was still remarkable. The Provincial Governor had also attached an enormous number of government slaves and troops.
A project of that scale had naturally consumed a fortune in construction costs. Yet the continuous future revenue secured by the contract and promises with the Provincial Governor was equally handsome. The authority to select half the laborers let Hwiyeom strengthen Ma Jeonggu while seizing the side branches of the ironworks faction by the throat; if he wished, he was confident the Hwiyeom Conglomerate could simply dominate the open bidding for the remaining half as well.
And above all else—
This State-run Ironworks was nothing less than a colossal monster that devoured coal. Simply by selling coal, the Sichuan Dang Family might well become the wealthiest of the Five Great Noble Families.
Yet in his swelling hope Hwiyeom had momentarily forgotten one fact: besides the contract with the Provincial Governor, a complicated problem still remained to be solved.
And only a few days after the State-run Ironworks was completed, the people who held that problem in their hands paid a visit to Sichuan.